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Claudia Muehlenweg, known as The Holistic Vision Coach, is the founder of the Naturally Clear Vision Institute. She is leading the natural vision improvement movement through her Naturally Clear Vision Coach Certification program and her consumer courses and memberships.
Claudia is a best-selling co-author of the anthology A New World Of Seeing—Practice & Perspectives of Natural Vision Improvement, and a sought after international speaker and workshop leader. She focuses on finding the root cause of her clients’ blurry vision instead of using symptomatic treatments like glasses, contacts or surgery that can actually make their eyesight worse in the long term.
Claudia’s own vision journey started at the age of three. She hated her glasses from the day she got them and has made it her life’s mission to help others see clearly naturally… just like she did over 20 years ago!
Dr Ritamarie
What’s the biggest blind spot when it comes to health that most people are overlooking? Whether you’re a health seeker looking to enhance your own health, whether you’re a health practitioner, a conventional health practitioner, a holistic health practitioner, eyesight is actually the biggest blind spot that we have in our practices.
And I’m so excited today, because I have in my presence, in person, live and in the flesh, I have the holistic vision coach, Claudia Muehlenweg, and she is the founder of Naturally Clear Vision Institute. She has trained thousands of people to improve their eyesight, not just to improve their eyesight, but many to throw away their glasses and no longer need them.
And I’m excited to have her here to talk to you about some strategies, but also how eye health contributes to overall body health and vice versa. How your overall body health can be contributing either negatively or positively to your whole body health.
So thanks so much for being here. I’m so excited to be here with you and to be able to do this in person.
Claudia (1:33)
I’m so excited to be here. We’ve known each other for what, like close to 10 years? And we’ve been at conferences together, and we’ve always wanted to do an interview and finally, finally we get to do it.
Dr Ritamarie (1:45)
Here’s the thing, when I first met Claudia, the holistic vision struck a bell with me, because back in the day about 40 years ago, I was intrigued by the Bates method. And I used to travel once a week to a class 50 miles from my home in San Jose, California to San Francisco to take naturally clear vision classes that they did there. And I was able to go from being unable to see the big E on the eye chart to being able to drive during bright daylight without glasses, right?
I got my vision down to 20 40-ish without glasses. So the processes work.
Unfortunately, I went from taking all those classes to sitting in a classroom all day and studying, because I decided to do my own holistic health training. I went to chiropractic school and then my master’s in nutrition and all. So I lost some of that benefit, and I went back to wearing contacts for a long time.
Fast forward, met Claudia whenever it was 2017, 15.
Claudia (2:55)
I think it 2018. I did your Sweet Spot program, the consumer program. And then we met in a mastermind and all of a sudden we clicked. Our work is so aligned.
Dr Ritamarie (3:04)
Yes. so our work is so aligned.
I took a refresher and took her class again and was able to get back to the point where I no longer wear contacts. I have a pair of glasses that I use for driving, usually for driving at night or on dark days, so I can be safe. So I haven’t gone back to full 20 20.
I’d love to someday when I get back into it. I’m getting more motivated having Claudia in my presence. Someday is not a day of the week. I know that, so I am going to get back into doing more of this, and that’s why I’m really inspired to have Claudia here.
So I want to talk a little bit about, how did you get
First of all, quick on how did you get into doing natural vision training?
Claudia (3:50)
Just like you, I had vision problems. You were nearsighted, and I was far sighted. So I got my first pair of glasses at the age of three. I don’t remember that, but I remember my first day of school and there’s actually photo. My dad was an avid photographer, and I sat there, the only kid. Now I’m born in the sixties. That was the only kid.
And like, you see me like really, deer in the headlights scared with the glasses on. And I was bullied, I was teased, I was miserable. I didn’t have any friends.
And so I decided from an early age on, I don’t want to tell the whole story, but basically I got out of classes around age 15 and in hindsight I realized I played handball. The only reason they kept me on the team was because they needed more girls, because I had depth perception problems, I couldn’t throw, I was the worst player. They just needed more body on the But in practice, in hindsight, you know catching, throwing, running around, peripheral vision, like all these things.
And then the doctor told me at 15, your eyes are normal. I was like, what? And all of a sudden, freedom from glasses. Boys would say, you have beautiful cat eyes. And then just a couple years later, high school exams, and I was not the good student. I studied, like you in chiropractic school, studied, studied, and I noticed my vision would get worse. And at that point, I was horrified.
I was like I never want to do this again. I don’t want to be chained to these glasses. And I found a book that was based on the Bates method, but it was written by a woman in California, funny enough, where I live now. And I did those techniques and I stayed out of glasses my whole 20s into my mid 30s. Long story, difficult marriage and divorce, single mom, two daughters. My vision during that time when we had those problems tanked a lot.
So I was wearing glasses again, like you mostly for driving at night, initially, and I noticed so quickly how my vision got worse wearing these glasses, and I had this epiphany one night, and quick, quick version of this.
I try to go out. I got lost on the way home in some sketchy part of downtown LA and that was before we had Google Maps. Yeah, I didn’t do the map quest, because I’m like, I know the way, it’s like this freeway and that freeway. And then I remember, like you know, that at the time the map was a tiny printed map, and I pulled over, and I put my glasses on, and I took them off and I took them on. The little light in the car was a dim light. I couldn’t read the map.
