#452 Dr Eye Health Explains How to Preserve Your Eyesight with Age

Allen (0:00)

The amount of energy you're getting from the sun can easily burn a hole in the retina in the back of the eye. I don't wish that on anybody, because usually once that tissue's gone, it is gone, it's not gonna come back. And so people end up with permanent holes in their vision from it. This is showing a mixture, again, of yellow light, red light, and near infrared light, can not only slow down the development of age-related macular degeneration, but also restore some usable eyesight.

Siim Land (0:27)

Dr. Allen, welcome to the show.

Allen (0:28)

Hey, thank you so much. Again, this is an honor to be here, to be invited, and to talk about eye stuff.

Siim Land (0:35)

Yeah, I'm excited. And eyes are one of these interesting organs or devices that don't get that much attention, but when you look at it, then they're quite important to our overall health but also just life satisfaction.

Allen (0:52)

Yeah, it's often something, I think it's human nature to always be more reactive, right? We don't think about it until there's a problem, and unfortunately, with the eyes, when there starts to be a problem, it's usually too late to do anything about it. So it's kind of the long story of better to do a prevention and do what you can early on in life, rather than be reactive later on once things have started.

Siim Land (1:18)

Yeah. And one very fascinating thing about the eyes is that they're actually connected to your brain. In some sense, they could be considered like an extension of your brain, which, you know, most people don't really think about. Is that true?

Allen (1:30)

Yeah, absolutely. One of my colleagues, I think, kind of famously said that they're the only like internal organ of your body that is facing the outside of the body. And yeah, the retina is an extension of your brain.

Siim Land (1:45)

That's interesting. And with age, eyesight or eye health tends to deteriorate. Why is that so? Like, is there something, I guess, intrinsically vulnerable about the eyes, or is it just, you know, natural aging that every other organ also deteriorates with age?

Allen (2:03)

And certainly age plays a big role in what's going on in the eye. And why I think the eye is maybe more susceptible to a lot of aging changes is because it is one of the most highly metabolic tissues in the body. And I've seen some publications saying it is the most highly metabolic tissue. And part of that is because of the massive amount of energy it takes to process vision and send the proper signals to the brain. But also because the eye is constantly being bombarded with light energy. And your body has to respond by fixing any sort of reaction, reactive oxygen species or oxidation, but also manage the inflammatory cascade that cells are also going through because of those same processes. And that relates to a lot of different eye diseases.

Siim Land (2:53)

And is like poor eyesight, so like with oral health, at least there is this association between poor oral health and other systemic diseases, like heart disease or Alzheimer's. Is there anything, something like that with eyes that poor eyesight walks hand in hand with diabetes or heart disease or something else? Or is it, could it also be just, you know, genetic or I guess random?

Allen (3:19)

Yeah, so it's definitely a little bit of both. We do know that some genetic components increase your likelihood of various eye diseases. But there is a lot of associations, right? If you are somebody who is more obese, you have type 2 diabetes or any other form of diabetes or high blood pressure, this dramatically increases the risk of various eye conditions, in fact, have direct disease processes within the eye.

But also, if you are somebody who has problems with your eyesight, even early on in life, or it's deteriorating, then there is also higher risks for other, like dementia and aging other issues, because your brain is not getting the same amount of information, and you are more likely to become sedentary, and that just sort of compounds everything, right? Then you are not moving as much, and then we see higher rates of cardiovascular disease and depression, and it just sort of cascades. So there's definitely a relationship to many different processes within the body.

Siim Land (4:14)

Yeah, it's interesting then, you know, too much screen time, too much technology use, you know, watching too much TV or something like that, irrespective of the sedentary component, like, so would that then increase the risk of those conditions as well, like heart disease, just through the act of worsening your eyesight? And yeah, like, let's say we control for being sedentary and being overweight, yeah, these are good questions.