SHAWN STEVENSON: Our bodies have a remarkable ability to heal, to regenerate, and to even improve no matter where we are in our lives today, more than ever, we are facing things in our environment. We're facing things in our society that are burning away our capacity to heal, to improve, but it doesn't have to be this way. And one of the aspects of our health and of our longevity that's under attack the most is our vision. And on this special episode, you're going to understand why there are skyrocketing rates of issues related to our vision. Now, I didn't say eyesight because as you're gonna discover as well, eyesight and vision are different things. And our special guest is a foremost expert in this subject matter in a vision training. He's sought after by some of the most elite athletes in the world whose vision is incredibly important, as well as everyday folks and dedicated parents who want to improve their children's performance in school.

Because you're also going to discover how issues like A DHD and dyslexia can be deeply tied to vision as well. Now again, vision is something much bigger than just our eyesight. This is deeply related to our brain and our nervous system, and the accumulation of a vast set of data. So we're gonna go through so much today and it's going to blow your mind and rest assured, right now, no matter where you are, no matter what your state of eyesight is, it can be improved. And we've got the science and the strategies to back this up, but it's not just eyesight that you wanna improve, again, it's your vision. This is one of those conversations that will stick with you for many, many years to come. That will change the way that you see reality. Now, before we get to our special guest, obviously our eyes, our brain, every single cell in our bodies are all made from the food that we eat.

Our food is creating the hardware so that we can run our software programs. We wanna make sure that we still have good hardware, deeply, deeply matters because the human body is resilient and it finds a way, it will make our bodies and our tissues out of the most low quality products that it has to. If good stuff's not available, it will do what it's gotta do. But what if we provide our bodies with the foundational nutrients, the foundational materials, to build exceedingly healthy tissues. It's through our nutrition as well that we can dramatically improve. Our vision. We can improve the health of our organs related to our vision. In fact, there are some key nutrients, lutein and xanthin.

These are two keratinoid that are proven to protect your eyes and even lower the risk of macular degeneration. And one of the best sources of these two powerful keratinoid is something that I've been utilizing for years, for almost 20 years now, and it's the superfood known as chlorella. And with most foods that have this kind of capacity, it's not just good for one thing, it's good for our whole bodies. Because a double-blind placebo controlled study published in clinical and experimental hypertension found that chlorella was able to normalize the blood pressure of test subjects with hypertension. Unfortunately, most people are unaware of how our nutrition can radically improve hypertension. We have a society that's constructed in a way that we are pointed directly to medications.

Those times are changing. Fortunately, I'm so grateful for that, but it's about taking action, and Chlorella is just one of these exceedingly powerful Green Superfood allergies. Spirulina is another one that's been affirmed to do some remarkable things in the human body that other things simply can't do. Spirulina has been found to promote stem cell genesis, the creation of new stem cells, and what do stem cells become? Anything that our bodies need, they're derived from stem cells. I get spirulina, chlorella, and other adaptogens like ashwagandha altogether, and the incredible green juice blend from Organifi.

Head over to organifi.com/model. That's O-R-G-A-N-I-F i.com/model, and you're going to get 20% off their incredible green juice blend. Also, their red juice blend is amazing as well. Tons of great brain and eye nutrients in that blend as well. So many incredible things. Head over there, check them out. Organifi.com/model for 20% off storewide, but definitely get your hands on. They're phenomenal green juice blend, the classic it all started with the number one green juice blend in the world. That's organifi.com/model for 20% off. And now let's get to the Spotify review of the week.

SPOTIFY REVIEW: Another Spotify review by WC. Great episode. It reinforces all the things I've been doing. I began intermittent fasting late 2019. Approximately two years later I'd lost about 80 pounds and was off all meds. I've continued consistent intermittent fasting on a 16-8 schedule. It's my lifestyle and I love it. I've never felt better. Thank you for sharing this great, easy, free means of improving our health. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Phenomenal! Thank you so much for leaving that comment over on Spotify. That's right. You can leave comments for the Model Health Show on Spotify right now. And that episode was from episode 8 85, can intermittent fasting reset and improve your metabolism. It was a masterclass on intermittent fasting, all the ins and outs, dos and don'ts, busting myths as well. And looking at, Hey, is intermittent fasting simply a result of calorie restriction? What does the data say? So we went through all of that stuff, provided some very practical strategies, and also forming people that's not a one size fits all modality as it is with most health approaches, and so I really do appreciate that debbie C.

Thank you for sharing your voice over on Spotify and please pop over to Apple Podcast lead review for the show, rate the show, or leave a comment on Spotify and you can also rate the show there as well. It really does mean so much. Please hear my voice. Hear my heart today. Please share your voice with me on any platform that you're listening on. It really does mean a lot. Without further ado, let's get to our special guest and topic of the day. Dr. Bryce Applebaum is a neuro optometrist and leading authority for functional vision. Through his revolutionary vision performance training, Dr. Applebaum has supported thousands of patients to optimize their vision, improve their brain functioning, and engage with life through a fresh new lens.

His phenomenal results have been featured all over major media from USA Today and The New York Times to network television shows on CBS and NBC. In addition to serving kids and adults of all ages, Applebaum is a trusted vision trainer for athletes in every major sport, including the NFL, NBA and MLB, as well as Olympians, professional race, car drivers, tennis pros, and more. In this powerful interview, Dr. Applebaum will expose the leading causes. Of our vision issues and how to train your eyes and your brain to thrive in this digital world. Let's dive in this conversation with the amazing Dr. Bryce Applebaum, my guy. How you doing today? 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Doing fantastic. Honored to be here. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Man, i'm so happy to talk to you. As you know, there's an epidemic of vision issues in our society today, so we're gonna talk about what's going on behind the scenes, why this is happening, and also what we can do to turn this thing around.

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Love it.

SHAWN STEVENSON: But first I want to ask you about your superhero origin story. What got you interested in vision in the first place? 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: So I'm a product of the work that, that we do now. As a kid, I was a mess. I was lost on the soccer field, struggled in the classroom, had these visual, developmental delays. So what that meant was my eyes didn't work together as a team. I had essentially no depth perception. My eyes alternated which one pointed straight ahead. And I really struggled with confidence and interpersonal connection. I mean, that was a mess. Fortunately, I, my parents gave me the opportunity to rebuild all of these skills with I brain training with vision, performance, training, and I attribute all my success in life, athletically, academically, interpersonally, what was developed for me. And for me, it took years. We can accomplish that in like months now, but I really look at this as like, I'm here so others don't have to struggle unnecessarily, just like I did. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's so powerful, man. And you have, obviously, you're impacting thousands upon thousands of people, and I think a good place to start is to talk about the difference between the two, because I think that we often tie them together. Eyesight and vision. They're actually two different things. Let's talk about that. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: A hundred percent. So eyesight and vision are completely separate entities. Eyesight is just our ability to see whether that's letters on a chart and an eye exam. What the teacher writes on the board in the classroom, or when you're driving, what's on a sign. Vision is far more complex. Vision is how our eyes move together, converge track, focus, how we process information and make sense of the world around us. So really, eyesight is a symptom, that's what glass and contacts are for. Vision is brain and vision problems are brain problems. And there's ways to address that and train the brain, so that vision doesn't impact our ability to achieve at our potential. But there's so much more to vision than just eyesight. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, and that's the thing too, is like thinking more broadly and holistically because our vision is so powerful. And then to drill it down to this one small thing, our eyes in many ways are kind of an extension of our brains. Our brain is in a very dark place. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Mm-hmm. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: But all of this stuff, even as I'm seeing you, it's really going on in my brain. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Mm-hmm. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Thanks to my eyes. Sending this data. Can you talk a little bit more about that? 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Yeah. I mean, our eyes actually are brain tissue in the first trimester. They emerge from our brain and come outside of this, you know, where they are now. And you know, when you think about just how we take in the world around us and how we process information and how vision guides our movement, that's really what it's intended for. So there's so much that can be done to get the eyes to work better together as a team, to get the eyes of the brain and the body to process information. But then to really access vision more higher level thinking through vision and how our brain can filter and use the information our eyes are sending it to make better sense of it and to unlock so much of our potential.

