BEH PODCAST EPISODE 52 - 8 Things Your Doctor is Not Telling You About Your Eye Disease, Part 4 of 8. Hint: Your Vision Can Improve.Today, this is the fourth of eight podcasts on Organic MD. We will discuss our Better Eye Health program that helps people with serious eye diseases, like macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa, and Stargardt’s disease. We have a very effective program for stopping and reversing the progression of these diseases. To some extent, allowing people to get vision back that has been lost. I want mention how important your diet is – what you choose to eat and how you eat it, not just taking supplements. Our title of this podcast, the benefits that come from improving your diet can go beyond your wildest dreams, says it all.8 Things Your Doctor is Not Telling You About Your Eye Disease, Part 4 of 8. Hint: Your Vision Can Improve.007_OMDPodcast_8Things_DietCarlyleWelcome to the Organic MD podcast with Dr. Damon Miller. I am Carlyle Coash. How are you doing today Dr. Miller? Dr. MillerI am doing well today. I am very grateful. We are in a time where we get to spend more time listening to podcasts. Grateful for that and making our offering here. Today, this is the fourth of eight podcasts on Organic MD. We will discuss our Better Eye Health program that helps people with serious eye diseases, like macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa, and Stargardt’s disease. We have a very effective program for stopping and reversing the progression of these diseases. To some extent, allowing people to get vision back that has been lost. I want mention how important your diet is – what you choose to eat and how you eat it, not just taking supplements. Our title of this podcast, the benefits that come from improving your diet can go beyond your wildest dreams, says it all.CarlyleI would agree. We talked a last time about my dad making his diet choice. Among other thing he did, the main shift was what he ate and how he ate it. From the time he made the change to the next 30 plus years, he kept to it. There were times he may stray and have a meal that was a little more heavy or cheesy. He would suffer a little, but would say it was worth it because he did not get to eat it that often. He was suffering at the other side of it though. You have talked about this many times over the years, your health can start reflecting the types of food we are eating and putting into our system. Our body works with what we give it, to some extent. If you are giving your body not-so-great-things, it will do the best it can to process them, but your body may take a hit for it. Dr. MillerYour dad was motivated. The doctor said he could lose some weight, but they would end up doing surgery anyway to take out his gallbladder. Your dad wanted to try losing the weight first. This is the basic philosophy here at Organic MD – when you have multiple things to try, go with the safe ones that easy, simple, and cheap. It may take some work, motivation, and effort on your part, but if there are options to surgery, we want to exhaust them. I cannot tell you how many people I have seen go into a fairly simple surgery and come out very scarred or dead. This is also true with a degenerative eye disease, like a retinal disease, or macular degeneration, etc. Will changing your diet reverse these diseases? It is not clear. There are many things you can do to take care of your health that are worth mentioning, in terms of the science behind it. When we talk about macular degeneration, Stargardt’s disease, retinitis pigmentosa, we are talking about problems that almost always have an underlying abnormal gene that predisposes you to it. I choose these words very carefully – predisposes you. Having an abnormal gene does not mean that gene is your destiny. We have another topic we will be talking about in a later podcast called epigenetics. This is the information that sits on top of a gene. The gene is simply the strand of DNA holding the information. It is wrapped around all of these complexes of proteins, histones, etc., that are bundled up and control which parts of the gene gets expressed. Whether or not a gene gets expressed is as important, if not more important, than whether you have the gene. Macular degeneration is a perfect example of this because it is the most common form of the age-related macular degeneration, ARMD. Often, age related macular degeneration, does not show up until the sixth, seventh, or eighth decade of life. Everyone with this has had the gene since birth, yet somehow their body has been keeping this gene suppressed. If there was any damage being done by the abnormal gene, the body was healing the damage faster than it could show up. In terms of the science of it, everyone now understands there is such a thing as epigenetics and how important it is, but seem to be looking for a drug that can be given to suppress a gene. How are we going to develop that? There has been a lot of work on epigenetics and with this work, there have been no drug…nada, nothing, zip, zero. This research has shown is that changes in diet and lifestyle will change the epigenetics. In other words, do things we know how to do to make you healthier. In our program, we are usually working with people at the later stages of the disease and they have already have quite a bit of damage done. You need to be doing a lot to regenerate and rebuild these cells in the eye. After all, they are the most complex tissues in the whole human body. When we are talking with the family members who have parents with this disease, the assume they have this gene too. We have also spoken with people who did a test found they have the gene. They are all asking what they are going to do so they do not have the same problems later on in life. If you eat well, take care of yourself, change lifestyles, do no drink too much alcohol, and do not smoke. We need to get a good sleep and destress. Basic, basic, basic things. We consider working with your diet is so important that I am going to talk about our Better Eye Health program. We do many things in the program, one of them being a module we added almost 18 years ago, our Healthy Eating Workshop. We work with you to find what is the best diet for you. What is the diet that is going to energize you, keep you healthy, and keep your cholesterol down? When you start working with a good diet, it solves all kinds of problems. People find that their blood pressure and sugars normalizes, their glaucoma goes away, their skin clears, and their joints feel better. The list really goes on and on. You need to be eating well. You would not believe what a difference it makes when you start eating a healthier diet. Keep in mind that a healthy diet for one person, may not be a healthy diet for another. It goes back to the old notion that you are what you eat. How often have you heard that? I have heard that my entire life, is it ever true.CarlyleI think you have said that your grandmother would say the fastest way to get in a box is to eat out of a box, or something like that.Dr. MillerThat was Adelle Davis, she was considered a the diet guru back in the 50s and 60s. She would always say, “The fastest way to end up at an early age in a box, is to eat out of a box.” There is a lot more wisdom where that comes from, not necessarily from Adelle Davis. Let me get philosophical for a moment, the reason that we are all here today is because we had grandmothers and ancestors who had figured out how to keep the family and the community healthy. It is not because of modern medicine. The wisdom we have been losing sight of is what does it mean to be healthy and what do you do? What is the healthiest lifestyle for you? There is a lot of valuable information and just another thing we do here at Organic MD. We are also trying to include more “ancient wisdom” in the podcasts and on our webpage. The most basic of it is you are what you eat. CarlyleBe curious of the things you are eating and what is in this product. Next time you eat something that is a processed, ask yourself what ingredients are in it and where did it come from? Especially when you are dealing with an illness, just asking those basic questions and thinking about it the next time you order something. This is also true when you are going to make something yourself. The next time you are at a supermarket and pull an item off the shelf, ask yourself if it will help you with the illness or issue you are relating to. You might have to put the box back…I go to Trader Joe’s and there are plenty of things that speak to me when I am in the aisle. The dark chocolate peanut butter cups literally talk when you walk by saying, “Wait, come back and get some! You need me, I am really good!” They are so good that you want to eat the entire container. I know I have to be very sparing or I will eat them all the time. In chocolatier terms, there is an aspect of chocolate that is good for you. The sweets and other processed foods contain so much fat, salt, and sugar. This mirrors back to what we have been talking about, which is for these things to change. You need to be more engaging, question things, and be mindful. Maybe pass on having three sugars in your coffee. Start with little things that you can shift in order to maintain that wellness. There are of course the rare examples, like George Burns. He smoked cigars his entire life, and probably ate pretty rich food, and drank too. He was fine, but that is not the case for the majority of people. We have to find our own path. Dr. MillerGeorge Burns was a pretty functional guy up until the end, but we are here to talk about the value of a good diet in the context of trying to stop and reverse a serious disease and keeping people on a good diet. One final thing about what happens when you eat well and make good choices about your food. It is not necessarily about peanut butter and chocolate and other sweets,