ATHE_Transcript_Ep 613_Dr. Rani Banik
JJ Virgin: [00:00:00] I'm JJ Virgin, PhD dropout, sorry mom, turned four time New York Times best selling author. Yes, I'm a certified nutrition specialist, fitness hall of famer, and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe, but I'm driven by my insatiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking questions, digging for answers, and sharing the information I uncover with as many people as I can, and that's why I created the Well Beyond 40 to synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive.
In each episode, we'll talk about what's working in the world of wellness, from personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism, to healthy aging and prescriptive fitness. Join me on the journey to better health so you can love how you look and feel right now and have the energy to play full out.
I've just finished recording this podcast, [00:01:00] and I literally can tell you that my mind has been blown. And I can't think of a time I've ever said that. I just interviewed Dr. Rani Banik, longtime friend, she's America's integrative eye doctor. She's a double board certified neuro ophthalmologist and functional medicine practitioner.
And what she shared with me are things that I never was aware of about when you need to have an eye exam, what type of eye exam you need to have, why these are so critical to do early, how they can help you identify and prevent different things like macular degeneration, cataracts, glaucoma, what types of things you can see in an eye exam, like different autoimmune diseases.
And MS and neurodegeneration, diabetes, just incredible information. Plus we might've jumped over and talked about cosmetic surgery and LASIK and makeup and all of these things as well. We're also going to dig into a little bit of diet and talk about her [00:02:00] new book, Beyond Carrots, best foods for eye health, A to Z.
And some supplements can make a big difference as well. She's a Castle Connolly top doctor, New York Magazine's best doctor. And she has been interviewed on Good Morning America, CBS, NBC, ABC, The New York Times, and a bunch more. And now on the Well Beyond 40 podcast, you are going to love this podcast. And you're also going to want to take her IQ test.
And you can do that at jjvirgin.com/EYEQ, get it? And I will be right back with Dr. Rani Banik. Stay with me.
Dr. Rani, welcome to the show.
Dr. Rani Banik: Thanks so much, JJ. I'm so excited to be here.
JJ Virgin: You know, what's crazy is somehow we have never talked about eye health. I just don't get it. And I especially don't get it because selfishly, you know, and I was telling you offline, like I had to wear glasses from like early age, [00:03:00] all the way up.
And they told me when I went through like my hormonal stuff, when I turned like 13 or 14, it would all be fine and go away. And it never went away till I had babies. Then it was perfect. And then like for a brief 15 years, I had fabulous, you know, eyesight and then BOOF was gone again. So it's been a thing.
Cause I've heard all sorts of things about why this is and what we can do to change it. So I'd love to dive in, you know, this is well beyond 40. What are the things that happen, you know, what happened with me? I'm surmising that some hormonal shifts happen, but you know, what are the things that start to happen as women start to.
Age beyond 40.
Dr. Rani Banik: Well, first of all, vision is such a dynamic sense. It's changing all the time. And when kids are young, their eyes are growing. So it could be that back then when you were young, your eyes were not yet optimized for distance vision. And so that's why you needed the glasses. You mentioned that your eyes were crossed, but then you kind of outgrew that as your eyes grew to a [00:04:00] certain, their adult size, basically.
But then after a certain age, especially after 40, other things start to happen. And they're also what we call natural changes in the eye. It's not that you're doing anything to trigger it or it's your environment. It's your diet necessarily. There are some things that happen just like many of us have skin changes around our eyes as we get older.
Our eyes change also as we get older. So one thing that happens to most people once they reach their mid 40s, early 50s is trouble reading. And almost everyone goes through this. I mean, I've gone through it. You mentioned that you've gone through it. I would say 95 percent of my patients go through it.
You know, you feel like you have to hold things further away and your arms just aren't long enough. So that's called presbyopia. And that happens because the lens inside the eye, normally it changes shape, it's dynamic, but as we get older, it becomes more stiff, and when it becomes more stiff, we have a hard time refocusing when we're looking from distance, to intermediate, to up close.
That's what's happening. Probably one of the most Annoying things that [00:05:00] people have to go through because they're trying to read a menu in a restaurant. They can't read it anymore. They're trying to read their bottles. They can't read the small font, but there are lots of, we were talking about this earlier, but there are lots of options that people can explore to help manage it.
Reading glasses are probably the simplest thing. You can just go get some over the counter reading glasses, try some different ones on, hold something, you know, small font that you're going to be reading and see what fits best for you. Otherwise, you can do multifocal contacts just on your phone, on your devices to help you read better.
And then, of course, there are drops that can be used to help you see better for reading.
JJ Virgin: Yeah, and those drops that you can use, and we were talking a little bit about this, I'd love to put this on the podcast as well. The name of it is, are there more than that, just one brand name?
Dr. Rani Banik: Right now there's only one that's FDA approved and it's called Vuity.
I have no financial interest in it, but I think there are going to be others on the market soon, but that was the first one to come to market. So you probably have seen ads for it on TV. Any [00:06:00] side effects?
JJ Virgin: So, I tried it. And it was super cool because I could go to the gym and actually see my podcasts and read things, which was great, but it also made me feel weird.
