Unlocking Eye Health: Dry Eye Solutions With YouTube's Optometrist, Dr. Joseph Allen

 

Watch the episode here

 

It can be so frustrating to be only able to see your doctor for a few moments before getting whisked away. That is why many consult Dr. Google and YouTube University for the questions they weren’t able to ask. The downside to this is finding which information to believe. Fortunately, YouTube’s Optometrist Dr. Joseph Allen has us covered. Dr. Allen is a practicing optometrist in Minnesota and the founder of Doctor Eye Health, an educational YouTube channel with more than 850K subscribers. Bringing his expertise to this episode, he joins Corinna Bellizzi to talk about eye health, particularly dry eyes. He shares how he learned about the benefits of omega-3s to dry eyes and its relationship to neuro and retinal health. Dr. Allen also debunks eye health myths and explains why visiting an optometrist is more than what meets the eye (they can help you discover diseases as well). So join Dr. Allen in this conversation and find out about dry eye solutions and more!

 

Key takeaways from this episode:

• Benefits of omega-3s to dry eyes
• Omega-3s and its relationship to neuro and retinal health
• Optometrists can help people discover diseases
• Debunking myths about eye health

 

Guest Social Links:

Website: https://www.doctoreyehealth.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@doctoreyehealth

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-joseph-allen-o-d-faao-24194555

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doctoreyehealth

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doctoreyehealth

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Unlocking Eye Health: Dry Eye Solutions With YouTube's Optometrist, Dr. Joseph Allen

We're going to dive into the topic of eye health and dry eyes in particular as we connect with Dr. Joseph J. Allen. He's an accomplished optometrist who understands what it takes to educate the public about eye health. He graduated magna cum laude and salutatorian from the Rosenburg School of Optometry in 2015 and completed his residency at the Minneapolis V.A. Medical Center. Dr. Allen is a fellow of the American Academy of Optometry and a Diplomat of the American Board of Optometry. He was awarded the Media Advocacy Award from the American Optometric Association in 2021.

As a practicing optometrist in Minnesota and Founder of Dr. Eye Health, an educational YouTube channel with more than 850,000 subscribers, he gets what it takes to distill important technical information into terms that you and I can understand. Dr. Allen has been featured in Ask Men, Oprah Daily, and so many more avenues, including his YouTube show. Dr. Allen, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Corinna. This is a huge honor for me and thank you for the intro. That's very nice.

If I can say optometric correctly once or twice during this, I'll be impressed with myself because ophthalmology, optometry, and all of these things are difficult to say words. I need more omegas.

O, T, and Hs in random places. It's fun.

I'm impressed with the content that you create on YouTube. In fact, that's what inspired me to reach out to your team in the first place and specifically share your knowledge with our audience as it relates to eye health and dry eyes in particular. Your personal story is so well told in that YouTube clip. I wanted to discuss first what brought you to this profession and then inspired you to create this YouTube channel.

First of all, thank you again. I put a lot of work into that specific video that you're referencing and a few other videos that dived more into the research and trying to have better answers around nutrition and eye health, specifically around dry eyes, which is something I have personally battled with and I see a lot of patients for. As far as why I got into the world of eyecare, from a young age, I was always fascinated with eyes and how we see the world, and how we interpret reality through our eyesight. As a young lad of 7 or 8 years old, I got glasses. I had thick glasses till I was about 7th grade when I got contact lenses. That changed my life in many ways where I was able to play sports. I was able to make friends easier because I was playing sports and then girls started paying attention to me.

At the age of thirteen, that's like the world. I had a huge life transformation because of switching to contacts. I'd see my dentist. I didn't like how they poked and brought it at my teeth, but I would see my eye doctor and I was like, “This guy is awesome.” Everything is like black magic I see better afterward and then I just loved contacts. With that inspiration, as I moved forward through schooling, I was like, "What could I see myself doing?" I like science. I asked my eye doctor at that time, "What is life like for you?" That persuaded me. I set that as a north star. Who knows what college is going to bring? Maybe I'll find something else.” That's a north star for me to walk that path. My passion for it continued to roll. That's how I ended up practicing as I do now.