And at some point I just drove and at some point I recognized the street. I made it home. Took the glasses off as I parked my car in the driveway, and my vision was so blurry. So like way worse. And I was like, you know what? Something is wrong with this. I noticed before that my vision was always more blurry when I took the glasses off, but that night it was really bad.
At first I was crying. I was really horrified, because I was a single provider, money maker. So I found the book again. I had it still. And I did those techniques, and we can talk about some of those today. And they really helped me. But I also was now in my early 40s, and I realized I needed more help. So I ended up taking private lessons and eventually did the teacher training, because it was so profound.
Dr Ritamarie (06:55)
Wow. And freedom from glasses is amazing. I wish I was 100% free from glasses, and I had perfectly clear vision, and I know I can get better, because I know that exact feeling. When you’re stressed, when I’m stressed out, I can feel like everything’s blurry, and there’s some days I wake up ,and I go, oh my God, everything is so clear. I mean, just honestly, the difference is so profound right now. I can sit four feet away from my computer screen and read it. I don’t need to have anything. I can see things, but there’s still a blur.
And I want to get rid of that blur. And I know that those of you who have glasses, you just take it for granted. People come into your office if you’re a doctor and you say, yeah, you wear glasses, no big deal. We don’t even address it as a health problem. We just say, yeah, you have your optometrist, you go and you get your glass prescriptions filled. But there’s so many profound things that glasses and poor vision affect when it comes to our health.
And so you and I had a discussion and I want to share a little bit about that, about some of the things that are associated with myopia, which is nearsightedness and presbyopia, no, hyperopia is farsighted. And presbyopia is the old age side, but it’s a form of farsighted. It’s a form of farsighted, that’s why I was thinking about that. So there are some things we should be looking at in terms of health and in terms of our mental status that are associated with nearsightedness or farsightedness. So tell them a little bit about that.
Claudia (8:21)
I think one point that you kind of went over that might have been buried, and what you just said is the stress component because that was my biggest epiphany was I got lost in the way and my vision was so much worse, and I noticed like no eye doctor ever told me. Basically, you get this exam. They put you in this auto refractor machine where you look in there, and then they ask this one or this one? This one or this one? Which is already so stressful.
I always say eye exams are the most stressful things in the world. And then you get your glasses, right? You’re like, wait, those are too strong. And the eye doctor says what? Get used to it. You will get used to this. And I always tell people no, because you are probably in that worst stressful moment, and your prescription is literally capturing that like that deer in the headlight.
Oh my God, I better get this right, because otherwise I spent $500, $600, $700 on a pair of glasses that don’t work. So that’s an important factor. So I always say, this is the first tip I want to give, do not accept those glasses.
So stress, so our nervous system changes, and with our nervous system changing from second to second, if we get hit by a car, we’re in that fight or flight mode immediately. But if that becomes chronic, you know, you guys, I’m sure you talk about this a lot, how chronic stress affects your blood sugar, like all that stuff, but it also affects your vision. And yes, I always say age, genetics, know, are you smoking cigarettes? Are you eating a lot of sugar? All these things obviously have an impact.
But stress is for me the underlying root cause of all these things, of these vision problems.
Dr Ritamarie (9:55)
Well, I think that stress is the underlying cause of all of our problems, really. That cortisol connection.
We know for blood sugar hugely, we know to blood pressure, we know all that. But to vision, it’s huge. It really is huge.
Claudia (10:10)
Exactly, because what do you do when you’re stressed? You eat that donut, you watch Netflix, you maybe drink that glass of wine. Those things are also… Those things are also… Right.
Dr Ritamarie (10:23)
But even if you don’t do those, which a lot of people that listen to my podcast and watch me on YouTube or follow me, they don’t do those things. I don’t do those things. But what we do is we tighten up.
We tighten up our whole system, because that’s a natural response to stress, right? You get tense, right? We get tense. And that all changes our vision. And one, I notice that I have more of a blur. I can stop myself, and I can just calm myself down.
And we’ll talk about this in a minute, the blinking, and we tend not to blink when we’re stressed. We tend to stare when we’re stressed. We tend to put our necks forward. We tighten all this stuff when we’re stressed. So there’s a huge connection.
But the thing I want to get back to, we’ll go forward with that in a minute, is you mentioned the connection between farsightedness and ADD, and introversion and extraversion, and nearsightedness and introversion.
Talk a little bit about that, because in practice, if we’re health practitioners, we see a lot of ADD type things, even if somebody hasn’t been diagnosed with ADD. There are focus problems, memory problems, and that’s all stress related as well, or has a stress component to it. So how does that relate to eyesight?
And so as a practitioner, you see somebody coming in, and they’re wearing those glasses, or they tell you they’re wearing reading glasses, and you do a typical exam and testing and assessment, we find the ADD connection.
Or when you find out about their glasses and what kind of glasses they use, you might be thinking, let’s look for certain mental acuity, psychological or physical problems. So let’s just talk about that.
Claudia (12:12)
So visual focus, eyesight, actually just to backtrack just a little bit, eyesight
is a term referred to visual acuity. That is what you talked about, 20 20, 20 40, that kind of thing. So there’s obviously a lot of other aspects of vision. That’s why I like vision improvement better than eyesight improvement. And eyesight is part of vision, right? And we can get more into what are all the other aspects of vision.
