Learn How To Rid Yourself Of Dry Eye And Help The Less Fortunate with Dr. Travis Zigler

Dr. Travis Zigler graduated in 2010 from The Ohio State University College of Optometry with Magna Cum Laude honors. He is the founder of Eye Love, https://eyelovethesun.com, whose mission is to heal 1,000,000 dry eye sufferers naturally. Dr. Travis and his wife, Dr. Jenna Zigler, use the profits from Eye Love to fund free and low cost clinics in Jamaica and in the US.  They also started a charity called the Eye Love Cares Foundation, https://eyelovecares.org, which provides exams, glasses and sunglasses for those in need, free education, and scholarships for students that align with their mission.  

Previously, Dr. Travis and Dr. Jenna owned two optometry practices, which they sold in 2017 to focus on their online efforts. Dr. Travis enjoys reading to his son, Jude, traveling to Jamaica, and playing the ukulele while he drinks his morning coffee.

Travis's favorite quote: “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” - Ghandi

Drs. Travis Zigler and Jenna Zigler, optometrists and co-founders of Eye Love, the makers of Heyedrate.

We want you to know exactly what we, at Eye Love, believe in. 

We believe that all dry eye sufferers should be treated equally.

We believe that more research should go into dry eyes.

We believe that your body has the capability to heal itself.

We believe that we will help 1,000,000 dry eye sufferers naturally by 2030. 

As our bus pulled into the community center where we would be holding our eye clinic for the day, we noticed an older gentleman a few yards back from the front of the long waiting line. His eyes were turned down and he appeared to be in tremendous pain. As our bus came to a stop & we all filed out, ready to begin another clinic day in rural Ecuador, we could not stop thinking about this man as we set up. In countries without proper access to eye care, patients will wait in line for hours, and it was clear that this man had been on his feet for some time.

Shortly after the first patient entered our clinic, Travis went out to the line and guided the man to the very front, putting him ahead of everyone else that day. After examination, it was found that this farmer was not only going blind from Glaucoma he was unaware he had, but he was also in pain due to sky-high eye pressure.

As patients continued to move through the clinic, Travis treated this man for hours to lower his eye pressure and make him comfortable. After not saying a word all day, the farmer started crying and said “Estoy libre de dolor. ¡Dios te bendiga! ¡Dios te bendiga!”, which translates to “I am pain-free. God bless you! God bless you!” The farmer then embraced Travis in a hug. As they parted ways, tears were shed and lives were forever changed that day.

It is stories like this that we’ve realized are not few and far between in countries that have no access to quality eye care. There is so much need in the world. We are a husband and wife duo that is looking to change the world and provide for those that need.

We started Eye Love in May of 2015 with our ultimate goal being to build permanent clinics in areas that have no access to quality eye care. As active members of Great Shape, Inc, and more specifically the iCARE project, we travel to Jamaica every year to give eye examinations and dispense eyeglasses. With proper help and funding, Great Shape Inc. is working to develop more permanent clinics, and our ultimate goal is to be able to work in those clinics more often.

As a company, we want you to feel good about your purchase and who you do business with. Our passion is to provide a better quality of life through better vision — locally and globally. Locally we do this by helping you see the clearest that you can. Globally by giving a portion of profits back to someone in need of an eye examination and glasses in Jamaica.

www.eyelovecares.org

(1) The Dry Eye Show | Facebook

(1) Dry Eye Syndrome Support Community | Facebook

The Dry Eye Show with Drs. Jenna & Travis Zigler - YouTube

www.ageucational.com

Full Transcript Below

Roy - AGEUcational (00:02):

Hello, and welcome to another episode of educational. This is Roy. This is Terry. So, uh, this is a fairly new show. We're going to just let the audience know, you know, our, our target audience is going to be, of course, the aging, uh, caregivers, family members, and those of us that are approaching aging. We want to, you know, give a lot of information on not only, uh, you know, what can we do if we are, you know, when we get to some certain ages, but what also can we do to maybe help us, uh, age better? And then also, um, look at how we can help caregivers and provide them support and information to help them provide better care. Uh, w what our, I guess our format is basically going to be, you know, mine and Terry's journey on how we get through this, how we deal with our parents and our situations. But, uh, we also going to have guests on from time to time to, um, you know, bring us some good information professionals in their field and, uh, uh, other informational expert. So, uh, today we've got an awesome guests. We've been excited looking forward to, uh, having them on it's, uh, Dr. Travis Ziegler. He is, uh, a doctor of optometry is that I know there's a couple of designation, so I want to make sure to get that one right.

Dr. Travis (01:19):

You are a hundred percent spot on optometry.

Roy - AGEUcational (01:22):

Okay. So, um, Dr. Travis and his wife, they used to have some, um, clinics that they ran and they've since gotten out and they have formed, um, uh, I guess it's a foundation and I'll let you talk a lot more about this, but it's, uh, I, Eye Love is that correct?

Dr. Travis (01:42):

Eye Love is our overall brand name. Yep. And the hydrate is our specific product line.

Roy - AGEUcational (01:46):

Yeah. And so, but you've also the great thing about that. So you've taken the profits profits from, Eye Love, and you've used those to fund, uh, low cost clinics in Jamaica and the U S so, uh, you know, it's awesome that you're helping out those that really need the help the most. And, um, I think in some of your information, like y'all's mission is to heal a million dry suffers naturally. So I guess without, uh, Terry, do you want to talk a little bit about the,

Terry - AGEUcational (02:16):

Well, I was just gonna, um, reiterate, uh, you know, the, Eye Love foundation it's, it's, it's such a worthy cause and y'all have helped what, like 50,000 people so far, is that correct? And your goal is to,

Dr. Travis (02:34):

I couldn't give you an exact number, but our, our goal, the goal with the foundation is to heal 1 billion or not, excuse me, to end the 1 billion people that are blinded due to lack of glasses. And so, um, to put an exact number on that, I would say we've seen a lot. Um, we usually see close to, to four to 6,000 per year, and we've been doing it for almost 13 years now. And so it's something that we've been doing for a long, long time. So to put an exact number, it's almost impossible because we see so many people in a week, but, um, the goal of the foundation is sustainability. And we want to make sure that these people, we don't just get them glasses one time, but then we can continue to serve them over and over again, instead of just giving them a pair of glasses, as you guys know, glasses, get lost, broken, stolen, everything. So trying to create more of a sustainability model around that.

Roy - AGEUcational (03:22):

Well, yeah, we kind of got ahead of ourselves, but first thank you for taking time out of your day to be with us, be with the show. It's awesome. Uh, if you don't mind, just, you know, we've gone into a little fragmented, but give us a little bit about the background. I know that you graduated from the Ohio state university and, uh, you know, found your way to Texas finally, but yeah. Talk a little bit about your, you know, being, I guess, working more at the clinic level and then making the decision to, uh, take on this chair.

Dr. Travis (03:53):

Yeah. Also some of my whole journey in about less than, less than three minutes. So we graduated my wife and I graduated. We're both doctors of optometry. We graduated in 2010 and 2011 from the Ohio state optometry college, or the highest state university college of optometry. You gotta get that right. And, um, we practice from my uncle, my uncle had a practice and we practiced with him until about 2014. Um, around 2013, I started feeling this itch to do something else. And we actually ended up quitting our jobs. And we moved from Ohio to South Carolina and we opened up two businesses, two practices, and we wanted to open up a pediatric practice, but God had other plans and he threw a geriatric practice at us. So we started seeing an aging population and we notice a lot of dry eyes. And so with a lot of dry eyes, we were treating it just like you normally do, giving them Restasis and steroid drops and doing everything we could, that was in our medication tool belt.

Dr. Travis (04:51):

And during this time of building our practices, we also started an online company called I love, and we make our brand line for more dry eye products. It's called hydrate. And so when we were seeing patients and just living life, building this online company with the two practices, we were battling fertility and we were told we could not get pregnant. And this was three years of battling fertility, and we were told we couldn't get pregnant. So we switched to Eastern medicine and when we switched to Eastern medicine, so we're three months into Eastern medicine, we got pregnant and we're, we're having our third son in about a month. So congratulations, thank you. But the shift happened like we were Western medicine trained and we'd been doing everything Western medicine way, but then we were healed with Eastern medicine after battling with Western medicine for three years.

Dr. Travis (05:41):

And it just kind of shifted our brain. Like why can't we take this to people with eye problems? And so we started teaching people, the switches that you can make to heal your body naturally, which will then in turn, heal your eyes naturally. And we've sent thousands of people through our dry bootcamp challenge, and it's free. It's that dry bootcamp challenge.com. It's an eight week program that just teaches you very simple things that you can change in your daily, in your daily ritual or your habits to make your life better, to decrease your inflammation, to decrease your dry eye, to decrease your lines on medications. And it works. And so if you stick to it, it works and we've had so many people go through. And it's amazing just to see the results of that. And so fast forward to around 2017 is when we had Jude, our first burst son, and we ended up selling one of the practices.

Dr. Travis (06:33):

And then we sold the other practice in 2018 to focus full-time on this online journey and teaching people how to heal dry naturally. And so our goal is to hit 1 million people to go through this program and to heal them naturally. And I think we're at about 50 to 75,000. That's probably where he got that number from at about 50 to 75,000 that have gone through this in the, I think we're in our, let me go back where our fourth year of doing it three, three and a half years that we've been doing it. So, um, we just, we we've built this, this audience of fans that have struggled with dry eye, they've been told everything. And then they find us online either through our show on YouTube called the dry eye show or our Facebook group called the dry eye syndrome support community. Then they go through this natural journey that they've never been educated on. And then it's just amazing to see the results. So we're getting to impact a lot more people this way versus seeing patients one-on-one. So we're loving what we're doing now, we're doing this full-time and our goal is to hit 1 million by the year 2030.

Roy - AGEUcational (07:33):

That is awesome. And just kind of a plug for the show. Uh, it's funny that we, uh, we have some Eastern medicine, uh, guests that are going to be on in the next couple of weeks. So we're looking forward to that. I think, um, you know, there seems to be a lot of shift going on from the Western medicine to the Eastern medicine. So, uh, interesting that you mentioned that, but so today, uh, you know, one, couple of things we want to talk about is I guess just the first would be basic eye health, and then of course get, uh, off to the dry eye just a little bit more. And I do like your, uh, if I'm not wrong, the product it's hydration with the, uh, eye in the middle of it. Hydrate. Yeah, yeah, yep. Hydrate. Yeah.

Terry - AGEUcational (08:17):

I have been, I signed up and got a free sample right away and have been using it for the last three days. And man, I can tell, I can tell a difference already.

Dr. Travis (08:30):

Just wait for two weeks. It's gotten better, but that's great. I love hearing those. Yeah.

Terry - AGEUcational (08:33):

Yeah. What's the difference between dry eye and maybe an allergies or w I mean, what's the difference? How do you know?

Dr. Travis (08:41):

Yeah. So the biggest difference between those two is just your symptoms. So an allergy is going to itch more and you're just going to feel like you want to dig into your eyes. So whenever I have a dry patient in my chair, I always ask, do your eyes itch more or do they burn more? And that will of indicate which way we want to go with allergies. You can have an overactive immune system caused from inflammation, caused from the foods that you're eating and everything, and that can cause your allergies. And so when you clean up your diet, that sometimes can tone down your allergies because your immune system is toned down now, too, right? But allergies, we're trying to stop the itch more. Our spray will help with that, but it's not made for that. What it's made for is actually it's called hypochlorous acid and hypochlorous acid is sounds scary.

