BITESIZE | How to Train Your Eyes & Rewire Your Brain for Better Focus & Less Stress | Dr Bryce Appelbaum #676

Dr Rangan Chatterjee (0:01)

Welcome to Feel Better, Live More, Bitesize, your weekly dose of inspiration, insights, and practical ideas to help you live well and thrive. Each episode brings you some of my favorite moments, useful tools, and inspiring ideas from the many incredible conversations I've had on my podcast. In today's Bitesize, pioneering neuro-optometrist Dr Bryce Appelbaum explains why our visual system is about far more than simply how well we can see. Many of us don't realize just how much our vision influences how we think, feel, and perform. And today, we explore the surprising connection between vision and stress, and Bryce shares some simple practical exercises we can all use to better support our visual system and our wider health.

The visual system may well be one of the most neglected areas in our health, for our health.

Dr Bryce Appelbaum (1:07)

I know I'm biased. That's not maybe. It 100 percent is.

Dr Rangan Chatterjee (1:10)

But no one's talking about vision or the visual system. That's a problem, isn't it?

Dr Bryce Appelbaum (1:14)

It is a huge problem.

Dr Rangan Chatterjee (1:16)

So in terms of symptoms that might indicate we've got a functional vision problem, what would you say they are?

Dr Bryce Appelbaum (1:23)

So absolutely, it starts with reading and screens because so much of our life is stuck up close. And so somebody who avoids reading or is losing their place or skipping words or skipping lines or not remembering what they're reading or their attention seems like it drains so quickly with reading, those are clear signs of something with the eyes not working as well together as a team as they could or should is in play. But then eye strain and headaches and tired eyes and dry eyes, those are all absolutely issues with vision where the stress of what they're asking of them, they're no longer able to meet the demands of.

Dr Rangan Chatterjee (2:02)

What about things like brain fog or just general fatigue and life or even things like burnouts? Do you think vision problems can play a role in those things as well?

Dr Bryce Appelbaum (2:14)

I think vision is a direct reflection of brain function. And so if there's fatigue, cognitively, if there's brain fog, if we're tired or we're losing productivity throughout the workday or throughout just the day in general, very often vision is playing a role in what's taxing the system.

And when you think about functional vision problems as being brain problems that are manifesting through the eyes, our vision can only withstand what our brain is asking it to do.

Dr Rangan Chatterjee (2:43)

Yeah.

Dr Bryce Appelbaum (2:44)

But there is so much more to vision than just eyesight. Vision is how our eyes move together, converge, track, focus, process information, how we derive meaning from the world around us, and then direct the appropriate action. So eyesight is a symptom. Eyesight is how well we can see at a certain distance. Eyesight is glasses or contacts. Vision is brain, and vision problems are brain problems. And there are so many solutions and fixes out there for vision problems that extend way beyond just getting new glasses or new contacts. So somebody who notices far away keeps getting blurrier, or their eyesight fluctuates throughout the day. Sometimes it's clear, sometimes it's blurry. The more tired they are, the more reading they're doing, the more fatigued they are, the more their vision changes.

That is the symptom of some underlying vision problem. And so often in today's world, that stems from the focusing system, the inside muscles of the eyes, not being able to with stain stamina, or not having flexibility, or not working together like they're supposed to, or the outside muscles of the eyes, the eye coordination system.

Each of these systems becoming fatigued, or becoming burnt out, the more that you're asking of them, and then eyesight starts to change because the visual system and the eye brain connection is either damaged, or not functioning at its potential.

Dr Rangan Chatterjee (4:18)

It's amazing how many different systems and symptoms in the body can be related back to problems in our visual system.

You mentioned a few, you know, fatigue, difficulty reading, difficulty staying focused and concentrating. You mentioned others to me over the course of the week. It seems like many of us have now adapted to a world of screens where everything's near. You know, reading books even, I guess. Everything's near, near, near, near, near. And we've, many of us, myself, as an example, has lost some of that ability to look out into the distance.

Dr Bryce Appelbaum (4:57)

That flexibility.

Dr Rangan Chatterjee (4:58)

That flexibility. And you said something, when you saw me on Monday, I was stuck on manual focus. You know, which is really interesting. So can you even separate the visual system from the rest of the body? Because I wanted to talk to you about stress in the visual system today. You're basically saying that we're living in a highly stressful visual world now. Right. We know that if we're looking at a horizon, the sea, we're on a beach, we're on a holiday, and we've got that soft peripheral vision where we can just see as far as the eye can see. We know that that actually is a way of activating the parasympathetic nervous system. So you're switching off stress, promoting relaxation. So it kind of stands to reason because all of these things are bi-directional. You said when I came to see you on Monday, I was locked in this manual focus. I had tunnel vision.