SHAWN STEVENSON: So what, when people say something like 2020 vision. Yeah. What does that mean? 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: So that's actually wrong. It's 2020 eyesight, right? So we want to say, you know anyone who says, oh yeah, I've been to the eye doctor and my eyes are fine, or I can see the tiny letters. You know, that's really just based off of a reactive model saying, can you see a small thing far away across a dark exam room? But if you think about how important vision is for driving and for sports and for navigating through space and for interpersonal connection, that's way more than just a clear image. That's how the eyes are focusing and tracking and converging. And then how the brain is filtering that input and telling the eyes and the rest of the body how to react.

You know, going back to the caveman days, vision is intended to really prepare us for danger and scan the horizon for, for danger or dinner, or explore through nature or to have this delicate balance with intricate work with our hands. But what vision where vision developed 4 billion years ago. It's now clashing against where we are today in this digital world that we're in, where many of us don't have the visual system developed to meet the demands of life these days.

SHAWN STEVENSON: So could we say eyesight would be more akin to like a snapshot? 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Of something, whereas vision would be like IMAX camera, recording all this intricate data and all of this like really complex machinery behind it all. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: A hundred percent. I mean, eyesight is the ability to see an image, and yet we have a focusing system, the inside muscles of our eyes responsible for clarity, that we want to be like an old school camera lens that's on auto focus, or if it's stuck on manual focus. And that snapshot you mentioned, it's hard to put together a lot of snapshots compared to putting together a movie in our brains. We can create that movie to make such better sense of the world and to really feel confident in space so that our eyes and our brain can work fluidly together as a team.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, I just thought of that analogy. I just went to a big IMAX opening for Thunderbolts with my family yesterday.

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Nice.

SHAWN STEVENSON: I had no idea. It's like, it might be the biggest screen in LA at the Universal Studios. And so I, I never seen a screen that big before. And, you know, our seats were, you know, a little bit back. It was like row F or something like that. And I was like, at least it's, you know, it's not the front, but it's kinda like in the middle of the theater. But it was still seemed so close because the screen was so big. And I'm like, I was waiting for my brain to adjust, right. Because it's not my eyes, it's not just the eyesight. My brain had to adjust. And by the time the movie got into like the first couple of minutes, like you forget and I see everything perfectly, but at first I'm like, look, my eyes are like darting around trying to see everything 'cause the screen is so big. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: And for so many people that can cause a sensory overload where there's just all this input that our brain can't filter and interpret. And so, you know, in a setting like that where there's this panoramic image you have to take in real time. We have different pathways neurologically that respond to central focal input with those that respond to peripheral ambient input. And in a normal healthy brain, we're taking in what's in front of us and around us simultaneously to be able to take in that whole IMAX picture without having to make all these eye movements that are darting across the screen.

Your, your fixation is pretty centered, but you're then processing all of this. And that processing is really what makes a movie like that awesome and enjoyable, or makes you dizzy and nauseous, wants you to run outta there because it's too much for your brain to, to make sense of. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Wow, that's, I love this. So what does 2020 eyesight mean then? 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: So 2020 eyesight is based off of a metric from like a hundred plus years ago, saying a certain size image at 20 feet, you're able to discriminate or see. So something that's 2040, let's say, is twice the size or 2080 is four times the size. And so it's really just a, a metric system to measure discrimination ability. Or how well you can see something clear that's really tiny, but so much of the world is beyond just these tiny little things around. And you know, whether somebody has HD eyesight or blurry eyesight that can be influenced with lenses, with prism, with vision training, with lots of different things. But I really push 20 happy, which is finding the right balance that allows you to take in near, far intermediate distances, but really allows you to access the brain and all the higher level thinking centers that incorporate vision into the integration of all that we ask of our brains. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: I love this. Okay, so let's talk about now what's causing us to be 20 unhappy. Like what's going on in our society today? That's, can you talk about number one, let's talk about the state of affairs. What's going on with vision today and what's behind all of these issues?

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: So environment plays a huge role in terms of stress on the system for so many aspects of health, but, and I know I'm biased, but way more for visual health as well. I think the big elephant in the room for most people is screen time. And screen time just ruining the connection between our eyes and our brains. And we don't have data yet to show what a lifetime of screen time does for us, but we're starting to see what five years does for us post covid, when there's just been this massive introduction of screens to all aspects of life. Shawn, do you know the average eight to 10-year-old spends six hours a day on the screen? The average adult spends seven hours and four minutes a day on a screen, that's average. An eight to 10-year-old does not have the vision development or the brain development to handle that many hours of strain and stress and, you know, blasting this high energy light at us for hours on end.

With the contrast, the brightness, the visual stimuli that our bodies don't know what to do with. I mean, our eyes and our brains were not meant to handle 2D devices for this extended period of time. So it's impacting social development, emotional development, cognitive development, but now vision development. And in many areas of vision development, it's impacting even eyesight, even the structure of the eyes. Myopia, which is the medical term for nearsightedness, is increasing at a really alarming rate. When we landed on the moon in 1969, a fourth of America was nearsighted. Now it's about 42, 43%. And if we think about the world right now, 30% of the world is nearsighted. It's estimated that by 2050, 50% of the world will be nearsighted.

And that's from lifestyle, environment and genetics. We can't really control genetics, but if two parents were to have a child today and both parents are nearsighted, that child would have a one in two chance of becoming nearsighted. If only one parent is a one in three chance, and if neither parent is a one in four chance because of environment and lifestyle and not being, not playing outdoors like we did when we were kids and being around junk lighting and reading and doing near work in the dark. And even just getting outside, I mean, we have studies that say two hours a day of out of being outside is protective, you're less likely to develop nearsightedness. So it's, it's the myopia that's increasing at a crazy rate, dryness, dry eye syndrome. I mean, the average person blinks 15 times in a minute. And when we're on screens, it goes down to like three to five times a minute, which literally means you're blinking less, your tear film being dispersed across the front surface less.

