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More than 20,000 workplace eye injuries take people off the job each year. Using proper eye protection can help prevent eye trauma at work. Find out more here:
http://bit.ly/1OgUJt7
Have tips on workplace eye-safety during the pandemic? Share them with us in our email community! https://bit.ly/2Flq1IR

Prevent Workplace Eye Injuries During COVID-19 If you're an essential worker during COVID-19, it may be tempting to remove your mask - especially if you struggle with fogged up goggles or glasses. Follow these tips for eye safety in the workplace.

March is Workplace Eye Wellness Month. Find out how to make your workspace more eye-friendly. http://bit.ly/1Q27QnM
Have tips on maintaining an eye-friendly workspace? Drop them in the comments below or join the email conversation: https://bit.ly/2Flq1IR

Suffering from eye strain at work? Follow these tips from the American Academy of Ophthalmology to get some relief. http://bit.ly/1Q27QnM

What helps you in preventing eye strain? Join the conversation! https://bit.ly/2Flq1IR

Computers, Digital Devices and Eye Strain Staring at your computer screen, smartphone or other digital devices for long periods won’t cause permanent eye damage, but your eyes may feel dry, red and tired. Learn how to prevent digital eye stra

March is Workplace Eye Wellness Month! If a day in front of the screen leaves your eyes dry, red, and irritated, try these eye ergonomics tips to make them more comfortable. http://bit.ly/1Q27QnM

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Here are 5 lutien-rich foods to fuel your eyes.

THIS WEEK IN THE FITEYES COMMUNITY: If you don't know this already, it is possible to see the fatty streaks and atherosclerotic plaques in the arteries in your retina from a routine fundus photograph.
Most ophthalmologists do not attempt to diagnose artery disease from the retina, but some forward thinkers believe this is exactly what we should be doing more of. Several years ago I did see fatty streaks in my retinal arteries on my fundus photos and it shocked me because my diet has always been so healthy, I exercise, I'm not overweight, I don't smoke, etc.
However, my nutritional approach at the time was strongly influenced by the research around "healthy fats". This alternative view on fats has almost become mainstream now. Butter is back. Eggs are OK. Lard is even OK. But in spite of the massive publicity, those studies receive, and the volume of such studies, the whole body of that work leaves many questions unanswered. Many of the key studies are very flawed. I reexamined my position, reviewed all the research, not just the research in support of my position, and I ended up changing my position and abandoning my high "healthy fat" diet. I would recommend to any of you to look for fatty streaks in your retinal arteries and then make your own decision about the best diet.
I believe cleaning up my retinal arteries is one of the best things I can do for my eyes. Programs like the Pritikin Diet, Ornish Diet, Esselstyn Diet, and McDougall Diet have the best evidence for reversing artery disease. Those are all plant-based low-fat diets.

As far as supplements, I believe saffron is one of the most interesting in the context of both glaucoma and AMD.

Paradise Herbs Saffr Tone – 60 Vegetarian Capsules
https://bit.ly/3kbg40B

-Dave, FitEyes Founder

JOIN the conversation! https://bit.ly/2Flq1IR

Your Brain May be Disguising a Blinding Eye Disease
FitEyes and the American Academy of Ophthalmology urge people to protect themselves from age-related macular degeneration

Even though Marlene Klein was having trouble recognizing familiar faces and began to mistake her fingers for carrots as she chopped vegetables, she had no idea she was slowly losing her vision to a leading cause of blindness, age-related macular degeneration (AMD). That's because her brain was compensating for the developing blind spots in her vision. Marlene is not alone. According to a recent Harris Poll survey, most Americans are unaware that people do not always experience symptoms before losing vision to eye disease. In February, FitEyes and the American Academy of Ophthalmology is urging people to protect themselves from vision loss from AMD by getting a baseline eye exam by age 40.
More than 2 million Americans are living with the most advanced forms of AMD, a number that is expected to reach 4.4 million by 2050. It is the leading cause of blindness among white Americans over 40, and it's a leading cause of irreversible vision loss throughout the world.