What was happening?
Dr. Rani Banik: Yeah. So the active ingredient, what it does is it constricts your pupil. So it actually stimulates the parasympathetic system. It constricts your pupil, but it can also get absorbed into your body. So it can kind of stimulate the parasympathetic system in your body. So that may be why you felt a little bit off.
The way we were talking about this earlier, the way you can prevent it from getting absorbed into your body is just to do a simple thing. Once you put the drop in, hold your fingers right here by the middle corner of your eyes, and that'll prevent it from getting absorbed into your body. So simple, simple hack there.
And then in terms of side effects, most people do fine with it, you know, on an as needed basis, I would not recommend using the drops every day. That's not really what it's meant for. It's meant for, you know, specific things. Like if you need to go to an event, you need to see something up close. [00:07:00] You could use it for that.
There are some more serious side effects that can happen. Like for example, rarely the drops can lead to something like retinal detachment. And that's something you definitely don't want to have. So just be aware. Talk to your eye doctor about whether it's right for you or not. And don't use it every day.
Those are my tips for the drops.
JJ Virgin: So beyond just finding that you need longer and longer arms to read as you age, what about like, are there any other things? That can happen as we age, and especially things that could be warning signs of, say, macular degeneration or cataracts or something like that.
Dr. Rani Banik: Well, first start with something that's really common, but not that serious, which is dry eye.
And most of us, especially women, after the age of 40, sometimes feel like our eyes are dry, and then that sensation may actually worsen over time. And the reason is because The tears on the surface of her eye, they just tend to evaporate. And in many cases, it's hormonally related, especially during perimenopause, menopause, [00:08:00] our hormones are changing.
And it's interesting, it's not just levels of estrogen and progesterone that go down, it's also testosterone. So we also have testosterone, estrogen, progesterone receptors on the glands inside our eyelids that produce tears. And because of those changing hormone levels, our tears just aren't as healthy as they should be.
And then they evaporate, people have dry eyes. So, That's a common cause of dry eye. Also, people are on screens all the time. You know, most of us are glued to our screens 8, 10, 12 hours or more a day. So that can also lead to dry eye because. When we're looking at a screen, for example, we blink much less.
Like normally we blink about 15 or 20 times a minute. When we're looking at a screen, we're only blinking about four or five times a minute. So when we're not blinking enough, our eyes are going to dry out. So think about all of that. Could it be hormonally related? Could it be, you know, just being on a screen all day long?
Could it be, you know, if you're driving and you have the car vents and they're blowing forced air right at your eyes, that's going to dry your eyes out too. So maybe you have dry eye [00:09:00] when you're driving. So think about all those things. And think about maybe how you can optimize them or talk to your eye doctor about what else you can do.
In my practice, I start people off on different tiers of therapy for dry eyes, so like Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3. Tier 1 is the simplest thing you can do, which is just to get like over the counter artificial teardrops. Tier two, sometimes I do some more aggressive therapies like prescription drops and then tier three, I actually go to compounded drops.
I actually do like compounded hormone drops for my patients like estrogen, progesterone, testosterone. But it's again, something you really should talk to your doctor about.
JJ Virgin: If you were doing hormone replacement therapy, would that help your eyes or is it better to do this piece where it's really, you know, you put it straight into your eyes and if you put it in your eyes, I'm assuming it's also going to be systemic.
So,
Dr. Rani Banik: it's interesting, you would think that if somebody is on hormone replacement therapy and they need to replace that estrogen, progesterone, testosterone for their eyes, that it would take care of it, but the studies have [00:10:00] not shown that, and we don't really understand why. Now, that was with traditional hormone replacement therapy, now with bio identical hormone replacement therapy, we don't know, the study just hasn't been done.
But in my experience, I've seen plenty of women who are on HRT or… BHRT, and they're not getting better with their dry eyes. That's why I started doing the topical, you know, the drop form just to get it directly to the target. And it tends to do much better. People tend to do much, much better with that.
JJ Virgin: That is amazing. How often do you have to use it?
Dr. Rani Banik: Two or three times a day. Wow. Regular drops. You know, if you buy like, you know, over the counter drops, you're going to be using them two, three times a day, same thing.
JJ Virgin: Now, I know that a couple years back, it was interesting. I started to notice that my eyes would hurt and I thought it was dry eye, but that didn't take care of it.
I thought I had a stye. I went to the doctor and I had some kind of weird little things that I had to use an antihistamine drop on. That's something that's a common thing that people [00:11:00] get, and I don't remember what the thing was. I just remember that it was enormously expensive drops that I have to put in my eyes when it shows up.
Dr. Rani Banik: So, it sounds like what you had were some allergies. And a lot of people suffer from eye allergies. Sometimes it's, you know, during certain seasons like the spring or the fall, even the summer, less so in the winter, but eye allergies can make your eyes feel really uncomfortable. It can feel like there's something in there.
They can be itchy, they could have crusting in the morning, they can be very red. And sometimes when we look in the inside of the eye, when we do an eye exam, we can see like little bumps on the inside of the eyelids and that's. A reaction to something allergic. And so there are lots of over the counter drops you can use for eye allergies.
