(upbeat music)
- Welcome, my friends to the Bob and Brad podcast,
produced by Bob and Brad,
the two most famous physical therapist on the internet.
I am Bob and exactly one half of the Bob and Brad team.
And my guest today is Dr. Joseph Allen, an optometrist,
from Minnesota, by the way.
And he has a great YouTube channel called Dr. Eye Health.
We'll talk about that. We'll talk about his background.
But he's got a lot of great advice for you.
If you have one or two eyes, I would check it out.
Thanks for watching.
Why don't we finish by talking about maybe tips
and eye exercises for eye strain relief.
- Sure. So eye strain.
I think a lot of people right now are having this, since,
this has happened before the pandemic,
but once the pandemic started
and everyone was forced to be more indoors,
in front of computer screens, Zoom meetings,
people started really having issues with it.
And certainly the blue light glasses game
kind of boost and that.
The big thing with eye strain is that if you're indoors,
if you're staring at a computer all day
it's like you're lifting a five pound weight with your arm
and you're holding it halfway up
and you're holding it there all day.
You can likely do it,
but after some time your arm's gonna get tired.
And same thing happens with your eye muscles.
So taking breaks is super important,
and just remembering, "Hey, I should probably not stare
at this screen for hours and hours and hours."
So getting up, moving away from your office, your desk,
putting your phone down, getting off the couch,
walking the around, using the bathroom.
Those are big things.
Dry eye plays a role in eye fatigue.
Again, because we don't blink as much.
So making sure that your eyes aren't dry and too irritated.
There are some things you can do ergonomically
if you're at an office desk.
Like right now I have my computer screen
where the top of the screen is about eye level.
- Right.
- So you're kind of looking down a little bit
not necessarily perfectly straightforward
but a little bit downward too.
That can help with eye strain.
Your computer screen should be about an arms length away.
You can almost high five the screen.
That is a good distance. Some people sit way too close.
Making sure you have updated glasses prescription
or specific glasses for focusing on the computer
because we can make a glasses prescription
to help reduce the amount of kind of focusing power
or muscle power required for you to be lifting,
in order to focus on that distance for long periods of time
- I got a pair of glasses for just computer use
because I have the bifocals and-
- Yeah
- Without them, I have to go like this.
(Dr. Allen laughs)
You know, it would crick my neck.
So, it was a game changer for me.
I mean, really I liked it.
- Yeah, once you get into the bifocal
or progressive no-line bifocal world.
- Yeah.
- Those lenses often have a section or a segment
to see computer screens, but it's narrow.
It's not a very wide field and some people are sitting there
trying to find the sweet spot in the lens.
And you're exactly right, they lift up their neck
to see closer. - [Bob] Yep. Exactly.
And end up with that neck issue.
So I recommend that for my patients,
especially if they work on a computer
if they spend several hours a day on the computer,
invest in a specific computer lens.
You'll have the whole lens to look through.
You won't have to bend your neck.
And things should be nice and clear and you won't have to
deal with that looking for the sweet spot aspect.
- Right. - So that plays a role.
As far as, you know, eye exercises to help with eye strain,
this is a tough one.
In the eye care world there is something called ortho-
not orthocare, sorry, orthoptics, or vision therapy,
which is often used for people with eye muscle disorders.
Like they have a lazy eye that's turning outward,
they're having problems focusing up close
because of the the communication of the brain
to the eye muscles and that coordination.
So there's a lot of good evidence and science
for that practice.
But as far as eye strain goes,
I think the biggest thing is just, again, taking a break,
getting away from the computer.
I encourage people to go for a walk outside.
- Absolutely. Absolutely.
- In Minnesota winter it's a little tough sometimes,
but getting outside, looking in the distance,
that's good for so many different aspects
of your psychology,
but certainly just for getting your eyes to stop focusing
on a near object for hours and hours.
And then other activities, sports,
anything where your eyes are shifting from left to right.
You're playing tennis, you're playing basketball.
Something a little bit more engaging.
I think those are just great activities
for lifestyle and for helping you just reduce kind of this
focused demand of your eyes for hours and hours.
I think those are some of the best.
I know I have a video that goes over a couple other
nontraditional eye muscle exercises,
just looking different directions.
- Sure.
- And I know some people given me good feedback
that that does help.
But it's not necessarily a guided, studied method
that's published in research.
If that makes sense.
- Very good.
Yes. That makes complete sense.
So I wanted to be very respectful of your time.
So is there anything else you wanna mention
on this podcast and YouTube video?
- Yeah, I think the biggest message I always try to advocate
for my patients is eat healthy (laughs).
Have a good lifestyle of eating healthy.
Green leafy vegetables are in fact healthier for the eye
than just eating carrots.
Getting good sleep.
Reducing stress in your life.
There have been good studies linking
increased levels of stress to higher levels of eye pressure.
And that increases your risk for glaucoma,
which is a blinding disease.
Eating better also helps reduce your risk
of macular degeneration.
Seeing your eye doctor yearly is recommended,
'cause a lot of eye diseases you visually won't-
you'll feel like, "Oh my vision's fine."
But a lot of eye diseases don't start to affect
your eyesight until it's too late.
- Sure.
- So your eye doctor's gonna catch things a lot sooner
and faster.
Unfortunately we have people who go many years
without seeing their eye doctor and they come in,
it's like, "Oh, now you have this disease.
I wish we could have caught this five years prior."
- [Bob] Yeah. Great advice.
- So those are the two biggest things.
And for anybody listening, I hope that they can at least
just think about their eyes, their vision a little bit more.
It's the most precious sense I think that we have
- It is.
- And you know, we're at a spot in technology where, yeah,
if you tragically lose a limb, if you lose a leg,
we have prosthetic legs.
We have other technology to help you still
live an amazing life.
If you lose your eye,
we don't really have a functional eye that we can just
plug in there and give you eyesight back.
Yet.
Maybe another a hundred years,
but we're far from that at this time.
- Sure.
So again, I'm gonna implore you to check out
Dr. Joseph Allen's YouTube channel.
Very, very informative.
It's called Dr. Eye Health.
And I don't know if you have a website
or anything like that.
- We do. - [Bob] You do?
Why don't you go ahead and-
- Yeah. Doctoreyehealth.com.
It's a little bit more of just a blog site and a place
to kind of just give a little bit more information.
So that that's another resource. Absolutely.
- I'm sure people can tell you're very well spoken
and have great information.
So once again I wanna thank you very much
for coming on the program.
You're always welcome back.
And I hope you have great eye health in the future.
- Thank you. I love that.
- All right.
Thanks Dr. Allen.
- [Dr. Allen] Thank you so much.
(upbeat music)