AMD happens when part of the retina called the macula is damaged. It's the part of the eye that delivers sharp, central vision needed to see objects straight ahead. Over time, the loss of central vision can interfere with everyday activities, such as the ability to drive, read, and see faces clearly.
Because AMD often has no early warning signs, getting regular comprehensive eye exams from an ophthalmologist is critical. Academy guidelines state that adults with no signs or risk factors for eye disease get a baseline eye disease screening at age 40 — the time when early signs of disease and changes in vision may start to occur. From age 40 to 54, get your eyes examined every 2 to 4 years; from 55 to 64, every 1 to 3 years. By age 65, get an exam every one to two years, even in the absence of symptoms or eye problems. If you have risk factors for eye disease, you will need to be examined more frequently.

Ophthalmologists – physicians who specialize in medical and surgical eye care – have more tools than ever before to diagnose AMD earlier, and to treat it better. But these advances cannot help patients whose disease is undiagnosed or patients who are unaware of the seriousness of their disease.
"People's lack of understanding about AMD is a real danger to public health," said Rahul N. Khurana, MD, clinical spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology. "As the number of people with AMD is expected to explode in the coming years, it's more important than ever that we prioritize eye health and have our eyes examined regularly."

More needs to be done to elevate eye health as a priority. According to that same Harris Poll, while 81 percent of respondents say they do everything they can to protect the health of their eyes, only 11 percent say eye appointments top their list of the most important doctor appointments to keep.
But Marlene is not one of them. She is vigilant about keeping appointments with her ophthalmologist.

"I keep going back to see my ophthalmologist every month because I want to be able to see my husband's face and to see my three, beautiful daughters," said Marlene.

Her commitment has paid off. Even though her initial diagnosis was dire, today she can recognize the faces of her family and friends and cook without nicking her fingers. Learn more about Marlene's story here. https://bit.ly/3bbOBaT

JOIN THE COMMUNITY! https://bit.ly/2Flq1IR

What You Don’t Know About AMD Can Blind You Even though Marlene Klein was having trouble recognizing familiar faces and began to mistake her fingers for carrots as she chopped vegetables, she had no id...

Study presented at supports the idea that retinal ganglion cells that regulate sleep are destroyed in glaucoma.
http://ow.ly/VI3u50Cl4Dr

Doing Things Slowly in a Fast World

The entire following blog post was initially written as a private email to a friend of mine. I decided to share it here.
I grew up doing fast things in a fast way. I raced motorcycles -- and I have always loved anything fast. But I also tried to accomplish the maximum possible number of things each day and I always pushed myself to do things quicker or more efficiently. Then I developed glaucoma.

As I have gotten to know myself more intimately (thanks in part to self-tonometry) I have realized that I actually like to take my time. I enjoy doing things in a non-rushed manner. You could even say that I enjoy being slow! (Something I never would have admitted to myself in my days of racing, even in my most private thoughts.) Even today, I still have great admiration for people who do things quickly, as if this is an inherently superior way of being.

But I now know that I like to take my time doing things. I still enjoy efficiency. But sometimes it is more efficient to delay the next project's start and finish what was started rather than have to terminate it due to an artificial deadline and then pick it up again at a later time. I like going deep into things (whether discussions, research, or building software) and having the time to do it well. And I have found that sometimes I even enjoy doing something in a completely inefficient manner (saying that still sounds sacrilegious). Sometimes I enjoy just plain being slow! (What have I just said! My gosh!)

Actually, slowness is a Kapha tendency. Honoring one's tendencies -- without letting them become imbalanced -- seems to be a valid strategy for healing. Exercise is good for Kapha people in part because it gets us going, prevents us from stagnating and getting taken over by inertia. However, keeping Kapha balanced is a much different thing from trying to deny one's Kapha tendencies and act like a vata or pitta person.

When I realized these things about myself, I stopped trying to consult with clients for at least 8 hours per day, for example. I started leaving big gaps between my appointments. This cut way back on my stress and dramatically increased my enjoyment. I think this decision and other related decisions are important to my strategy of protecting my vision. This decision has certainly been a benefit to my overall health and happiness.

I think one of the worst things I did was deny my desire to take my time. For most of my life, I forced myself to operate in jobs and in situations that demanded doing things as fast as possible.

My wife is the opposite of me in this regard. She does not like to spend much time on any one thing. She doesn't care about understanding something in detail, and it is virtually impossible for her to do deep research. But it also makes her an ideal fit for many modern workplaces. Bosses see her as someone who gets things done. Indeed, I also greatly admire this quality of hers. (And few bosses really care about doing things any better than she does them anyway, but now I'm getting off-topic.)