And then there are some kind of heavy duty prescription drops. And it sounds like that's probably what you had was maybe some kind of a mild steroid drop or something for the allergy, but it's super, super common. Even kids get it too. Some kids, you know, they have such severe. Seasonal allergies and their eyes just get really red and [00:12:00] puffy and they're rubbing their eyes.
So one thing with eye allergies, if you feel like you have eye allergies, do not rub your eyes. It's probably the hardest
JJ Virgin: thing ever.
Dr. Rani Banik: I know. You want to tie your hands behind your back. Please don't. Instead, do some cool compresses. You know, there are other things you can do, but please do. Cause that's just going to exacerbate things.
Like when you rub, you're causing friction and those little bumps are kind of like scraping against the surface of your eye, it's going to make things worse. So please don't do that. I know it's, it's tempting.
JJ Virgin: Just rubbing your eyes in general feels so good. It does. I know it's bursting and I know we're going to talk about like cosmetic surgery and makeup and all that.
Before we do, you mentioned screens. Being on your screen for hours every day can be problematic. Are there things that you can do like changing the screen settings or blue blockers or anything like that? Will that make
Dr. Rani Banik: a difference? Yeah, so what you're describing is something that we call digital eye strain, where people are on screens, they get dry eyes, they have trouble focusing, they sometimes even [00:13:00] have light sensitivity, they may develop headaches or neck strain.
So that's all this umbrella syndrome of eye strain. Now what can you do? Well, I would say number one is to take frequent breaks. That's what we typically recommend. So if you can, like set your timer every 30 minutes, just close your eyes, maybe do some meditative breathing during those, like 20 seconds of just closing your eyes.
Relieving your eyes of that constant eye strain. The other thing you can do is a lot of people turn to blue blockers, but there was really an interesting study that was just published of over 600 patients that show that blue blockers don't really work, not really proven to work. And probably it's because most blue blockers, if you look at them, They have a light tint or no tint at all.
They look, some of them look clear. Some of them have like a light yellow tint and that's only blocking about 20 to 30 percent of the blue light. So that's probably why most studies using blue blockers don't work because you're not really blocking all the blue light. So if you're going to do blue blockers, get a deeper tint.
And I love, you know, like a deep orange or amber or red [00:14:00] tint. And you'll see the difference immediately. Like when you look at your screen, you almost feel like immediately, like there's this Relaxation that happens. And another tip about BlueBlockers, how do you know if your BlueBlocker is really working for you?
Well, you put them on, you look at your screen, And if you can still see the color blue on your screen, you know that it's not blocking most of the blue light. But if you put on one of those deeper tinted blue blockers, you'll hardly be able to see any blue at all. So that's a good indication if your blue blocker is giving you enough blue blocking filtering ability.
Other things you can do. So this is where nutrition comes in and this is really fascinating. So our eyes have a natural ability to block and filter blue light. Just like they can also block and filter UV light. There are nutrients that get deposited in the back of the eye, in the retina, that can absorb blue light and filter it and basically neutralize it.
So what are these nutrients? Lutein and zeaxanthin. Now, many people probably have never heard of them. They're called the macular carotenoids, but they're [00:15:00] so important for eye health. So if you want to enhance your eyes natural ability to block blue light when you're on the screen, have foods that are rich in lutein, zeaxanthin.
And the other benefit is that not only do they help your eyes, they also help your brain health. So there's lots of studies that show that. Lutein and zeaxanthin are great for cognitive health. They slow down cognitive decline, brain fog, memory loss, et cetera. So two benefits from these two nutrients.
Okay,
JJ Virgin: cool. So I have Beyond Carrots, which is such a cute name for a book, by the way. The best foods for eye health, like so cute. In here, I know that you have a lot on nutrition. Which are the top foods for lutein and zeaxanthin?
Dr. Rani Banik: Oh, there are so many. So I will start with leafy greens. Leafy greens have probably the highest concentration of lutein and zeaxanthin and I would say if you're going to choose amongst the leafy greens, the ones you want to pick are kale, spinach, collard greens, Swiss chard.
Those are probably my top choices. Let's say you don't eat leafy greens. Let's say you [00:16:00] can't tolerate them. Maybe you're sensitive to oxalates. There are lots of other foods that can provide you with these. These nutrients. So you can look for anything yellow and orange. So for example, I love orange bell peppers.
They're probably the highest concentration of lutein and zeaxanthin aside from leafy greens. Yellow bell peppers. I know, JJ, you're not a big fan of corn, but corn is a great source as well. And also spices. So people don't realize that some of those brightly colored orange and yellow spices are actually that color because of lutein and zeaxanthin.
So things like paprika, cayenne pepper, saffron, these are great spices to add to your diet also to get these nutrients.
JJ Virgin: Oh, here's the thing. If it was organic, corn, fresh, right? That's one thing, but that's not how people are eating corn. It's like the old processed food, right? So that's it. And I'm glad you brought up the oxalate issue that like, there's so much, so [00:17:00] much now.