Dr. Travis (09:26):

Cause it's nasty acid it's actually naturally made by your body. Okay? And so your, your immune system makes this to help kill bacteria and pathogens. And one of the most common causes of dry eye is a buildup of bacteria on your eyelids and in your eye. And so this hypochlorous acid helps reduce that bacteria load, which then reduces the inflammation, the redness, the pain, the irritation. And so that's how this helps in contact lens wearers, especially have a lot more bacteria. So they usually have a lot more dryness and irritation, which Terry, I know you're a contact lens wearer. So, um,

Terry - AGEUcational (09:59):

And not a very good one because I wear them. You know, I sleep in there. I I'm your worst nightmare

Dr. Travis (10:07):

Spray that spray. So make sure you're spraying that spray because the spray is going to help keep that bacteria load down. Cause most contact lens complications that we see in clinic, red eyes, ulcers, all those caused from overgrowth of bacteria. And so, and in hypoxia, which is the lack of oxygen. And so we can take care of the bacteria side with our spray. So make sure you're using that spray morning and night and take your contact lenses out at night, please.

Roy - AGEUcational (10:31):

Ben, since I spoke to you the first time I promise, well, before we get too far off into the, uh, dry, uh, can you just give us some general, uh, eye health information?

Dr. Travis (10:46):

Yeah. So what are the best things you can do is protect yourself from the sun. The sun causes a lot of problems, not really the sun, but the UV light from the sun. And so sunglasses are a great thing to wear outdoors when it's a bright sunny day and the UV index is high. I know you guys are in Texas, we're in Texas. It's a nice sunny day down here in Austin. And so UV index isn't gonna be as high in the winter, of course, but in the summer it can get up to 10. And so when you're trying to avoid that time period, but UV protection is huge. So wearing a good emphasis on the good pair of sunglasses. So most sunglasses that you buy the gas station, cheapies that you buy the $10 to $5, you can actually like clean off the UV protection that are on those.

Dr. Travis (11:27):

And so you want to get a pair of, that's actually got the UV protection embedded into it. And so I love Maui. Jim that's like my favorite sunglass brand. They are a little pricier Ray-Ban as much as I don't like the parent company of Ray-Ban, Ray-Ban actually makes a good lens that is very protected from the sun. Just make sure you invest in sunglasses because it's going to protect your eyes from the UV light. That's kind of one of the most basic ones that you hear, but it is important. But one of my favorite ones is if you decrease the inflammation in your body, you're going to heal your eyes and keep your eyes healthy. And so this will go we'll, we'll probably get into this a little bit more on the dry side, but the first thing we recommend anybody, when they ask me, what's the number one thing I can do for my health or what's the number one thing I can do for my dry eye?

Dr. Travis (12:12):

Or what's the number one thing I can do for macular degeneration is replace your breakfast with a green smoothie. I cannot emphasize the importance of this because you guys have all heard that carrots are good for your eyes. And that's because the vitamins that are in carrots, spinach is even better, but you have to have organic spinach because it has more of the nutrients. And so a green smoothie is just simply a non-dairy milk. And then you can put some spinach in there and then some fruit. So I recommend berries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, any of those. And then you can put like protein powders. We recommend plant-based protein powders as well. Just to flavor it up a little bit more, um, avoid juices, but simply replacing your breakfast with the green smoothie is going to replace one of the most inflammatory meals of the day.

Dr. Travis (13:03):

Because most people eat cereal toast, you know, meat like bacon or sausage or ham. Those are all heavily inflammatory foods for your body. And so when you get rid of those at breakfast time and replace it with an anti-inflammatory green smoothie, that's filled with greens. Greens are great because they have vitamins, a vitamin C and then also they have what are called, um, phytochemicals or phytonutrients. These are Zen theme, um, lutein and Z asses and Thien. And so those are found abundantly in your eye. And when you eat more of them, intake more of them ingest more of them. It's going to make your eye healthier. And so not only are you decreasing the inflammation in your entire body, which then decreases your risk for high blood pressure, heart attack, diabetes, dry macular degeneration, you're also making your eyes healthier and the same in the same light.

Dr. Travis (13:58):

So I'm going to go one example and then I'll, I'll see if you guys have any questions. Yeah. Okay. We were at a conference once and there's, there's this new it's called the macular pigment density measurement. And so what it does is it measures the back of your eye and how, how dense or how packed in your pigment is the more pigment you have, the healthier, the less likely you have to develop macular degeneration. My wife and I we've drank green smoothies since 2013, every single day. We were the highest by over double everybody else at the conference because we created smoothies every day that tells you how healthy our eyes are and how healthy our bodies are.

Roy - AGEUcational (14:42):

It's interesting. You bring that up because, um, uh, some things that we had discussed last week, this, you know, like for me, I do suffer from, uh, know high blood pressure and keeping our control, but that spinach is high in potassium. So I think just the other day, you know, Terry went to the grocery store and got us the, um, you know, the spinach. And I don't know if it's organic that it may be one swap we need to make, but it was, but, you know, adding that in the berries and trying to do that green smoothie. So it's also good to know, not only for the inflammatory high blood pressure, but also to help our eyes. That's awesome. Yeah. I think that's overlooked a lot,

Dr. Travis (15:19):

You know, my number one tip.

Roy - AGEUcational (15:21):

Yeah. So you did mention carrots, uh, is, uh, I was just going to say, is that, uh, is that all pretty much all in truth or is that a wives' tale that, you know, carrots are the best for our eyesight?

Dr. Travis (15:35):

Not the best, but they're still good. They have made a carotene in them, but like I said, kale and spinach and your green vegetables are going to be a lot better for your eyes. Okay.

Roy - AGEUcational (15:44):

Okay. Well, I guess I'll have to send it

Dr. Travis (15:49):

The carrot farmer somewhere came out with that ad.

Roy - AGEUcational (15:53):

Yeah. Okay. No, that's good. It's good stuff to know. Uh, yeah, because I think, you know, people, especially of our age group, uh, we're a little late to the party, but the more that we can do now, it will probably, um, deuce our suffering and our decreased vision, you know, 20, 25, 30 years from now, however too late to start, right. Yeah.