I finished my residency in 2016 and started practicing. In private practice, I worked at a few different clinics at the time, filling in throughout the week. I was always frustrated that I didn't have enough time with my patients. I wanted to explain what glaucoma was. I wanted to explain how diabetes is going to affect their eyes, these are the lifestyles, and this is what the research shows that they can do to change their life and reduce their risk of these diseases. Unfortunately, because of the economics, insurance, reimbursements, and everything, I think almost everybody who goes to see their doctor probably is frustrated that they only have a few minutes with their doctor, they can only ask 1 or 2 questions, and then the doctors got to get to the next patient.

 

I realized around that time my frustration and wanting to teach people, and realizing that everybody is going to Dr. Google. Even I do it. If I'm curious about what's going on, I'm going to see what's posted online. YouTube space is where I had been personally since I was in high school. I watched a lot of YouTube and learned a lot from YouTube. There wasn't much on eyecare or what was on there was from maybe a fourteen-year-old kid talking about their contacts. It wasn't coming from anybody who was in the profession or practiced in the profession. I was like, “I need a hobby and I love to teach. Let's figure it out.”

This isn't your only hobby either. I know as somebody who creates a fair amount of content through podcasting, it takes a lot of time and effort to prep for those things, to video and edit them together, and to bring them out into the world. How do you strike this balance between your profession for optometry and actually seeing your patients, the YouTube channel, and then your personal life? You have all these outdoor interests, you like to cook, and you even like to video games. How do you even make time for them?

The sad truth is the last few years were tough. I had a challenge for the first 3 to 4 years of doing the YouTube channel of working 5 to 6 days a week and doing the YouTube channel at the same time. I'll admit I was working to an unhealthy amount. I had patients who even ask, “Are you okay? You look ill. You look pale.” I sacrificed a lot to work hard and fuel that passion. I did have to sacrifice a lot. Thankfully in the last few years, I was given an opportunity where I can choose to make less money, and see fewer patients in the clinic, but I had more time and a better balance in life to invest in my creativity.

I see the YouTube channel more as public health. I'm offering public education to help people around the world learn about their eyes, what they can do, and what they should ask their doctor. That's hitting a different level of satisfaction more so than just working to make income. I like seeing patients. I love seeing patients in the clinic. I have struck this balance of working a few days a week in the clinic, and then the rest of the week working on the rest of these projects around public education, whether it be YouTube or podcasting, or teaching other doctors. I give a lot of lectures to other doctors based on research and adjunct clinical professor for a couple of schools of optometry. I teach a lot of students too.

I'm just acknowledging the work that goes into it. I also understand that in this particular video, you were inspired to test your before and after omega-3 levels and talk about your journey with dry eye. A lot of people suffer from dry eye. Your personal experience with that particular story is quite interesting. I'd like to invite you to talk about the process overall as Orlo is also conducting a before and after Tested by You campaign where we are providing the OmegaQuant Test Kit too. You telling your personal story will help our audience understand how easy this is, and what they can expect to learn from the process.

There is so much research. omega-3 has been in the research since the 1960s or something like that. It goes back pretty far. In the realm of dry eye, it started coming out in the early 2000s as this might be a treatment for dry eye disease. The challenge as a clinician is I find many eye doctors, both optometrists and ophthalmologists and eye surgeons, have looked at this research and they have always stood on the fence. There are so many different types of dry eye. It is a multifactorial disease. A lot of the research there is about how many milligrams did that one study use? Very little. This other study used a lot.

Dry eye is a multifactorial disease.

There's what type of omega-3 and what type of metrics did they follow to say what improved and what didn't in terms of how much tear volume or was it damaged to the ocular surface, evaporation rate, or patient satisfaction? There are so many different metrics and honestly, it’s all over the place. The vast majority of studies that looked at dry eye do largely conclude that there is likely some benefit. Even a Cochrane Review in 2019 did say that there is likely some benefit of taking omega-3s in the realm of dry eye, although they even said that there is a lot of mixed data uncertainty.

The AREDS 1 and 2 studies focused on a combination of ingredients including omega-3s to support eye health. Bausch and Lomb even came out with a product that was marketed in Walgreens and drugstores, which is a combination of ingredients including some eye health-specific antioxidants like Lutein or Zeaxanthin and something to that effect. It’s a lot of anecdotal evidence of people saying, “I take my omega-3s and my dry eye complaints subsided.”

