Dr. Cha:
Do we have our super foods for lunch? Yes.
Dr. King:
Yes.
Dr. Leah:
There are superfoods.
Dr. Cha:
Oh, that’d be great. If we had like visual eggs, like blueberries and like kale.
Dr. King:
I actually had blueberries last night.
Dr. Leah:
Did you?
Dr. King:
And, and I made kale and blueberries last night.
Dr. Cha:
Look at that.
Dr. King:
Look at me not even realizing what I’m doing. It’s just, it’s part of my life now.
Dr. Cha:
It’s just so second nature too, right?
Dr. King:
Oh, hi. She’s filming
Dr. Cha:
And this is our special guest, our new addition to our practice. Dr. Leah Bohnert.
Dr. Leah:
Hello everyone.
Dr. King:
Also known as Dr. Leah. Today we’re gonna be talking about super foods. There’s an old saying, you are what you eat. Well guess what? You see, how you eat. What you eat can affect the function and quality of your vision. And that doesn’t mean it’s a magic bean. It’s not gonna cure blindness. It’s not gonna, you know, be some sort of be all, end all. But there are certain things that can really improve your visual function and help you maximize the quality of your vision. So stick around and we’ll talk more.
Dr. Cha:
So our resident expert, Dr. Lea
Dr. Leah:
So basically what super foods are is it’s a type of food that is nutrient dense. So it’s got a lot of different minerals, vitamins, things like that in it. But it’s also low in calories too. So it’s gonna be really good for your overall health.
Dr. King:
Why do I need that?
Speaker:
Why is it important to maintain good eye health?
Dr. King:
Why wouldn’t it be important to maintain good eye health?
Dr. Cha:
It’s one of our primary, you know, special senses. I’ve heard a statistic, it’s probably, I don’t know, made up, but we do.
Dr. Leah:
I love it.
Dr. Cha:
Well, we do like 90% of our processing or just observations in the world from day to day mainly, mainly through vision. And you know, a lot of people talk about, you know, what they fear, whether they fear like losing a limb or losing their ability to walk or even losing their life. Usually a lot of people say they would want to lose many other things before they lose their vision. So it’s incredibly important. People are very sensitive about their vision
Dr. King:
Very much so. There have been statistics that the number one fear, if you had to choose losing sight is the number one fear. Number one sense that people fear losing. We take it pretty seriously because when patients come into our office and they’re having trouble seeing, they’re very afraid. And they always ask, what can I do to make my vision better? Well, a healthy diet is going to make a huge difference in your visual prognosis.
Speaker:
Which superfoods are beneficial for your health?
Dr. Leah:
Well,
Dr. King:
We happen to have a list.
Dr. Leah:
I may have a little list here. Thinking about vitamins first. Vitamin A is a important vitamin for overall eye health. It’s going to help your retina, which is gonna be something that’s in the back of your eye. That’s not something that you can see readily. But that help with the back of the eye. Vitamin A is also helpful for dry eye as well too. So it’s gonna help with that. Where do you get vitamin A though? A big one is gonna be sweet potatoes and then also carrots. So those are the two big super foods that you could eat to kind of help with those sort of things.
Dr. King:
And they’re both orange. Oh, easy to remember.
Dr. Cha:
I didn’t even think about it like that.
Dr. Leah:
They vitamin A, orange. There you go.
Dr. Cha:
If I remember correctly, orange. No, Orange
Have y’all heard of like chicken nugget eye?
Dr. King:
Chicken nugget eye?
Dr. Cha:
Yeah, it’s like a, I think there is like a condition for the eye where a patient is like nutrient deficient.
Dr. King:
Yes, yes, yes.
Dr. Cha:
Malnourished. And like, I think it’s a vitamin A deficiency.
Dr. Leah:
Oh, okay.
Dr. Cha:
Literally we call chicken nugget eye because for one, when we look at your eye, the texture looks like a chicken nugget, like the kind of crackly surface. Especially like the, the white part of your eye. I think the conjunctiva.
Dr. Leah:
Oh Okay.
Dr. Cha:
You, you kind of inquire about their, you know, nutritional history. And it’s usually either very poor, either malnourished or like they’ll eat like chicken nuggets all the time or something.
Dr. King:
Right. They eat tan. I think we’ve all had patients, oh, I don’t eat green things. Yeah. I don’t eat, blah blah. Yeah. You know, so they end up eating tan.