It's then setting the signal to the brain to release more tears, but the tears are coming out in the wrong consistency, and then they're more watery and less oily, and then they drain faster. And then we've got this negative feedback loop where inflammation gets tapped into and the gland starts secreting things differently. And as simple as that sounds, remembering to blink, remembering to get outside and remembering to take breaks from screen time. I mean, those are simple, proactive measures we should all be taking. But very often that's not enough to really support us in the way we need to, but it's at least something we can all start doing today.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Wow. Oh my goodness. Thank you. First and foremost, just the situation with our kids, right? Being born into this mess, we've, we've got to be proactive. And you brought up the exact thing that I was thinking about, which is I had time, we had time to lay a foundation, right? And this is, this is the cool thing we're gonna get to regardless of where you are right now with your vision, it can be improved. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Literally any brain at any age. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: At any age. And so just keep that in your back pocket for now. But it is far more helpful if we can set a good template because you just mentioned our brain and our eyes not really being developed, especially when we're young yet. And getting these inputs basically creating a situation where our, where our vision is getting fixated on these devices. And we had a lot of time just being outside and playing and not being on screens, right.

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Playing ball and climbing in the trees.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. And I feel like this, having that template really helped to insulate me later on as I started to spend more time on the computer writing books and things like that. Whereas, you know, my, my, my peers are, you know, they have their readers and things like that. But also while I was writing those books, I had my outside time, like literally I would, you know, maybe I'm right for an hour and a half, two hours, and I'd go for a walk for 20 minutes, right. And I just, and also, one of the things that I would do, for example, even just being on my screen for a bit, I would look out the window and look at something in the distance just after a little while because you could start to feel the fatigue coming on. And I picked up these little things along the way, but nothing like what you're teaching. And the, the key here is we can build these things in. It's really so many of us, I think we kind of need like physical therapy and rehab for our vision in a way. Does, does that sound accurate? 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: It's, you're hitting the nail right on the head. There is vision training basically, which is PT for the eyes, but really for the brain through the eyes that can establish the appropriate foundation to handle this digital world that we're in, to handle the completely different eye movements that are required for screen engagement compared to reading a book. Like there it's so different what's required on screens than just reading something that you're holding. When you're reading a book, you're making smooth, accurate, methodical eye movements across the page, they're sequential. Holding the book gives you that tactile feedback of where the book is, you know how to, how much to converge and how much to focus your eyes.

When we go to screens, literally the focusing system is locked up. I mean, if you were to squeeze your fist like this, Shawn, after a few seconds, your hand starts to hurt. But if you were to let go and come back and take those movement breaks that you talked about, that can allow for performance to be better over time. It can allow for flexibility. But our focusing system, the inside muscles of the eyes are responsible for clarity. When they're on the screen, they're literally locked in. Our pupils get smaller and you're under tension over time, unless you're trying to get buff tension over time with muscles is not something that we want to be doing for our visual system, not for those muscles.

And that is what contributes to headaches and eye strain and dryness and blurred vision. You know, there, there's 60% of Americans are experiencing some form of digital eye strain right now. And when our vision's working properly, we take it for granted, but very often our eyes are not working together as a team. The inside and outside muscles of the eyes are not working in synergy, and then it can allow. This sense of normal to become this new normal where you can't wait to close the computer after the back-to-back zooms, or by the end of the day, you don't wanna read a book with your eyes. You wanna read it with your ears and rely on, on audio. Or even just like hanging out and playing with your kids can be taxing because you've literally been under visual stress all day and you can't handle it anymore. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: You are reading, you're reading some people right now, man. You're reading some people, myself included, definitely have had those experiences. And you know, one of these things that also just drummed up in, in my environment, all my elders, you know, when they were in their thirties, you know, and thinking about, you know, my mom, my aunt, my, my grandparents wearing glasses, right? So that genetic thing being kind of against me in a sense like just seeing the individuals, the adults. But my life turned out very different. And again, we can attribute this to a modicum of things, right? The, the nutrition, the exercise. But most assuredly again, today in this environment, and this applies to pretty much everything about a reality, use it or lose it, use it or, or lose it. And we're training our vision, we're training our bodies to be very good at sitting in chairs. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Mm-hmm. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: We're training our vision to be very good at staring at a device closeup. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Mm-hmm. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right? And that's the thing. 

So what we're gonna do and what you're teaching people. Whether we're talking about Olympic athletes, whether we're talking about kids that are struggling in school, you are training people how to unlock their vision and how to rehabilitate their vision to get outta this fixed state and to exercise our, our eyes, exercise our vision, exercise our brain.

And we're gonna talk about all of that. But I want to tie this into what I just said at the end of that, which is something so many people, unfortunately, so many kids are dealing with this, they're being misdiagnosed with behavioral issues with A DHD. And sure, they can have some symptoms of these things, but to be put into this box. So often and more data is emerging on this, a lot of these issues are tied to their vision. Let's talk about that. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Thank you for bringing this up. You know, there's over 80% of what's learned in the classroom comes through the visual processing of information. And sadly, like one in 10 kids at a minimum, depending on what studies you read, have a functional vision problem significant enough to impact learning. And when children haven't developed the visual skills and abilities necessary to support the demands of reading and screen time, they develop symptoms like losing their place with reading, skipping words, skipping lines, having to then reread. Words going into and out of focus, becoming blurry, sometimes even double trouble copying off the blackboard and going from near to far.

And then of course, trouble focusing. And like you say, so often in the medical world, we're so quick to slap labels on behaviors like ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, autism spectrum disorders, when in fact these can be hidden functional vision problems. And I'm a firm believer because I see it all day every day. Those labels are incomplete diagnoses until you've ruled out vision first or addressed vision first. So many of the symptoms of A DHD or of dyslexia or reading challenges stem from sustained near concentration tasks being really hard on the system. And a child that has great attention for video games or sports, but has zero attention for reading or writing or desk work.

There's no way to measure with a blood test, somebody has ADD or ADHD. It's based off of symptoms and behaviors and that profile. And we just need to raise awareness so that there's so much less unnecessary struggling because of these hidden functional vision problems that when you know what to look for, they're no longer hidden. But these problems are increasing at a ridiculously high rate. And if you cannot focus your eyes the way they're supposed to, you cannot focus your mind the way it's supposed to. And any change in eye movement is a change in attention. If you can't control your eye movements, you can't control your attention. This is low hanging fruit. But I think a lot of people don't talk about this because number one, they either don't know what to look for or test for. And even if they do, more importantly, they don't know the solutions that are available where really the proof's in the pudding when it's addressed. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yes, so this, to circle all this back and put it all together. Right now we're dealing with, again, an epidemic of vision issues and they're increasing, exponentially. We've gotta do something about this, but we've gotta understand also, you mentioned the genetic component as well. We all have a certain template, but we don't, we don't wanna make things worse than they are, of course. And so this is inclusive for all of us, whether we are wearing glasses for certain situations, whether we're wearing them all the time, contacts, whether we have known vision, eyesight issues, right, which is different from vision. We can all improve, we can all improve so many aspects of our vision.

And that's really what I want to talk about. What can we do to fix this? Because what, what I'm hearing is that we're going to find out that our eyesight can be improved, let alone all these aspects of our vision, but our, the eyesight being one of the symptoms can improve. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: So somebody whose prescription is increasing every year, that is a clear sign of a functional vision problem. Far away being blurry is very often a symptom of a near problem. If the near problem is the focusing system, not having the right stamina or flexibility or focus in the eyes of different planes, we're then adapting to the lens we're in because of the visual stress associated with near. And then we're needing something stronger to maintain that same clarity, which means stronger glasses, stronger lenses, then we go down this vicious cycle.