Many people who live in the state of Arizona will have evaporative issues in dry eyes because it's so dry there. The whole region can experience that. Some people experience dry eye when they work in air-conditioned buildings exclusively, so by the end of the day, it’s like eye fatigue from both staring at bright screens and also exposure to dry air. As you said, it’s multifactorial.

Even just walking through the experience for you, that YouTube video is only about twelve minutes. You edited it well. It shared even the additional things that you were doing to help manage your dry eye as a contact wearer and also as somebody who might have some glandular potential issues, and then the eye to make sure you got the right lubrication of your eye. What have you found through your personal experience taking the omega-3 during that test and beyond that since it's been a couple of months since you concluded?

With the whole video, I wanted to take not just a personal look at how I would do taking omega-3s because I'd taken them in the past but never consistently. I never did it like a scientific matter. I never tracked my symptoms and my blood levels. That is something that almost no studies have done in the realm of dry eye and omega-3. A few have, but most of them have not tracked the omega-3 before and after. I’m like, “If I'm going to do this and if I'm going to feel good about it on a personal level but also from a clinical level as a clinician in the clinic, am I going to recommend this to my patients?” I wanted to see how I did with it.

I have mentioned in the video that I have struggled with dry eyes since I was a teenager with contact lenses. As I have gone through school and learned about the meibomian glands, which are the oil glands in your eyelids, those oils prevent your tears from evaporating. For a lot of people, these glands start to atrophy and diminish for many different reasons but it’s something I struggled with. In the video, as I outlined, I started first off seeing my blood levels of omega-3s, which were quite alarming to me because I wasn't taking any omega-3 supplements. I personally have eaten more of a plant-based diet for going on eight years now.

For anybody who has followed other researchers or other doctors in that space that advocate for a plant-based diet, a lot of people say, “If you eat enough flaxseed, ground flaxseed, or other vegetable sources of omega-3s, your body will convert enough.” I have always been frustrated because I try to find the research to back up those statements and I sometimes can't find it, or the little bit I find are pretty old, and I don't find the best answers. I was interested in doing that blood test to see where was I at. Unfortunately, I was around a 4.5, 4.6, or maybe a little bit less, 4.3.

That's pretty good for a vegan. I'm sorry to say that, but most vegans test at about 3.5% because of that same issue where you could consume a lot of flax oil, walnuts, and chia seeds. Your body doesn't metabolically make those plant-sourced omega-3s in EPA and DHA easily. It takes about sixteen times more fat to get there. That's assuming that your system is operating optimally. The reasons it might not operate optimally are if you don't have the right nutrient balance, including B vitamins, vitamin C, and some others.

You are consuming omega-6 at the same time and all of those plant sources also have omega-6 in them. The same enzymes are used to break it down from the plant source linoleic acid into an arachidonic acid as you would see on the omega-3 side from alpha-linoleic acid to EPA and DHA. The balance becomes very hard. It's hard to get enough omega-3 if you're only consuming plants. Thankfully, you can take an algae oil. That's where Orlo comes in. We can talk more about that, but it's not entirely surprising that you'd be around 4%.

Taking a supplement though, you can expect to be 6% and higher even if you're just consuming plant sources as long as you're getting the EPA and DHA directly. If somebody is plant-based, you don't necessarily need to run a fish oil. In fact, fish get their omega-3s EPA and DHA from the algae they consume. That's there, 4.5% is not terrible but not great because OmegaQuant even says that the ideal is to be 8% plus.

Thank you for sharing that. That was my initial motivation for doing this specific video and doing my own research on this. I knew algae oil was available. It was something I wanted to try. Most of the research on dry eye specifically is using fish oil supplements. The vast majority of eye doctors I know still maybe don't recommend the algae. There's not that much research on algae oil specifically for dry eyes. Maybe that will be part two. My part two video will be me switching to algae.

