The advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition.

Hello, I'm Kimberly King, and welcome to the mother's market radio show, a show dedicated to the Truth, Beauty and Goodness of the human condition. On today's show, we're going to try to help you see the light more clearly, that is as we discuss what you can do to have better eye help, plus later we'll find out what's happening around town and what's new at mother's market, but first up, we're really looking forward to today's show, and joining us today is nutritional consultant and certified natural health professional, Valerie home. Valerie appears in front of thousands of people each year, and she speaks on a variety of topics, even host her own radio show, she set to wealth of health and nutritional knowledge, and we wanna get right to her.

Welcome back of Valerie. How are you?

I'm doing wonderfully can really, so good to be back. Well, happy you could join us again, and before we get to our topic, tell us the scope and focus of your work.

Well, I've been studying nutrition for over 15 years, both food and supplements, all the ways to support our bodies in different ways, and what some of the foods that are the root causes of a lot of our health problems. So that's been a lot of my focus. I work for a couple of different companies, educating people, I do education for doctors, nurse practitioners, staff members in health food stores and consumers with my seminars and also my radio show.

Well, that was fascinating, and today we're talking about eye health, not the very first thing that people think about when it comes to nutrition, but of course, it is very important, and I know that's the first thing I both... Actually, both of us put our eye glasses on when we walked in together, don't, but I problems they seem to be on the upswing. What are the possible causes of health... Well, there are a variety of lifestyle and food issues at work, virtually all eye problems have blood sugar as one of the root causes, so diabetes is a big risk factor, but even people who don't have diabetes when they have blood sugar fluctuations and eat a lot of sugar and white flower end up with problems starting to develop in the eye long before they're diagnosed as a diabetic, also the hydrogenated oils, the eyes are one of the areas of the body that use the fats we eat as a building block tool, so the eyes absorb fats, so good fats make eye healthier, negative fats are of destructive force in the eye and hydrogenated oils, partially hydrogenated oils are certainly a big part of that, food chemicals also drive these free radicals as Does cigarette smoking or exposure to second-hand smoke. They find out that a lot of my problems have to do with free radical damage, so decreasing the amount of free radicals that our body produces by having a healthier lifestyle, eating healthier food, as well as taking some anti-oxidants that we're gonna talk about. Make a big difference. And lastly, UV light exposure, heavy duty sun exposure without sunglasses for a long time can damage the eye as can computer use in our modern world, we're all using computers, if you're sitting at that for eight hours a day, that could be destructive as well.

I noticed that, especially when our kids get on there earlier, and of course now the glasses seemed to be coming up hearing earlier as well, let's talk about what are the trouble areas of the eye... Well, the eye is an interesting thing, I've taken a number of classes about the eye over the years, including a class called I Ridley, which is the Chinese study of the eye, actually... It developed here in the United States, not Chinese at all, but it is a very interesting system where we look at different components of the eye and it can tell us various things, wherever little spots appear on the IRIS, it correlates with an area of the body where trouble might be brewing, so it's a very interesting study, but some of the things I learned in that class, a blue ring around the outside of the eye indicates how much cholesterol plaque that we have building up. So it's called the cholesterol ring. This is much easier to spot in people who don't have blue eyes, if you have blue eyes, it's really hard to see the blue cholesterol plaque ring, the pupil itself expands and contracts to let light in, so in darker conditions that people gets larger to let more light in and when it's bright, our pupils get smaller, some people, their pupils are constantly wide and they don't even respond to a bright light shine into the eye that indicates severe adrenal fatigue, they're so stressed out that their pupils aren't working well, so that's really wild.

Then there's the vision itself near-sided, which is what I am, means that the lens of the eye is too curved, so the lens, it should be like a clear plastic lens, almost like a contact lens, when it's at the normal curve, you have normal vision when it is two curve? You are near-sighted when it's too flat, your far sighted, and if it's a partial curve and an uneven curve, that's called The astigmatism, so it's not an even vision problem, it's kind of an uneven one, and that's what they call the astigmatism. And then there are the problems with cataracts and glaucoma, and those are some of the top causes of blindness in our country, and that's what I was just gonna ask you about, or cataracts and glaucoma.