I feel like we're getting really food phobic. Instead of understanding that we have to see which foods work for us. And if they don't, why don't they? And let's heal our gut. Like when I wrote The Virgin Diet, it wasn't drop seven foods forever. When people see me 10 years later, they go, I'm on The Virgin Diet.
I go, that was actually a process to take you through an elimination and swapping and healing process. So you can figure out which foods work for you and which foods don't. And if they don't. How to heal your gut. So at some point they might, with the exception of gluten, I don't feel like it's a really great thing, unless you're lucky enough to live in Italy.
Dr. Rani Banik: Yeah. Yeah. Some people are sensitive to oxalate, so they can't have the leafy greens. Other people are sensitive to nightshades. And so they can't have peppers or any kind of spices that are coming from peppers. So you just have to figure out what your body can tolerate. And I agree with you a hundred percent.
It's not forever. You eliminate them for some time and then you reintroduce and you see how your body reacts and listen, listen to your body and figure out what you can take and what [00:18:00] you can't take.
JJ Virgin: Yep. Just the voice of reason, but it is, it has been driving me nuts lately because I feel like we're just making people scared of everything.
Yeah. We'll be monofood diets. It's like, this is not how, not how we have been on the planet for all these years. So back over, you were talking blue blocker glasses. Let's talk glasses, glasses, because as people age, I mean, how likely is it that they need to wear glasses? I've heard from several different people that they can train you so that you don't need glasses.
Is that true? It always looks like a lot of
Dr. Rani Banik: work. Not everyone needs glasses. It just depends on the power of your eyes. Like, what is your baseline power? And sometimes people are given glasses when they don't necessarily need them or they're given a prescription that's too strong for their baseline power.
So I'm going to give you a tip here. And this is something that you're going to have to ask your eye doctor the next time you go to see your eye doctor for a pair of a prescription. is ask for a cycloplegic refraction. Now, it sounds like a fancy [00:19:00] term, but basically what they do is they put certain drops in your eyes.
They use those drops to dilate your eyes, but they should check your glasses prescription after you get the drops put in because that will give you your baseline prescription. You can't try to focus through it. You can't really try hard and strain your eyes and see through that because your eyes are basically dilated and paralyzed.
So that's the best time to check a prescription. And oftentimes, like I'll give you my own story. When I was younger. My late teens, early twenties, I became myopic, meaning I couldn't see far away. So I needed to get glasses and contacts. And my prescription back then was a minus five and a minus three. And for years I was wearing a minus five and a minus three.
And it wasn't until I got to my forties and I was like, I can't read anymore. And I needed to get reading glasses that I had that cycle prejuper fraction done. And this is, I'm embarrassed to say this as an eye doctor. I didn't get a proper cycloplegic refraction until I was in my forties, but when I got that cycloplegic refraction, what happened [00:20:00] was my prescription, my true prescription was not a minus five, it was a minus 3.
5. And my other eye was not a minus three, it was a minus 1. 5. So I was over, what we call over minused for years. And so it is possible to decrease your prescription, but you need to ask for that type of refraction. What
JJ Virgin: happens if you're over minused?
Dr. Rani Banik: You can't see properly. So this is a reason why many people, especially after 40, have such trouble.
You know, they may be corrected for distance, but all of a sudden they can't see their computer well, or they can't read. It's usually because they're over minused. And if you just back off on that minus prescription, like what happened to me? You can function better. So right now I'm actually using, I wear contacts and I wear multifocal contacts and I'm using an even lesser prescription than that because that allows me to see distance and it allows me to read and I'm very comfortable.
So you just have to play around with the prescription. And I always say, choose the lowest prescription you need. [00:21:00] Don't go for the highest one or don't even go for like in between. Just try to lower it down as much as
JJ Virgin: possible. Why on earth would that just be the standard way that an eye exam is done?
Dr. Rani Banik: Why is it not?
JJ Virgin: Or why isn't that just the way it's done?
Dr. Rani Banik: Cause it takes time and some people, they don't want to get their eyes dilated, but there are lots of great reasons to get your eyes dilated. So especially adults, we should be getting our eyes dilated every one to two years. But when people are younger, why should we do that?
So many reasons. I don't want to take you down a rabbit hole.
JJ Virgin: You can't just throw that out there, that statement. I'm like, what is that statement? I don't even get it.
Dr. Rani Banik: So there are things that can happen in the back of the eye that you may not know is going on. A lot of these conditions are asymptomatic.
Like for example, macular degeneration. Many people have probably heard the term, they've probably seen macular degeneration, but. People may not know that they have it unless they get to a very advanced stage where they've actually [00:22:00] lost vision. And it's really the earlier stages, the asymptomatic stages, that we can do something about.
We can prevent it from getting worse. And the only way to know if you have it is to get a dilated eye exam. Glaucoma is the same way. A lot of people have glaucoma. They have no idea that they have glaucoma because they haven't had a dilated eye exam. Cataracts too. So people can have cataracts. They may not have symptoms in the early stages.
So That's why we recommend getting your eyes dilated. I know it's not fun. It's an inconvenience for a couple of hours, but if you think about your eyes like long term, it's worth it. It's so worth it to be blurry for a couple of hours to be able to diagnose these things early because when it comes to eye health, prevention is key.
You want to prevent it from happening. Don't wait until it happens because once it happens, you cannot reverse a disease. You want to prevent them from happening.
JJ Virgin: Okay, this is so huge because I'm thinking about this going, okay, we're told to get a colonoscopy, a mammogram, all these other things. But never once have I been told to [00:23:00] go get a checkup to check if I've got any kind of early onset of glaucoma.
Never. I've never heard this.
Dr. Rani Banik: Can I talk to your doctor?
JJ Virgin: Unless they can't see. Like if their vision changes, they'd never go and get an eye exam,
Dr. Rani Banik: right? It's a major issue because it's not, we don't have an awareness about our eyes. Like we were talking when, and when we started our conversation, you said, you know, a lot of people just.
Don't really think about it until there's a problem. You know, if you think about our senses, the five senses, vision, most people would say is the most precious of them all. It's the most important of them all. Yet we just kind of assume we're going to be able to see okay. The truth is a lot of these conditions that can happen are completely silent until they get to be an advanced age.
And you need to get, just like you go, so you were saying you go see the dentist twice a year. You get your eye exam once a year after age 40. I've never heard this before. There should be a major public service campaign. Oh my gosh. And I'll tell you another thing, JJ. So, when people come see [00:24:00] me, they get their eye exam, I've been able to diagnose so many other health conditions just from their eyes.
Like, I can't tell you. The number of people I've diagnosed with high blood pressure, with diabetes, with high cholesterol, heart issues, just from their eye exam, because it shows up in the eyes, our eyes are connected to the rest of their body. They're not just on their own and they reflect what's going on in the body.
So go see your eye doctor because you could be. Shocked at what they could help you to uncover.
JJ Virgin: I'm thinking about the eye doctor I go, and I've gone to a lot of different eye doctors, so it's not like I've had the same eye doctor forever. No, I've had multiple different eye doctors cause I've moved around the country. And no one's ever said this or said, I need an annual exam. It's usually just, Oh, you need, you want a new pair of glasses.
You have to get your prescription updated. And I don't believe, how would I know if they've actually done an exam to evaluate for any of these things?
Dr. Rani Banik: Yeah. [00:25:00] So usually not only do you get your glasses checked, but they put you in a couple of machines and you put your chin in the rest and they look at your eyes with a light.
So that's telling, you know, they're checking the front of the eye, they do a glaucoma test, and then the key is they do that, the drops. And unless you're getting the drops, you're not getting the complete eye exam. So please, if you haven't booked it already, get your eye checkups done. Okay.
JJ Virgin: And so for everybody listening, this is like, this is so huge and I cannot believe being in the field, this is the first time I've heard this.
I don't know if my head was under a rock. However,
Dr. Rani Banik: I think a lot of people just don't, they don't know.
JJ Virgin: And what would you ask your doctor? Like you're calling up the doctor, the eye doctor. What are you asking them for? Just an annual, like, cause we know about a physical
Dr. Rani Banik: checkup. Annual dilated exam. I need my annual dilated exam.
And again, people don't like the drops, but they can be lifesavers. I tell you like so many patients I've diagnosed with heart disease, with tumors. I mean, I don't want to scare anybody, but [00:26:00] the eye is not just a window to our soul. It's a window to our health. That's the bottom line. And. I think I counted once, I think you can pick up over 200 medical conditions from an eye exam.
From lupus to thyroid problems, Hashimoto's, autoimmune diseases, like blood clotting disorders. So many things we can pick up from a simple eye exam.
JJ Virgin: Well, you can, but would most doctors, are they trained to be able to do this?
Dr. Rani Banik: So there's two kinds of eye care providers. There's ophthalmologists who are MDs and there are optometrists who are ODs.
Both of them can do this type of eye exam. Absolutely. So it doesn't matter who you see, get your dilated exam.
JJ Virgin: Okay. And they can see all this other stuff and they would bring it up.
Dr. Rani Banik: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They should be able to. Holy smokes.
JJ Virgin: Okay. This is amazing. I'm on it. Next thing then, the last time I went to the doctor, I actually went in cause I wanted to see if I could get LASIKs.
Would love your opinion on, which I'm not a candidate for, but I would love your opinion [00:27:00] on LASIKs. Is this something that someone who's eyesight shifted should look at? Is it a yay? Is it a nay? What's your opinion?
Dr. Rani Banik: First of all, LASIK has been around a while. It's relatively safe. Hundreds of millions of people have probably had it and they're very happy with their eyesight.
But what I'll tell you is that it's not for everyone. So it depends on whether you're a candidate or not depends on a few things. If you have severe dry eye, I would not recommend it because it's gonna make things much, much worse. If your corneas are thin, they're gonna measure the thickness of your cornea.
You may not be a candidate if you have cataracts or if you have early cataracts, it's probably not a good idea to get LASIK because eventually you're gonna need cataract surgery anyway. So there's a couple of different things like a checklist your doctor's gonna go through with you to see if you're a good candidate.