For this video, I did fish oil. I try to be as adherent to the plan as possible. I missed a few days throughout the three-month trial, but I did it every day. I tracked my dry eye symptoms through a dry eye questionnaire every single day. I measured the oil levels of my tear film. I measured a couple of other parameters but then tracked those over the three-month period. I then did another OmegaQuant blood level test and found my omega is about 9.5%. It's a pretty significant improvement. Also, my symptoms improved and the oil production of my tear film improved.

I have a little mirror I would use at home to track if any of my oil glands were getting clogged. Oftentimes in the past, I'd been able to look in the mirror and I could see some of my glands were clogged. Throughout this period, after that 6 to 8-week mark of taking the supplements, my glands were not clogging.

At least I'm only an N-of-1, where I'm only one person. By doing this and noticing such an improvement in my own symptoms and with having objective data from the clinic and knowing that I was getting this improvement in my blood levels, I felt way more confident in recommending them to my patients. I do now recommend for my patients consider doing a blood test first to know where they are at before they even start, or if they're currently taking some other brand or form of omega-3, to test where they're at. Perhaps they're not getting enough or it's not the best quality or most efficient form for them. That's what I have learned from doing that self-study and video.

Consider doing a blood test first so you know where you are before even starting to take supplements.

Otherwise, you had a healthy diet starting out. You just weren't consuming fish. You weren't consuming other animal sources of omega-3s either. It made it tough to get enough. I totally get that. I want to take a moment to talk about what Orlo is doing. Just so everyone is aware, this show is brought to you by Orlo Nutrition. It's the most sustainable and bioavailable algae-based nutrition product in the world. Orlo makes omega-3s in their best absorbed polar lipid form and from pure sustainable algae. It's grown at their state-of-the-art facility in Iceland with only beautiful pristine Icelandic water and the nutrients algae need to thrive.

With all green energies closed systems, you can expect the algae to grow exponentially and become something that can continue to supply us for years to come. Their omega-3s provide EPA and DHA in their direct form at up to three times better absorption than fish oil. This means it's not only better for you, it's better for the planet, and without that fishy aftertaste. Orlo is standing behind the product in a whole new way now. With the Tested by You program, they provide before and after OmegaQuant test kits to verify your omega-3 levels now, and another test after your fourth month of supplementation.

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I want to talk about what other benefits you realized specifically during this test that you performed taking a high dose of omega-3s. If you noticed anything else beyond the dry eyes because often people assume, “I'll take a supplement. I'll take it every day. If I don't feel a difference, I'm going to stop.” That's not always the case with omegas. As you said, your dry eye symptoms abated. Did you notice anything else?

I don't know if this is truly just anecdotal or not, but I know my skin has been better. I have had other people comment that I looked better. Beyond that, I haven't noticed too many other issues. I have had a history of gut issues, which is mainly one of the reasons why I switched to eating more of a plant-based diet. I found it helped a lot with my own GI problems. It could be that I have been eating a lot healthier in the last six months since I started that trial at the end of December 2022. Perhaps the omega-3s have had a benefit there too.

I notice more if I forget to take them for a few days, I'm feeling a little brain fog or something like that. My personal story in omega-3s is also connected to eye health. I had terrible vision starting when I was a little kid. People would point to the stars and tell me that they saw a blue star, red star, or whatever. I would never be able to see them. I was found out in third grade when we had a spot optometrist come in and check our vision. I had been hiding it from everybody. Sitting in the front of the class, copying notes from somebody next to me because I didn't want to wear glasses. Ultimately, I had to wear glasses. I could see the spots in the moon for the first time, and all of that jazz.

In my twenties, I started supplementing with omega-3s and a lot of them. I was working in the omega-3 industry. I started to get eye strain headaches or what I thought were eye strain headaches. I went to the optometrist to try and figure out what was going on with my vision. They told me that my vision had improved by two steps, going from a negative 6.5 to a negative 6 in both my right and left eye. I’m nearsighted. Over the course of the next three years, my vision improved. About every six months I'd have to go in for a new prescription that was less. By the time it leveled out, I was 28. I decided to get LASIK.

I didn't want to wear glasses anymore. I love to do outdoor sports. I'm a scuba diver. I'm a horseback rider and being active is a lot of fun for me. I went ahead and had LASIK, understanding full well that this could create dry eye complaints. I was religious about using the rewetting drops, but I also continued to take a lot of omega-3 through my healing phase. I have never had dry eye complaints. Not once. I don't notice any scars on my eyes from having the LASIK or anything like that.