And so can you talk about with these problems and how they develop... Well, as I mentioned before, blood sugar can be a risk factor for both, Cataracts are cloudy or opaque spots that develop on the usually translucent lens of the eye, when these thoughts spots first appear, you might not notice any difference in your vision. They are the leading cause of vision loss in the United States and worldwide, and because they develop gradually, sometimes we don't really notice that they're happening, but vision is going to become cloud-ER, sometimes people ignore this and it goes undetected until it's too late to stop the damage, which is a real shame because when they're caught early enough, they can really be fixed, and if people are not able to fix them, there is a surgery where they can remove the lens and replace it with a plastic lens, and that is a fairly painless and easy to recover from procedure, I've known several people who had that done, and it's quite a successful surgery, and if your eyes are healthy and you can take some anti-oxen, you can even help to avoid that entirely in the first place, but cataracts also... They're caused by these free radicals, these destructive molecules that destroy things, and the eye seem to be particularly susceptible to that, so we wanna make sure that we consulting or eye doctor or optometrist, if we ever experience vision changes to make sure that it's something simple and not... More difficult going on. And early diagnosis can be very effective treatment and nutritional therapy is really important for preventing and even treating cataracts, and you're just talking about some of those antioxidants, and so it sounds like food choices and blood sugar balance have a lot to do with these eye issues, but what are some of those supplements that can support... I help.

Absolutely, there are quite a few, and then I was gonna mention God coma briefly as well. Coma involves a narrowing the vision almost into tunnel vision for most people, it also starts with pressure problems in the eye, the eye is always pumping fluids in and out of the eye, and those processes should be even so pump fluid in. pump fluid out, when the pumping out gets clogged up for one reason or another, then the pressure builds up in the eye, and that's what they call glaucoma, and that one can actually start to narrow the view of the vision, so it's almost like a tunnel vision problem, for both glaucoma and cataracts, sometimes when people start to see bright lights around the lights at night, night driving night vision, that can become a problem, although it's always because of that, but it sometimes can be caused by that.

So let's talk about these wonderful supplements you just ask me about, because there are some phenomenal ones that really help with our eye health overall, can help to prevent damage as a foundation, which is really a great foundation for the whole body. Omega-3 fish oils are such a good thing for the eye since the eyes operate on good fats, this is one of the best facts that we could possibly take in... In fact, I read an article recently that stated that taking fish oil on a daily basis can reduce your risk of premature death by 85% from all causes hyper-Centered get back to fishing. It's so important, and my favorite brand is available at mother's market is Nordic Naturals official, very clean, very pure, never a fishy taste, a little fruity, very nice, so you can get those in liquids or capsules, whatever you prefer, but the fish oil is an excellent foundation for health, I wanna just rewind. And that was the... Take a line right there.

That's the headliner.

Perfect, exactly. And magnesium, both the omega-3s and magnesium deficiency are very prevalent in our country, somewhere around 80% of Americans are deficient in both the omega-3 centipede acids and magnesium magnesium, it turns out has a great impact on eye health as well, especially the Y problems where you wanna relax the muscles where you want that blood flow and that circulatory flow so that you're getting your fluids in and out of the well, things like that.

So magnesium is very helpful, also the variety of good magnesium available, I recommend Magnesium citrate when people tend towards constipation, it loosen things up, makes it easier to go to the bathroom or magnesium glycine if people don't want to loosen up their digestive tract, so there are a variety of different forms out there, I'm not a big fan of magnesium oxide because it's poorly absorbed, so I don't recommend that one. But those are some really good ones.

Another thing that is interesting for Eyes is an herb called Bill Berry, and in World War II, the soldiers discovered that they had much better night vision if they had been snacking on Bill Berry throughout the day, so it's particularly renowned for night vision. And this can be helpful for those people who do see those rings around the light, that major glare around lights when they drive at night, very helpful. So Bill, very often people see an improvement in their night vision within the first week or two with Bill Berry... What is Bill Berry? I just wanna know it is a type of barriers, it's one that we don't know here in the US very much now, we don't see Bill Berry in our different grocery sections like they do in Europe, it's... I know native in England, and I believe other parts of Europe as well, they make Bill Berry Jam and things like that, but we do have it here as a supplement, so you can get Bill Berry and a capsule, which is very helpful in terms of that night vision, and when we come back in just a moment, we are gonna talk some more about the beta-carotene nutrients, the carotenoids, that is one of the major types of nutrients that our Y operates on, so when we come back after our short break, we'll talk some more about those... Yes, my dad always said, Eat your carrots, or eye vision will be great when you eat your carrots. That's right.

Good, well, we've talked about someone who is... I have to just say real quickly, Valerie, that you are so good about your education and always staying very well updated on all of your information, so that is why we always have you back because you are such a wealth of information, so thank you for being up to date on my pleasure, and it's so interesting, the longer I study nutrition, big shifts occur, we've had big shifts occur over the last few years and how much D3 we should take... It went from 400 to 5000 a.That's a big shift.

And the new big shift this year, animal fats are good, saturated fats are good, vegetable oils are bad as the polyunsaturated fats or bad... Wow, what a paradigm shift that is, we'll talk a little bit more about that, but that's another thing going on out there.