Dr. Travis (16:15):

Hey, I'm in my thirties. And I started when I was in my twenties. So,

Roy - AGEUcational (16:19):

Well, you're here in the early bird. You had all that information. Uh, so, uh, you know, talk to us a little bit about, uh, dry, dry, uh, because I, you know, I can tell when I eat, um, and I don't know exactly what he does. I have some kind of food allergies because would be mornings when I wake up with the more puffy eyes, more scratchy. Um, and then, you know, it'll dissipate, excuse me through the day, but I can also can easily tell his triggers of things I've eaten the day before. So I know you've explained the difference between that, but can you tell us a little bit more just about the dry eye itself?

Dr. Travis (16:58):

Yeah. So the dry eye is an interesting low list of symptoms because that most typical symptom that you're going to have is that your rotation, that dryness in your eye, that redness in your eye, but you can also feel like there's something in your eye, like a piece of sand. It feels almost gritty and you can't get it out. And so that's another common symptom is you feel like you have something in there, but it's just not, not in there. Another common symptom is your eyes are watering too much. Now this sounds crazy because you have dry eye. Why am I as watering? And I'm going to get into a little biology here and anatomical lesson. So your tears that are on the front of your eye are made to moisturize, lubricate and help you see better. So the tears have multiple layers, they have three layers and the outside layer comes from your eyelid.

Dr. Travis (17:47):

It, your eyelid has lots of glands. They're called my Bowman glands. And those glands secrete an oil onto our eye. That oil it's only a responsibility. Well, not the only, but one of its primary responsibilities is to keep your tears together. Now there's a second layer of the tears called the watery layer. And that comes from a gland called your lacquer mobile. And which is up here in your eyelid. So the meibomian glands are all around the eyelid. The LACMA gland is kind of on the outside of your eyelid. So when the, my Bowman glands, the oil glands are not functioning properly. Oil is not getting onto the eye. And what happens is those tears that they're supposed to stay together. They're now breaking up. And when they break up your brain or your eyes screaming in pain, that I don't have enough tears on my eye, I need help, which then triggers your brain to release more watery tears.

Dr. Travis (18:40):

So your eyes are watering more as a result of not having enough oil, oily layer on your tears. And so a lot of people ask me, like, why do you recommend cleaning your eyelid and eyelid hygiene as one of the first steps in treating dry eye. And it's because those oil glands, and we want to make sure that the oil glands are working properly and they work properly by decreasing the bacteria on our eyelids and decreasing the inflammation. Because if your eyelids are inflamed oil lands, aren't going to work in the oil glands can actually die off. And if they die off, it's very hard. And we haven't really had any studies that show it. It's hard to get them back. And so we want to make sure we take care of our eyelids. I actually use our spray every single day, and I don't have any problems with dry eye.

Dr. Travis (19:22):

I'm doing it as just a preventative measure. Very similar to how you brush your teeth to prevent cavities cavities, or from bacteria in your mouth. You're brushing your teeth to decrease the bacteria. I'm doing that on my eyelids to prevent future problems, you know, 30, 40 years down the line. Okay. And so watery tears or watery eyes, gritty eyes, dry irritation, redness. Those are kind of the most common symptoms. And, you know, they can happen. Like you talked about from food. So food is huge. And we have so many sensitivities to food that we don't even realize that we've just kind of normalized in our own lives. And I'll, I'll give you an example of something that happened in my life. I've gone gluten-free I am a gluten-free dairy-free vegetarian now. It sounds terrible. Doesn't it horrible 90% of the time, but the other 10%, I still eat other stuff.

Dr. Travis (20:17):

I still eat meat. I still drink a little bit here and there. And I still eat a little bit of gluten, but the 90% that I control, I am very strict with my diet, because what happens is if I start eating gluten more, gluten is actually something that almost every single person is sensitive to. They just don't realize it. Every single person almost. I realize it. So when I eat gluten too much, I get eczema all over my hands, all over my face. I get rosacea. So my whole face will flush. And then I get arthritis. I can't even do one pushup if I eat too much gluten, but this morning I did a hundred pushups. Cause I haven't had gluten in a while. So I can do a lot of pushups. I do pushups every morning, but I can't even do one if I've had gluten too much.

Dr. Travis (20:57):

So that's the effect is arthritis, high blood pressure, you know, irritable bowel syndrome, diarrhea, constipation, gas, acid, reflux. Those are all signs of a food sensitivity. And so you, if you have any of those problems, then you need to watch what you're eating easiest way to, to, to figure it out is eliminating gluten and dairy. First. I didn't even say meat. They're gluten and dairy. If you can eliminate those two, try gluten first and then dairy second, you'd be shocked by how many symptoms will go away as a result of eliminating gluten and dairy. Wow. I kind of went off on a whole body tangent. Now you asked about dry eyes.

Roy - AGEUcational (21:36):

That's that's, that's good to know because I, you know, like I said, I've, that's something I've found that with me. It's and it's more than it does. It does affect my eyes, but it can affect I'll be so congested in the mornings. When I wake up that it may take me two or three hours to clear my head and finally, you know, be able to carry on normally. So, um, definitely something worth checking out. I, I guess kind of backing up just a minute would be the why, why would, um, what causes the dry eyes? Is it environmental? Is it body chemistry? I mean, we talked a little bit about diet, but uh, you know, what are some of the other things that can be factored in that?

Dr. Travis (22:20):

Yeah, so you, you nailed it. It's it's it's environment. It's what we eat. It's what we do. It's, it's a lot of things. So it's a very multifactorial disease and what can cause it is your tears can just be off. We talked about those oil glands earlier. If the oil glands aren't working properly, that will cause dry eye, your eyelids could be off. So you could have problems with your eyelids that are, you know, stuck to the eye, as much as they're supposed to be, or you're not blinking properly, or you're not blinking fully close. So that's another cause of it. Now it can be caused because th th the chemical imbalance of your tears is off. It tends to be more salty and dry eye patients versus more non salty for normal patients. And so that saltiness is a sign of dry eye as well.

Dr. Travis (23:03):

It can be from innovation, from your nerves. So your nerves might have something off and that's causing your dry eye. Okay. But most of the time, almost 95% of the time, it is that inflammation. And so this person's whole body is inflamed, and that inflammation is causing the dry eye. Some other things can cause it to you. You mentioned environment. So we'll get into that a little bit. Of course, like if you're in a desert type environment or a winter, those are going to be drier environments than a Texas summer, which is humid and, or, or an Ohio summer, which is even more humid. So a hundred percent humidity and 95 degree day is going to be better for dry eye than a negative 20 degree with 0% humidity. And so putting a humidifier by your bed can sometimes help with that. And then also an air purifier by your bed might help with that congestion as well.

Dr. Travis (23:52):

Just to go back to that. Yeah, but then let's stick with environment, computers, phones, all of this stuff is causing problems with your eyes. You're not blinking as much when you're on a computer. And so when you're not blinking as much, your, your oil blends, aren't releasing as much oil and therefore your eyes are getting dryer. We're starting to see dry eye in younger and younger demographics because they're on their computers, eight to 10 to 12 to 14 hours a day, which is absurd and they don't blink as much. And so if they're not blinking, they're not playing outside. It's causing more problems with dryness. And so sticking with the environment. What I recommend with computer work with phone work is the 20, 20, 20 rule. Every 20 minutes of computer or phone work, just take 20 seconds or five minutes even, and just look at something 20 feet away or further, that's going to relax your eyes. It's going to decrease your dryness. It's going to make you blink. And the second thing about, about phones and computer use is stop using them one to two hours before you go to bed because all of these devices have balloons.

Roy - AGEUcational (24:58):

Wait, I'm sorry. I don't think Terry heard you on that. Could you say that? Just repeat that one more time.

Dr. Travis (25:07):

I will definitely repeat it one more time for the listeners as well, because get off your phone, get off your computer, get off the TV. One to two hours before you go to bed, because the blue light emitted from these devices is actually preventing you from getting into your deep restful sleep because blue light is made by the sun. Uh, obviously the sky is blue, but blue light is made from the sun to tell you to wake up. And so when blue lights out, your melatonin drops and melatonin is your sleep, sleep. Hormone. Melatonin drops when blue lights out and when blue light goes away, the sun goes down. Your melatonin increases. Well, the problem we have right now is we're on our devices. So we're constantly being exposed to blue light. And that concept exposure is then causing your melatonin not to increase. Therefore, if you, this is my challenge to your listeners. Okay. Do what you normally do. And then try this an hour before bed, shut off all electronics, watch how fat much faster you fall asleep. Yes. And then watch how much better you feel when you wake up in the morning, because you get into that deep restful sleep stage four sleep REM sleep is harder to get to that when your melatonin's not increased in production because of that blue light on your phone. Right?

Roy - AGEUcational (26:22):

Yeah. And that's a shift that we've tried to make, uh, you know, for myself, even, you know, watching TV, going to sleep, but, you know, try to read a book and, uh, try to at least take that that hour. So I don't think I've done good on the timeframe, but, you know, I will work on trying to stretch that to, you know, an hour to two hours out. So yeah. That's great advice for a lot of reasons, not only for our eyes, but just for our general health overall being healthy. So yeah,

Dr. Travis (26:49):

The bedroom is for sleep and sex only. That's what I always thought.

Roy - AGEUcational (26:53):

Right? So what, what are some future implications of dry eye and not taking care of that? Uh, you know, as early as we can, once we get to our seventies and eighties, you, I assume that they're just, it's like anything else, it, it kinda manifest into something probably worse after a while.

Dr. Travis (27:14):

Yeah. Not, not to scare listeners or scary or scare you too. But like, I haven't seen the worst case of dry eyes where people can't even function anymore. And so a lot of these people are just miserable. They can't even open their eyes long enough to really function life. They can't drive anymore as a result of the dry eyes severity. Now, with that being said, that is less than 1% of the cases. And, and I don't know if it's fortunately or unfortunately that's the people that usually find us online because they've tried everything nothing's working. And so they they're looking for answers. So that's very rare. That's like I said, less than 1%, what my fear with the future is, is if we're not taking care of our eyelids, now all those, my bombing lands that screed that oil and this younger generation they're going to be gone.

Dr. Travis (28:00):

And the problem is once my Bowman glands are gone and you have no more oily layer on your tears, that's where the severe dry eye kicks in. And so we don't know the impact. We don't know what's going to happen to the generation below me. I didn't grow up with smartphones. I got my first cell phone when I think it was a freshmen in college. So, and it was just a flip, flip phone that was like Greenstreet. So that shows like where my demographic is. I'm 36 years old below me though, is the generation that I fear because they're the ones that grew up with smartphones, grew up with computers. I didn't even have a computer in my house until I was like in high school. And so they're on it all the time. School's on it. Everything's on it, especially now with the COVID environment in that virtual learning, they're on it all the time.

Dr. Travis (28:43):

And so what's going to happen to that generation in 40 years when they're in their forties and fifties. And they're, my Boeing lands are completely gone as a result of all this computer work. And so we don't know, we don't know what's going to happen. I think it's the same thing. That's going to happen to that same generation with their hearing, because they always have earphones in or headphones in or iPad. Um, I can't even think the word iPod earbuds. That's the word. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's scary to think about, but the easiest thing you can do is clean your eyelids. So you don't even have to buy any of my products. You have face wash at home, use a natural face wash, make sure it doesn't have bad ingredients in it. So more natural, organic face wash, wash your face, but then spend a specific, a little bit time, just kind of gently rubbing your eyelids.