I'm not anti glasses, I'm not anti contact. I wear contacts, but we shouldn't have to keep adapting to the stress from the environment if we're not able to decrease the stress, right. And so if you address the problem, then the symptom slows down, stops changing, or in some cases even reverses. And the fact that, you know, you shared about your relatives wearing glasses. I know you were an athletic kid growing up. You spent time outside, you spent time applying. These functional visual skills to fast moving space, and it allowed for a more balanced system, a more balanced equilibrium. So you were less likely to have adapted to all of this near stress because you had a healthy balance of each. That's something that we all need to be doing. We all need to be taking walks and taking breaks and allowing movement to de-stress our visual system, which it clearly does. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Mm-hmm. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: But if you're not getting up from your seat and you're on your seat for eight plus hours, you've got problems with so many aspects of health, not just eyes. However, that's the world so many of us live in now, and it's not getting better until we know how to, until we know better, so we can do better. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. It just hit me how much our vision is involved in movement. You know, they're just, they're, they're interconnected deeply. And if we're not moving, our vision isn't moving much either.

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Absolutely. I mean, vision is intended to guide movement. Outside in natural lighting with the delicate balance between distance and near. And although our ancestors, the cavemen didn't live as long as we do now, they weren't wearing reading glasses and yet they were still drawing on walls. They were still cooking with their hands. They're still manipulating space. But that past is now clashing against modern day times and what's asked of us now, we have to evolve and develop as a species and we need to make eye training commonplace with the right type of work, the right sequencing of work, and the right specific type of work to allow I brain body integration that can unlock so much of our potential that's hidden when things are in the way.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yes. Awesome. Alright, let's talk about eye training.

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Yes.

SHAWN STEVENSON: All right. Because whether it is, a kid who is Been struggling in school and you are helping them to improve their vision or, uh, a top player in the MLB Major League baseball. You know, trying to hit a fastball at a hundred miles an hour. They're coming to see you. They're getting training for, from you to improve their vision. Let's talk about the training, like what does that look like? Let's talk a little bit about what we can do to fix these vision issues. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: So from an early age, we're all told keep your eye on the ball, but nobody really teaches you how, we can teach you how. So with a vision performance training program, you know, we're lifting up the hood, we're doing all the right testing to look at all the different systems, but we're looking at these systems in ways that relate to life. So take your tracking system, for instance, that's following something as it's going across midline, that's making the eye jumps across a page when you're reading that's following a ball in space that's keeping your attention on a car as it's moving.

We need to be evaluating the system in three dimensional space, in 2D space, on screens, not on screens, to see where the problems lie. And then we also need to be looking at how our eyes are working together. The depth perception. And what vision training does is it teaches somebody how to use their eyes to rewire the software of their brain and change how they're using vision and to establish order from this disorder. So whether it's establishing new neuronal connections that weren't developed on their own, repairing ones that are damaged from a concussion or traumatic brain injury, or optimizing and enhancing visual processing and critical areas of function to allow for performance to be upgraded. So much can be done when we use our eyes to retrain our brain.

And this is really, it's not eye training, it's visual brain training, and we have neuroplasticity for any brain at any age. When I was in school, I was taught that after age eight, there's this critical period for vision development and you blow out the candles on your eighth birthday and what you see is what you get. We know that's not true. However, that's what most doctors still preach because of research that is talking about vision loss, not vision gained. So if you or I were to wear an eye patch for six months and take off the eye patch, we'd be sensitive delight, but we wouldn't have lost sight. You take a 6-year-old, they wear an eye patch for six months, you take it off. They literally will have lost sight.

But we now know at any age we can reestablish fun function. We can improve a lazy eye or amblyopia, which often is a two eye problem, showing up on one eye. You dress it on a two eye basis, so much can be done to improve that or an eye turn. Very often eye turns are not eye muscle strength or eye muscle length. Coordination and developmental delays where the brain hasn't learned how to use the eyes as a cohesive team. So with vision training, it should be customized to the exact problems, the exact person, and just like any really powerful training process or therapeutic process, it's raising to that person's awareness what they're doing so they can learn how to self correct and self monitor.

It's teaching somebody who has poor depth perception, let's say, what it feels like, what it looks like, and the depth that occurs when the eyes are pointing and acting like they're in the same place. The brain's turning onto that information, and then we see things floating and then we see them popping out. That's literally tapping into the visual centers that allow for 3D awareness and then reproducing that with adding movement and balance and vestibular input and cognition because our visual system doesn't operate in isolation of all these other systems. You're really creating a scenario in a therapy room or in a, in a setting where the person can be empowered with the skills that they either haven't developed on their own or that were damaged. And then with enough work, these maladaptations or bad habits, no longer options. And then you're using your brain the way in which it's wired. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Vision is so cool.

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: So cool.

SHAWN STEVENSON: So cool. I'm just thinking about the connections just from our toes and what our feet are doing to even the feeling of being nauseous based on something you're, yeah, you're picking up with your vision.

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: I mean, motion sickness. So much of motion sickness has a visual component that's treatable. Somebody who's motion sick has a passenger in a car, or when they're reading or on a tablet or in the backseat of the car that's diagnostic, or at least a visual vestibular disconnect, and we can improve and often eliminate that. And that same person, if they're, when they're driving, they're way less motion sick or not motion sick at all. It's because they're able to motor plan and adjust their body for the turns and get the fluid in the semicircular canals up here to, you know, be more fluid and and more balanced. And then literally, the dizziness, the nausea, the signals, our body is setting us to disengage from this task because we're under threat. No longer signals that are being sent because we're able to use these systems in synergy. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Oh my goodness gracious. This is, this is powerful stuff. This is powerful stuff. Got a quick break coming up.

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SHAWN STEVENSON: So you mentioned of course, like you've got all these people coming in from literally from all over the world to get very sophisticated testing and. You know, to have programs designed just for them, but you know that the vast majority of people who need this work and need this information, and prior to now, they wouldn't have access.

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: A hundred percent.

SHAWN STEVENSON:  And so you've created virtual programs that are phenomenal. I've gone through your training as well, and I've got some things to share. We'll talk about Love It. But can you let everybody know about Screen Fit and what that's all about? And also let's talk about how folks can get access to it. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: So, I'm so grateful that we've been able to, to reach people beyond just Maryland and the DC area. And, the problem, like you shared, there's not enough people doing this type of work and it's not as accessible as it needs to be. And so, right when Covid hit, we created this program called Screen Fit, which is literally kind of the equivalent of like doing body weight work for instead of going to the gym. It's establishing the right visual skills and abilities to support reading and, and driving and screens and really helping kind of fine tune the tracking and focusing and convergence systems. So it's an online program, anybody can do it. It's a do it yourself program. It's designed for the masses. So somebody has a massive eye turn or a terrible concussion. This is gonna help, but it's probably not gonna fix the problem because you need something customized. But again, not everybody has access to that. So a screen fit is, there's two different courses.

