﻿So you've got eye floaters and you're desperate for a cure.
Then you hear about Vision Degrading Myodesopsia
or VDM Project and its
quest for a cure for vitreous eye floaters, awesome
you think then you discover that they're asking for donations towards their efforts
to find a solution and you suddenly get alarm bells ringing in your head and you
wonder, is this just an elaborate scam to get money off of me?
In this video, I'm going to explore
the work of the VDM Project and why I'm choosing to support their efforts.
Hi I'm Martin Oguzie, this is Martin's Eye Tips, thank you for joining me.
This channel is dedicated to helping you
see better, see more comfortably and also to be less anxious about your eyes.
If that sounds interesting to them,
please hit the subscribe button, hit the notification bell as well.
So you get reminded every time I upload a new video, as you may have figured out
by now, I don't believe that the VDM project and its research is a scam.
That's because I've had the opportunity to talk to and be able to meet some
of the team and people that are involved in the project and bringing it to life.
So the project has been funded by Fabio, who has been busy assembling a team
of passionate individuals from all walks of life and from all around the world
with one thing in common, and that is that they are all vitreous
eye floaters sufferers and they all want
to come together to bring a solution to life.
I've met a number of these individuals and I've heard their floaters stories
which have proved to be both powerful and inspiring.
So let's get into what the project and its objectives are all about.
Why I think it's worth your attention.
I'm going to bring this video down into the following sections,
which I'll leave timestamped in the description box below.
First of all,
what's unique about the VDM Project, the power of the crowd, the plan
where they are now, is a cure realistic and should you support it now?
The VDM Project could easily be
a group of people, a group of sufferers that come together to complain,
to feel sorry for themselves and frankly not achieve much at all.
But I think the key unique thing about the project is that led by Fabio,
they've gone out to collaborate with an ice specialist in the form of Dr.
Jerry Sebag.
I think this is a significant and important move towards their bold goal
of finding a non-surgical cure for vitreous eye floaters or at the very
least, a safer surgical alternative for vitreous eye floaters.
The reason is because Dr.
Sebag is an experienced ophthalmologist and a vitreo-retinal surgeon.
But he also does head up a not for profit
organization called the VMR Research Foundation.
VMR stands Vitreous Macular Retina,
which is really the key areas that the foundation works in.
For what I can see, the foundation is very well connected to a lot of universities,
institutions that are all doing the kind of work that will be necessary to support
the foundation in a non financial capacity.
So it's a unique opportunity.
I think the VDM Project has established to partner with Dr.
Sebag and the VMR research foundation.
So this means it's not just the community
gathering together to talk, but instead real action can come out of the project.
At this point, you might be wondering what does VDM even mean?
Well, it stands for Vision
Degrading Myodesopsia.
And this is a term that I believe has been coined by Dr.
Sebag himself to distinguish the difference between
regular myodesopsia, which is the medical name for eye floaters
and what he is calling a vision degrading myodesopsia.
Dr. Sabag believes that clinically significant
floaters that cause degrading of your vision is actually a real disease.
And this is important because not all floaters cause vision degradation.
But if one does and it can be linked to a disease process,
then we can study that process with the hope of curing the disease,
much in the same way that we would do many other diseases.
And this would also make it a lot easier for big pharmaceutical backing to be
established or even government funding to speed up this work.
Now, the VDM Project has taken up the challenge of bringing in people
and experts together to find an acceptable cure for eye floaters,
because there just doesn't appear to be the necessary big pharmaceutical support
or interest for a treatment in the pipeline.
Now, Dr.
Sebag runs the VMR Research Foundation,
as not for profit organization, and they're constantly fundraising
themselves for the work that they're doing.
So how does the VDM Project expect
to be able to fund and support the work of Dr.
Sebag for the desired solution?
What if you dig deep enough
into the VDM website, you'll find and understand that they're
actively seeking donations to bring their vision to life.
And if you think about it,
it's no different really to crowd funding the research.
And many of us who have given money
to a crowdfunding campaign at some point in recent years.
The reality is if people who stand
to benefit from the research don't invest financially in it, it may never get done.
The guys at the VDM Project, however,
have been creative enough to look at other methods of funding.
And in April 2020, I believe they secured
about $10,000 of monthly online
advertising free from Google after jumping
through the necessary hoops and proving their not for profit status,
as well as also proving that the doing is much needed.
So what's the plan? I mean, nobody wants to throw their hard
earned money at a project that doesn't have a plan.
Well, firstly, as the name suggests,
the VDM project is just that a project that means it's a work in progress.
And that means that you should be clear that treatment or cure will not be
available overnight or possibly even in the very near future.
There are four initial stages of their
broader plan that I'll cover in the following steps.
These are outlined on their website as well.
And I'll leave links in the description so you can check that out for yourself.
So first of all, is phase 1.
Phase 1 is the launch of their website, vdmresearch.org and also their plan
to reach 10,000 people via their newsletter.
So this really is all about gathering
a mass of people who feel that the work that they're doing will be
beneficial to them and that they have an interest in the success of the project.
So the link to the newsletter,
I'll also leave in the description box below so you can check that out
for yourself and I think is certainly worth signing up.
There's nothing to lose, nothing to pay for.
And you'll get a document with which highlights really the research
that they are kind of working on and some of their thinking and strategies about
their approach to being able to find a solution.
Phase 2 is to help the VMR Research Foundation for a specific
research projects, and this is described on the website as well.
And for more details, I'll leave a link to that page in the description box as well.
However, the Vitreous Macular Retina Research
Foundation, to give it its full name, has three main objectives here.
And they're currently working on this
and they have a monthly funding goal to be able to establish these three steps.
So the first step is to discover the cause of eye floaters,
which they believe will help them to be able to, in the short term,
discover a cure and in the longer term, to be able to prevent vitreous floaters.
So the second objective is to discover the link between myopia and eye floaters.
Thirdly is to create and distribute a new type of questionnaire
to help them accurately measure the negative impact the eye floaters has
on people in a way that reproduces data that can be analysed and measured.
Phase 3 of the VDM Project plan is to create a huge pressure group
to influence pharmaceutical companies and to get support from institutions as well.
And finally, Phase 4 is to develop a better treatment approach for eye
floaters and to focus on prevention as well.
So that's the broad plan, and it's ambitious, to say the least.
But there is an actual plan based
on action and attached to an actual research capable foundation, as we speak
I believe that right now they are in phase
two and perhaps early stage phase three with a lot of work still needing to be done.
And actual research as well still needing to be done.
So as I said earlier, this really is a project and work
in progress that will be helped with more people getting on board
for more updates on their progress, you know, do check out the website.
And it's also worth checking out the YouTube channel of Cormack
on the channel called Cure Eye Floaters, Natural Remedies And Solutions.
He's a member of the team and he's
certainly clued up on the progress of the project.
I think it's a reasonable question to ask
and from an optometrist point of view, and even from what I know
of the ophthalmology and vision research community,
people are generally quite closed off to the possibility of there being
a non-surgical treatment for vitreous eye floaters, you know, full stop.
However, in my relatively short time
of making videos about floaters here on YouTube, I discovered that there is
a lot of research that needs to be done and perhaps some forgotten scientific
thinking about the vitreous as well that could ultimately lead to a breakthrough.
Now, the reality, though,
is that we'll never know unless someone actually does the research.
And Dr Sebag is certainly someone
that appears to have all the necessary expertise, interest.
And I hope that a cure or a better
treatment is possible for vitreous eye floaters.
That alone, in my eyes, is a reason to be hopeful.
And I quote the recent VDM Project review video produced by James over at the world
of eye floaters channel and I definitely suggest you go and check out his video
for his take on things if you haven't done so already.
And I'll leave a link to that as well, a description box below.
But he did raise some interesting
questions that I imagine some of you may have about the project as well.
So one of them was really around the support and how you support the project
financially, you know what's gonna be
done with all the money that people are given and how long will it take to arrive
at a treatment and a cure for vitreous eye floaters. Now,
from what I can understand in terms of how long it may take for treatment to arrive.
I think it's a long way off, especially when I hear that they're still
needing to develop ways to image the vitreous better because generally
the research hasn't been done into better imaging
techniques for the vitreous.
So currently ultrasound is the best way of doing that.
But they are looking at developing ways
of using the O.C.T. scanning device to be able to look at the vitreous as well.
However, I think that people have
to accept this and allow the process to take place.
I do think that with the right funding, things can move along a lot faster.
And I believe that advanced level phase 3
of the plan that I outlined
from the VDM Project's objectives should at least be the focus for anyone choosing
to support the VDM Project and the VMR Research Foundation financially.
If the project can raise enough support financially and by kind of mass community
support via the newsletter Facebook communities, whatever the case may be,
then it may be possible for Dr. Sebag's VMR Research Foundation to get huge
funding from institutions or big pharmaceutical companies.
That will then mean that they need less
crowd funding money from individuals and they can make a lot faster progress.
And I must say, I don't get anything out
of supporting the project or making these videos at all.
So but I do know that there are many great people involved in this project,
and I do feel that it's a credible attempt to bring people together to get solution
to a very big problem that many people are living through.
Well, I'm not going to flat out recommend
you go out and donate to the project without thinking about it.
I would suggest that if you are an eye floater
sufferer and is making your life miserable and you want a solution,
then there's no harm in checking out the website, signing up to the newsletter.
And if you do end up donating,
then I would suggest that you do so knowing that what you're really doing is
supporting the project up until it can hopefully stand on its own two feet.
Also, if floaters sufferers who are often crying out for help, don't support it.
You need to ask yourself the question, why would anybody else support it?
Leave me a comment
Do you think the VDM Project is a good idea?
Subscribe to the channel hit the like button
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And I look forward to catching you guys in the next video.
Take care.