So mental focus. So when we focus on something, you know, that’s already a little bit of that. We’re focusing on something.
Whereas when we are relaxed, we look out at the trees. Our eyes are relaxed, the ciliary muscles relaxed. So that the state of the eyes that’s relaxed is when we kind of look far. We don’t have that hard focus. Let’s say we’re reading an email or we’re writing something or we’re working, we have more focus in that kind of convergence, closer focus, which puts us in a little bit of an alert state and that’s good. But if that’s a strain, or if we feel overwhelmed, or if it’s all too much, we literally don’t want to see things, right? So sometimes it’s like too much.
So when you talk about ADD, I find that it’s connected to astigmatism, which a lot of people have, and it’s anatomically complicated to describe. It’s mostly a corneal thing. It’s related to the tension of the six outer eye muscles being uneven.
But there is this idea of, I am so good at multitasking. I can do all these things. But then you’re not really focusing on one thing. So ADD is this kind of like, in astigmatism, you literally have different focal points in your retina, and that’s why you have that blurriness like the double moons or like the triple moon or the doubling of the, people often say double vision, which is different from actually double vision caused by your two eyes not working together.
So it’s that shadow. That haze around like the traffic lights at night. So exactly. so astigmatism has that kind of like ADD, you’re literally like not focused, you’re just jumping around mentally.
The mental focus and the visual focus are connected, because you know how sometimes you walk around, but you’re mentally like totally zoned out. You think about what you’re going to cook for dinner. We end up like, oh, there was a mailbox on my way? Because we don’t pay attention. So, that’s one thing I think is very important to connect with how we are. The glasses can sometimes create sharpness for us, but we’re mentally not really focused and that can actually cause a disconnect between what you’re looking at or you’re processing, because we see in the brain, we can talk about this.
So we don’t actually see in the eyes, we see in the brain. So, you know, that’s why what we perceive is different than what the light rays that get projected on the retina is not what we see.
Dr Ritamarie (14:55)
So there’s the mechanical aspect of vision, but then there’s the mind, the whole neurologic aspect.
Claudia (15:04)
Yeah. What do you perceive? And I always like to come back to that.
About 10 years ago, there was this blue and black dress. Remember that photo that went around on Facebook where that was viral? And people are like, no, it’s gold and white. And there was this heated debate. No, you’re wrong. No, you’re right. And this was all based on, they later found out, it was a low res photo, a cell phone shot of a dress of a bridesmaid or something. But you assume, when you look at that photo, you assume, is it taken outside, is it taken inside? Is this in the shadow, is she standing in the light? And based on all these, that’s why visual illusions are a great way to improve your vision. Visual illusions are fun, because the brain gets so easily tricked.
And then what we think is the right answer, we’re like, that’s the truth. When in fact, it’s our own perception based on assumptions that we make about something based on our experiences in the past, memories. So that’s really how we see is based on all these things, not just on the physical light rays falling on the retina. And remember, you know this from school biology, on the retina, the image is upside down.
So, seeing is really just, is more than just that physical aspect. think that’s what eye doctors, I mean, I say eye doctors are super important. Please get your eyes checked. We can, we will talk about eye health in a moment, but just the aspect of how we actually perceive or see is way more complicated than just that. Than just the mechanical aspect and the visual acuity itself. And we can help that.
Okay. So we started out talking about the blind spot, right? It’s a blind spot in health, in holistic health, but in health in general, the eyes are just there. Everybody has bad eyes. What is the percentage of people who wear glasses in this Western world?
Claudia (16:48)
It gets worse and worse. So myopia, which is nearsightedness, is really an epidemic. We have about 42% of people in the United States being nearsighted. But when you look at children and young adults, I don’t know the numbers for the US, but I know in Southeast Asia, especially in Singapore, now 93% of children and young adults are nearsighted, which puts you at a higher risk for many of the age-related eye diseases. And so the trend is going up.
So nearsightedness is when you do not see the distance clearly, but you can read up close pretty well. We spend so much time looking up close. At computers and at books, well, books not as much even anymore, but screens.
Right, screens, exactly. And then the pressure, that’s also the pressure, especially in Asia on children academically. So it’s not just that, and we can talk about this, of course for the eyes to look up close is like I talked a little bit earlier, the convergence is a little bit of a muscular effort. If you automatically live in that state of alertness. It’s not bad stress at that point, but it’s a little bit of a sympathetic state when you’re focusing up close versus when you just let your eyes relax, right?
But there’s also that pressure when you’re studying, that’s college myopia, right? It’s like you have to pass that test. You don’t sleep well. I mean, it’s all these things rolled into this toxic cocktail, but we do see an epidemic.
And we can also talk about presbyopia, the old age side is when you need the reading glasses, you’re like, I can’t read that small print, you’re holding things out. The arms are too short. So this is a common thing, but it’s also avoidable. It’s like, because some people don’t get it. Why do some people not get it?
Dr Ritamarie (18:25)
Very few people don’t get it though. So that’s why it’s considered unavoidable. And people just think it’s like wrinkles, right? No matter how healthy you are and how much water you drink and all that, we inevitably get wrinkles.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a 90-year-old person without wrinkles unless they’ve had all that face job done. So you’re saying it’s not inevitable to need reading glasses.