Each course has 30 lessons. Each lesson is 10 or 15 minutes to do. Can't wait to hear your experience with it. But it, it's something that I am just so beyond grateful for because we've had 100% of people who've gone through it see an improvement in symptoms. And we've had as young as five and as old as 89 go through this. And we've had high volume. And so it's something that we wanna continue to fine tune and develop, but it's a, it's really powerful what can be done when you do the right work, you're motivated, you stick with it, and then you see your hard work paying off, but you gotta do the work. You know, people that say something like eye exercises or screen fit doesn't work. Those are the same people saying that normal exercise doesn't work. You gotta do the exercise, you gotta know what to do. And if you do it, you see your hard work, you know, manifesting in, in the areas of life that have been challenging.

SHAWN STEVENSON: I love this so much because this reminds me of this quote from Jim Roh. "Nobody can do your pushups for you." All right? There's so many things in life that we can get outsourced today, but yeah, we haven't been able to crack the code on someone else doing exercise for us or going to the bathroom for us, which is weird, you know? Anyways. So there's certain things that you just gotta do yourself. Yeah, and this is for yourself. And again, this is available for everybody right now. If folks go to themodelhealthshow.com/screenfit. Altogether is one word, screen fit. You're going to get access to this incredible training, and also you got a free lesson there for everybody, at minimum, that everybody can check out for free.

But by using the code model at checkout, you can get $200 off of the full course. Right, which is amazing. All right, so go to themodelhealthshow.com/screenfit and take advantage of this. This is something for all of us to do, including our kids. And when you came in here, that's one of the things that you were saying to me was for my youngest son. In particular, to really get on board with some of these practices so that he can have a lifetime of good vision and not having to try to go back and fix stuff later on. So being more proactive for our kids is incredibly important. And so I went through the training and a bunch of the different exercises and to share my experience. So, of course, I've never done anything like this, like proactively. And as I, when I started, I'm just like, why haven I ever done this? You know, I picked up little things here or there that just seemed logical, which is like, if I'm staring at this device, I'm training my, my vision to be good at this distance, right? So let me do some exercise and just look away for a while or whatever. Like, I just started to build these things in a. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: 20-20-20 rule. Take a break for 20 seconds, look 20 feet away at least every 20 minutes, but as often as you can. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And what inspired that also was like feeling the feelings of what it's like to not do that, which is like feeling fatigue, feeling kind of just like not well after being on the phone for a while, right? Getting sucked into the internet black hole. Especially during the covid days, you know? And just being like, ah, I don't think anybody's on the, on their phone for an hour and just like, I feel awesome afterwards, you know? And so I just got in the habit of doing these things 'cause I, it was like I was putting my vision into a cast, you know, my eyesight.

And so just, I added these little bits in and like when I go for a walk, I look, look off in the distance, like try to see the furthest tree away, like the very top of that tree, and like tracking birds and like doing, for me, I'm just like, what am I, what am my ancestors to be doing? You know? And that has led to some, some benefits, obviously, but to be more intentional and to start this training and to take it seriously. And I did all the exercises day one, and the next day I felt a little bit like eye fatigue, right? And, and you, you could talk about why, but the day after that, I felt better than I did the day prior to starting. Like I just felt sharper. I was seeing, already just seeing my vision was I can't, this is the thing about it, it's very difficult to explain vision.

Like, because it's so comprehensive. It's that IMAX movie. And so already I noticed things were, were improving. Now here's what I noticed in one of the, in one of the trainings. This one was like the peripheral vision, right. Tracking the pin. As I was extending my arms to the side, I think it was kind of like, 'cause I, you know, you have a model, you have somebody who's doing this stuff and I would see her do it. I'm like, I can go way, I can almost put my arm behind me and still see the pin. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So it was like super human from the side and down, but up it was less. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Interesting. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And it's because of my hat. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: I was gonna say. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And so ev ever since I was a kid, just like my stepfather, you know, he put on a cap, we leave the house, right? And so the same thing for me ever since I was a kid, leave the house, grab your cap. And so my, but it wasn't bad because like when I get home, no cap, I train all this stuff. And, but it's, it was different. I noticed that it wasn't as good as the other directions. And this brought, not only did it bring awareness, but it brought an urgency of training for me to improve that, to bring that thing up that I wouldn't have known was different or was kind of, kind of constrained. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: So many people wear hats because even unconsciously the junk lighting from our world creates sensory overload or this feeling of needing to retreat. And so the hat can be protective, but also it's blocking the ability to take in the whole world from that position. And I think it sounds like you're one of the few in the minority where you didn't really have visual efficiency problems that you knew of before all this. And for many people, like the tech neck, the eye strain, the disrupted sleep and circadian rhythms, the dryness, the dr, the blurry vision is kind of at such a low level.

You're just kind of accepting it as as normal and don't even think about it otherwise. But in going through this, you know, day one of the program. I know the exact exercises you did and that very likely broke down some bad habits that were in place, so that we could then rebuild newer, better ones together. And something like our focusing system, for instance, many people focus their eyes up close at slightly different planes. They don't have to focus at the same plane because they can't and have no clue they're doing that. And so like the near far focus activity where you're going from far to near and far to near what you are doing naturally for so many times in life, you can actually measure how close you can hold one finger compared to what the other eye, the other finger.

And when there are different distances, that's literally telling you that in normal two eye viewing conditions, you're relying on one eye a little more than the other for focus because of a ri, a binocular rivalry or competition over a sensory input of which eye to use. So something like screen fit is literally building equal skills between each eye first so that when we start doing two wide work in there. There's less of a choice over which eye to use because one's not taking over 'cause they're doing the same thing. So, you know, periphery and side vision really is the key for central vision. So I love that you noticed you could go beyond because when our visual system is under stress for any human, our pupils widen and we get this tunnel vision effect and that actually collapses space and makes it so very often it becomes harder to trust what you see.

Somebody who driving over a bridge gets a panic attack or is afraid of heights or is hesitant with stairs or escalators or is knocking things over or bumping in a wall is very often that's faulty central and peripheral processing and the integration of those and something like screen fit can really be life changing if in fact you're becoming aware, aware of what you are not aware of. But then you're doing the work to help equalize and improve those skills. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right. So it's like a, it's a, it's a tool of kind of rev revelation and information. It's giving me data back. But also providing these incredible exercises to improve all aspects. One of my favorite exercises was the near far training with the window. By the way. And just to see how incredible our vision is, to be able to see off in the distance and then immediately to see something close. It was just like remarkable. That, and then to proactively do it. And that's the thing about is, and can you talk about the connection here, a closeness with being a muscle?

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And being able to essentially our, our voluntary muscles, right. To be able to activate them on command. We want our, we want our eyes to do this automatically, of course. But there are certain times when we want to intentionally use our vision to do something and we want to be able to command that, to call upon that. So are our eyes, can we say that they're like a muscle. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM:  Absolutely. And our brain even more so is a muscle and our brain's ability to that to then regulate and control our eyes as a muscle, we can strengthen, we can improve stamina, we can improve flexibility. That system you're talking about is our accommodative system. It's our focusing system that lets us know what something is, how hard or how soft to look at it for us to then be able to interpret that information. That's the inside muscle system. The outside muscle system lets us know where something is in a normal, healthy brain. The what and the where give us the same feedback, so something is single and clear.