Dr. Travis (29:32):

You don't need all the fancy eyelid washes that we sell eyelid scrubs or anything like that. Um, but the easiest thing to add is the spray that we sell. And so after wash your face, you can just spray your eyelids and just leave it on and that's it. And so that's the easiest thing you can do. It's like brushing your teeth, but it only takes about five seconds versus two minutes. And so that's the easiest thing you can do right now to just maintain the health of your eyelids. And I think you'll start to see that coming up in the next 10 to 20 years is that's going to be discussed more, brush your teeth, wash your eyelids, brush your teeth, wash your eyelids. Because I mean, I can live without my teeth, but I don't want to live without my eyes. Right.

Roy - AGEUcational (30:09):

Right. Exactly. So this is a little bit off topic, but something related to computer. So one thing I noticed about me is if I'm in front of a computer all day, or especially an iPhone, you know, something, cause I'm, you know, basically in front of a screen 10 hours a day, and then I get out in the car and start driving, you know, it's like, I've been focused, I guess, up close for so long, then there's that transition. Sometimes it doesn't even happen. But you know, it's like trying to get my focus back for that longer distances. I guess we can relate that back to that 20, 20, 20 exercise that you said earlier, is there, what can we do to help that? Cause I, I just think about how dangerous that is, especially, you know, in the dusky hours to get out and driving, you know, you can't vote. You're not really focused and being able to see a far clear.

Dr. Travis (31:05):

Yeah. So let's go into that. This is, this is where I'm going to debunk the myth of Terry blaming her dad for everything. So we talked about that before. So whatever reading you got anything up. Yeah, no, no, it's fine. Um, so whenever we're reading or looking at anything up close, what we're doing is our eyes are focusing. So we have a muscle inside our eye and it bends the lens inside our eye to be able to see up close. Okay. And it's actively working. That's when we're reading, when we look at something far away, everything is relaxed. The muscles relaxed, the lens is relaxed. It's in its natural state. So that's why when you're reading for a long period of time, your eyes are tired. What I like to relate it to is you have a 10 pound weight, not too heavy and you start curling it, you do bicep curls.

Dr. Travis (31:59):

And you know, it's not bad. It's only 10 pounds, but imagine do that for an hour and then two hours and then three hours. That's what we're doing to our eyes when we're reading and on computer all the time. Okay. And so when you look at something far away, it's like putting that bicep curl or that, that dumbbell down, giving your arm a break. And so what's happening with you and this is the unfortunate thing of hitting your forties and into your fifties, right? And so we have that lens, that lenses flexible when we're born, but starting at age six months to two years, we start to add layers that lens every single day. And as we add layers to anything, it gets thicker and as anything gets thicker, it gets less and less flexible. And so the ability for you to bend your lens, to see up close and then relax it to see far away, just takes a longer time period than it did when you were in your twenties and then in your teens.

Dr. Travis (32:52):

And so what happens with that as that lens continues to get more and more rigid and less flexible. That's when we start to lose the ability to read. And that's when we need reading glasses. Okay. And then furthermore, once we hit our fifties and into our sixties, as that lens gets thicker and thicker and thicker, it actually changes our whole prescription. So then we have trouble seeing not only up close for reading, but now we need them for far away as well. And so that's a completely normal process that happens to the lens inside our eye. And then what happens next is that lens becomes cloudy and that's a cataract. Everybody thinks a cataract is a disease. It's not, it's just a normal degeneration and clouding of the lens inside your eye. And it happens to a hundred percent of us if we live long enough.

Dr. Travis (33:39):

And so once that happens, we take out that rigid, cloudy, inflexible lens out of the eye, and we put a brand new plastic, one in the eye, this new plastic one, you can have it made for just distance only. You can have a made for just computers. You can have it made for both. You can have it made for everything. So you get rid of your glasses after cataract surgery, not full time, you get rid of your glasses having to work full time, but you can kind of customize that whole experience for yourself. Yeah. And so I hope that made sense with the transition of your entire life. You're probably thinking back like, yep. Yep. I remember. Yep. Okay. I got my reading glasses and then I got my full-time glasses.

Roy - AGEUcational (34:20):

Yeah. My big wake up. And I hate to even say this but years ago, you know, a few years ago went to the, uh, get my driver's license renewed. And the, it was all, this is a little exaggerated, but was almost as bad as she said, can you look at the letters in this machine? I'm like, well, what machine, when I'm glad that bad, but you know, that was a definite wake up for me that like one side was just nothing but lines across of it. So anyway, I, you know, went out and got that taken care of back to the cataract for just a second. I know we could make a whole episode from that, but that is something that is very gradual. So, um, what is a key or what's something that we can look forward to say really now is the time to get that taken care of before we get in a really bad position.

Dr. Travis (35:05):

Yeah. Cataracts and cataract surgery is all about one thing and it's all about you. And so it's all about how much it's affecting your daily life. And so I know patients that have cataracts and they don't do anything about it because they're buying and they can see, they can pass the driver's test. Doesn't really bother them. And I have other patients that they have the smallest littlest, tiniest cataract that you wouldn't think affects anything and they can't stand it. And so we had them get surgery very soon in the process. Now from Medicare standards, Medicare says you have to see worse than 20, 40, or worse with correction in order to have surgery. Okay. And so 2040, isn't that bad a vision. So 2020 line is the bottom line and there's 2025, 2030, 2040. So it's only four lines worse than that. 2020 line. Okay. When we're measuring to give you an idea, when we're on mission trips, we correct to the 2040 line because they're used to not seeing anything. And so to correct them just to that 2040 line, which is considered medically necessary here in the U S that just shows you kind of, it just depends on the patient. So once you certain noticing that daily life being affected, right. That's when we have it done. Okay. Okay.