I have 20/20 and 20/15 vision in one eye and the left. My eye doctor also shared with me at the time I decided to get LASIK that while my focal point was right in front of my face, I would probably always see perfectly to be able to read before the surgery. Now I'm like everyone else. Expected my vision to start to falter in my 40s. I'm 46 now. I still don't need reading glasses. When should I start to reach for my reading glasses? I'm curious what your thoughts are.

I don't know exactly where the powers of your eyes are at, but generally, the vast majority of people will sometime in between their 40s and 50s usually start to have some challenges seeing up close. It also depends on your pupil size a little bit and what your refractive error is. If somebody was perfectly plain-0 needing no glasses at all, powers were zero, generally, around that mid-40s to late 40s, they're going to be more dependent on some form of magnification to see up close.

I'm hoping it doesn't happen anytime soon. I do still have a mild astigmatism but it doesn't affect my vision to the point where I need glasses.

There is a lot to be said about omega-3s, especially the DHA component and its relationship to both neuro health and retinal health because your retina is an extension of the brain. There is quite a bit of research into omega-3s, whether it be from a diet source or supplementation, and its effect on several different eye diseases. As far as changing your demand for glasses or nearsightedness, there might have been other factors. I don't have that data.

I don't either, but it's surprising. I hadn't heard of somebody's vision getting dramatically better in their 20s. From 25 to 28, I had to get a new lesser prescription every 6 months.

I can make my own speculations of what probably happened. It’s probably more on the side that you were either over-minus during previous years when you were giving away too much power or your eyes had been almost over-accommodating. Your eyes were almost getting fixated. A lot more research is going into myopia and nearsightedness. Now we have new devices to measure axial length or the length of the eyeball and how that changes. There's so much, but no matter what, omega-3s have been shown in many studies to play an important role in retinal health, whether that be for macular degeneration, diabetes, and then overall aging of the eye in both animal and human studies.

 

If we understand too that half of the fat in the brain and eyes is made up of DHA, it becomes no wonder you need to supply this fat to your body to have health.

The photoreceptor cells in the back of the eye give you your eyesight. If you lose your photoreceptor cells, you can't see. About 50% to 60% of those photoreceptor cells are made of DHA. That's one of the reasons why young kids like prenatal and young infants need to get DHA to form their retina and even have the chance of seeing good vision. It's quite fascinating.

The AREDS vitamin studies, which are more for macular degeneration and not specifically dry eye, did do some studies looking at omega-3 supplementation. That specific study didn't conclude there was any real benefit to reducing the advancement of macular degeneration in that study group. That comes to a debate. Was it because they didn't have enough omega-3? Was it the form of omega-3? There are so many questions to that. Hopefully, more research will tell.

I have a question specific to optometry and its role in overall health. Often, people assume that if they don't have poor vision, they don't need to go to an optometrist even when their insurance often covers optometry for a relatively simple or minor fee. I have learned over the years that optometrists can help people discover disease states before they are advanced enough to be discovered by their GP. Talk to us about this. Why is it important to get an annual from an optometrist?

This is one of my favorite questions and favorite things about my profession. Eyesight is so important. If you're getting vision changes, you're seeing spots in your vision, or you can't see, that's an obvious tell sign something is wrong and you should go get it checked. A lot of times, your body has learned to hold on to have prioritized good vision, and then it lets go of that at the worst moment. It holds on to keep it good and then if there is a disease process, things get affected and it's always way late. There are many not just eye diseases but systemic diseases and autoimmune conditions that affect our eyes, and they can brew for years before you have vision loss.

Thankfully, during an eye exam, we can see through the cornea, the front surface of the eye, we can see through the pupil, the dark circle, and the center part of the iris. We can see through that and using light, we can see the retinal tissue in the back. That means we can see your blood vessels and your optic nerve or the direct nerve connecting to your brain. All of these tissues will tell us if there is bleeding from saying something like diabetes. We can see if there are high blood pressure issues from chronic blood pressure causing constriction of your blood vessels. We can see bleeding in the eye if you have anemia. We can see autoimmune conditions such as any inflammatory bowel disease that’s affecting the eye.

There's an interesting whole subsection of retinal research called the gut retinal axis. A lot is going into that, especially around the microbiome becoming such a big research topic. Also brain diseases and things like multiple sclerosis. Unfortunately, brain tumors do happen. Even tumors of the eyeball itself will be able to catch these through a simple eye exam. Even if you don't need glasses, doctors are happy to see you so they can look and examine and make sure everything is working well and working the way it should.

There's also an ability to see early signs of diabetes. Is that not so?

Absolutely. I had a patient who didn't see their family doctor very often, but just by looking in the eye, there are some telltale signs of how diabetes causes damage. We'll catch it before even their family doctor will.

Are there any myths that you'd like to help debunk specific to eye health?

Unfortunately, there are a lot of myths. Probably the biggest one is that, “I see fine. I don't need to see the eye doctor.” I know there's a lot of confusion about blue light in the world right now. That blew up during 2020 as everyone was staring in front of computer screens and getting eye strain and probably worse dryness because they weren't blinking enough in front of the computer. There is certainly some good scientific evidence that blue light influences sleep patterns, as well as some role in our metabolism. The research is still very early and there may be a role of having some awareness of how much blue light you are absorbing. More research is coming. Trying to think if there are other big myths. I'll think about it if something comes to me.

As we talk about some of these things now, good sleep hygiene also involves shutting off your devices a bit before you go to sleep. Are you seeing a connection between blue light exposure and sleep? Is that something that you've read up on?

There is a specific receptor in your retina called intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells. That's a fun one. This doesn't even communicate eyesight to your brain. This cell only counts about 1% of your retina. It is highly sensitive to blue light and it communicates to the parts of your brain which regulate your sleep cycle, your alertness, and even your pupil size. They do know and have been able to show that blue light in both animal and human studies does affect our melatonin, your sleep hormone. It affects how much you release and at what time it releases.

Although a lot of people do try to unwind in the evening by looking at their phones, watching a show on YouTube, or responding to comments or emails. It is a good practice to learn to calm down and shut things away. Maybe read a book or talk with a family member. Try meditation or something a little bit less stimulating.

Do the blue light shields that operate as apps on your phone do anything?

There are some publications that have shown that that does have some beneficial effect of reducing the blue light impact on your sleep cycle. It's not 100%, but even computer and cell phone manufacturers are looking into researching new ways to eliminate this level of harsh light. Right now, it may have some effect on you and it's probably better than nothing. More research is always needed. I thought of one more myth. Everyone thinks carrots are good for the eyes. There is a benefit because carrots help us form vitamin A and have the form of beta-carotene and then you form that in your liver, and vitamin A is used in your retina to help you see.

However, as more research has come out, lutein which you get in green leafy vegetables may have an even better protective effect alongside DHA and omega-3s as being more supportive for eye health. You get vitamin A in so many sources through our diet more than just carrots. It’s probably not as essential unless you are calorie deficient as in malnourished countries and places around the world.

That's how Vitamin Angels got their start. They were specifically giving vitamin A soft gels to women during pregnancy and post-pregnancy in countries around the globe because children were being born and never developing the ability to see. They literally had too little vitamin A in their diets, surviving on things like potatoes, which have no vitamin A in them. Eat a variety of green leafy vegetables. Eat the rainbow as they say. If you’re watching this on YouTube, you see the plate that I have in the background with some arugula, shaved radish, and tomatoes. That alone would have some lutein in it, as well as probably some zeaxanthin. These are antioxidants that are present in fruits and vegetables. You can get them supplementary as well. I understand that lutein is an antioxidant that's specific to the cornea. Is that correct?

It’s the macula.

It resides in there and helps to filter the blue light.

It's like the bullseye. If you and I were at a pub throwing darts at the bullseye, if you were to look at the retina in the back of the eye, the central bullseye where you see your 20/20 vision, your good vision, your color vision, your ability to read and recognize your loved one's faces, that part of the eye is called the macula. The vast majority of lutein and zeaxanthin are all stored right in that central spot. It's to protect against harsh light and oxidative damage and filter the high energy blue light. It's like a natural blue light filter as is often said. Most people are very deficient. Especially children, usually hate to eat their vegetables. You mainly get lutein from green leafy vegetables and that sort of thing. A few nuts too, but not in high quantity.