Excellent, well, great information, Valery. Right now, it is time to take a quick break, so stay with this and we will be right back or... Welcome back to the mother's market radio show. And we wanna remind you, if you missed any portion of today's show, you can find us on iTunes by searching mother's market radio, or download the podcast from our website, mother's market dot com, click the link for radio and listen to past shows. Plus, download our Healthy Recipes and money savings coupons, all available at mother's market dot com. And now back to our interview with nutritional consultant Valerie Hall, and we're talking about eye health, and you mentioned beta-carotene and of course, all of the... Well, each your carrots and you'll have better eye health... Right, absolutely. This is an interesting group of nutrients, it's actually in the vitamin A family, there's beta-carotene routine as Santana, Anton are all different coronoid and they have a very specific affinity for the eye.

So some terrific things.

One of the ones that's been an excellent protector for many years is called leucine and Lute as one of these carotenoids, and it is extracted from the Marigold flower, and if you're going to take a routine supplement, make sure you're getting at least 20 milligrams of free lute daily, some of them have just a few milligrams, that's not enough to make any impact. Making sure you're getting 20 milligrams of free lute daily alpha-lapsed is another anti-oxidant nutrient that's very protective for the eye, but the one that I wanna really focus on is called Stanton as a Anton is a new up and comer in the nutrition field, and every popular writer about nutrition gets more and more excited with every article, everybody is over the moon about attention and its potential to help in the body, I keep hearing about it too, it is really interesting. It's, first of all, it's an unusual shape, it is long and thin and fits perfectly into the cell membranes and the mitochondrial membranes, so it's outstanding for protecting those against damage. It also protects DNA from damage.

This is a long-acting anti-oxidant, it lasts much longer in the body and quench is a lot more free radicals than most anti-oxidants, and since it's that soluble, it's going right into the eye, right into the cells of the eye for protection.

So this is an excellent one there... Most of the studies on Stanton, which by the way, is extracted from Hawaiian LG, and most of the studies in Japan have focused on eye health and brain help, and new findings are finding it's also excellent for cardiovascular health.

So in Japan, a lot of the studies focused on heavy UV light exposure, computer use, things like that, being out in the sun a lot and preventing the damage from all that, but the other studies focused on brain health and its protection there, new studies are showing how good, it is for veins, arteries, blood vessels, capillaries and the heart itself.

So all kinds of good things.

When I go around the country and talk about different nutrients... One of the advantages I have is I get feedback from people who have used them. For myself, I have noticed a sharpening of vision with Asian, then I've been using it for about six months now, and I wear contact lenses, I'm very near-sighted. Where contact lenses... And then I have to wear reading glasses when I have my contact lenses in order to see up close, so I was able to get pretty good vision for a long time, but now that I'm in my 50s, it wasn't quite so clear no matter what prescription I had... And now it's crystal clear. When I'm looking far away, my contact lens has worked much better when I was out and about in Texas recently, I had one woman who told me that as a Anton got rid of a spot on her eye that the optometrist had found, and when she went back a couple of months later, it was gone after taking Asian than every day, and another woman who was developing glaucoma in her right eye, and that pressure normalized after three months, I've asked his Anthony, she was right at the beginning of that problem, but still... This is the first thing I'm hearing, where people are actually getting improvements in their eye health, so I think as the Anton has a tremendous potential to be very healing and helpful as well as preventative for... Damage in the eye, of course, we wanna eat those, eat lots of antioxidants and food to the brightly colored vegetables, things like that, avoid the hydrogenated oil and the process sugars and starches, and that's gonna be a good foundation for the eye, and I'm very excited about the Austrian than... Yeah, I've been hearing wonderful things about that as that... I can't even say it is a T exactly, but it's the Hawaiian portion to it, that's where it's from say, absolutely. And you can find an excellent one at mother's market by doctor's best vitamins or brands, so they've got it right there at the mother's market stores.

Perfect, I love it. And can you talk a little bit more about the... We started to touch about that... Beta-carotene, right? Is that... Yes, the beta-carotene itself is good, vitamin A is good, vitamin D3 is good as well. And then those ones we talked about that are members of the beta-carotene formula, what are called carotenoids include the Asante and the looting, they're all different components of that beta care team.

Perfect.

Okay, now let's talk a little bit about the support for dry eyes, I know a lot of people who have dry eyes, they're just using eye drops constantly, and there are a couple of ways we can moisture the eye from the inside out.

One of those, these are wonderful fish oil by Nordic Naturals, excellent lubrication for the eyes and also supporting the structure of the eye, and one that I really like is called hyaluronic acid, hyaluronic acid. We've heard about for a variety of things over the years, you can also get this as a supplement, and they have a very nice one by doctor's best at mother's market, and hyaluronic acid pulls water into the skin and plump up wrinkles... Yeah, perpetrator Le purposes, has so many good things in the body, pumps up for eagles in the skin, it also is fantastic for joint comfort because it pulls water into the synovial fluid into the cartilage, really, it's almost like a shock absorber in the joints.