Claudia (18:49)
I always agree with this. I say, listen guys, we get wrinkles, we age, and you know that the theory is that the lens gets stiffer, but it’s more like it grows additional layers. So, it makes it a little bit harder to focus up close.
So we do lose some, I think as children, we have about 60 diopters of the lens. It has incredible focusing powers. We also have the length of the eyeball. When you think of the old fashioned cameras, right? We have the big long, so the length of the camera and the lens produce the image. So yes, the eyeball does change, but again, perception is also key, because we have people with the same, let’s say minus three myopia, whatever it is. Why do some people read the eye chart like three lines further down.
So again, perception, and this is where you can get into this too, because we really need to work with the brain. But some blind people literally have vision, which is something that I’m not an expert in, but I’ve seen people blindfolded can literally see things. I would say a very important part is that just because your eyeball isn’t perfect, you can still have stellar perception and a big ability to see things.
I don’t know, maybe that doesn’t make sense.
Dr Ritamarie (20:05)
Well, I’m thinking when you say that, I’m thinking about how we fill things in, right? If you see those things with the sentences that are missing some key letters, and it looks like gobbledygook, but we know what it says, because our brain fills it in. And we do that with visuals. That’s the illusions, the whole illusions thing. So we do have that ability to fill it in from our mental and from our memory.
So it doesn’t sound so far-fetched to me.
So this is all well and good, and we know that visual problems are a lot related to stress, and that your experience is that it can be reversed, and that people can actually get rid of their glasses after long periods of time having worn them.
So where do we start? People are watching and thinking, I have these big, thick Coke bottle glasses, and I’ve been wearing them for 40 years. Where do I start? Is there really hope for me? Where do we start?
Claudia (20:57)
First of all, I do want to say, I never say “reverse,” because we don’t ever know. But what I say, we can always improve. So, I like to always think, ask everybody this, When you got your first pair of glasses, or when you first noticed your vision getting more blurry, a year or two before, what was going on in your life?
More often than not, there was something that could be an adverse childhood event, like I was bullied and teased, it could be a loved one dying, parents divorcing, when you’re in college. There’s usually some kind of extreme stress that was kind of the catalyst that ignited that thing.
So that is good to connect with too, because a lot of times it could be emotional root causes that got you into glasses in the first place, and now you have that frost upon clarity on your eyes which your brain wasn’t really handling. Your nervous system wanted to protect you from all the scary stuff, and it blurted out so that you don’t have to deal with it. Now, you have to deal with it. So that’s a little side note but in terms of getting started, it’s like, so think about that a little bit. I think that’s important to think about what was going on in your life.
And if you got them at a young age like me, I do not remember eight, I think seven or eight, and if nothing comes up, that’s fine, don’t worry. But with glasses, without going into a whole session on optics and lenses, the strength of glasses is measured in diopters, just like our body weight is pounds or kilos or, you know, length in centimeters or what is it, inches here.
But diopters is the strength of the glasses, but diopters are related to a specific distance. Everybody that starts with reading glasses knows when they put the reading glasses on the plus one, plus one and a half to read, and you look up, everything is blurry. So you immediately know, you take them off. It’s just correcting for that distance. Or a nearsighted person, usually you see them, you know, reading the newspaper, sometimes when I used to be in Europe in the trains, and the glasses on the top of the head, because they can see well without glasses up close, but then need them for fun.
So you already get the idea that those glasses are really just for one distance. Now what I see is then as you get older, you get bifocals, very focused like progressives that have different diopters in different parts of the lens. But here’s the problem with these glasses. They make the assumption that when you look straight, you look far. Let’s say you would wear those glasses now, but I want to see clearly.
We’re sitting pretty close. So I would have to do this to look through the lower part of the lens, and you see people on zoom calls or on computers like this, because that’s pretty close. So they want the diopter for the near vision. And so they do all kinds of weird head postures, which is related to astigmatism, neck tension forward. You used to be a chiropractor. I mean there’s so many problems when it comes to the head posture, right?
So I always get everybody out of those glasses and then I’m like, what do you really need glasses for? So maybe you are nearsighted and you can go on a hike without them and you have to be safe. I don’t want anybody to do something like, it’s okay. You don’t want to be in a totally blurry world because again, what does the brain do? It’s all blurry. I’m checking out. I’m focusing on what am I going to make for dinner? So don’t live in a total blur, that’s not the point, but you can be just a hair under corrected for driving. Always safety first.
Claudia (24:21)
I always tell people driving, please wear your prescription glasses, but anywhere else, or maybe you can be in the garden, or you can cook, or if you are presbyopic, maybe you can use weaker glasses or you can initially increase the brightness, and read a little bigger print.
Like we basically want to get started, really see them as kind pills for the eyes. I actually call them pills for the eyes. Use them when you really need them, because safety first. If we are not safe, we can’t relax. So we were already stressed out. Don’t be a hero by going with our glasses all the time. But then you’re like, I can’t see anything, but that’s really important stepping down.
And you would be surprised how many people can just, you know, I look at the prescriptions, and they had it like plus five for reading and a plus two and a half a distance, and they’re like, you know what? Those drug store plus three readers are totally fine. I can read everything, you know? So that’s a really important part. Really. Don’t be over-corrected. Don’t be over-corrected, and only use glasses or correction when you need it, because we need to perform. I don’t want you to be at the computer like what? Like I can’t see anything. Right? Because that squint is creating strain.
