How did a visual phenomenon emanating from a small yellow spot in the back of our eyes and seen at just the right moment by Emperor Constantine the Great change the course of history? In a just released TedTalk by our longtime board member Dr. Lisa Renzi, art and history...

February is AMD and low vision awareness month. A Mediterranean diet is associated with a lower risk of macular degeneration. Interest in the Mediterranean diet began in the 1960’s with the observation that coronary heart disease caused fewer deaths in Mediterranean countries, such as Greece and Italy, than in the...

In 1888, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche first stated, “Out of life’s school of war, what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.” This sentence has become an overused and often parodied aphorism that nevertheless accurately portrays the picture of resilience and affirmation for overcoming adversity. Indeed, 2020 has been a year...

According to current statistics, 1 in every 10 of us reading this article will have Alzheimer’s dementia by the time we are 65 years old. That risk will double every 5 years of our lives. Other sobering statistics from the Alzheimer’s Association reveal that 1 in 3 seniors die with...

Dear Julie, Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin that functions as a pro-hormone. Vitamin D’s effects on immune function have been the topic of much recent research in COVID. “It has been proposed that the activation of the Vitamin D receptor (VDR) signaling pathway may generate beneficial effects in Acute...

Dear Julie, We begin this week’s wellness spotlight with an excerpt from a book by the director of the NIH Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD. The Human Genome Project, which Dr. Collins headed up, is considered to be biology’s equivalent to the Apollo moon landing or splitting the atom. The...

Dear Julie, In this week’s wellness spotlight, Dr. Dorothy Hitchmoth shares her knowledge and wisdom in a recently published article in Medium. This impressive piece traces her journey to wellness and she shares with the reader pearls of wisdom that will leave you feeling grateful to be her colleague in...

Dear Julie, Our weekly wellness spotlight is an article by medical journalist Bill Sardi on lead toxicity. Before reading the article below, a case of lead toxicity is also referenced below. https://www.reviewofophthalmology.com/article/wills-eye-resident-case-series-24966 57 year old with toxic optic neuropathy..... “Toxic optic neuropathies typically present with a gradually progressive, bilaterally symmetric,...

Dear Julie, n this week’s wellness spotlight, we highlight a study published in the journal Nutrients in June 2019. In this study, lifestyle interventions of diet and exercise regimens were shown to decrease the occurrence of retinal microaneurysms in overweight and obese individuals with impaired glucose tolerance. Lifestyle Intervention Improves...

Dear Julie, Dr. Susan Summerton does an excellent job in keeping our members up to date with current research with the articles she posts on our OWNS facebook page. Below is an article Dr. Summerton recently shared. Dietary Habits, Fatty Acids and Carotenoid Levels Are Associated with Neovascular Age-Related Macular...

Dear Julie, In this week’s wellness spotlight, we would like to continue with the topic of intermittent fasting by highlighting one of our members who is a giant among us in nutritional medicine. Dr. Paul Chous has an Optometry practice in Tacoma, WA specializing in diabetes eye care and education. He is adjunct faculty at Western University of Health Sciences, past Vice President of...

Dear Julie, Cardiovascular disease remains the number one cause of death in the United States. It is a largely preventable disease, and lifestyle modifications are paramount in preventing it. In last week’s wellness spotlight, the caliber of retinal vasculature was highlighted as a predictor of cardiovascular disease. In this week’s...

Dear Julie, As eye doctors, we spend our time evaluating retinal vasculature on every patient we see. We are fully aware that abnormalities in retinal vasculature can alert us to cardiovascular risk. The article below was published recently in the online journal Medical News Today. It highlights a recent study...

Dear Julie, The season of fall is upon us. Pumpkins for Halloween carvings and pumpkin pies line up in rows in grocery stores. The trees decorate themselves in crimson and gold. We scurry out in the mornings to get to work and find ourselves quickly turning around and running back...

Dear Julie, For this week’s wellness spotlight, we highlight another great article Dr. Susan Summerton posted to our OWNS facebook site. Behaviour change, weight loss and remission of Type 2 diabetes: a community-based prospective cohort study H. Dambha-Miller A. J. Day J. Strelitz G. Irving S. J. Griffin First published:...

Dear Julie, Researchers analyzed hospital records of nearly 80,000 diabetics in Austria Those deficient in vitamin D more likely to die early from diabetes-related illness Risk of death from infectious diseases also doubled in vitamin D deficient group By CONNOR BOYD HEALTH REPORTER FOR MAILONLINE PUBLISHED: 18:00 EDT, 19 September...

Dear Julie, TAURINE Taurine is synthesized by humans from cysteine in a process that requires vitamin B6. It exists in the body as a free amino acid, and it is not used for protein synthesis. Taurine stabilizes cell membranes, functions as a neurotransmitter and osmoregulator, is involved in conjugation of...

Dear Julie, "The bounty of the earth produces an exquisite design of vital nutrients found in the molecular structure of carotenoids. These vibrant red, yellow, and orange components are the inspiration for the research described in this special issue. As these nutrients are harvested and ingested, they spark a regeneration of...

Dear Julie, Another article highlighting the importance of nutrition was recently published.  We wanted to share it with you. Teens, fast food and depression:  A new study says there's a connection   Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham were behind the report. They analyzed 84 middle school kids from low-income...

Dear Julie, Most of us have seen the news headline that has been flooding the internet and news briefings in ocular and medical journals and websites: “BLINDNESS CAUSED BY A JUNK FOOD DIET" “A British teenager has permanent vision loss, hearing loss, and weak bones after years of eating only...