But another thing I'll tell you, and I have this conversation at dinner parties, cocktail parties all the time. People ask me like, okay, so you're an eye doctor, have you had LASIK? And I say, no. And they ask, okay, so why is it that you haven't had it? And what I tell them is this. [00:28:00] If you go to any ophthalmology conference and there's, you know, 000 ophthalmologists from around the world at the contest, you look around in the room, almost everyone is wearing glasses or contacts.
And you have to ask yourself, why is it that the doctors who do the procedure don't get it done on themselves? And it's a very simple explanation, because we know what can happen. We know about the risks, the complications, and we're not willing to take that risk. So, it is very, very low. Let's say it's 1 out of 5, 000 where something's gonna go wrong.
And you may not have great vision or you may have an eye infection or something like that. So it could really affect you long term. So it's an elective procedure. Again, most people do great. Most people have an excellent outcome, like excellent vision, 20 20 or better. But if you're that one in 5, 000 person, it's 100 percent to you.
And so as eye doctors, we know what the risks are and we're not willing to go through and basically make our eyes vulnerable to that risk. So that's what I tell people. And then people kind of pause and they say, okay, in that [00:29:00] case. Maybe I'm not going to do it, but you know, I just try to give them a balanced perspective of it's a great procedure yet when you're going into it, be aware of what the potential risk can be.
I
JJ Virgin: think that pretty much says everything though. If the eye doctors aren't doing it, hello, tells me what I need to know. Let's talk other cosmetic surgery. And you know, what you see there with everything from, I guess it would be like bless and that type of
Dr. Rani Banik: stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So as we get older, the skin around our eyes, it's really, really thin.
We can start to see, you know, sags and bags and wrinkles. And sometimes, you know, especially with the upper lid, if it gets really heavy, it can come over and block our vision, almost like a curtain over our vision. So that is correctable with surgery and it's called a blepharoplasty. Most people get their upper lids done, some people will get their lower lids done, like if they have puffiness down here, it's basically puffiness due to, we have fat pads around our eye socket, so those fat [00:30:00] pads are pooching forward, and so the surgery removes the fat pads, and it kind of makes it smoother.
So, these are common procedures. Go to somebody who really understands the anatomy and that's what I would say number one. So there are lots of people, different types of doctors who do the surgery. You can go to see like a plastic surgeon, but I would recommend somebody who specializes in oculoplastics, meaning that they're trained in ophthalmology and they've done a fellowship in the eyelids.
So they're super, super specialized at the eyelids. Most people have a great outcome and just a couple of caveats, again, I just want to make everyone aware of what can happen. If you have dry eye, let your doctor know that you have dry eye, because if you get that surgery and they do a little bit too much, your dry eye can be a lot, lot worse.
So just let them know ahead of time I have dry eye so they can be conservative when they do that surgery.
JJ Virgin: Sounds like you should just tell them that anyway, because wouldn't you want them to be conservative?
Dr. Rani Banik: Yes. They just like want that wide eyed look and they tell their doctor, I just want my eyes nice and open so I can [00:31:00] see, but you know, it's a balance.
You don't want your eyes to be like wide, wide open because then it's just going to make them more dry. Or maybe if you're light sensitive, it's going to make you more light sensitive. So just be, you know, moderation is key as with everything, right? So what
JJ Virgin: about, you know, especially as we're aging? Makeup.
Dr. Rani Banik: I hesitate a little bit because I personally, I don't wear any eye makeup. And it's just a personal choice. It's not because it's not a good idea to wear eye makeup, but you know, there are some healthy eye makeup practices that you should be aware of. So first of all, a lot of people wear, will wear eyeliner on their lower lids or even on their upper lids and they'll cover the waterline.
If you bring your eyelid down, you see where the lashes come out and inside of that is the waterline. And there are tiny little glands there that help produce our tears. And when you wear eye makeup on that waterline, you're basically blocking all those glands. You're not allowing them to secrete tears and your eyes are going to get super dry and irritated.
I know a lot of people, when I tell them don't do it, they're like, oh, but that's how I [00:32:00] do it. But I tell them, don't cover the waterline, put it on the under surface, just on the outside of there. In terms of mascara, mascara has a lot of tiny little particles that it leaves, and it can get into your eyes, it can get into the tear film, it can cause a lot of dryness.
You know, experiment with different brands and just see which brand your eyes feel most comfortable with. But definitely if you have dry eyes, try to stay away from mascara that's really thick. And also if you wear like eyeshadow, especially like the metallic ones where they have like the little minerals in them, that can get into your eyes also and cause a lot of irritation.
So try to stay away from that type of eye makeup if you're really sensitive. But overall, I think most people wear eye makeup. It's not an issue. Just be aware of these little things.
JJ Virgin: Okay, hold on. You have no mascara on? No. You look like this. So if you're not watching this video or seeing something on Instagram with Dr.
Rani, that is amazing. Holy smokes. Talk about natural beauty. [00:33:00]
Dr. Rani Banik: You should see my daughter's eyelashes. Oh my God. She, she's got these gorgeous long lashes and she wants to cut them. And I say, why do you want lashes? And she says, because they keep curling in and going inside my eye and they're poking me.