Dr Ritamarie (25:35)
And wrinkles. And it reminds me of when I first needed glasses, I was about eight years old. And it was just because it was slightly blurry on the blackboard if I sat towards the back of the classroom. So they got me evaluated. We got the glasses. And then my mother told me, you know, I would take them off to read, and I would put them on for distance.
I mean, the ideal there would be, I can’t read what that is. But my mother said I don’t want you to lose your glasses. I don’t want you to scratch your glasses by taking them on and off. So she said, just wear them all the time. And my dear Aunt Rose, rest in peace, both my mother and Aunt Rose, but my dear Aunt Rose said, don’t wear those glasses all the time. Just wear them when you need them. Thank you, Aunt Rose. But mom didn’t listen. I listened to mom, of course, because I lived with mom, not Aunt Rose.
And I started wearing them all the time. And guess what happened, right? Every year I needed a stronger prescription. Every year, because I’m wearing them for reading, and I don’t need them for reading. That’s a huge strain. And so the distance vision got worse and worse. So over time it got to the point where I couldn’t even read the big E on the chart. And then as I was a teenager, I think at like late in high school, I got contacts and then you’re constantly corrected. So you can’t take them on and off.
Claudia (27:03
That’s a good point I want to really quickly highlight. So if you are near sighted, and you wear contacts, but you’re spending all day at the computer. So your contacts are correcting you for 20 feet distance, but you’re really looking at two feet distance all day.
I always tell all my contact clients, get your eye doctor to give you contacts for two feet distance. And most of the time between computer and distance. Go get your eyes checked. But it’s about one diopter. So let’s say you need three diopters for distance vision, minus three. For the computer, you probably need something about minus two. So a little bit less. So wear the minus two, and then when you’re driving, you put some inexpensive minus one on top. So that basically now you’re good to go.
Because you’re straining your eyes, and many optometrists say the same thing when you’re nearsighted, and you have that full strength correction for far distance vision when you’re looking up close you can do it when you’re younger and guess what? When you get older, your system is overwhelmed, and it creates so much extra, excessive, convergence effort on the eyes that it really ruins your vision. So don’t do that guys. When you’re nearsighted, if you wear contacts, if you’re a driver, and you drive all day, yes, that’s different. But if you spend, most of us spend a lot of time at the closer point. Right.
Dr Ritamarie (28:20)
And for me even, when I use them for driving at night or in the dark, let’s just say I use them for driving. But as I’m driving and then we stop at a light, you’ll see me take them off to look or to talk or whatever, just on and off, on and off, because I don’t like wearing them all the time, and I don’t like having a distance vision when I’m looking at something up close.
Claudia (28:45)
The other problem is that near-sighted lenses kind of make everything smaller. And you get that tunnel vision, because you think everybody wears glasses, also if you’re far sighted, you have this concept of everything is sharp behind the glasses, and everything out there is not. You ignore it, because that stuff is not important.
The anatomy of the eye, and we can talk more about that, it’s like nobody has good vision in the peripheral field. So the glasses are often causing, and especially in traffic, peripheral vision is so important. You might not see that bicyclist or that pedestrian.
And near-sighted lenses kind of have a virtual focal point. They make everything smaller. So they create a distortion. That’s when people first get lenses. Your whole spatial understanding is actually screwed up with lenses. So that’s a whole other thing. I mean, the brain is amazing. It gets used to the good and the bad stuff. So it does get used to it eventually, but initially not.
So that’s why I think what you’re doing is really smart. Taking them on and off. You have to obviously make sure both hands are on the wheel.
Dr Ritamarie (29:44)
I’m not doing it while I’m driving, but you know. And oftentimes if I’m driving during this bright day, I’m in my own neighborhood, I don’t need them. Because what I need them for is to see the signs and to be able to distinguish them. So if I’m in an uncomfortable neighborhood, first of all, you’re more stressed, because you don’t know.
Claudie (30:04)
Your visual acuity will be worse when you’re stressed.
Dr Ritamarie (30:09_
So it’s when I’m just driving in my own neighborhood, I don’t need glasses. Right. I know my neighborhood. I know where I need to turn.
Claudia (30:16)
Be safe. Pay attention to all the things on the road. And it’s important to like, like I see people like staring at the road.here is like,
Dr Ritamarie (30:26)
And you’re making vision worse. Right. And you’re making your driving worse and it’s unsafe. Yeah. I totally get that.
I totally get that. So we’re all over the map here.
So I want to just come up and bring us back to some focus. If you’re a practitioner who’s watching us on our podcast, we mostly get practitioners watching or on our YouTube channel. What I’m talking about is being really conscious and trying to give you, when people come in, don’t just ask them about their fatigue and about their thyroid, about their blood sugar and all this stuff and really focus on that. Really pay attention to are they wearing glasses?
Do they have presbyopia? Do they have astigmatism? Ask those questions so you can help.
What are some of the things that a practitioner who’s not an optometrist and not an ophthalmologist, that’s not their primary focus, what are some of the things we can tell people or ask people or suggest that people do to help improve their vision and its effects on the rest of their body?
