Huberman Lab: AMA #6: Eye Health, Why We Yawn & Increasing Motivation

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools

for everyday life.

I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford

School of Medicine.

Today is an Ask Me Anything episode, or AMA.

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Now without further ado, I will answer your questions, and as always, I will strive to

be as thorough as possible, as clear as possible, and as concise as possible.

The first question is about eye health, in particular eye health protocols for people

that are aging, but eye health protocols for people in general.

The question is, I'm noticing that my vision, both close and far, is deteriorating.

What are the best eye exercises, eye health behaviors, supplements, etc. for the aging

eye?

So the answer I'm about to provide applies to everybody regardless of age, which is,

you want to make sure that you view things both close up and far away across your day.

Many many people nowadays spend a lot of time looking at their smartphone, looking at the

computer screen, looking at books and paper, in other words, looking at things somewhere

between nine inches away from their face and their eyes, maybe two and a half feet away

from their face and eyes.

This is an unprecedented event in human history, as far as we know, because it wasn't until

the advent of the smartphone that we've spent so much time looking at screens at close range,

relative to looking at things at further distances from our face throughout the day.

In fact, it should come as no surprise that the incidence of myopia of nearsightedness

is increasing dramatically around the world, but is increasing particularly fast in children

and in young adults and even in adults who are viewing things at very close range.

So two and a half feet or less.

I am not saying that viewing things at two and a half feet or less is bad for your eyes.

That is simply not the case.

However, if you want your vision to be maintained or even improve, it's going to be very important

for you to view things at a distance as well for ideally several hours per day.

I realize some people just simply won't accomplish this.

In fact, I'd like everyone to just take a moment and do a rough estimation in your head

of how much time during your daytime activities you are viewing things at, say, two and a

half feet or three feet or less, so smartphone, computer screen, paper, books, etc., versus

viewing things that are four feet away, eight feet away.

So maybe conversation across the table with another human being.

Remember those?

Some of us are doing that more now that we seem to be emerging from this whole pandemic

phase.

However, many people are still mostly just viewing things within very close range.

And in fact, if you were to ask yourself, how much time do you spend looking at things

at the distance of many hundreds of feet or taking a walk where you're not looking at

any screen and you're simply letting visual images or the visual imagery rather pass by

on your eyes?

I think for most of us, that number is getting progressively smaller and smaller with each

passing year.

So this is an issue because the structure of the eye is such that the lens of the eye

can move, but also that the length of the eyeball from front to back is actually impacted

by how close or how far you happen to view things during the course of your day, especially

during development.

There's a classic experiment that I'd like to just briefly describe to you, which has

been performed in chickens, it's been performed in mice, it's also been performed on humans

where a visual occluder or a visual image, so an occluder is just a black sort of screen

or piece of cardboard or an image, maybe some black and white checks or checkers are placed

at a certain distance from the eye either up close or far away.

And the impact of that on the length of the eyeball and on the structure of the lens and

on the quality and acuity of vision is then measured.

And to make a long story short, what these studies show is that if during development

you or an animal exclusively looks at things that are up close, very close to the eye and

doesn't ever get long range vision, the eyeball lengthens and when that happens, the lens,

which of course is in the front of the eyeball, which focuses the light onto the back of the

eyeball, which is where the so-called neural retina is, where the cells that sense light

are, that visual image lands in front of as opposed to directly on the light sensing portion

of the eyeball that we call the neural retina.

It lands too close or near the lens as opposed to on the back of the eyeball.

And that's part of the reason what we call the consequence of that near-sighted myopia.

In far-sightedness, the opposite happens.

The visual image is actually focused behind the retina.

It doesn't land directly on the retina, which is what you want.

It's focused too far behind the retina and that's due to a shortening of the eyeball.

So what I just described actually explains pretty well why kids who look at computer

screens or books up close often need glasses.

And when I was growing up, they call this nerd syndrome, raising my hand for those of

you who are listening.

I read an awful lot, but I also spend time outside, fortunately, and running around on

the soccer field and looking at things in the distance and playing in the neighborhood

with my friends.

Kids that spend the vast amount of their time looking at things up close, in particular

children who do that indoors for most of their waking time, well, those kids develop myopia.

This is part of the reason why we have such an increase of the incidence of myopia nowadays.

What's interesting, and I think most people don't realize, is that even as a young adult

and adult, and perhaps even as an older adult, an elderly person, looking at things up close

too much at the expense of getting some time viewing things at a distance, in particular

outdoors, can be very problematic because it can exacerbate myopia.

So the short, direct prescription here is to make sure that you're getting at least

an hour or so each day, although ideally it would be more of long viewing.

And that could be done by walking outside and avoiding looking at your phone while walking.

It doesn't require that you look at a particular object in the distance, although if you are

scanning for and looking for objects in the distance, the way that you might on a hike

or you're looking out toward or off a vista or you're looking for someone in the distance,

all of that sort of visual scanning behavior is going to be very good for your eye health

and for maintaining vision at a distance.

If you're somebody who's farsighted and you have trouble seeing things up close, well

then you need to ask yourself whether or not you're spending too much time looking at things

off in the distance.

Although I want to be very clear that nearsightedness and farsightedness aren't necessarily the consequence

of this near far viewing, there can be independent causes of nearsightedness and farsightedness.

But for many people out there who are spending progressively more and more time just looking

at things up close, you can get this lengthening of the eyeball or challenges in the way that

the elasticity of the lens is controlled by the musculature in ways that make it hard

to maintain sharp, crisp vision when you are looking at things at a distance or up close.

So I can't because there are simply no studies to support the idea that you need exactly

two hours per day of outside long vision at a particular distance or that you want to

cut off or have a threshold of four hours per day of looking at things up close.

But we can say with a high degree of confidence that if you want to maintain or enhance your

vision at all distances, that for every hour or so that you spend looking at things, say

a distance of three feet away or less, you want to get at least one hour per day total.

It doesn't have to be all at once of looking at things out in the distance or looking at

things beyond three feet relative to the distance from your eye.

So I think for some people who are already badly myopic, this isn't going to remedy

that myopia.

You're still going to need corrective lenses.

But if you're somebody similar to the person who asked the question that they're, quote

unquote, noticing their vision is deteriorating, really try and balance out the amount of viewing

that you're doing at close distance and long distance.

Again, I would not obsess about the total numbers, it doesn't have to be three hours

and three hours, but the more time that you can spend at viewing things at variable distance

throughout the day, the better off you're going to be in maintaining and perhaps even

enhancing your vision somewhat.

Now there's an additional behavioral tool that we can glean from the recent scientific

literature exploring myopia, which points to the fact that children who get two hours

a day or more of time outside in sunlight, right?

One of my favorite topics.

I know how many people are probably rolling their eyes right now when they hear me say

you really want to do morning sunlight, not through a window or windshield, don't wear

sunglasses for that, trying to get as much sunlight as you can in your eyes early in

the day, never stare at any light so bright.

It's painful.

Look at it, etc.

We've done a lot of episodes on this.

We have a light for health episode.

This isn't all the sleep episodes.

It's just such a basic foundation of circadian rhythm and health that I just keep repeating

it.

However, there are also large scale clinical trials involving thousands of subjects.

They've shown that people, children in particular who get two hours or more of outside time

every day have a much lower instance of myopia.

Now what's really interesting about these studies is that while some of those kids are

looking at things further off in the distance than they would if they were indoors on their

tablets or screens or with their nose in a book, it does not seem to be the case that

they have to be looking at things in the distance in order to see this reduced incidence of

myopia.

What's probably happening instead is that the particular wavelengths of light that emanate

from the sun, that photon energy in particular is triggering the activation of the so-called

intrinsically sensitive melanopsin retinal ganglion cells, which we know are important

for setting circadian rhythm, for enhancing mood focus and alertness during the day and

enhancing the quality and duration of sleep at night.

But those melanopsin intrinsically photosensitive ganglion cells are also involved in networks

within the eye that relate to blood flow, that relate to the ciliary body, which is

a structure within the eye that controls the aperture and movement of some key components

within the eye that also relate to the crispness of vision, that is the acuity of vision at

both short and long range.

So there are a lot of technical details there.

In fact, I really hope to get the great Russ Van Gelder or Dr. Russ Van Gelder, who's the

chair of ophthalmology at the University of Washington in Seattle, who is a world expert

in this and the various aspects, both molecular and structural of the ciliary body and the

lens and is an expert in uveitis, a very interesting topic in its own right, to come onto the podcast

and talk more about eye health and we will do that in the not too distant future.

Meanwhile, if the first behavioral protocol for enhancing and maintaining eye health is

to make sure that you're spending at least some time balancing out the near vision and

far vision during the day, it also stands to reason that you want to get outside for

at least two hours a day, which I know sounds like a lot in order to prevent myopia.

If you're a young person and offset the progression of and maybe even reverse some myopia, we

don't know yet based on the data, but there's some indication that's possible by getting

outside two hours a day.

And the cool thing is because many people, including myself, have a lot of work to do

and we need to be on our phones quite a lot or we choose to be on our phones quite a lot.

This effect of getting sunlight outdoors during the daytime for two hours or more does not

seem to require that you stay off your phone or tablet or that you're looking at things

far in the distance the entire time.

What this means is if you can get outside onto a patio or a deck or an outdoor table,

if you can, if weather and conditions permit and do some of your phone time and computer

time and reading, et cetera, outdoors.

Now if you're already making an effort to get outside, hike, play sports, take walks,

et cetera, that of course counts towards this two hour threshold.

And I know this sounds like a lot, this two hours.

And yet for most people, you know, it certainly will vary depending on time of year, but I

think striving to get on average about two hours of outdoor time as much as you can or

opening a window, which wouldn't be as good as getting outside, but opening a window and

trying to get some natural light exposure to the eye to trigger the activity, these intrinsically

photosensitive melnobs and retinal ganglion cells, that's going to be a really good idea

in trying to offset and maybe even reverse some vision loss.

Now the other behavioral protocols which have shown to be useful in terms of maintaining

or improving vision relate to the musculature around the eye and the control of the movement

of the lens and actually the lens of the eye has its own kind of flexibility.

It's a really, really interesting structure.

I'll geek out on this far too long if I don't prevent myself from doing so, but the lens

is just incredible.

The fact that it has a specific structure of proteins like crystallines and things of

that sort and that it can still derive nourishment from blood flow, but does not actually have

vasculature within it.

So it's not, if you notice, I mean, the lens of your eyes and filled with blood vessels

and capillaries because it needs light to pass through, super interesting structure.

I think the only violation of what I just said is the manatee, right?

Those big sort of underwater elephant-like creatures that I think were or are endangered

down in Florida.

They were getting chopped up by speedboats, but I think now there's some effort to preserve

those big gentle giants.

The manatee, as I recall, has a vascularized lens, which is why their eyes look opaque.

It looks like they have cataracts in any case.

They're not a manatee.

You have no blood vessel supply to the lens, keeping that lens clear as vital nowadays

that they can do lens replacement.

There's really a pretty incredible progress in the realm of ophthalmology and surgical

replacement of the lens or the cornea, other aspects of the eye.

But if you're somebody who is interested in maintaining your vision, you're going to want

to maintain the musculature that controls the movement and the change of shape in that

lens and the movement of the eyes, which allows you to transition your vision from very sharp

when viewing things up close to very sharp when viewing things at a distance.

This is where some of the so-called near-far exercises can be very useful.

When we did a full-length podcast on eye health and improving eyesight, which I invite you

to listen to if you like, talked about two different types of vision exercises that have

been shown to be useful for improving vision at the level of acuity that have a lot to

do with improving the musculature and the movement of the eyes and the lens.

That's what's called a smooth pursuit task.

You could go onto YouTube if you like and put smooth pursuit eye task and do this for

a few minutes each day if you're trying to keep your vision strong.

What that task involves is, as the name suggests, smoothly tracking a small dot or crosshatch

or arrow on the screen, which is very different than the so-called saccade type eye movements

that we often make.

Saccades are when you dart your eyes to a particular location to look at something, then dart it

to another location to look at something.

Micro-saccades are little tiny versions of those that we're doing most all of the time,

believe it or not.

When you look at a visual scene or image, if you did not have those little micro-saccades,

your brain would adapt or would attenuate to whatever you were looking at and the visual

image would actually disappear, which really speaks to how important it is that your perceptions

change in order to maintain them.

This is very similar to where if something is placed on your hand, say a finger, you'll

notice that change.

But then if you leave it there for a short while, you'll forget that it's there because

the cells there have adapted out.

There's no change.

So your nervous system is largely responding to change.

This is also why when you walk into a room and you often notice a novel smell, let's

hope it's a good smell, after a few minutes or so, you don't notice the smell anymore

because your olfactory system adapted that away.

So a lot of that adaptation is prevented by those little micro-saccades and the macro-saccades,

the bigger saccades are really for moving your eyes around to look for things in visual

space.

Smooth pursuit is a very particular kind of visual behavior that you can do in a smooth

pursuit task.

Again, zero cost costs a little bit of time, I suppose, to do this on YouTube.

And most any of them will do.

We can provide a link in the show note captions of one that we like or several that we like.