I'm like, Oh my goodness. Like, just wait, just wait until you're a little bit older. You're going to be so, so grateful that you have these long, beautiful lashes. But you know, the truth is I'll tell you why I don't wear eye makeup. This is kind of silly, but it's not because I know what can happen or a dry eye or any of that that I just explained.
It's just because I can never get it right. No one ever taught me how to put it on correctly. So it's even and symmetric. And when it's not even, then it kind of really annoys me. So I just decide not to wear it. So that's my reason for not wearing eye makeup. I
JJ Virgin: just honestly can't believe you look this way and you haven't, I'm very jealous, which brought me to one more thing.
Since you mentioned the very long lashes, what
Dr. Rani Banik: about Latisse? It's a great product. It's been around for a long time. It came about because the ingredient in latisse is what we [00:34:00] actually use for patients with glaucoma. So we've been using this drop for glaucoma for years, for decades. And the side effect was that the people grew these gorgeous long lashes.
And then the company realized, oh, they can market this product not for glaucoma, but they can market it for lash growth. So it's a progesterone type of compound in the drop that causes lash growth. Just a couple of things to be aware of. It works great. If you don't use it, it'll stop working, so your lashes will thin out.
The other thing is, sometimes, depending on your skin tone, It can cause increased pigmentation. So some people actually, if they use it, if they're darker pigmented, they'll develop these really dark circles under their lids or even on the top lid. So it can cause like a kind of a raccoon eye appearance.
So maybe if you're, if you have darkly pigmented skin, just be a little bit cautious
JJ Virgin: with that. Well, I wonder then if it's progesterone that's doing that with those eye drops that you talked about that you use the progesterone, testosterone, estradiol eye drops, do those help your [00:35:00] lashes?
Dr. Rani Banik: Not that I've seen.
I think it's because of it's a specific formulation of progesterone. That's why.
JJ Virgin: Yeah. It's funny. One of my closest girlfriends, it was like 25 years ago, was using that for glaucoma and had the most amazing lashes. It was before Latisse came out and she was like, I'll get you some of it that you can use, but I've used it ever since.
There's actually
Dr. Rani Banik: a lot of other serums on the market, like Lash Growth serums, and most of them will have that progesterone ingredient in it. I mean, it's not just Latisse anymore. There are lots of them on the market. Latisse you need a prescription for, but some of these other ones, it's a lesser concentration, so you can get it over the counter.
JJ Virgin: Yeah. That is so interesting. I feel like it would be remiss sitting here looking at Beyond Carrots that talks about the best foods for eye health. Which this book is so great and so user friendly too. And beautiful. It's so pretty, all the pretty colors and everything.
Dr. Rani Banik: You know, my daughter, I keep talking about my daughter, but she actually did the layout for my book.
She helped her daughter and she, well, when she did it, she [00:36:00] was 14. Now she's 15. She has a, an eye for pun intended, an eye for design. And she helped me with the layout. And I was like, wow, I'm going to use this. And I actually, I did it that way because I wanted it to be user friendly. Like I didn't want it to be bogged down with.
Scientific jargon. I wanted people to be able to look through it with their families, with their kids, and be able to pick out foods that they want, may want to try. Maybe something they've never had before. All these different foods can support your eyes. So yeah, that's the goal is to get it into as many people's hands as possible and get them to use the material and make a practical impact.
JJ Virgin: It is beautiful. So it would be remiss not to talk a little bit about food. I know we mentioned some things, but where I'd love to go with this is. What would be some of the things we'd want to absolutely not do or limit that could be problematic for our eyes?
Dr. Rani Banik: So we've all probably heard by now about the SAD diet, standard American diet.
And so we know there are studies showing [00:37:00] that people who are on a SAD diet have higher rates of macular degeneration. So that's just a no brainer. Like you want to avoid SAD types of foods. And then in terms of what we should do or maybe even promote even more as I was talking about the macular carotenoids earlier, lutein, zeaxanthin.
So it's estimated we need, I'm going to get a little scientific and nerdy here, but it's estimated that we need about 6. 5 milligrams of lutein a day. to keep our eyes healthy. And most people are probably only getting one to two milligrams a day. So you really have to boost your intake of those foods with lutein and zeaxanthin to help support your retina, to prevent macular degeneration, to prevent cataracts.
So, it's really important that you have foods in your diet, rotate through the foods, and then maybe even take an iHealth supplement. So, I'm a big proponent of supplementation for eye Health because most people just are not getting enough of these nutrients in their diet as it is. Well, I mean,
JJ Virgin: here's the thing, like the minute you said that, I go, sounds like you should take a supplement just to ensure.
That you're [00:38:00] getting it, right? Because what's the risk if you got some extra lutein versus not having enough?
Dr. Rani Banik: And actually, like I said earlier, it'll help your brain health too. And there are some studies, there's a couple of studies that show that it can help with patients with breast cancer and prostate cancer.