But what you're describing here is that old school camera analogy I shared where literally you can get your focusing lens to be on auto focus. So you can instantaneously lock in and make something clear and everybody in their mid forties or beyond anatomical changes occur where our focusing system becomes a little more rigid, a little less flexible. But if you don't use it, you lose it, right. And I think the simple solution that most people assume is the only solution is things start to get blurry, grab reading glasses, like that's the equivalent of literally, oh, my knee hurts, I'm gonna just automatically throw myself in a wheelchair and stop using it.

You don't do that, right? You figure out what happened. You figure out the root cause. Then you work your way back to functionality. This same goes with our visual system and with our focusing system. Instead of reaching for the over the counter drugstore readers, the first chance you get, you can start to train focus and hold clarity at a close distance for five seconds and then six seconds and then 10 seconds. And if done right with the right type of work, you can prolong the deterioration. You can actually improve the stamina and the clarity, and you keep doing that. You're not gonna need reading glasses for way longer. And even if you do, they're gonna be way weaker than they would be. My wife at 42 literally blew out the candles on her birthday, and then all of a sudden the small print on the medicine bottle no longer could make out.

And luckily she knew a functional I doc with a secret recipe, but we put her through a specific sequence of vision performance training exercises. She did it every day and she now literally has the focusing system of a 25-year-old reverse the age related changes. And just like she exercises all the other muscles in her body daily, she exercises her focusing muscles to keep and maintain what she reversed. And she's now got a runway that's at least way longer than it would've been otherwise. But it was important to her, right? I mean, if somebody, if that's not important to you, if you don't know about it, it's, yeah, this is a lot easier to see the print. I'm gonna grab these readers. That becomes your new normal, then we go down this cycle that literally in many cases, just changes indefinitely. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. And that's what I want everybody to ask themselves right now. How important is my vision? How important is your vision for you in your life? Is this something that you value? And understanding that vision isn't just eyesight, it's so much bigger than that. And this is a part of longevity, to say the least.

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Oh my God, yes.

SHAWN STEVENSON: This is connected to so many aspects of our health, of our daily lives, lives, and even our wa, even our wake and our sleep life as well, which we can maybe talk a little bit about. But just keeping this in mind and asking ourselves, how important is this? And understand we are being inundated with conditions that are, in many ways, it's just, it's, it's a design now in society that is leading to poor vision. Period. End of story. What are you gonna do about it? And access to this right now is a no-brainer, right? So again, go to themodelhealthshow.com/screen fit right now. Take advantage again. There's a free lesson there. Also, you can get the full course $200 off, use the code model at checkout. And I want to ask you about one of these exercises since we said the word pushups earlier. You have I pushups?

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Yes.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Can we share with everybody how to do I pushups? 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Absolutely. So a well-rounded program is ideal for any type of fitness. You know, that better than anybody I pushups will improve, specifically focus flexibility. So that is, you don't need it and everything in screen feet, you don't need any equipment. This is all supposed to be body weight type work. So with I, pushups, pushups, for anybody who's watching, take one hand and cover up one eye. Take the other hand and use a finger or a pen or something that's got a little bit of detail. So with a finger, you can kind of see the, the fingerprint and the pad of your finger. You wanna watch that, bring it as close to you as you can until it gets a little blurry, and then stop and hold it and make it clear and you wanna hold it.

Look really hard. Stimulate the focusing system. You'll notice the pupil, the inside muscle or the the inside hole that the muscles behind will lock in and get really small. You're stimulating that system. Hold it for five seconds and then look all the way out into the distance. Throw your focus way out. Relax the system. Look soft for five seconds back at the finger for five seconds back at the in the distance. So it's a gross constriction. Relaxation, constriction, relaxation. Doing it the same amount of time, right eye as left eye. Most people will notice that finger can be held at slightly different distances for each eye.

In some cases, way larger distances. And doing this, even if you were to allow your finger to be a millimeter closer each day or each week, these improvements compound and they build on each other. And a millimeter a week for 10 weeks, you're literally holding things closer, clearer. You keep doing this. You're not gonna need stronger reading glasses. You may not even need to use your reading glasses as often as you currently are. And I'm not anti glasses, but I am anti being lazy with our visual system and our brain when we do know what's possible because like you said, this influences productivity, happiness, sleep patterns, systemic health and inflammation.

I mean, for people that are buried in screens all day long and the, and responding to the light, which is then allowing the receptors in the back of her eyes that release melatonin in the brain to be triggered and stimulated. If that's dec, being released at the wrong rate and the wrong level, literally we're not sleeping the way we would, we're in this hyper aroused state. And you know how terrible it is to not sleep well and how much that then allows the cascade to manifest for so many other aspects of health. A lot of this goes back to your eyes and your brain and that connection. And when we can optimize that connection, we can access our vision for our future. But then also we can avoid so much unnecessary struggling, whether we know about it or don't. And I love that in doing some of these exercises, you saw things change, which meant that previously your status quo was just normal, but you didn't really know that it was, it should be any different, right? That's crazy. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm just thinking about yesterday, going to the movies and you know, at Universal Studios you're brown to see some weird stuff, but there's a guy who had a, he was an older guy. He was, I'm just gonna guess maybe 75, 80 years old. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Big old gray mustache. But he had a Spider-Man jacket on.

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Oh nice.

SHAWN STEVENSON: And I'm just like, you know, that's that youthfulness in him. And this reminds me of, you know, my wife having this instance. She told me about when we were first getting together, maybe this was like a year after we'd been together, and she, she wore contacts at the time and she still does like for certain things, she'll like put these contacts on. 

But she fell asleep with them on one time and she woke up the next day and she's just like, I can see. And she's just like, holy. She's like, am I Spider-Man? She thought about, because in the original Spider-Man, Toby McGuire has this moment where he realizes I don't need these glasses. And it's like a superpower, you know? And just for us to keep this in mind that all of these things are trainable, they can get better. But if you don't use it, you lose it. And you mentioned this, and this is so important, you mentioned that just doing the pushups alone, that's one exercise. The same for us. If we're just doing pushups as our exercise, we're gonna get well developed in one way. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: You get nice pecs and that's about it, right?

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. And the rest of our body can be lacking a slacking in many other ways and maybe even create some imbalances, right? Yeah. So we want to train our vision holistically. Yeah. Right. And so with the, with the, with the pushups, with the vision pushups, how many reps would you recommend that we do? 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: So if it's a listening symptoms, that's letting you know your body's talking to you. So I'd say start off like two minutes, right eye, two minutes left eye, see how it goes. Next day, try adding a little bit more to it. I mean, ideally you don't want to be spending 20 minutes per eye, but you want to have learning take place. If you're doing something and just going through the motions, it's not worth doing. But if you're doing it and thinking about. Wow, this is how it feels. This is where I'm looking. I can really feel my world collapsing and coming in and being stimulated and being kind of relaxed and throwing it out. The more you do that, the more conscious work gets integrated into subconscious mind. And so I would say start with two minutes per eye build to hopefully five minutes per eye.