But by doing that smooth pursuit task for a bit each day, maybe just a minute or two,

you're maintaining your ability through the musculature of the eye to do smooth pursuit.

And of course, you do smooth pursuit when you move about your day.

But for people that are trying to offset or reverse vision loss, doing some additional

deliberate smooth pursuit exercises can be useful.

The other visual exercise that can be very useful is the so-called near-far exercise.

So this is best accomplished, I think, by holding out a pen or pencil in front of your

eyes in front of your head and focusing very intensely through what's called a virgin's

eye movement where you bring both eyes to the tip of the pen and then moving that pen

closer and closer and closer to your eyes where you get close enough that you actually

have to deliberately bring your eyes.

For those of you listening, this is what I'm doing right now.

So the point where it's blurry and you can no longer hold it in sharp, crisp relief,

you can't see it sharply, that is, and then you can move it out a little bit distance

and kind of play right around that threshold where it's hard to keep it in focus now and

then move it back out again and then in.

Doing that for even a minute or two, you'll find is a bit of a strain on your eyes, but

you can actually build up the musculature and the neuromuscular connections that allow

you to do that more efficiently.

And that has been shown to improve certain aspects of vision, especially when people

are diligent about doing those exercises, not necessarily every day, but let's say three

days a week or so.

They can be very fast.

I actually find them kind of fun for reasons that escape me entirely.

Now, how close you can bring that object and still maintain it in sharp focus will vary

from person to person based on a number of things.

First of all, how healthy and well-performing their neural retina is, whether or not they

have myopia or hyperopia, nearsightedness, et cetera, whether or not, for instance, you're

like me and you have a fairly close interpupillary distance or whether or not you're more wall

eyed and you have your eyes further apart.

All those things will dictate the exact performance of that task, but nonetheless, it's a very

useful task to do when trying to maintain or improve vision.

Now, of course, there are a lot more behavioral tools that one could use to maintain or enhance

vision, really touching on the biggest and what I consider the most important ones that

are most accessible to people without the need for any fancy equipment at all.

And if you want to learn more about other behavioral tools that one can use to maintain

or enhance vision, please see the episode that we did on eyesight, you can simply go

to hubermanlab.com, put into the search function, eyesight or vision, it'll take you right to

it.

In fact, everything on that website is keyword indexed and will take you to the various episodes

and timestamps that you're interested in, according to that keyword.

Now the person who asked this question, by the way, is Page Singer.

Thank you, Page Singer.

And the question got a lot of upvotes because apparently there's a lot of interest in this,

understandably.

So asked about nutrition and supplements for maintaining or improving vision.

That could be a very lengthy conversation, but let's just summarize it with a few brief

points that we know stand based on the clinical and scientific research.

We've all heard that carrots are good for your eyes.

Well, it's not carrots per se that are good for your eyes.

It's vitamin A that's essential for the so-called phototransduction cascade.

The phototransduction cascade is the process by which the photoreceptors, which are in

the back of the retina, at least if you're a human, they're in the back of the retina,

take photons, light energy and convert it into electrical signals that's then conveyed

to the other cells and neurons within the retina and then passed into the brain to create

visual percepts.

Most people can get enough of this fat soluble vitamin, we call vitamin A, by making sure

that they eat at least some dark green leafy vegetables and that they do that in their

closest to raw form, maybe cooked a little bit, but not overly cooked.

There are other sources of vitamin A out there.

You can look those up online just for sources of vitamin A. Most people will be able to

get enough vitamin A from their nutrition and won't require it from a supplement, provided

that it's not present at excessively high levels in a foundational supplement or vitamin

mineral supplement.

Getting some additional vitamin A from a foundational supplement or vitamin mineral

supplement is probably not going to be an issue unless you really take in far too much

of that vitamin A and could potentially provide some insurance.

But again, I think most people can get enough vitamin A from their diet if they are taking

care to eat the foods that contain vitamin A. Green leafy vegetables being one.

The other food that's known to be highly enriched in vitamin A is liver, one of my

least favorite foods, regardless of what animal that liver comes from.

Liver is somewhat of a popular slash controversial organ meat in the nutrition space for reasons

that aren't interesting for sake of this discussion anyway.

I suppose for those of you that like liver, you could eat a little bit of liver every

once in a while.

It is rich in a number of things that are beneficial to health, although for you vegans

out there, I'm sure you'll want to avoid liver entirely.

I avoid liver because I just simply don't like the way it tastes.

I've maybe once or twice I've tasted liver that was appetizing to me and it can be okay,

but it's just not, or at least by my read it can be okay, but it's not a food that I

actively seek out, order or prepare for myself on a regular basis.

