(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 "Doctor 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.
Let's go on to the next topic.
Let's talk about cataracts.
We have a lot of elderly people
in our population as far as YouTube.
So, - Yeah.
- What are they, how do you treat them?
- So cataracts are one of the most common things
that develop inside the eye.
It's kinda like gray hair.
(Joseph laughs)
It's always funny to me,
we always ask our patients if cataracts runs in your family,
it's part of our health standard protocol.
But I always kinda laughed at that,
because if you live long enough,
you will get some level of cataracts.
- It's like arthritis.
- Yeah.
(Joseph laughs)
Arthritis, gray hair, something.
- [Bob] Yeah.
- So inside of the eye, there is a crystalline lens.
And this lens is nice, crystal clear when you are young,
or for most people,
it's possible to be born with a cataract but,
this crystalline lens is flexible,
it is clear as a young age.
But every year of life,
it grows a little bit larger, little bit larger.
And by the time most people are in their maybe fifties,
they start to see a,
almost yellowing color on this lens inside the eye.
And as eye doctors we could see this,
but if you keep getting older,
and a couple other factors influence this,
but the lens starts to become foggy and opaque.
And if you're somebody who is developing a cataract,
this happens so slowly over years,
you usually don't realize it's happening.
If you notice any symptoms,
you just notice your vision's more blurry.
Or some people describe it as if they have like,
a piece of like fogged glass over their vision,
or something has grown over their vision.
That's what they often describe to me.
But this cataract, which funny enough,
the name is derived from the white frothy appearance
of a waterfall, right?
And if you've ever seen that,
if you've gone to a waterfall
and it just looks more white kind of color,
that's what a cataract is.
And that's what it's called that inside the eye.
Because once a cataract develops, it turns white.
And again with your vision really fuzzy,
you can't really see.
So in third world countries
it is a common cause of blindness.
'Cause it's they don't have access to surgery,
then it's tough for them to see well.
So I even myself go on mission trips a couple times
with some surgeons and they'll do cataract surgeries
basically the whole time in third world countries.
But thankfully in more first world countries
people who have access to healthcare,
cataract surgery is thankfully
one of the most successful surgeries
that exists across all of medicine.
It's very fast and efficient.
And it takes you longer to get ready for the surgery
than it takes to complete the surgery.
So thankfully,
when it comes to cataract surgery,
it takes about an hour to get somebody ready,
to have the procedure.
It takes about 10, 15 minutes
for that procedure to be finished.
Most people at the end of recovery,
'cause it takes some time, there's inflammation afterward,
and you're often using eyedrops.
It usually takes about three to four weeks
for the eye to be more or less fully healed
from cataract surgery.
With the surgery,
because they took this lens out of the eye,
which has power to it,
they now do an implant
of a plastic replacement lens inside the eye.
Which they try to account for your glasses prescription,
any prescription that may be needed.
And for most people,
they may have a very minimal glasses prescription left over,
or they're just relying on like,
over the counter reader glasses.
And for the few people who,
if people want to invest money outta pocket,
'cause here in the United States a lot of people,
insurance will cover that.
If you have a cataract that's causing blurred vision,
most insurances will cover that procedure.
If you want, you can get higher technology glassed lenses,
they now have multifocal lenses.
Or if you have a toric, if you have astigmatism,
if your doctors ever told you,
you have a large amount of astigmatism,
they do have toric implants to account for that as well.
- Wow.
- So, those usually again cost
a little bit more outta pocket.
Or if you wanna go with a procedure
that involves using laser,
instead of more of the little bit older technology,
which both are still good,
but there's different packages
that some surgeons will offer.
If people are interested in,
maybe not having to rely on glasses as much
after the procedure.
- So both eyes done at the same time.
- Funny enough, usually not.
It's usually one eye at a time.
- Oh, it is.
- [Joseph] But there are some,
newer publications of surgeons throughout the country,
trying to do two at the same time.
And so that might change in the future.
But one of the reasons why they often don't is because,
what happens if something,
- Oh, right.
- [Joseph] What happens if something goes wrong
in the procedure?
- Right, right. Makes sense.
- If you're doing one eye at a time, thankfully,
you have the other eye.
But if you're doing it on both eyes then, so,
- Good point, good point.
(upbeat music)