However, it is clear to both my wife and I that her (lack of depth + quickness) and my (depth + slowness) are complimentary. Neither is inherently better than the other, but modern society tries to force everyone into the mode my wife operates in. Even in areas where depth has traditionally been the most valued trait, CEO's have (for example) compelled employees to follow a model that emphasizes speed above all else, right?A person who doesn't fit well in a corporate culture that demands we do as much as possible as fast as possible, will, at some point, have to face a hard truth. The lack of congruence here is almost guaranteed to result in the development of the disease. Often people never make the connection between dis-ease and disease, but my experience tells me that the correlation is nearly 1.0. [EDIT: a correlation of 1.0 means loosely that the relationship is nearly 100% aligned.)

I had to accept the fact that leaving time between clients (so that, if an occasional Thursday session needs to run longer, for example, I can go with that and enjoy it) would reduce my potential and actual income. In the beginning, my old ideas about being productive, successful, etc. dominated the messages from my own body. I endured dis-ease. Eventually, I did listen to my body -- but my first reaction was that I wanted to quit consulting and go back to my previous job. Eventually, I just learned to really listen, to pay attention to what was right in front of me. When I gave up my concepts about "success" I found that I could easily do this consulting and be comfortable. But at the time it was a difficult decision. Choosing to be "less successful" goes against everything society wants us to do/be. Society rewards/honors those who destroy their health to achieve some material gains, right? As Eckhart Tolle points out, when we are on our death beds, we may finally see the folly of this way of living. Tim Ferris calls it the deferred life plan.

One can learn mental discipline and psychological techniques for dealing with stress in the workplace. But when one is in a job that is against one's nature, it makes mastering the other eminent psychological skills we've discussed seem trivial. I do not feel that simply adjusting, as challenging as that would be, is sufficient to let me accomplish my goals of protecting my vision and improving my vision. I need to be in a situation where I feel totally right all the time. Where I live with comfort (the total opposite of dis-ease) in my physiology 24 hours a day.

No matter what worldly success may be achieved by conforming to society's ideals of success if doing so is against one's nature and takes one out of one's comfort zone, real success and real happiness will never ever be achieved. Nothing but misery, disease, and suffering will come from that strategy.

The beauty of self-tonometry is that we can quantify and test these ideas. In my case, I see a near-perfect long term correlation between dis-ease in my body and elevated intraocular pressure.

As a postscript, I would like to add that even after I made this decision to honor my enjoyment of working more slowly, I still retained a tendency to want to do things fast and to do more in less time. For example, I have the habit of walking in the evenings. It is good for my eyes. Until more recently, I tried to walk fast. I felt like I needed to get the benefits of physical exercise (even though I was walking primarily for my mind and my eyes). That immediately led to the idea that the more miles I walked in my given hour of time, the better I was doing.

Soon I discovered that my walks did not always lower my IOP. Eventually, I tried the idea of walking slowly. (Slowly I started applying the concept of being true to myself to all areas of my life.) At first, walking slowly was actually psychologically painful. I felt that I was wasting my time. Eventually, I learned to let myself do it and I found that I could consistently produce lower IOP by walking slower. My best walking is when I turn off my thinking brain and just walk as slow and as relaxed as I feel like walking. When I give up on the idea of making it into a productive exercise, I get a much lower IOP. Moral of the story: slower is better. ;)

Want to learn more? JOIN THE COMMUNITY! https://bit.ly/3u1uZz9

I wanted to let the community know that Dr. Robert Ritch gave you all some very nice compliments recently. He recognized the overall degree of intelligence represented among FitEyes members as well as the general good quality of your discussions.
I want to echo his thoughts. It is such a pleasure to interact with the FitEyes community. Sometimes I forget how dysfunctional many support groups can become.

I have personally been inspired by this book: Why People Don't Heal and How They Can - Caroline Myss
https://bit.ly/37j68gv
I am proud to say that 15 years later, FitEyes remains a very good example of a healthy group that actually does support healing. Our community has avoided falling into the various traps Caroline Myss mentions in her book.

We are not afraid to think outside the box. We focus on finding solutions and solving problems. Evidence of this ranges from self-tonometry to micro-drops to medication rotation to new supplements to discussion of cutting edge surgical procedures and medical advances.

Many of the topics that empower patients were originally brainstormed here in FitEyes and have now become widely adopted. Of course, we started the whole discussion of self-tonometry, as well as micro-drops. Same for rotating medications. And we were the first patient group to seriously look at important supplements like PEA for eye health.