The supplements on the market are mostly extracted from marigolds. It's a flower. Marigolds are technically edible, but I don't think they taste very good.

I have never tried it. I don't recommend my patients go out and eat marigolds. From what I understand in reading the research on lutein, it's showing more support. It is not just good for the eye but also for the brain. It’s very similar to DHA.

They act like antioxidants in the body. Even the omega-3 DHA and EPA act like antioxidants in many ways. They help to resolve inflammation. They stimulate these things called resolvins and protectins. Resolvins resolve inflammation and protectins protect against DNA damage. Both those things are pretty important. That's one of the reasons getting an omega-3 every day is so critical. I want to thank you so much for sharing your story and for coming to the show. I have thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. I hope you have too.

Thank you so much. I greatly appreciate it. I wish you the best for all that you guys are doing.

Would you like to leave our audience with any specific thoughts?

Eat healthy and get good sleep. Whether or not you're having eye issues, definitely see your doctor and get things checked out to make sure everything is working okay and that you can do your best to prevent future eye disease. I want you to see good today and on until tomorrow.

Thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you.

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To find out more about Dr. Joseph Allen, visit his social media pages and YouTube channel @DoctorEyeHealth. The key importance of this conversation is one resounding theme. It's a good idea to take your omega-3s and to remember to take them every single day. I encourage you to visit www.OrloNutrition.com and visit the Tested by You page. While our show and the blog associated with this are always published on OrloNutrition.com, under a podcast section, you can navigate over to products, click on the Tested by You, and subscribe. Get the everyday great price of 15% off in addition to receiving two free OmegaQuant test kits. It’s the same kits that Dr. Allen used in his own assessment. That's a $100 value.

We also can sell the kits directly on our site if you're interested in checking where your levels are right now. You get two free with a six-month subscription. You can ensure that you're going to take that every single day to get the best results. You'll get to see what your baseline is. Hopefully, it’s north of 4%. Don't be too alarmed if that's where you are because, after four months of supplementation, you're going to see a dramatic increase in that level. Remember to use the coupon code NWC at checkout for a bonus discount.

If you learned something today, I hope that you'll subscribe to this show, Nutrition Without Compromise. While you're at it, please give us a thumbs up, a five-star review, and a written review. This will help us reach more people so they can achieve their best health naturally. Remember again, go to OrloNutrition.com and use that coupon code NWC at checkout if you want to go ahead and take advantage of the Tested by You campaign. As we close today’s show, I hope you'll raise a cup of your favorite beverage with me as I say in my closing words. Here's to your health.

 

Important Links

• https://www.DoctorEyeHealth.com
• https://www.YouTube.com/@doctoreyehealth
• https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/dr-joseph-allen-o-d-faao-24194555
• https://www.Instagram.com/DoctorEyeHealth
• https://www.Facebook.com/DoctorEyeHealth
• Orlo Nutrition
• Tested by You

 

About Dr. Joseph J. Allen

Dr. Joseph J. Allen graduated Magna Cum Laude and Salutatorian from the Rosenburg School of Optometry in 2015 and completed his residency at the Minneapolis V.A. Medical Center. Dr. Allen is a Fellow of the American Academy of Optometry and a Diplomate of the American Board of Optometry. He is a member of the American Optometric Association, the AOA Strategic Communications Committee, and he completed the AOA leadership training in 2022. He was also awarded the Media Advocacy award from the AOA in 2021.

Dr. Allen is a practicing optometrist in Minnesota and the founder of Doctor Eye Health, an educational YouTube channel with more than 850K subscribers. There he provides information about eye health, ocular disease and vision products. His videos cover a range of topics that his subscribers frequently ask about: eye floaters, glaucoma, dry eye syndrome, contact lenses, eyeglasses, and more. Dr. Allen has been featured in Ask Men and Oprah Daily and in his free time, he enjoys rock climbing, running, cooking, playing video games, hiking, and biking.