So fortunately there are other sources of vitamin A as well.

And again, I just invite you to all put into a web search, you know, food sources of vitamin

A and figure out how to get your daily dose of vitamin A by taking in foods that you like

for you.

And then in terms of supplementation of things that can enhance vision, this is a newer area

and frankly it's an area where most of the data point to some supplements that can potentially

be beneficial in certain disease conditions.

So for instance, in fairly progressed age-related macular degeneration, age-related macular

degeneration is fairly common or more common than we would like, we should say.

And it does appear that supplementing with certain things like lutein, which is present

in eggs or egg yolks in particular, especially egg yolks that aren't overly cooked or that

can be supplemented can potentially help with some instances of age-related macular degeneration.

But the data on this are still emerging.

I consulted with our chair of ophthalmology at Stanford about lutein and some of the other

things that you'll see out there like zeaxanthine and astaxanthines and, you know, these xanthines

come from certain fruits like blueberries and they're present in supplements and things

of that sort.

The consensus I got talking to him and talking to some other ophthalmologists are that if

you're really aiming to get a healthy diet, you're avoiding cigarette smoking and by

healthy diet, I mean getting sufficient amounts of vitamin A and lutein through food sources.

Again, you can look up where those food sources are.

Egg yolks just being one of them.

Well then chances are you're not going to need to supplement with lutein or the zeaxanthines

or the astaxanthines.

However, I have heard anecdotal reports from a number of people that they'll start taking

a supplement for eye health.

There are a number of them out there.

We are not as a podcast affiliate with any of those eye health supplements, by the way.

And people are reporting enhanced vision.

You know, I receive emails all the time that say, you know, I'm taking this, you know, lutein

at 20 milligrams per day.

And there I should mention that the dosage that's been explored in a couple of studies

is 10 to 20 milligrams per day.

Again, you could get that from foods.

You could go above that if you're, you know, more cavalier or you could go toward the lower

end of that 10 to 20 milligrams per day.

If you are somebody who tries to, who's more conservative, I should say.

Well, there aren't people out there who are, you know, looking at lutein, they think it's

fairly safe and they're taking higher dosages of lutein, so 20, 30 milligrams per day.

They're also taking supplements that contain zeaxanthines and astaxanthines and are reporting

anecdotally that their vision is enhanced.

I don't dispute those claims, but as of now, there aren't many papers.

I could only find about four, three really solid ones.

And then a fourth that point to the specific disease instances where supplementing with

lutein, zeaxanthine or astaxanthine can be beneficial for slowing the progression of

things like advanced onset age related macular degeneration.

And the degree of offset for that macular degeneration was slight.

It wasn't enormous, but it was robust enough that it was, it warranted reporting in the

paper or things like leavers, which is a particular eye disease that impacts a whole different

set of systems in the eye.

So basically what I'm trying to say is when it comes to supplements to support eye health,

make sure you're getting enough vitamin A from your diet.

If you're not, consider supplementation or consider changing your diet somewhat to make

sure you can get that lutein and vitamin A. And if you are interested in it and it's

within your budget, I don't know of any evidence that supplementing with additional lutein,

zeaxanthine and astaxanthine can be dangerous at all.

So for those of you that are really interested in maintaining or improving your vision, that

might be an area that you want to explore.

I personally am not taking lutein, zeaxanthine or astaxanthine, at least not at this time.

I do take a foundational supplement, which is my source of vitamin A in addition to my

food sources, but I don't suffer from vision loss anywhere at readers at night and I have

for a long time.

I have a little bit of a muscular weakness in one of my eyes that originated in childhood.

So occasionally if I get very fatigued, one of my eyes will deviate a little bit, a little

bit of almost strabismus, especially if I've been awake for very long periods of time.

It tends to recover once I get a good night's sleep.

Some of you that have experienced this where you have one eye that might just drift a little

bit.

I could do this for the camera if you want.

Okay, this is weird.

My sister across the table when we were at a friend's houses for dinner, so I can actually

move one of my eyes in like this, which actually just reflects that there's a muscle, extraocular

muscle closer to my nose.

It's rather weak, which allows me to kind of do that.

I can't do it so well with the opposite eye.

Anyway, now I need to blink to kind of clear my vision.

But the point is that if you're somebody who has a slightly deviating eye, slightly, often

if you go to the ophthalmologist or optometrist, they're going to give you a prism lens, which

is going to redirect the image onto that slightly deflected eyeball.