Claudia (31:24)
I think it’s just a great way when you do an intake and find out when did you first get your glasses, like what was going on, because that would be another piece for your Sherlock Holmes deduction, because vision is often affected, and eye doctors will tell you this, you often find other diseases in the eyes first. Again, maybe if you’re a practitioner, you’re probably asking them about traumatic events, about stress in their life, so you can just add the vision as a puzzle piece to that. Finding out if they have any learning disabilities. Often it’s like the chicken and the egg.
I’m not an expert in learning disabilities, but there is dyslexia and sometimes people who got glasses when it really isn’t the vision. But it’s the brain not understanding those things. But sometimes it could be the vision, and then the kid is labeled as having a learning disability when it’s really visual problems. So it’s getting really curious about their vision about those glasses. How do they feel about themselves too?
And we haven’t touched a little bit on the emotional, mental aspects with the ADD, but nearsighted people are always thinking about the future. So there’s more of that worst case scenario, fear, anxiety. Anxiety is usually really high with nearsighted folks versus far sighted people that see better in the far distance, but not so well up close.
There’s more that anger and frustration and pushing out and those kind of behaviors. Look at that. Maybe the liver is affected. Is that person also far-sided? So from Chinese medicine, eye diseases with cataracts, which is a clouding of the lens, which is highly related to blood sugar imbalances and diabetes, but also heavy metals and steroid use.
Louise Hay. I love what she teaches. She talks about the dark future. There’s no joy in my life. So why do people get cataracts in their 60s? They retire, maybe the empty nest. What now? Right? So when you look at all these things, don’t see the cataracts. It is connected to obviously, like I said, blood sugar and all these things. But is there also an emotional piece?
Glaucoma is when you lose your peripheral vision. It’s an optic nerve disease that’s usually related in most cases to elevated intraocular pressure, there’s also normal pressure, that’s the people with low blood pressure. Basically the optic nerve doesn’t get enough nutrients or the pressure is so high that there’s so much pressure on the nerve. But those are the pressure cooker people that straight, like all the ducks have to be in a row, you know? And so look at all these things too, not just, is there anything connected to that emotional state as well?
Dr Ritamarie (34:03)
So there’s a lot, you know. There’s a lot of interactions both ways with the visual problems affecting the overall health, but also overall health affecting the visual problems. And we as practitioners, we need to be the detectives, the Sherlock Holmes, and help people to figure it out. Because most of it is so overlooked, right? It’s just, you have a prescription. Great, great, great. You have high blood pressure. Here’s your prescription and send you on your way.
If you’re watching this, it’s because you’re interested in something different and you’re interested in something more and really understanding root causes with people.
So, eye diseases, I just want to mention, where you mentioned blood sugar and the effects on cataracts, but the blood sugar also has an effect on the retina. So we’ve heard of diabetic retinopathy. You don’t have to be a diagnosed diabetic to have retinopathy. And that’s a reason for having a full eye exam. I remember having somebody in our blood sugar balancing program years ago, our Sweet Spot program, and she had gone to the eye doctor to get her prescription, you know, refilled or whatever. And the doctor said, you better get your diabetes under control. And she goes, diabetes, you’re confusing me. My husband’s the one with diabetes. I don’t have diabetes. And he says, well, your eyes sure have diabetes. So she’d had no signs. She’d been checked out. Her practitioner, her primary care, said, you don’t have diabetes.
So she comes in, and we do this very unique kind of testing where I call it pre-insulin resistance. So it’s not even insulin resistance where you could diagnose it from blood sugar. Perfectly fine fasting blood sugar, but she found that when she ate certain foods, her blood sugar was peaking. When she got stressed in a certain way, her blood sugar was going crazy. That was already affecting her vision.
So my focus is a big focus on metabolic health and getting your blood sugars and your insulin levels under control. That’s going to affect your eyes, and you may not know it.
Another person that came to us, he had retinopathies and he had not been diagnosed as even insulin resistant. Through our process, he figured himself out that he had insulin resistance and his A1C was high and his insulin was high, but his fasting blood sugar was still low, was still normal. So, you know, that’s where I say all these things are overlooked.
It’s the same way in metabolic health, poor metabolic health, blood sugar imbalance is completely overlooked, because we’re not testing the right ways. We’re not asking the right questions. The same thing with eye health, and we’re just taking it as a natural course. I wear glasses. Is it nearsighted or farsighted? okay. But we’re not seeing that there’s actually ways to help people.
And last thing I’m going to say about that is I have seen people who don’t, they just come in, they come into a group program for getting their health back, and all of a sudden they’re saying, my vision is better. I had to go to my doctor, and they lowered my prescription.
So there’s a big interaction, and we need to be looking at it. And what you said about the prescription, that’s exactly what they told me when I took that class. I was wearing contacts at the time. They said you need to get rid of your contacts and start, just get a pair of glasses that are corrected for 20 40, right? So they’re under corrected, so that you can use them when needed, keep them off whenever you can.
So let’s just roll this into a bow. If you’re a person who is wearing glasses, whether you’re a practitioner or not, we all, I don’t care if you’re a practitioner or you’re a health seeker listening here, right?
Because we all, you’re a practitioner, you most likely wear glasses, quite frankly, because you’ve been through the stress of going to medical school, and naturopathic school, chiropractic school, whatever the school you went to, and you went through that stress. And I would say that of all the people in our health practitioner program, we have a nutritional endocrinology practitioner training with all kinds of practitioners in it. And I would say probably 80% wear glasses, maybe even more, if I were to really look at that.