Terry - AGEUcational (36:18):

And does everything get blurry? I mean, I know I today's, I day for me, so I have an appointment after this to get, uh, my, uh, with my optometrist. But the last few, I guess the last five years that I've gone in, you know, he said, you're, you're starting to get some cataract and we can see some cataract things going on. And, um, I, I have noticed really, especially the last two years, everything is blurrier. Now I know that's because I'm, um, one of those, you know, that where's my contacts all the time. And, um, I'm sure that has a lot to do with it as well. But is that a sign of Canberra? I mean, is there a sign that you're having cataracts? Can you, yeah.

Dr. Travis (37:04):

Yeah. So blurriness is the number one sign learn. This is the number one sign, but you're also, you're just judging by your symptoms. I'm guessing you're bar sided. Yep. Plus you need reading glasses. And so having both of those gradually gets worse over time. Therefore it could be that as well. Okay. And so you, when, when I hear doctors say that they have, you have a small cataract, I actually never really talked to my patients when they had that small cataract quote, unquote, small cataract, because I always saw that it caused too much anxiety in the patient and it's really nothing it's subclinical. It's just something that everybody has. So why do you tell your patient? Because unless it's causing them problems. Right. And so if I see a small cataract and I think it's going to cause them problems within the next year, then I educate them on it. But for the most part, I never really educated those small cataracts that almost everybody over the age of 55, as I never educated on that, just because it sent worth the anxiety that the patient caused because you as a patient, you're cataract and you're like, wait, what? I have a cataract, but also his doctor didn't, she was better. What's the big deal. Right. Okay.

Roy - AGEUcational (38:14):

All right. Well, we're going to have to start wrapping up. We appreciate you giving so generously of your time, but a couple of things before we go, number one is, you know, I think our eyes are, you know, we always want to go to the doctor, get our checkup to the dentist, get our cleaning every six months. But I'm one to say that, you know, probably don't take care of my eyes as good as I should because you know, right now I can see, but I think, um, so tell us what is a good schedule for us to be on to, uh, you know, go get our examinations.

Dr. Travis (38:50):

So this will be the official schedule from the AOA, which is the American optometric association. And so the first time we ever want to see you for an exam nine months old, nine months, wow. Everything's normal. At nine months, we go every two years until you're six years old. And then from age six years old until about the age of 20, we'd like to see you every year. Cause a lot can change every year when you're growing like that. So up to 20, we like to see every year, if everything is completely normal, you don't want glasses. Everything's healthy. Every other year is good after that until you're about 40. And so after 40, then we like to see you every year because it's not just about glasses and contacts. It's about everything else we can find. Glaucoma is not a condition that you will notice anything, any problems until it's too late macular degeneration, you will not notice many problems until it's too late.

Dr. Travis (39:45):

Those are, those are, those are diseases that are harder to reverse. And we don't have a simple cataract surgery that can fix them. Okay. And so I've, I've detected five patients with brain tumors from an eye exam. When we caught the brain tumor fast enough that they were able to get treatment and they survived. I remember I was in clinic one day and a patient came in, knocked on my door and said, he just gave me a hug. And I didn't remember him right off the top of my head, but he's like, you sent me out for a brain scan and MRI and they found a brain tumor and they said they caught it early enough. And they removed it. And I am cancer-free because of what you found on the eye exam. Wow. And so that is the importance of an eye exam. Cause we can catch those things before they become before you'll notice any problems.

Dr. Travis (40:29):

Cause he didn't have any symptoms. But a test that I did in my office made me believe that he might have a brain tumor. So I sent him out for further testing and he did. And so that's the power of an eye exam. Your eyes are the windows to your entire body. We can see live blood vessels in the back of the eye and detect diabetes and high blood pressure before you even know you have it. And before your doctors and sometimes detect it's because we see live blood vessels and you don't see that anywhere else in the body, unless you get cut open. Yeah. And so the eyes are powerful and that's, I recommend an exam every year. So if you want to don't remember any of them about all the things I just said, just remember go every year, that's it?

Roy - AGEUcational (41:11):

Yeah. And that's a good point. You make, especially people that suffer from high blood pressure and diabetes, that they can have a tremendous effect on our eyesight. And from my understanding, that's something that's not reversible, is that damage. So you end up basically having to live with that.

Dr. Travis (41:28):

Yeah. It can be, the scarring can be pretty horrific. Um, but if we catch the diabetes soon we can reverse. But if it gets bad enough, the scarring is really bad. Yeah.

Terry - AGEUcational (41:37):

Oh my goodness. Can you tell us, um, tell us about your, I love cares foundation little bit and, and uh, if somebody wants to get more information about that and, and what your purpose and all of that.

Dr. Travis (41:53):

Yeah. So the other cares foundation was started because my wife and I went on a mission trip back in 2006. So I said 13 years ago, it's actually been 15 years. Wow. So 2006, we went on our first mission trip in Ecuador and fell in love with it. There's nothing like giving somebody a vision for the first time. And they're like 16 years old or even 40 years old or even 70 years old. They never had great vision. You put a pair of glasses on them. A pair of simple readers can make a huge difference in somebody's life. You and I can pick up readers at the drug store for a dollar and they have no access to this. So a six-year-old thinks they're blind because they can no longer read, put a pair of readers on them. They burst in tears because they can read again.

Dr. Travis (42:34):

Um, another story that we've seen is a fishermen fishermen need to line their hook and they can no longer line their hooks. So they become beggars on the street because middle class in these countries that we serve is $2,000 a year. And so every little bit counts. And if they are making $2,000 a year for their family of five and all of a sudden their income gets cut off because they can no longer fish their hook. That's a big deal. And so we're not just giving glasses. We're, we're stimulating the economy in these countries because these people can get back to work and serve other people instead of just begging on the streets. And so that's kind of the, the foundation of our foundation is just healing. These people that don't have access to eyecare and don't have access to glasses and giving it to them for free. And if you ever want to come with us, our, our websites, I love cares.org. Um, but if you ever want to come with us, just reach out to me and I'll give some other places that you can reach out to me here in just a little bit, but okay. Reach out to me. And if you want to volunteer, you do not have to be a doctor. You didn't have to be an eyecare. You can just come with us and enjoy and be humbled by serving and serving humanity in a completely different light.

