Hey, it's Doctor K ! I’m a board-certified ophthalmologist and neuro-ophthalmologist and I've spent the past decade studying eye health and treating patients with every possible blinding eye disease you can imagine in clinics in NYC, DC, Miami, and Southern California.
When I began to see that the Average American spends 8-10 hours a day in front of a screen like the one you are reading these words on, and I began to hear from countless people suffering from dry eye, tired eyes, and eye strain impacting their work, their relationships, and their lives, I knew there had to a solution. Our eyes are simply not designed to function this way, and every day I have friends and patients asking me one simple question: What can I do to improve and protect my vision?
I can’t tell you how many people come up to me and tell me that their “eyes feel tired at the end of the day”, or they have eye strain, headaches, neck pain, or blurry vision from being on the screen all day.
Most doctors just give you unhelpful advice like “take breaks from the screen,” but honestly, who in the world wants to do that? When you’re writing an email, reading an article like this, or just scrolling through FB or IG, the last thing you want to worry about is your vision.
That’s why I’ve spent the last year of my life poring through clinical research studies and searching the world for the BEST solution to this problem that all of us are facing. Because whether you are young or old, more and more research is showing that the hours and hours of screen time pile up and can affect your long-term eye health and vision. And even now, it can cause eye strain, eye fatigue, and blurry vision.
After talking to hundreds of patients and looking through thousands of research studies, I was shocked to discover 3 Little Known Secrets about eye health that nobody else is talking about:
1) Apps or programs that simply change the color of your screen don’t really work!
I love using apps like NightShift on my iPhone or f.lux on my laptop that change the color of the screen and make it easier on my eyes. It honestly feels better and more soothing to my eyes. But the sobering truth that nobody ever told me--and that even I, as an eye doctor, had to discover myself after tons of research--is that these filters just change the color of your screen to make it warmer, but they don’t affect or reduce the potentially harmful light that is emitted by the screen in the first place! Not only that, but these apps have NEVER been studied in any human trial and have NEVER been shown to have any long-term benefit for protecting your vision--or reducing the annoying eye fatigue and eye strain that comes from being on your screen all day.
2) Blue Blocking Glasses are not just ugly...they don’t really work either.
This one was shocking! Almost everyone I know is wearing these glasses, especially at night to improve their sleep. I was wearing them too, thinking that I was somehow blocking blue light and protecting my sleep and my vision. Honestly, just like the apps on my phone or laptop, these made my eyes feel better too.
Until I dug deep into the research and realized that, just like the apps, most of these glasses are just plain yellow lenses that change the color of your vision, but have no proven benefit in any clinical studies. In fact, a recent study called a meta-analysis (a study which pools data from multiple different studies) looked at 3 different trials of blue blocking glasses and found that there was no improvement in eye strain, eye fatigue, or sleep scores at all after wearing these glasses for months. I was as disappointed as anyone. I knew there had to be a better solution.
But first, I had to tackle another myth I kept hearing, even from other eye doctors...
3) Blue Light is harmless and can’t do any harm to my health, right?
WRONG. I spent countless hours in the library reading up on every article or publication I could get my hands on, and came to learn that literally every single study done on blue light shows that it affects your sleep and circadian rhythm...which in turn affects every aspect of your life and your health.
Now if you haven’t heard of “blue light”, you will soon. It’s the high energy wavelength of light that is closest to UV light on the electromagnetic spectrum. And it is the exact wavelength of light emitted from the LEDs on every digital device--including like the one you’re on now, reading these words.
Now I get it, it’s not something we notice or feel...so how can it possibly be harmful? If it truly was affecting you, you would feel it and notice it, right?
Everyone knows the answer to that is NO. Think of sunbathing in the sun all day without sunscreen on. In the moment, it feels great. But the sunburn appears the next day and it’s painful (and toxic to your skin).
Same thing with smoking. Or eating junk food. The list goes on. The harmful effects don’t show up until much later.
Right now, researchers are still working out the effects of blue light on our vision and overall health. One study showed that it even leads to an increase in wrinkles on your face. But at the end of the day, the truth is that it’s too early to know what the long-term effects will be. We won’t know for another 10-20 years, just like we didn’t realize smoking was bad for you until many years after it first came out.
But there is one thing that EVERY research study agrees on right now: blue light severely affects your sleep and circadian rhythm. Why? This is a fascinating topic and goes back to evolution, but basically, humans evolved from organisms that lived in the depths of the ocean. Now the ocean is blue, because the blue wavelength of light is the only wavelength of sunlight that penetrates the ocean. The rest gets reflected. Since every organism has an internal circadian clock, and those early organisms lived at the bottom of the ocean, they relied on BLUE light to tell them whether it was sunlight or dark outside, and what time of day it was. And since we evolved from those organisms, our circadian rhythm is exquisitely sensitive to blue light...which just happens to be the type of light that digital screens are made out of! Bottom line, being exposed to digital screens--especially at night--throws off your internal biological clock and ruins your sleep, which everyone knows can lead to decreased productivity, low energy, decreased s*x drive, poor mood, poor memory, poor cognition, poor reaction time, and every kind of health problem you can imagine.
After discovering all of these truths, and seeing that our society and the medical community was way behind when it comes to understanding the toxic effects of blue light, I saw an opportunity to make a difference. While the rest of the world was applying band-aids to the problem like blue blocking glasses--or even worse, ignoring the problem--I decided to find a way to get to the root of the problem. I knew there had to be a better solution.
And finally, after thousands of hours of research and searching, I CRACKED THE CODE and discovered this ONE SIMPLE SECRET and one weird tip that is so simple and easy--but that almost NOBODY is talking about. Want to know what that secret is?
You see, nature and evolution are MUCH smarter than we are. And luckily, nature created a set of nutrients that are SPECIFICALLY designed to protect your eyes and your vision...and filter out blue light! Two of these nutrients are called lutein and zeaxanthin. What are lutein and zeaxanthin?
They are pigments called carotenoids and are found in all kinds of plants and in green, leafy vegetables, like spinach and kale. Ever hear of the old adage that carrots are “good for your eyes?” This is because they contain “carotenoids”--which are lutein and zeaxanthin!
The main function of lutein and zeaxanthin is to protect our vision. In fact, out of the nearly 600 carotenoids found in nature, lutein and zeaxanthin are the ONLY ones that get taken up in the eye, in a region called the retina--which is the light sensing wallpaper in the back of your eye. The retina is a highly metabolically active, incredibly complex tissue with 9 different layers. It’s job is to take light signals from the outside world, process them, and send them to your brain, where they get turned into a visual image. This is a complex, delicate process where even the slightest imbalance can wreak havoc on your vision.
You may have heard of a condition called “macular degeneration.” This is one of the most common forms of blindness in the world, and is caused by degeneration of the central portion of your retina, which is called the macula. The macula is the most important portion of the retina and accounts for 90% of your vision.
Well, guess what? Lutein and zeaxanthin are the exact nutrients that build up and strengthen the macula. In fact, numerous studies have shown that lutein and zeaxanthin (which, as we said, are pigments), increase something called macular pigment optic density (MPOD). This is exactly what it sounds like--the density of pigment in your macula. The higher this number, the better and stronger the macula, the better and stronger your vision, and the less risk of conditions that can lead to degeneration of the retina and macula. This is why, when you get enough lutein and zeaxanthin, either from your diet or from supplements, you protect and maintain and can even improve your vision.
The only problem is, nature wasn’t prepared for the massive technological revolution that led to the proliferation of digital screens that we are all exposed to now. It simply could not prepare or design for us to get the high amounts of lutein and zeaxanthin that we need to protect and soothe our eyes in this day and age. Right now, the average diet only contains a few milligrams of lutein and zeaxanthin, which is not nearly enough. And that’s not just because the average diet is poor. Even if you are super healthy, you’d have to eat over 50 carrots a day to get the right amount of lutein and zeaxanthin required to protect your vision! This is simply not fun or practical.
So I did what anyone else would do--I started researching supplements that contain lutein and zeaxanthin. As a professional, board-certified ophthalmologist, I thought it would be easy to find a supplement on the market that had the right ingredients in the right dosage, so that I could recommend it to my friends and patients.
Well, again I was WRONG. I looked at every single eye vitamin on the market and was shocked and disappointed to find that most of them contained either the WRONG ingredients, or ingredients that had no science behind them and were potentially harmful, or the right ingredients, but in the WRONG dose! And in some cases, it was all of the above!
I quickly realized that the vitamin and supplement industry is completely unregulated and there are a lot of false claims and a lot of “snake oil” out there. Most of these supplements are not made by actual eye doctors, they are made by supplement brands who come up with products that are based on little to no knowledge or research.
Basically, I got tired of walking up and down the aisles at drugstores and seeing them filled with all kinds of junk that claims to help you--but is really just snake oil with no research behind it.
And I got tired of seeing my Facebook feed filled with ads from fake supplement companies trying to get me to buy their junk too.
That’s why, as an eye care professional, I decided to spend the last year of my life coming up with the perfect solution to get you the right dosage of nutrients like lutein, zeaxanthin, and other the anti-oxidants that are crucial to your vision and the health of your retina--like Vitamin C, Vitamin E, Zinc, Bilberry, and Saffron-- so that you can power through the hours and hours of digital screen time without eye fatigue, "tired eyes", wrecking your sleep, or even worse--wrecking your eyesight.
That’s why I founded an eye vitamin and supplement company and named it eyetamins™. And I decided to dedicate myself to reinventing the eye vitamin for the modern world, with the purest and most natural ingredients, backed by the most up-to-date, accurate science and research.
Quite simply, my mission is to make eyetamins™ the best eye vitamin company in the world. How am I doing this? Well, there is really no magic about it! It is just relentless focus on research, high quality ingredients, and patient attention to detail.
You can read more about it here: www.eyetamins.co
Once again, here's what we’ve covered in this article:
*What *exactly* blue light is, why everyone is talking about it and why YOU need to know about it
*Why excess screen time could be harming not just your eyes but your sleep and overall health
*The ONLY clinically proven method for protecting your eyes and your vision (hint: it's NOT blue blocking glasses).
And it’s all available to you, right here: www.eyetamins.co
If you desire to protect your vision and have the power to maximize your visual performance, protect yourself from digital eye strain, and be at your absolute best, then this is for YOU!