So I want to just step back to, you already mentioned that taking the glasses off when you don’t need them, not wearing them and expecting that dual purpose, you mentioned the process. Work with your eye doctor to see if you can find one that’s willing to help you with that. But what can people do on a daily basis? I know you have lots of techniques. What’s one or two you can teach us to help improve our vision?
Claudia (38:17)
So thank you. Yeah, I talked about, I call it go naked, just provocatively. Meaning like don’t use, don’t put your glasses on when you don’t need them. We talked a little bit about blinking.
So blinking is one of those simple things that helps you lubricate your eyes. Dry eyes is a huge problem as we get older, especially at menopause. Blinking, 80% of dry eyes is related to some evaporation of the tear film, which is not just watery, aqueous humor. It’s actually a lipid. There’s lipids in there. Meibomian gland dysfunction, which are the glands at the edge of the eyelids.
That could be a thing. So I always recommend getting your eyes checked, guys. I think I’m the last, because some of my clients haven’t seen the eye doctor in a long time, and I get your eyes checked so that you know, first of all, you’re ahead of the game. You also know all the parts are in good shape. Like, we would never drive our cars and be like, I don’t do those oil changes. It’s so annoying. You know, I just drive the car, the engine light, who cares? In fact, I call blurry vision the engine light coming on. It’s like something isn’t right. Get it checked. So please do that. The glasses, that’s the thing where I usually help. But get your eye health checked, okay?
So, sunlight. Your eye doctor will most likely tell you, sunlight is very dangerous. And I get asked about blue blockers and all this stuff all the time. So, at sunrise and sunset, there’s really no UV. So, we want to set this circadian clock. I know this is a big part of what you teach. I don’t actually usually wear sunglasses unless I’m in very bright place, and it’s snow or the ocean, like it’s extremely bright.
But think about this, our pupils are built in sunglasses. If you have a healthy eye, and you’re not taking any drugs that enlarge your pupils, if you had those atropine drops or whatever, or you have some kind of condition where your pupils don’t constrict, it’s super important to wear sunglasses, okay?
But if your eyes are healthy, they get very small, which is the relaxed state. And in bright light and when it’s dark the pupils open up, right? So we have this internal kind of system but when we now wear sunglasses all the time, which I used to do, the pupils actually open up behind the sunglasses, and your pupillary reaction slows down, and that’s a big problem with night driving and headlights. And so I stopped wearing sunglasses, so that’s one of my recommendations. But please check with your eye doctor.
My favorite blue blocking company now has a new daylight lens that suppresses some of that short length blue light that is not so healthy for us. But we need the blue light in the middle of the day,because that sets our circadian clock. And natural light has all the lights. All that talk about red light therapy, which is great, it’s all for free in the sunlight, right? So we need the natural, it’s not the same for the windows, that’s a question I get too.
The windows. Most modern windows have all kinds of light blocks for energy and also the light levels and often I wear a hat or a cap. So that’s my next tip. So we go naked, blink, blink, blink, sunlight, and then also close your eyes more often. Just close your eyes.
I teach something called palming. Some people call it cupping where you close your eyes, and you cover them with your cupped hands, and you want to relax your shoulders. Take a few deep breaths and then really what you want to do is bring up a happy memory. So don’t think about your shopping list. Bring up something, and I think you call that a mini vacation. It’s a mini vacation. So maybe go on a mini vacation, or think of some person or pet or a place where you really relax. You can literally take a break.
I sometimes call it pee and palm. Maybe in the bathroom you put your elbows on your knees. Find that mini break and when you’re ready to come back, you keep your eyes closed, slowly move the hands away, so you realize how much light comes into the closed eyelids.
And then you take your time, you don’t have to rush back. And then I like to take five quick blinks and five gentle squeezes. And most people would say, my eyes feel more lubricated. What did I do? Like 30 seconds, right? And you’re more relaxed.
Dr Ritamarie (42:20)
Yeah, you’re more relaxed. And I think having something to lean your elbows on, because I felt a little tension.
Claudia (42:36)
Yeah, you don’t want to hold it. That’s why a friend of mine makes palming, we call this palming sticks, or you can turn the chair around. Or you put your elbows on your knees or something. I’ve done it up to, and people ask me, how long? And I’m like, it depends. You can do it if your eyes already feel dry, you do it as a remedy. Ideally, you do it preventatively.
Whenever your eyes feel strained, take that little mini vacation for your eyes, that little time out. And for some people, they need it like five times a day for like a minute, because they strain a lot and other people might need a longer time. So I always tell people, play around with it.
What gives you the most benefits like when do you feel the most relaxed when do your eyes feel relaxed? When do you feel the lack of eye strain or lubrication? So palming is one of those things.
We don’t stand and run all day. We sit. The whole system needs a little rest, right?
Dr Ritamarie (43:17)
So I love that, and I want to just step in there. When you do that, you’re getting a double benefit, because your cortisol levels will start to balance. You go into what’s called the parasympathetic nervous system state. You get out of that fight-flight modem, and you go into the parasympathetic. So you’re having an effect on the rest of your body, on your digestion, on your brain fog, et cetera. So I really encourage that. And I like the idea of adding in the little mini vacation when you’re doing it.