Terry - AGEUcational (43:44):

Wow. That's awesome. Yeah.

Roy - AGEUcational (43:47):

Okay. Yeah. And tell, uh, give everybody, uh, you know, basically talk a little bit about your product. What, you know, we've talked a little bit, but you can go ahead and say, you know, how that's can help people. And also if you have a tip, uh, you know, one thing I like to ask is what is something? And we can, uh, do the eyecare is what is something that you do every day, I guess, besides cleaning your eyelids that you know is, uh, perpetuates the, your eyecare.

Dr. Travis (44:18):

So we talked about green smoothies. That's one of my favorites. Yeah. Hydration is another one of my favorites. Just making sure you drink enough water. Okay. Um, organic foods. We've talked about that. And then the phones we already, we've pretty covered my whole bootcamp and I've upset, but you're tracing your phone use to sleep better. But another big part is stress as well. And so stress chronic stress that we're all under increases inflammation in your body and causes a lot of disease. And so doing things to just de-stress your life. Some of my favorites are I write three things that I'm grateful for every night before I go to bed, three things that are grateful for that happened that day. Another thing is meditation. When I wake up in the morning, I spend my first five to 30 minutes in meditation and prayer because it sets the mood for the day.

Dr. Travis (45:05):

It sets, it keeps you calmer and it will decrease your stress because you're connecting with a higher purpose. And those are kind of stresses. Another big thing that you just really need to maintain and take time out to just breathe. You don't have to be rushing. This is your life, your life, you control it. And a lot of people let life control them. And that's why you're so stressed out. But if you take control of life, then you'll be a lot less stressed out and you'll have a lot more fun. Yeah. So that's kind of the other tips. Cause we already went through all my other tests.

Roy - AGEUcational (45:37):

All right. Well, we do appreciate you taking time out of your day. So again, let everybody know if they'd like to be a part of your trip, uh, are just get some more information. Uh, how can we reach out and either connect with you or get to your website?

Dr. Travis (45:52):

Yeah. So the easiest way to find us is on Facebook. Our, our support community called the dry eye syndrome, support community, dry eye syndrome, support community, just type in dry eye on Facebook. And we're the first group to pop up. Okay. We're really active in that. We go live in that once a week with either an interview with an expert, or we just go live talking about a subject. We also go live a lot on our YouTube channel, which is called The Dry Eye Show. And you're going to get specific advice, but you're also going to get overall health advice too. So The Dry Eye show on YouTube or the dry eye syndrome support community on Facebook. And then if you want to try our spray or hydrate lid and lash cleanser, few you're suffering from dry eye, or you just want to start that eyelid maintenance routine. Yes. You can get it at freehydratedotcomfreehydrate.com. It's free. Your first bottle is free. It's a month supply. You just have to pay for shipping and handling and that's it.

Roy - AGEUcational (46:41):

Okay. Yeah. And it's easy, Terry, like she said, she reached out, signed up for it already. God is already using it. So yeah.

Terry - AGEUcational (46:49):

Yeah. It's made a big difference and the end, you're never going to stop hearing from us. That's right. I will have gotten lots of emails, but I'm, I'm trying to read them all. Um, but the proceeds for what you sell, go toward these trips and, and helping people in Jamaica and beyond.

Dr. Travis (47:08):

Yep. So we donate a portion of all profits, not profits, actually, we, we donate a portion of all top line revenue to the foundation. And I think just in 2020, we were able to donate close to $60,000 to the foundation, which helped give sunglasses to sunglasses and glasses to a ton of people. Even though we weren't able to go on our mission trips in 2020, we still sent sunglasses. We actually, Jamaica is our main hub. That's where we go. Every October, we actually were able to donate over. I think it was like 10,000 meals this year in Jamaica. And so it was cool to see because one of our friends is down there. He was actually hand delivering just bags of groceries to these families. And it was just really rewarding, not our typical, you know, eyesight mission, but we kind of adjust to what's in need and during COVID glasses are great, but nobody's working so you don't really need to see that. Well, um, but food was more important than the year 2020 to get people food that they needed.

Terry - AGEUcational (48:04):

That's that's great. And also I wanted to mention that you and your lovely wife, Jenna, are expanding your family this year, correct? March 24th. So congratulations.

Dr. Travis (48:17):

Yeah. We're, we're excited and anxious and all sorts of life changes in 2021 happened. Right?

Roy - AGEUcational (48:24):

Right. Well, my advice to everybody is to, uh, you know, get that appointment if you haven't made one in a while, because I think I saw it more than anything else. Uh, you don't realize how lucky you are to have it, and we need to take better care of it to make it last. Uh, you know, we, don't definitely don't want to outlive our, uh, side. It can really, you know, just debilitate our quality of life among other things. So reach out to Dr. Travis, if you got some dry eye issues, they can help you and also, um, make those appointments, get out there and get it taken care of. So, uh, for today, that's gonna do it for this episode of educational. We appreciate it. Uh, you can find us on all the major pod podcast platforms, Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and a lot of other ones.

Roy - AGEUcational (49:14):

If we're not on a service that you use, please reach out. We'd be glad to get it added. You can also find us at www.ageucaional.com. This, um, we will post this episode there with the transcript of the podcast. Also find us on YouTube at educational. We do have a channel that this interview, uh, once it goes live, then the video will be posted of it as well. Uh, also since we are new, we asked that if you are a professional, that is, uh, you know, targets aging with some kind of service or product we'd love to hear from you. If you are a senior that has made it through something or would like to share your journey with us caregivers, uh, we'd be glad to hear from you. You can either write me at or Terry at, you know, Roy or Terry with a Y at ageucational.com. So until next time, thank you very much and take care of your loved ones.

Terry - AGEUcational (50:13):

Thank you, Dr. Travis. Appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks for having me on.

www.eyelovecares.org

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