One thing you'll really want to discuss with that ophthalmologist or optometrist is whether

or not there are exercises that you could do to overcome that issue without the need

for a prism.

Because what I saw and what many other people see when they put on a prism lens is that

indeed it can line up their vision or their visual perception better, but indeed it can

lead to progressive weakening of the muscle further and further so then that eyeball starts

to deviate further and further.

And that raises a larger question, which is, should we wear corrective lenses?

In fact, if you go online, you'll find or hear about these examples of people that stopped

wearing their corrective lenses, their glasses or contacts, in order to bring their vision

back or improve their vision on their own.

Now if your vision is quite impaired, you're going to need corrective lenses or contacts.

However, there are a number of people out there who find that if their vision is somewhat

impaired, that forcing themselves to view things at a distance to do smooth pursuit,

to do near far and to make sure that they're getting adequate nutrition and things of that

sort can all some to help offset some of the visual impairment that would occur if they

were to just pop glasses on their face and rely on the corrective lenses in order to

focus that the light onto the correct area within the eye onto the neural retina.

So I'm not telling people to throw off or get rid of their corrective lenses and contacts,

but you can be overly reliant on these things like a crutch in a way that perhaps you want

to do a little bit of work to try and overcome and then maybe work with a weaker prescription.

And certainly in the case of prism lenses, what I mentioned before is a real consideration.

It's one I'm very familiar with.

So as a last, but I think very important and exciting feature of visual improvement is

red light.

I talked a little bit about this on the episode of the human lab podcast all about light and

health.

There's some really spectacular, I think I consider it spectacular.

Many other people consider it spectacular research out of University of College London.

And the work I'm referring to is Glenn Jeffrey's work.

I've known Glenn for a long time.

These are animal studies and now two human studies exploring how exposure to red light

early in the day can offset some of the vision loss related to age related macular degeneration

or simply age related visual decline.

And there's a whole mechanism here that's discussed in that episode, but it has to do

with the fact that red light and urine for red light together or maybe even separately

when viewed for even just a minute to three minutes once or maybe two or three times per

week maximum can actually reduce the number of what are called reactive oxygen species

in the photoreceptors that convert photons into electrical signals.

The rest of the visual system can understand.

So that's a mouthful.

Basically what they found was for people 40 years or older, if they viewed this red light

at a distance of about a foot and a half, although I wouldn't get too specific with

us for a few minutes each week total, they were able to offset some of the vision loss

within a particular domain of vision.

And I don't have time to go into the details here, but because I do that in the light for

health episode, but you have different types of photoreceptors, cones and rods.

You have different types of cone photoreceptors that spawn to different wavelengths of light

short, medium and long wavelengths of light, so called blue, green and red cones are sometimes

called when these people who are 40 years or older viewed red light on a consistent basis

early in the day.

And it did have to be early in the day.

There was a real circadian effect there.

There was a offset of some of the vision loss that would normally occur in a particular

wavelength of light range that resulted in better visual acuity overall.

So if you're very concerned about your vision or you're into red light therapies, et cetera,

there are a number of different red light devices out there at some future point.

The Huber and Lab podcast may partner with one of these red light companies.

So right now I'm not going to mention any of them, particularly they're prominent online.

What you're looking for is a red light unit that provides red light and maybe far and

near infrared, excuse me, light as well.

So something in the 650 to 720 ish nanometer range.

So it's going to look red or almost invisible to you if it's really far into the infrared.

And you'll want to view that at a distance about a foot and a half to two feet, and you

don't want it to be so bright that it's painful to look at, because you don't want to damage

your eyes.

But that's essentially what they used in these studies from the Jeffrey Lab.

And they showed some pretty impressive offset of some of the aspects of vision loss in these

people 40 and older.

So that's an area that you may want to explore as well, especially for folks 40 and older.

And again, this red light exposure had to be done early in the day.

So hopefully that collection of behavioral tools near far, smooth pursuit, some of the

discussion about lutein, nutrition, vitamin A supplementation, Zazanthine, Zazanthine's,

getting two hours of light exposure outside sunlight exposure, get outside to do some

of your work, and perhaps even deliberate red light exposure for certain people can be

used to offset your concerns and your actual potential vision loss and maybe even improve

your vision regardless of what age you are.

Everything I described is supported from the peer review literature.

And again, if you want to get the deep dive on mechanism and further information about

dosages, please check out the episode on eyesight and improving your eyesight and the light

for health episode again at hubermanlab.com.

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Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.