So those of you who have studied with me and are in our programs, you’ve heard me say, take that, do that several times a day. I usually say, put your hand over your heart. But if you put your hands over your eyes, assuming you can rest your elbows, that would be great.
Claudia (43:58)
I do a lot with meditation too. When you meditate, that’s the only time where I say, multitasking is okay. But when you meditate, if you meditate already, or you have prayer, or some kind of thing in the morning, you can just do that. And you can do it laying in bed with a cushion under your arms. I’ve done it squatting down, back against the wall, elbows on the knee, whatever, you know, in the plane. You can do it anywhere. And one other thing, I also have clients that say, I can’t relax. This is so stressful. I can’t do this.
So another thing that I always recommend is movement. So one little tip I want to give you guys. Don’t think about your body moving, but the people with great vision will, when I ask them this question, does everything appear to be moving? They will be like, yeah. Like the second I move my eyes left and right, it seems like the world is moving. So I did not see that. People with poor vision, usually with glasses, you stare. You try to lock things down. Of course the computer and the table, and the stuff isn’t moving.
But if I’m going like this, I’m looking over there, it seems like the computer is moving, because now it’s on the left of me, now it’s on the right of me. Of course, my head is moving. But the more you have that sensation, when you walk through, let’s say you walk, you hike, you walk, it feels like the environment is going the other way. So the more you have that, it’s an illusion, because obviously unless the trees outside that we see are moving from the wind.
But the more you kind of get the sensation of movement, and some people are rebounders, great. You rebound, and you notice as you go up, it seems like the room is going down. So the more you do that for some people, they need to do that kind of thing first to relax and then they can do palming, because not everybody is ready to sit down.
Dr Ritamarie (45:42)
Like anything else, habits just require repetition to create new habits. If you’re used to waking up in the morning and gobbling down the coffee and a donut, then it’s a habit.
Claudia (45:53)
I do the black coffee, so don’t judge me, please.
Dr Ritamarie (45:57)
But anyway, that’s the thing. We have to create it slowly and, you know, add the habit to something you already did. Like you said, you’re on the toilet. What did you call it? A pee and palm?
Claudia (46:08)
Pee and Palm. Or the meditation. That’s where a tool like a palming stick, which is like any kind of bolster. Sometimes you might have a nice cushy thing.
Find a nice spot, that’s also what I recommend. Don’t see this as another thing on your long to-do list. But if you have a cushy, like an armrest, sometimes a yoga bolster, I put that across and then have the feet flat on the floor. You want to feel grounded. And then just take that little break for yourself. And sometimes if you can’t do that, just close your eyes. Like sometimes on Zoom calls, you know, you don’t always have to look. Sometimes I’m just like, rest your eyes. In fact, I used to do that as a school kid, because I’m not an auditory learner.
When I close my eyes, I would be able to retain the information, because when my eyes were open, I was getting distracted. I guess the teacher told you, pay attention, Claudia. Open your eyes. But I intuitively closed my eyes, because I could listen. I could retain the information better as kids. Kids are so smart.
Dr Ritamarie (47:06)
We are, and then we dumb them down by trying to teach them things.
So this has been a lot of information, and I really appreciate you taking the time to be here. And I want you to share how people can get in touch with you. I know you do these challenges, like five day, four day, whatever challenges periodically to help people, guide people through these tracks. So tell us a little bit about that and how people can reach you.
Claudia (7:28)
Yeah, so I have a free guide called 10 Vision Habits for Menopause and Beyond. So those vision habits are actually good for everybody. It’s just more like I relate it more to like the loss of close-up vision, the dry eyes, more common menopausal symptoms, but it doesn’t mean if you are a woman that’s not in menopause or you’re a man, those are really great. So that’s a free download. And then several times a year, I run a free training, because people always tell me, I don’t know if it works. I don’t believe this. And I always say, see for yourself.
Don’t believe me, don’t believe your eye doctor who’s probably going to say it was not going to work. And I have a, I don’t like the word challenge so much, but people get that idea. It’s like, see better in just four days. And I do that several times a year. So that’s a great way where I do life coaching. You get a little mini training every day and then we go over those things. And that’s a way for people to say, I see it. Because make it work for yourself.
Test things for yourself, don’t just believe in some guru. And I also want you to not just believe me, but test it out, because I know it works. But I also, feel like sometimes we believe too much what other people tell us and deep down, what aligns with you, I think, and obviously learning information, but I’m a big believer of testing things out for yourself.
It’s called See Better in Just 4 Days.
Dr Ritamarie (48:52)
And then the website is?
Claudia (48:54)
My website is naturallyclearvision.com. and I’m known as the holistic vision coach on Instagram and YouTube.
Dr Ritamarie (49:01)
There you go. So you can find her on Instagram and YouTube, and she has a Clear Vision Wednesday, free live thing every week. So educate yourself, pick what you can, and if you want to go deeper, you can study with Claudia, but there’s a lot of information here.
There’s a lot of information in that download. We’ll have the link in the comments, and the description in the show notes.
And I share things that you can do to enhance your life, to enhance your health, to enhance your metabolic health, to enhance your overall quality of life, and again you’ve got to figure out things for yourself.
There’s no right way or wrong way. There is the way that’s going to work well for you. So study as a practitioner, continue to learn more, add these new things to your trick box, your toolbox, so that you can help more people. So be here, be present, be now. And until next time, shine on.
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