Dear Julie, An unhealthy diet including high fat and cholesterol-enriched food can contribute to developing eye diseases which lead to a loss of vision, University of Southampton research has revealed. The study, led by Dr. Arjuna Ratnayaka, has shown how retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells in the eye become damaged...

Lifestyle medicine is making news in the financial industry, as the yearly dementia-attributable societal cost per person is high. Ways to prevent dementia are on the radar of not only those in the health industry but now also in financial sectors. Please see the article below published in MarketWatch on...

Dear Julie, Of all the parts of the microbiome from the ocular microbiome to the oral microbiome, the gut microbiome is by far the most well researched, and we now know that everything our gut microbiome does has an impact on our health. The vitamins they manufacture, the role they...

Dear Julie, It seems like you cannot open a magazine these days, whether it be a scientific journal or Newsweek, without seeing something on the microbiome or probiotics. Companies are profiting heavily from the sale of supplements and foods containing “good belly bugs shown to improve our health”. The hype that...

Dear Julie, In last week’s wellness spotlight, a lecture from the 2019 Congress of Clinical Rheumatology was highlighted. James T. Rosenbaum, MD, Chief of Ophthalmology at the Legacy Devers Eye Institute in Portland, Oregon and also Chief of Arthritis and Rheumatic diseases at the Oregon Health and Science University spoke...

Dear Julie, May 2019....More than 620 registered attendees from 45 states and 11 countries traveled to Destin, Florida for the 2019 Congress of Clinical Rheumatology. One of the highlights was a lecture presented by James T. Rosenbaum, MD on the intestinal microbiome in rheumatic diseases. Dr. Rosenbaum is Chief of...

Dear Kari, Our weekly wellness spotlight is an article by medical journalist Bill Sardi on lead toxicity. Before reading the article below, a case of lead toxicity is also referenced below. https://www.reviewofophthalmology.com/article/wills-eye-resident-case-series-24966 57 year old with toxic optic neuropathy..... “Toxic optic neuropathies typically present with a gradually progressive, bilaterally symmetric,...

Dear Julie, Sweat, Fast, Donate Blood, Limit Red Meat, Supplement with Iron/Copper Chelators (Fisetin, Quercetin, Resveratrol, IP6 Rice Bran, Nucleotides) To Reduce the Population of Senescent Cells in Your Body & Live Longer & Healthier Than You Ever Imagined By Bill Sardi To Stay Young… Kill “Zombie” Cells --- Scientific American...

Dear Julie, In this week’s wellness spotlight, Dr. Stuart Richer shares an article written by Scott Nygren for the Pain Management Newsletter of The Captain James Lovell Federal Health Care Center in Chicago. This is an excellent example of nutritional awareness becoming more mainstream in healthcare.  What Does Nutrition Have to...

Dear Julie, It’s that time of year again....images of eggs are everywhere. Brightly colored plastic eggs stuffed with prizes for egg hunts, small chocolate eggs with creamy centers in shiny tinfoil on display in the grocery stores, large eggs made entirely of solid chocolate displayed by life-sized chocolate bunnies.... In...

Dear Julie, Cherry picking is a term based on the perceived process of harvesting fruit, such as cherries. The picker would be expected to only select the ripest and healthiest fruits. An observer who only sees the selected fruit may thus wrongly conclude that most, or even all, of the...

Dear Julie, In last week’s wellness spotlight, we highlighted the mineral magnesium. In this week’s spotlight, we will highlight calcium and a new study published March 21, 2019 in JAMA that looked at the association of dietary and supplementary calcium intake with age-related macular degeneration. Calcium plays a key role in imparting...

Dear Julie, MAGNESIUM Magnesium deficiency is one of the most frequently encountered nutritional problems seen clinically. Low magnesium intake is due in large part to the high proportion of nutrient-depleted refined and processed foods in the Western diet. For example, 85% of the magnesium is lost in the refining of...

Dear Julie, In this week’s wellness spotlight, a very important new meta-analysis on the efficacy of omega-3 fatty acid supplementation for the treatment of dry eye disease will be highlighted. This meta-analysis was published in the journal Cornea in 2019. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30702470 The authors looked at 17 randomized clinical trials involving 3,363 patients....

Dear Julie, February is the month we honor the meaningful relationships in our lives. We buy flowers and chocolates and search “google” for that perfect restaurant to enjoy the pleasures of an amazing meal while staring into the eyes of the person we love. We realize that not only is...

Dear Julie, In The News: A Recent Study Suggests Glaucoma May Be an Autoimmune Disorder A new study from MIT and Massachusetts Eye and Ear has found that glaucoma may in fact be an autoimmune disorder. In a study of mice, the researchers showed that the body's own T cells...

Dear Kari, As we are saying goodbye to 2018 and welcoming in 2019, as a society and as human beings, we have a lot to be grateful for. In 2018, OWNS published its first annual wellness supplement in the fall issue of Review of Optometry. This supplement reached more than 40,000 clinicians...

Dear Julie, OWNS member Dr. Sandra Young has combined her love of cooking and her interest in wellness and nutrition for the benefit of a larger audience.  She has authored two cookbooks that specifically use ingredients that are eye healthy.  To learn more you can go to www.visionarykitchen.com. We asked Dr....

Dear Julie, As we say goodbye to January, National Glaucoma Awareness Month, let’s take a look at a study involving Omega 3’s and IOP: https://tvst.arvojournals.org/Article.aspx?articleid=2680625 In this study, 105 individuals 18 years of age and older were randomized to take one of the following: a krill oil supplement containing 945...