You know, then later on in screen fit, we do that with two eyes, but after already having done some eye convergence work, which is pulling the eyes in as something's approaching you so that when you're doing a near far focus or doing pushups with two eyes, it's very different than doing it with one eye, where we're now adding another system involved. And so screen fit was methodically crafted with the right sequencing of specific exercises to not let anything get worse for pretty much anybody. But then to build really from a broad foundation to a much more fine tuned one as you're kind of climbing the mountain of vision development. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Awesome, awesome. And you know, with that being said, you've been describing exactly the experience of so many people, but with my wife and mentioning the contacts and how she only wears 'em on occasion now because she went through that same kind of standard of care where every time she'd go get an eye exam, they give her stronger and stronger prescriptions to the point she was like, my vision's getting worse doing what they're saying. Let me just back off and let my eyes be eyes. But she didn't have this training now. And so that's what I'm so excited to see her implementing this and you know, but the thing is, it has to come from a sense of importance for all of us, right?

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Yes.

SHAWN STEVENSON: And that's really the driver. And so that's why I want to, again, encourage us to ask ourselves like, how important is my vision? Does it matter to me? There's so many things going on in the world, it's a lot easier to veg out on our phone, right. But also, let me not even say that. It comes to a point where. If you don't do the thing, you mentioned this with meditation earlier.

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Yeah.

SHAWN STEVENSON: You feel weird. You feel weird if you don't have your meditation. This doesn't have to be  “harder” than, you know, straining our eyes a different way. Right. Doing some eye pushups every now and then, in fact, it can make you feel a lot better. Now, with this being said, I wanna circle back to the sleep connection. Because unconsciously, or just on the periphery of this, we would think that our eyes are the opposite of sleep. Like our, you know, we're shutting the eyes down, but our eyes are critical in picking up the data that sync all of this up. So let's talk about that. The photoreceptors and all that stuff. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: So the, there, it's a higher percentage of mitochondria in our eyes than any other part of our body. And there's specific photoreceptors in our eyes that are

 actually more active when the eyes are closed and it's dark than when they're open. So we have these specialized cells on our retina whose sole purpose is to respond to light and to signal the sleep wake cycle that then tells our brain information from time and space through our eyes. When to secrete the right hormones, and then how to have balance there. A lot of people are hearing now like, don't be on your phone right before bed, or, you know, try and eliminate all the junk lighting as much as you can, as close to bed as possible.

Actually in preparation for this, for the last week, I did not look at an electronic after dinner time, after the sun went down. And I'll tell, I kid you not, I've never slept better. And I've got a real busy life. So many people have real busy lives. You, you, you almost just kind of go down that rat race of just myopically focusing on what's important at that moment, and you don't look at the big picture. But when we're not sleeping that impacts so much of our health. And I mean, there's even clear signs of metabolic function being disrupted. Even certain cancers being linked to poor sleep. And we're literally talking about life or death by doing too much screen time. And I know I'm extending that and taking a big, big lunge there.

But you know, so many things that happen in life are avoidable if we're present in the moment. So many car accidents are avoidable. If you can notice what's off in the periphery without jumping your eye to get there, to just make a small change, to get outta harm's way, and you doing that peripheral exercise and being more aware of what's in the periphery, you probably have very solid periphery to begin with. But so many people, especially people who are inside and sedentary for most of their life, their world is literally like they're looking through paper towel holders functionally. And so world War three could be going on around them and they don't even realize. And a lot of parents listening notice, like sometimes different visual profiles and kids will show up where a child's buried with their in a book with the covers over their head in the dark and literally they don't know what else is going on 'cause they're so locked in or the opposite, they're so peripherally engaged that they can't focus centrally for more than a few seconds.

We can influence visual behavior with the right type of training to change dramatically how somebody's functioning. But sleep should really be that kind of carrot that we're dangling. Where you've wr written an amazing book on sleep. I would imagine a whole lot on vision probably wasn't in there. But if, you know, we should be learning from all of our life experiences and continuing to upgrade what we're doing and optimize what we're doing so that we can live long, die strong, and have that be with our body, but also with our visual system. And that can happen. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yes. That's the it and it can happen. What I did do, and what I've been talking about since, the publishing of Sleep Smarter is the connection. It goes both ways. Our sleep deeply impacts our vision and our vision deeply impacts our sleep.

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Yeah.

SHAWN STEVENSON: And just seeing how, you know, poor sleep quality or getting short, you know, short sleep debt dramatically decreases efficiency in shooting, you know, for people who are working with rifles, you know, snipers and performance on, you know, uh, free throws and things like that for college athletes. And just their vision to line up, their ability to line up their vision with what they want their bodies to do suffers when we're sleep deprived, but our sleep is deeply impacted by our vision.

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right. And so you're tying all that together for us, because I want to know if people have had this experience where they might not even be on their phone right before bed, but they, if they spent a lot of time on a screen all day.

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Yeah.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right? Or cut off. From being outside and getting some natural light in. How was your sleep that night? Do you notice that your sleep isn't that good? 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: I mean, I, I see most of our patients in office have substantial vision problems and, and they are miserable for so many reasons. But the amount of people whose symptoms are dramatically worse on school days or work days or during the week, but then on the weekends when they're outside, when they're with their family, when they're with their friends, like night and day difference, or maybe don't even have the headaches or the migraines or what comes during the week, that's a thing, right?

And so how much time you spend with stress visually from your environment, regardless of whether that's from screens or not. I mean, somebody could be writing a book or having a conversation like this, and this is taxing their system that then disrupts homeostasis and your equilibrium. And depending on how much time your autonomic nervous system takes to come back to its steady state that's gonna throw off digestion and thinking, and then eventually sleep as well. I mean, so many aspects of just systemic function. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yep. You just said it. This is such a big takeaway for everybody today, is that our vision is affecting everything about us, our digestion, even our, our skin protection from sun damage, right?

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Yes.

SHAWN STEVENSON: So, we'll throw a study up for everybody to see, but we got data affirming. People that are wearing sunglasses out in the sun are more likely to get sunburned. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Do you know that the vast majority of eye doctors would say, you're absolutely wrong. What? What are you talking about? Right. And light, and we could have an entire podcast on light. We need natural light, all I mean, to, to regulate hormones, mood, alertness, so many things. But when we trick our bodies to thinking we're not in light. We don't release the same biochemicals to protect us in the ways that we would otherwise. It's, and that matters very differently for different skin tones and different hormonal issues. But that needs to get out there. People need to know about that. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: And, blue light, you know, there's all these eye doctors saying, well, there's no studies that say blue light does any damage. It's your body's reaction to the stress, not necessarily the light, but how you're then responding accordingly and the fight or flight response that gets kicked into, 

And then how that influences a hypersensitive brain versus one who maybe is responding differently to that type of stimulus. I mean, we should, sunglasses, you don't wanna stare directly at a sun. You wanna protect from UV damage to the areas that are, that you can protect, but also like we want to be as natural as possible in life. And outside when the sun's not glaring right down at you at high noon. I mean, mornings and evenings, and getting indirect sunlight. So healthy for regulating circadian rhythms, mood, alertness, hormones, everything. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yep. That visual system is informing what all of our cells are doing all the time. And so it's just being more human, having an association with the world around us. And, you know, our, our vision, just to tie this back to sleep once again, is picking up data that's informing all of our neurotransmitters, all of our cells, our mitochondria. It's informing our body what time it is and what it should be doing, right. And you, thank you for bringing this up, because blue light isn't inherently bad. It's not bad. It's necessary. It's necessary. It's a part.

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: But natural light.