So additional benefits, not just eye and brain health. So. I think they're really powerful nutrients. They don't get enough buzz just like iHealth doesn't get enough buzz in the healthcare world. These nutrients are so powerful. They're antioxidants and they can protect so many different parts of your body.
So why not?
JJ Virgin: Especially since people are scared right now, like there's veggie fear out there. That's not,
Dr. Rani Banik: it's making things worse. I'll tell you one other thing. So veggie fear, most foods that have lutein and zeaxanthin are plant products, plant foods, but you can also get them from egg yolk. So you know that beautiful orange, yellow color of egg yolk?
That's because it's so rich in lutein and zeaxanthin. So if you love eggs, don't throw away the yolk, eat the yolk, please.
JJ Virgin: [00:39:00] Well, when you eat the yolk, you actually are going to do better with your protein, even though the yolk's where the fat is, it's going to help you with bile production and protein absorption.
And the big one I say there, because I like to say you are what you eat, ate, like you can just see the difference if you get a factory egg versus a pastured egg. And the difference, and I actually had a client tell me this once, Rani, they, I said, you've got to eat pastured eggs. She goes, I don't like the bright orange yolk of a pastured egg.
I'm like, what? You want that pale and yellow?
Dr. Rani Banik: Do you think it was radioactive or something? I thought it was like.
JJ Virgin: Wow. I can't believe you just said that. That's the exact opposite. So I do want to talk about, cause you created a blend. And I'm looking through your book here. You created a blend. I think this blend is Fortify.
Is it Fortify? That's got the Yeah,
Dr. Rani Banik: it's Fortify. Yeah, actually I have it back here. So this is something, well, what I did was when I was writing my book, I was researching a lot of the eye health supplements on the market. And what I realized is [00:40:00] that there was no formulation that really had everything I thought.
An eye health supplement should have. So this blend includes lutein, zeaxanthin, and then there's a third one too, meso zeaxanthin. That's probably the most important of all. So it has all three. It has astaxanthin, and I think astaxanthin is also the hot new antioxidant out there. It's been around for a while, but people are using it for skin health, for their immune health.
But it's got great benefits for eye health too, and it also has berry extracts. So berries are super critical for eye health. They have these dark, dark pigments, specifically like blueberries, blackberries. These pigments get absorbed by the eye. They help protect your retina, protect against oscillative stress.
So this blend has all of that in there. The specific berry blends that are shown for eye health to help with macular degeneration and glaucoma and cataracts. Very cool.
JJ Virgin: So I'm going to put in the show notes your Beyond Carrots book, and then we can link to these supplements as well. And we're also going to link [00:41:00] to your IQ test, E Y E Q.
Tell everyone what they'll find out by taking this quiz.
Dr. Rani Banik: It's an online quiz. It's pretty short. It only takes about five, six minutes to do, and it'll ask you a couple of questions about your history, your eye history, your family history, your habits. And then it'll give you a score. And based off of your score, you will know whether you're at low risk, medium risk, or high risk for vision issues.
And then I can give you some pointers and tips on what you can do, depending on which category you fall into. So it's kind of a quick and simple way to get an assessment of how healthy your eyes are. Even if you haven't been to the eye doctor in a couple of years, you can get a sense of, okay, am I, am I at like low risk for vision issues?
What should I do for that? If I'm at high risk for vision issues, what do I really need to do for that? So.
JJ Virgin: Fantastic. And then get your annual. Eye exam, dilated eye exam. Who knew? Yeah.
Dr. Rani Banik: I have to say next time you're in New York, come and see me so I can do your eye exam. I would love,
JJ Virgin: oh my gosh, are you kidding?
I'm glad with that. February. That's what I'll do. 'cause I'm like, [00:42:00] first of all, to never hear you should be back every year. I'm just, you blew my mind with that, that I've never heard this before from any of the doctors. I've seen it.
Dr. Rani Banik: It's the recommendation and, and I think we just maybe need to do a public service campaign teaching doctors like, okay, this is what you have to tell your patients.
And then they'll do it just like they go for their. Colonoscopies and mammograms and everything.
JJ Virgin: So yeah, the primary care docs should be the ones orchestrating all of this.
Dr. Rani Banik: They only really tell people who are diabetic, like go get your eye exam because that is a, you know, standard of care, but regular eye exams are a standard of care too.
JJ Virgin: So, yeah, there you go. You had so many one liners in this interview, by the way, you speak in one liners and that was one of them. You really, we've got to be out. You got to get out more because the world needs this message. I thank you so much for doing this with me. I'm totally taking you up on that.
Cause I'll be there in February. I'm coming for you. I'm coming in to see you. And for everybody listening, we're going to put all of this at jjvirgin.com/EYEQ. [00:43:00] And that will be the link to the book, link to this supplement that we talked about, link to the quiz. We will spell out that exam that you need, the way you need to have your exam done, the whatever, eucycloplegic something, I wrote it down.
And thank you again so much for your time. Thank you. Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips, and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look and feel great, and more importantly, that you're built to last. And check me out on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and my website, jjvirgin.com. And make sure to follow my podcast so you don't miss a single episode at subscribetojj.com. See you next time.
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