The common path for a glaucoma patient is more and more eye drops, then surgery, and eventually more surgery, with a lot of eye discomfort throughout. We cannot all avoid that path. Indeed, the newer surgical options are a very important advance. But it is very encouraging that a meaningful number of FitEyes members have shown all of us that it is possible for glaucoma to be a positive path, one where "progression" does not simply mean a worsening of glaucoma but instead means that we are progressing in our own growth, progressing in our knowledge, and progressively finding additional ways to empower ourselves.

We can sometimes reduce our eye drops and even achieve better IOP management. We can sometimes delay or avoid surgery, not because we are procrastinating, but because we have empowered ourselves through knowledge to get our IOP under better control, hence avoiding the need for surgery. We can always find inner peace in the midst of any challenge life brings our way. Those are just a few examples of the incredibly encouraging things I have seen in this community over the last 15 years.

Thank you all for keeping FitEyes so positive and full of actionable information. You all make it fun and rewarding to be a part of FitEyes.

-Dave, FitEyes Founder

Why People Don't Heal and How They Can - Caroline Myss Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.

In terms of fat intake, the evidence suggests that saturated fats, trans fats, and omega-6 fatty acids contributes to AMD. Monounsaturated fats (think olive oil) are potentially protective. However, omega-3 fatty acids actually decrease the risk of AMD and are one of the most important supplements to consider for AMD (as well as glaucoma). The result of a study concerned with wet AMD shows that dietary total omega-3 intake was inversely associated with neovascular AMD.

From: The relationship of dietary lipid intake and age-related macular degeneration in a case-control study: AREDS Report No. 20 - PubMedhttps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17502507/

Although we tend to focus a lot on glaucoma, in the spirit of AMD Awareness Month, we invite discussion of anything related to AMD (and this is true for any month).

In particular, there are many supplements, such as those for oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction (and others), that are highly relevant to both glaucoma and AMD.

Both atherosclerosis and high cholesterol are considered important risk factors for AMD too. Lifestyle habits and dietary supplements can positively impact both of these factors. One study to support the AMD connection is:
The cholesterol-enriched diet causes age-related macular degeneration-like pathology in rabbit retina - PubMedhttps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21851605/

February is AMD Awareness Month 👀

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) does not normally result in blindness, but it does involve loss of central vision.

Well established lifestyle habits that help prevent AMD include exercise, not smoking, and eating a healthy, low-fat diet. There is good evidence that dietary supplements may slow the progression in those who already have AMD. Whether supplements help prevent it is more controversial, but my opinion (which is not mainstream) is that since lifestyle habits are known to be important in prevention, it is logical that the right dietary supplements should be helpful too. Specific evidence to support my opinion can be found in the following research:

Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Retinal Diseases https://bit.ly/3roqrAH

LIMITED TIME OFFER! 🚨 Check out these savings on our favorite eye-health product, PEAmium by Awakened.energy.

Use code AMDAWARENESS to get $3.00 off your order.

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We know, these prices are hard to resist. Stock up on this season's favorites now!

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Reasons why you shouldn't skimp on sleep. https://bit.ly/3oWtzCV

Why You Shouldn’t Skimp on Sleep – Nordic Naturals Blog by Terra Lynn When life gets busy, sleep is often the first thing to go. But sleep is more important than you might think. Without proper sleep, your brain has trouble forming memories and learning new information.1 Chronic lack of sleep also takes its toll on your immune and cardiovascular systems....

Learn more about the relationship between fear and elevated intraocular pressure: https://bit.ly/3nSA5t6

Relationship Between Fear and Elevated Intraocular Pressure Elevated intraocular pressure can be classified as a condition characterized by resistance and contraction. The intraocular fluid cannot flow from the eye freely because there is resistance in one or both of the main drainage areas. This resistance creates elevated pressure inside the eye.

🚨 Did you know that nasal conditions affect eye pressure? Learn more https://bit.ly/2XIrHlj

Nasal Conditions Affect Eye Pressure Sinus conditions affect one's eye pressure. This is particularly important for glaucoma patients. Nasal blockage can have a strong effect on eye pressure and there are subtle effects as well. In addition, I speculate that the nose may offer an effective way for glaucoma patients to improve the long-...

These favorites are sure to help with those healthy New Year's resolutions!

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