SHAWN STEVENSON: It's a part of, it's a part of life. Like we're getting this full spectrum. But if you're getting it at this intensity at certain times, it can throw that clock off, right? When your body's deciding, should I be releasing me melatonin right now? Or a little bit more norepinephrine? Or should this be, you know, a little bit more estrogen like, what, what should I be doing right now? And it can throw the whole system off. And so whether that's accelerating or aging, whether this is foiling or sleep quality, it's the, it's the nature of the world that we live in right now. But it doesn't have to be this way. We can be a part of this world, obviously, but we've gotta be proactive to train our vision, to protect ourselves, protect our health in this ever increasingly technological world.

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Yeah. And we need to adapt to this digital world, right? I mean, there's certain things we can all do where if you're on a screen, the bigger the screen, the farther away, the better. That's gonna be helpful. Everything in moderation. Have the right protective lenses on for your specific scenario. And blue light, in moderation, is not terrible, but also artificial blue light blasting your eyes and brains for seven hours, four minutes plus, that's where the problem comes, right? So knowing, first, knowing about all this is important, but then recognizing we can all be proactive and take so much of our health, but our visual health into our own hands and have the right lifestyle modifications, the right nutrition and supplements to help support our eyes and our eye brain connection. I mean, everyone can take actionable steps after listening to this in terms of just how to live a healthier, happier, more fulfilled life. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Absolutely. Absolutely. Can you let everybody know what they can expect with the Screen Fit program? 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Yes. So with Screen Fit, you can expect some handholding in terms of what to do, why to do it, and how often to do it, and to kind of take the the steps needed to just help take control over your functional visual skills. And that's gonna transfer to reading, to driving, to screens, to interpersonal connection to sports, to really have a visual foundation that allows you to thrive or at least do better in life compared to where things are now. And you gotta get through it, you gotta do the work. But what's neat is, I mean, you talk about your family with this, for anyone listening, just purchase it once. Everyone in the family can use it, right? I mean, it's, there's no way to say you can only watch a video at a certain time, and then if certain eyes are on there, then no other eyes can benefit from it.

They're, they're lessons. And the intention is not more screens to treat screens. The intention is you watch the video of what to do, talks you through it, then put the phone, tablet, computer down, and then go ahead and do the activity. And so many of these, if you tie them to regular tasks of daily living, you're not having to think about when to do it. You know, there's, there was a something on social media that's been going viral this week on doing eye pushups. While you're pooping. It's getting a lot of attention because you're tying two together, two tasks together that usually aren't tied together. But if you're gonna the bathroom regularly, that right there is a couple minutes a day. You can do eye stretches while you're brushing your teeth. You can be at a stoplight and do near far focus activities. I mean, there's so much that we can do that can be tied into life. It doesn't have to be, you set aside x amount of time every day, but for best results, or at least at the beginning, you know, that's gonna get you better results faster.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Humans, we're all about stacking today.

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Oh yeah.

SHAWN STEVENSON: We could, we could double up and do something at the same time. And that's the opposite what most people are doing. On the toilet, they're spending a lot more time on the toilet because they're right on their phone. They're lost in, you know, in the internet, black hole, you know? And so. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: But we'll say if you're doing, let's say, eye pushups on the toilet before wiping, you're doing that. And then make sure you, we don't wanna get pink eye or other, other things brought into the equation here.

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's so funny.

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: We've had, I mean, this is like in a million views in a, in a week. It's crazy. And it's like a lot of pe I mean, it's, it's, it's funny.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: But it's also, we gotta gotta be little careful. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Of course. Fair warning, caveat. Of course. You know. So this is, this is so phenomenal because again, we have the opportunity to train, train our vision to improve so many aspects of our lives as side effects. And you started off the episode talking about that our eyesight is a side effect, right? There's so many aspects of our reality, of our health, of our connection, of our performance. That is deeply connected to our vision, and we have the power to improve this. And again, what's so cool about this is what, I mean, there's many things cool about it, but it's like having a personal trainer or my vision getting these exercises.

But it's like having a personal trainer where, okay, I know what to do now. So now I've got, I've got these exercises down packed, and now I can just do them when I want to, which is really cool. Again, there's, it's, it's a holistic strategy because there's so many aspects of our vision that we don't even think about, right? That can be trained that we're using sometimes most of the time total accident. And also accidentally, we're making them suffer and becoming more debilitated. And so this is a defense against all of that and protection and affirmation. And so again, go to themodelhealthshow.com/screenfit right now. Use the code model at checkout. $200 off the complete program. There's also a free lesson there for you to jump in and man, this has been so awesome. Gotta do this again. Talk more about light and vision. There's so many different things for us to dive into. Sports performance. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Concussion, I mean.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Concussions.

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Right? Oh my gosh. So many people are struggling for what currently with present symptoms from something that happened months, years ago, and don't even realize it's tied to disruption to that eye brain connection. And that's causing what we've talked about today symptom-wise on steroids like so much worse. And people are really struggling when this can be the, the missing piece to that puzzle. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Well, thank you for doing this and creating this for all of us. And, if you could, could you share also where people can connect with you online, follow you, all that good stuff. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: Thank you so much for, for allowing me to talk to your community here and, and for having such interest because. I'm biased. Vision's our dominant sensory system. It should be what's guiding and leading, but when it's not, it can be, it can really interfere. So you can, you can find us on my vision first.com, um, or on social media, on Instagram, Dr. Bryce Applebaum. But my ancestors made life difficult. Applebaum as a PP el not like the apple. But we are just pumping out as much content as we can just to help educate the world and really change how we're all looking at vision because it's so needed and with the right mindset, the right work, we can really unlock so much of our potential by putting our vision first. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yes, man, it's so exciting. Thank you so much for coming to hang out with us. I appreciate it. 

DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM: My pleasure. Appreciate being here. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: The one and only, Dr. Bryce Applebaum. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode today. I hope that you got a lot of value out of this. This is yet another tool for empowerment, and one of the things that if we put some intention into this. It can improve every area of our lives. Our vision matters for so much about our health, and this is one of those things that we often, in this society in particular, we take for granted. And so I'm so grateful to be able to bring this information and the leading expert in this subject matter to share with everybody because there was a time when this information would be relegated to just the select view for those in the know.

But this is the right use of technology to be able to share this information and share the empowerment at scale. And it's so remarkable because all we have to do oftentimes is just click play and tune in, and we can unlock a whole new world for ourselves. So please share this out with somebody that you care about who would be interested in improving their vision. I think this would be incredibly valuable for them as well. Share this out on social media as well. Take a screenshot and tag Dr. Applebaum. He's at Dr. Bryce Applebaum. Again, apple spelled a little different as he mentioned, A-P-P-E-L-B-A-U-M. And tag me as well. I'm at Shawn Model on Instagram and just share the love.

Let's get this information out to more hands and more hearts. I appreciate you so much for tuning in. We've got some amazing masterclasses and world-class guests coming your way very, very soon. Just make sure to stay tuned. Take care, have an amazing day and I'll talk with you soon. And for more after the show, make sure to head over to the model health show.com. That's where you can find all of the show notes. You can find transcriptions videos for each episode. And if you've got a comment, you can leave me a comment there as well. And please make sure to head over to iTunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome. And I appreciate that so much and take care. I promise, to keep giving you more powerful, empowering, great content to help you transform your life. Thanks for tuning in.