Dr. Cha:
Yep, yep, yep, yep.
Dr. Leah:
That sounds so good.
Dr. Cha:
That’s funny.
Dr. King:
Are you talking about, is that the toe spots?
Dr. Cha:
Yes. Yes. I think so. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. King:
Vitamin A deficiency. I remember there is a whole vitamin a deficiency syndrome. I never heard it called chicken nugget eye. I think generational
Dr. Leah:
Okay. So another really important vitamin for overall health is gonna be vitamin C. Vitamin C is an, is an antioxidant. So it’s protecting the body from damage from unhealthy foods that you eat. And also from different like environmental factors as well. What vitamin C does for the eye is it’s going to help slow the progression of cataracts. And then also age related macular degeneration too. So that’s something that also happens in the retina with your central vision. So where can you get vitamin C? Most of your fruits are gonna have vitamin C oranges, grapefruits, peaches. But then another thing that I had read was tomatoes and bell peppers are actually really high in vitamin C too. So that’s something you could try if you didn’t love fruits.
Dr. Cha:
There’s like a, just like a Simpsons episode.
Dr. King:
I go to the Simpsons for all my nutrition.
Dr. Cha:
There’s like an episode where like Homer, the father is a big guy. He’s like trying to slim down and then like eat a bell pepper, you know, just like, just replace everything. Eat bell pepper. He like, you want some chips, eat a bell pepper. You know,
Dr. King:
Did he lose weight?
Dr. Cha:
I think he looked great. Yeah. In the show, who knows?
Dr. King:
But I wonder if his vision got better.
Dr. Cha:
Didn’t get worse.
Dr. King:
There you go.
Dr. Leah:
Another superfood group is gonna be your Omega -3. So that’s gonna be an essential fatty acid that is good for overall health. And then it also decreases inflammation in the body, which is helpful for all different things, especially dry eye. That’s the biggest reason you, you know, you would probably take Omega-3 for eye health. You can get those usually in cold water fish if you’re not taking a supplement. So salmon, tuna, things like that are gonna have Omega-3’s.
Dr. King:
And something I’ve been reading a little bit more about with the Omega-3 can be found in flaxseed.
Dr. Leah:
Oh, okay.
Dr. King:
But there seems to be a difference in the way that breaks down in the body. So the plant, the plant-based Omega-3s don’t seem to work the same way, particularly for like macula and stuff. The ocean-based Omega-3s , which also have been found in for, for vegan folks in certain alga algae. I believe it’s not a seaweed, it’s an algae. You can get the Omega-3s that way. So if you’re looking to add Omega-3s , think ocean-base is, seems to be the newest research coming out on that. Used to be we were either way plant, based, you know, land or ocean-based. But that’s something that I’ve been noticing in the literature lately, is more the ocean-based Omega-3.
Dr. Cha:
Yeah. I believe certain cuisines just have richer, are are richer in Omega-3s. Apparently Western or American diets have a lot of Omega-6s.
Dr. King:
Which six and nine.
Dr. Cha:
Yeah. I believe six and nine. They could be broken down into three.
Dr. King:
No, nobody else went there. Our producer went there.
Dr. Leah:
Oh my gosh.
Speaker:
All Right.
Dr. King:
Let’s try and keep it professional. Continue, Dr. Cha.
Dr. Cha:
I think my Mediterranean diets, you know a lot of, a lot of eastern diets with a lot of fish like Japanese diets because of all the Yeah. Cold water fish involved in their you know, everyday nutritional intake. They have just less of that, you know, over there. Yeah. These people on the east or with these kind of fish rich diets, they’ve been eating that their entire lives. And like we talked about, there’s no like magic bean or you know, magic pill. Just taking one omega-3 one s is not gonna no cure your dry eye or make you feel much better. It takes months to. It takes a lot of time for the, you know, your biochemistry, literally the, you know, the makeup of your body to change by what you ingest. I heard from a physician, a cornea specialist. He said, food is the best medicine. Instead of giving you, you know, a prescription or get you take supplements if you can actually eat it in your everyday diet. That’s the best way to absorb, you know that. Right. These super foods or these nutrients that we’re talking about.
Dr. King:
I’ve always been taught that, you know, you’re gonna absorb it better from the food you eat versus when it’s packed into a pill or a liquid. Because it’s been processed to a point. Yeah. Not that supplements are bad. Supplements are a great way to, to, to literally supplement what you’re already eating but you know, the, the fresher the food and the more pure the food, the less processed it is. Your body’s gonna know how to handle that and absorb what it needs.
Dr. Leah:
The last antioxidants I’m gonna talk about is gonna be Lutein and Zeaxanthin. What those nutrients are gonna do is they’re actually gonna protect the macula, which is in the back of the eye, the retina. It’s your central vision, fine detail, vision, a lot of your color vision too, foods you can get those two nutrients in is gonna be your leafy greens. So kale and spinach are great. Another one that I had found was actually eggs has a good amount of both of those nutrients in them too.
Dr. King:
Particularly the yolk. So egg yolks are not necessarily bad.
Dr. Leah:
See.
Dr. King:
So that means Hollandaise sauce actually contains Lutein and Zeaxanthin, it has egg yolks in it. I got your back.
Dr. Cha:
We’d rather have you have a egg yolk on your plate than in your eye. Cuz that’s literally what we’ll see when we look inside your eye. If it gets big enough and bad enough, the macular degeneration looks like this, you know, yellow spot, these spots forming. If they coalesce or kind of collect, there’s even a condition called best disease, right? Or there’s an egg yolk center and that’s more of a, you know, something you’re born with. But that kind of illustrate what we’re trying to prevent. Right? Eat the yolk, don’t have it develop in your eye.
Dr. King:
Eat the yolk, keep it outta your eyes, just eat it. I’ve always told my patients eat the rainbow. And you can tell we’ve been talking about these colors we’ve been talking about, you know, you want that variety. Don’t stick to the tans, eat the rainbow. And if you do that, now you’re giving your body something to work with and you can get the tissues to function better.
Speaker:
So now we’re getting into our myth buster segment. Super foods will cure all eye issues.
Dr. King:
Well, well, let’s think about that. We just said all, whatever is a hundred percent all no, no. You know, these are…
Dr. Leah:
Just no
Dr. King:
Whatever you say. All always, never, you know, it’s like, come on. No, but, but no, it’s not gonna cure all eye issues, but at least you’re setting the stage to have better ocular health. I mean, we’re all exposed to, to outside influences, whether it’s air pollution, other medications we have to take you know, just different things in life, stress. But if we at least feed our bodies, we have some defense against some of that stuff.
Speaker:
Superfoods can replace the need for glasses and contacts?
Dr. Leah:
You wanna take that?
Dr. Cha:
Sure.
Dr. King:
Once again, no!
Dr. Cha:
I mean, glasses and contacts specifically address what’s called refractive error. Refractive meaning bending of light and error, meaning the wrong bending of light. So when we look at our, our eyeball, the idea is that it takes the light from around us and projects it to a certain spot. We’ve been talking about the retina a lot, the retinas, the back part of the eye, the one that kind of collects all the information and sends it to our brain. You can think of it almost like a projection screen. So if you ever kind of mess with a projection screen, you have to kind of turn knobs. And what that’s doing is actually you’re aligning the different lenses of the, of the projection screen so that it projects the image onto the wall or your screen that you have. And that’s exactly what our eye does, but we don’t have things that we can move around. We don’t have knobs on our eyes, so we, yeah, somewhat. You can think of it almost like use a prosthetic, we use glasses or we put something even closer to our eye, a contact lens and you know, you can go even as far to explore different options for refractive surgery. So that’s LASIK, SMILE, ICL and even refractive lens exchange or cataract surgery. So yeah, foods don’t really replace glasses or contacts, but it makes sure that the rest of the eye is capable to see clearly once it does have glasses in contacts or even a refractive surgery to help bend the light to the right point.
Dr. King:
The eye is not healthy. We can put the best pair of glasses or contacts on it. True. Still doesn’t see well because the tissue is not good. So it takes all these things together to make your vision work. So, the, the super foods help the tissues, the lenses just focus the light onto the tissue. Well that pretty much sums up our, our discussion on superfoods, ocular nutrition. Once again, we’re not talking about a magic medication here. We’re talking about trying to develop healthy habits to support your body. So if you really have nutritional questions, the best thing to do is do some research. There are folks out there that are called nutritionists. Guess what? They’re the experts. But we hope you found it helpful. And if you like what you saw, be sure to subscribe, you know, down there, that little button down there. In the meantime, I’m Dr. King.
Dr. Cha:
Dr. Cha.
Dr. Leah:
Dr. Leah.
Dr. King:
We’ll see you next time.