So the hyaluronic has really been renowned for joint health and skin health, but one of the other things it does is pull some moisture into the eyes and the mouth, so it's excellent for dry eye and dry mouth benefit after benefit.

I love that. No negative side of it. I just, I outlive of wherever you are, A, to incorporate that I lead a By All Means.

So excellent for dry eye. And you know what? Yeah, all those. The liquid eye drops. Those can't be good for you. After time and time again, right?

That's true. They have a lot of chemicals. You're better if you've gotta do that, you just... A plain saline solution that they usually sell for contact lenses, so saline means it's got a slight amount of salt in it, it's the same kind of salt amount as tears or sea water.

Do you know we in the body have the same amount of salt as seawater, you are just filled with information...

I am full of it, I hang out with you more often. But you would be a fun partner in trivia proceeding to... Yeah, very good at... To a repertory... Well, I've seen people develop that eye infection problems like pinky, and I don't know, what would you recommend for those kind of dies... Well, pinky is an eye infection problem, and if people are prone to regular infections of a variety of kinds, I recommend that they work on getting their vitamin D3 levels up in the body, blood plasma levels of D3 are very low. In this country, most people have blood plasma levels of D3 somewhere between the teens and the 30s, which is far too low, it's very instrumental for the immune system and fighting off infection, doctors tell us to get between 40 and 50 as blood levels. I think that's still way too though, I like 60 to 80. let's go big on the D3.

We wanna take... And most people need 5000 units a day of D3, and if some people, if they're really low, might need even more than that 10000 a day or so, so there are variety of levels of defray can take, but I think for teens and adults, I really like that 5000 a day level, they now say that 10000 a day as well, within the safety range, so we can certainly go up above that old 400 unit recommendation, which was far too little, so D3 is good. There's a wonderful immune supplement that really helps to keep us healthy in a variety of different ways called Epicor, you can also find Epicor at mother's market, and Epicor balances and harmonize as the immune system, it's fine to take for anybody with autoimmune, in fact, it down regulates the autoimmune response, while it up-regulates your response to fighting off infections, bacteria, viruses, cold flu, things like that, I think it's one of the most amazing immune supplements that I have seen so far, it's more appropriate to take just one 500 milligram capsule every day to keep your immune system strong, instead of something that you take when you come down with a cold or flu, it's not that kind of thing, it's an immune balancer and harmonize, and it helps the immune system to work the way it should.

But basically, one of the things that I recommend, if people have pink eye, there's something that you can buy in mothers called colloidal silver, and colloidal silver is really good as an anti-bacterial, so it's very good for Strata also for eye infections over the years in my own family and in my consultation practice have recommended that people mix a 50-50 mix of colloidal silver drops and saline solution, which you can pick up at any drug store sold for contact lenses, you can mix those two together and put them in a little dropper bottle so the colloidal silver and saline mixed at half and half, and a couple of drops in the eye throughout the day makes a huge difference in healing things like the pink eye, which is conjunctivitis and other bacterial infections in the eye do really well with a little bit of colloidal silver, it does sting just a little bit of a test... Yes, it does thing just a little bit, but it feels great and that Stan goes away very quickly and your eye feels a lot better, very good for swelling and any kind of a bacterial infection in the eye.

Yeah, was just gonna ask you about that sting, but you're cleansing and that's exactly, exactly.

What about... I was gonna go back to that vitamin D and the amounts, and how do you know how much you're saying that it's good to go big or that a... How can you tell... And especially like your aging group, is there a way to tell or should we go to our doctor and get that amount, you can get it checked, but I would guarantee that if you have not been taken D3 as a supplement, you are low...

I will guarantee that if certainly if you have immune problems or bone problems, you're definitely low in D3, so I think that you could just... It's very safe for everyone to just take 5000 if you wanna get it checked, if you're gonna go to 10000 or more, then you wanna get checked on a regular basis and see where you are as far as your blood levels, but virtually... Percent of Americans are low in D3. So it's pretty universal.

Okay, so interesting, and you are so filled with information, thank you so much for your time, Valery, and we appreciate your knowledge and we look forward to having you on again in the meantime, you can get more information on Valerie and her website, Valerie Hall, nutrition dot com, and learn more about her nutritional and natural approach to making us all healthier, we look forward to our next visit. Thank you, thank you so much, Kimberly.

Thanks for listening to the mother's market radio show, and for shopping at mother's market, the advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen, mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition,