Welcome to episode 44 of Behind the Shield podcast.
My name is James Gearing,
and I am recording this a little bit early
because we have a very angry young lady
bearing down towards Florida named Irma.
And I'm gonna have to go to the station in a moment
and be the crew that rides it out.
So this week, I really wanted to delve into the world
of eye health and vision.
This is an area that we really don't discuss very much
that anywhere in the fire service specifically
in the military, we touch on hearing a lot
because of the noise of the sirens and the weapons
and all those things.
But eye health, vision as an obstacle getting
into the career, how to change your vision,
how to protect your eyes themselves.
This is an area that aside from you need
to wear safety glasses, we just don't touch on at all.
So this week's guest is Dr. Michael Lang.
He's an optometrist here in central Florida,
very well respected nationally and internationally,
also a nutritionist and a psychology major.
So very interesting perspective on overall health
rather than focusing just on the eyeballs themselves.
So we delve in to my story, which is basically
I was told as a young man in England,
you can never be a firefighter because you're colorblind.
Absolute BS.
So we'll talk about that story.
And we're gonna come up with some solutions
to people that have things like that,
the trip hazards as far as entering the profession.
We're gonna talk about how to maintain your eye health,
not just with corrective lenses and those kinds of things,
but also nutrition, hydration areas there.
So that's gonna tie into the overall health.
We're gonna talk about how to protect your eyes,
what kind of products are out there,
what to look for if you're in certain fields.
And then we delve into a number of other things
from A2 milk to nutrition, obesity in the US.
So this was a great conversation I had face to face
with Dr. Lang in his office.
So I'm gonna keep this intro short.
I'm gonna go pack my bag and drive south
when everyone's driving north.
And just before I leave, don't forget,
rate us on iTunes, share an episode,
be part of the solution of spreading each
and one of these incredible episodes around the planet.
So without further ado,
I introduce to you Dr. Michael Lang.
Enjoy.
Welcome to Behind the Show.
Dr. Lang, how you doing?
It's great to be here.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you very much.
We are sitting here about two or three days
from Hurricane Irma showing up.
So I think the whole state of Florida
is wondering what the hell's gonna go down.
So we're gonna go to the top of the hill.
And this is where the lake will be.
I think the whole state of Florida is wondering what the hell is going to go on.
But, all right, so I want to kind of paint the picture before we delve into
eyes and nutrition and all the other things that we're going to talk about.
Can you give me a background where you were born, what your family unit was like?
Right, absolutely. So I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana,
geez, September 15th, 1961. I'm 55 years old now. My dad's a rheumatologist, so I came from
a medical background, and I actually was racing motocross at a competitive age. Started out about
10 years of age. I rode the minibike nationals, and I went up and started riding 125, expert,
and very competitive. I ended up in the Grand National Championship, broke my leg in my back,
broke my leg in five places, broke my back, ended my motocross career at 19 years of age.
And so then I started thinking, well, I got to go to college. And I actually was going to be an
orthopedic surgeon, and my dad being a rheumatologist said, well, you know, that's a lot of school.
And I mean, we were going to think about 15 years more of school, you know, with college,
or even more fellowship training residency. I just don't know if I want to do that. So then
I started thinking about optometry. And my dad said, that's a good profession. So I ended up
going to optometry school. And that's how I ended up going to optometry, because I wanted to do
something to help people want to be in the health profession, but I didn't want to go 16 years of
school. So you know, in four years of college, got a degree in psychology, then I got another
degree in physiological optics, then I went away to optometry school for four years. And then I
also became a certified nutritional specialist after the fact at the American College of Nutrition.
And I did that because I was tired of seeing my patients really age right before my eye,
age very rapidly macular degeneration, cataracts, glaucoma. And so I started working with nutrition
and started seeing how we adjusted their diet and adjusted the supplements they were taking,
that we could actually slow down the aging process in the eye and thus the entire body.
And then I started my own vitamin company called four to five items. And we'll talk about that a
little bit more. But that's how I kind of got interested in the field. The motocross accident
triggered me to go to college because I wasn't going to go to college. I was going to be the next
you know, world champion Bob Hurricane Hanna. And that went by the wayside. But now I'm racing cars.
Brilliant. Yeah, those safer than a motorbike though. Yep. Four wheels on the ground and a roll cage.
So you said the first area you went into was psychology. Why did you choose that on the way
to optometry school? Well, that's a good question. You have to pick something in the sciences that
are going to enable you to get all your prerequisites. Pre-requisites are very hard. I mean,
they're physics and chemistry, organic chemistry, calculus, trigonometry, all sorts of biologies.
And so and psychology. And so I didn't love biology. I didn't love chemistry, but I really
like psychology. I really liked, you know, understanding why people react the way they do,
why people act the way they do. And so I, that's why I got my degree in psychology. And for people
that are listening out there, don't go into psychology. You're not going to make a lot of
money because with a degree at a BS level in psychology, you cannot get a job and make anything.
You have to go into the master's program or your PhD and become a clinical psychologist.
So that was just a stepping ground to get my prerequisites done and to get a degree so I could
get into optometry school. Okay. Now just to kind of educate the listeners, I'm aware of how
optometry schools are in the U.S. because my wife is an optician and she's on her route.
And she used to work with you and she's on her route to optometry school.
A, the prereqs are insane. The high level math that they need, the Rain Man stuff to go in there.
But secondly, it's kind of unique. And if you could tell us a little bit more about it,
there's only a certain number of schools in the whole of the U.S., aren't there? Roughly how many
are there? Optometry school is very competitive. I mean, it's tougher to get into optometry school
really than medical school. Because you think about medical school, there's, you know, five or
six, seven or even more, depending on the state, medical schools per state. And optometry school,
I mean, I think there's 17 or 18 optometry schools in the entire country. And so there's a lot of
people that want to become optometrists because it's a four-year program after college. You know,
you can make a lot of money. It's good money. You're helping people. And depending on the state,
you can do eye surgery. You can prescribe any medication. Orals are topicals now. Optometry
has really gone into that next realm and expanded their scope. I really think an optometric physician
or an optometrist is your gatekeeper, your primary eye care physician. And they'll see you for
everything from glaucoma treatment and pink eye and corneal lacerations to stye removal, even laser
procedures. And then when you need, you know, major surgery, you would go to the ophthalmologist that
is fellowship trained in that arena. So a retina specialist for retinal surgery, corneal specialist
for corneal surgery, oculoplastics for, you know, plastic procedures. So ophthalmology has become
very specialized. It's very rare you see a general ophthalmologist anymore because the optometrist has
really taken over that whole realm of eye care and are trained very well at doing it.
Right. Now we only have one here in Florida and that's Nova down in Fort Lauderdale.
Right.
Do you see, and this is for Becky as well, do you see another one opening up in the state of
Florida anytime soon? You know, I've had rumors, rumors about, you know, opening in Tallahassee,
opening in Gainesville, Orlando, Tampa. But as far as I know, they're rumors.
Okay. Cause that'd be a long drive when she gets into school, but that's,
that's a whole separate thing. All right. So you weren't able to do motocross. So while you were,
you know, transitioning through school, did you take up any other sports instead?
Yeah, I actually got into road biking and mountain biking, triathlons. You know,
I competed in a lot of that. But you know, mountain biking is really one of my passions
and road biking. And now I'm doing recumbent biking as well because now at 55,
I'm starting to develop a little degenerative arthritis, especially in my back, my neck
and my knee. And you know, the triathlon bikes, you've been over, you know, almost in a question
mark position. And if you're going for a 50 mile bike ride, I got some lower back pain and neck
pain after being in that position that long period of time. So I went to our carbon fiber,
recumbent bicycle and you know, you sit back, it's almost like an lazy boy and you really
hits different muscle groups and hits your glutes, your calves, your thighs,
even better than road biking does. It's pretty amazing. And now it's interesting when we think
about this, because you know, being a male, we got to be concerned at 55 years of age about prostate
issues. Okay. And so when I'm right, I made some YouTube videos all about, you know, biking on a
recumbent bike and I'm preserving my prostate is what I'm telling people. Because when you're on a
road bike, even a mountain bike, but more on a road bike, you have that pointy little seat,
and it goes up there and it hits that nerve right near your prostate. And it can cause prolonged
inflammation of the prostate. So there is some potential evidence, let's just put it that way,
that people that bike long periods of time with those little race seats can aggravate their
prostate, maybe even cause impotence. Nobody wants that. Heck, I have four kids though, and I'm 55.
I don't need any more kids. But sterility and impotence can occur from people doing road bike
for long, long periods of time. So I think the recumbent bike, a lot more people are going to
start riding these recumbent bikes and even the trikes, the cat trikes, they're carbon fiber now,
so they're very light. Actually, I go about one mile an hour faster than I did on my triathlon
bike on the recumbent bike, as it's so low and aerodynamic and sleek. You just prompted me to
bring up an episode I had episode 11, which is Dr. Eric Goodman. He has a thing called foundation
training. And some of his top clients are Lance Armstrong, I think the US or British cycling team,
and it's a lot of the same problem. They have back problems from being in that hunch position
and the whole posterior chain getting very weak. So that's something to me passing to you.
Foundation training, it was so good. I healed my back with it. I actually went out to California
and got certified. So amazing, amazing thing, especially for cyclists, because they get the
short hamstrings and that almost fetal position that they're in for so long.
And I think it's a good idea to mix it up a little bit. That's why I still ride my road bike.
I do the mountain bike. I do the recumbent bike. I also have a trike. And so you can mix it up a
little bit. And then I just got into a sport now since we live on the bay, I'm doing a lot of
sculling. So it's a row and you go out and skull and that amazing amount of workout you get for
your legs, cardio, upper body. I mean, I think for overall exercise, rowing in a skull is probably
one of the best forms of exercise. But you know, in order to slow down the aging in our body,
and thus our eyes, you have to be cardiovascularly fit. You got to exercise. I always tell my
patients, my listeners on my talk show, I tell them, you know, 20 minutes minimum, five days
a week of cardiovascular exercise, preferably more, but 20 minutes minimum, 30 minutes in the
gym pumping iron, preferably more than that as well. But that's an absolute minimum, 30 minutes
of weight bearing exercise, 20 minutes of cardiovascular exercise. A lot of my patients
will come into the office and say, well, I, you know, I walk five miles a day. That sounds
impressive. Right. But then I tell them, get up, show me how you walk. And they just a little
stroll. Their pulse isn't going, you know, over resting. So it's not doing much for cardiovascular.
So I tell them the power walk, you know, they don't have to go five miles. I can power walk
for a half a mile. But you know, interval training is great, but we got to do cardio,
we got to do weight bearing exercise that combined with the proper sleep, the proper diet,
the right amount of sunshine. Sunshine is very important. We've been brainwashed, stay out of
the sun because it causes skin cancer. There's actually studies that indicate people that are
out of the sun are more prone to get skin cancer, herniated skin cancers than people that are in it
a moderate amount. So you don't want to get sunburned, but you want to be out there in the sun.
And the combination of all of that is anti-aging. Absolutely. Yeah. I'm known for just wearing
shorts when I work out and, you know, shoes, hardly ever as well. But I noticed that myself,
you know, I mean, I'm from England and I'm able to tolerate the sun here in Florida. Fine. As long
as you're not out there for too long. And the more I read, the more they seem to be linking a lot of
the cancers to the sun blocks and sunscreens that they are in the actual sun itself. I haven't used
a sunscreen in probably 20 years, you know, maybe more than that when my mom made me use a sunscreen
because I think there's a lot of chemicals in those sunscreens. And who knows if those chemicals
aren't some of the culprits for the basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas that we see. It's
interesting. My dad has never used a sunscreen, grew up as a farm boy in South Dakota, never used
sunscreen, never had any skin cancer. My mom, on the other hand, has used sunscreen all of her life,
Montgomery, Alabama. So there's a different genetic there, but she's had some horrendous
skin cancers. So there could be a point there. Remember everything in moderation. You don't want
to be out there and get totally burned. You just want to get, you know, a little bit of sun. And
most, most studies indicate, you know, 20 to 30 minutes, depending on the size, your weight,
and the color of your skin. So I'm blonde hair, green eyes, about, you know, 195 pounds. So 20
minutes to 30 minutes a day is plenty for me. And I've tested my 25 hydroxy. That's a blood test.
And my blood levels of vitamin D range between 80 and 90. And that's where I tell people try to
get theirs between 80 and 90. But if you're darkly pigmented and you're overweight, then you got to
be out in the sun longer than that, probably 45 minutes to an hour, and you won't get burned.
But that vitamin D deficiency is linked with macular degeneration, linked with tri-I,
linked with diabetes, many forms of cancers, rheumatoid arthritis. Remember, vitamin D is
a potent steroid hormone. So it's an anti, not only is an antioxidant, but it's anti-inflammatory.
So we got to get our vitamin D. Then people say, well, I take vitamin D. My doctor prescribed
vitamin D. It's different. People don't have the digestive enzymes, the probiotics, the intrinsic
factors in their stomach to actually absorb the vitamin D orally the way they do when they go out
in the sun. And some people are taking way too much. If you take too much vitamin D3 orally,
it can actually increase your risk of atrial fibrillation, a heart problem we don't want.
But you won't get that from the sun itself. Now, another little tidbit of information that people
don't realize, when you're out in the sun, don't go get in the soapy shower right afterwards.
Because the soaps are going to wash off the oils that are allowing the vitamin D to absorb.
So most studies indicate six to eight hours after being in the sun before you're using the soap on
your body. Now, let's say you're out for 30 minutes in between your lunch break and you got to take a
quick shower so you don't stink. Well, get in and wash under your arms with soap, but just use
regular water on the rest of your body so the vitamin D will actually absorb.
Okay. Brilliant. Yeah. I know that the percentage you absorb through sunlight is just a huge amount
more than you can orally as well. So I mean, it's a no brainer and it's free.
Right. And vitamin A will block the absorption of vitamin D. And so,
vitamins that I've developed have no vitamin A and no beta carotene in it. Vitamin A actually
blocks the absorption of D3. So if you have a multivitamin out there that has vitamin A in it,
it's blocking the absorption of the vitamin D3. And if it has beta carotene in it,
it's blocking the absorption of the xanthophylls, lutein, zeaxanthin, and astaxanthin that are
incredible for the skin and the retina, thus your vision. So beta carotene and vitamin A,
I don't like those in multivitamins. Copper and zinc, I don't like in multivitamins either.
Right. Okay. Well, we're talking about vision. So let's kind of bring in the whole first
responder thing. So I'm going to start with a very, very brief story of why I wasn't a fireman in
England. So I grew up, had basically a very poor vision in my right eye. And then when I did the
color vision tests, the ink block tests, whatever the official name is, I can see some of the numbers,
not others. So in the British medical system, they said, James, you're colorblind. You can never be a
fire pilot, a fire mineral in this other list of cool jobs. Here's the crap ones left for you to do.
So I literally went years, I trained some, one of my friends to become a fireman on the fitness side.
And it wasn't until I came to the U S and I don't even know what clicked in me, but one day I realized
I can see these different colors. I can, I can differentiate the traffic lights. And really it
was just a kind of leap of faith. I went through fire school everywhere. I did the medical and they
just showed me the little pegs they have outside the doctor's office. And they asked me just to
read those colors. And I read them off perfectly. All right. They checked the box. And I was like,
okay, so, um, with color vision specifically, I realized, and correct me if I'm wrong, that it was
like vision that you want either completely gray blind or perfect color vision, that there was a
spectrum in between. And I was not too far off normal. I just would never be a fashion designer
probably. So, um, let's talk about color vision first. So a, how, how valid is that color vision
in 2017? Well, it is a very valid test, but it's almost a useless test. And the reason for this is
you have a color deficiency. Nobody's really truly colorblind. It is very rare. Colorblind means you
only see in black and white. And that's a very, very rare. I've never seen it in my life. Color
deficiency is very common. And you probably have a red green deficiency. We have red green deficiencies
and blue yellow deficiencies. And so that means yes, a job like a fashion coordinator, all right,
probably wouldn't be ideal because you have trouble differentiating between different hues of reds
and different hues of green. But if you, if I hold a cap, there's red and one green, you can definitely
say it's red and green. It will not affect your life in anything you do unless you're having to
match colors that are very similar. So you could be a jet fire pilot, you could be a policeman,
you could be a military. It's not going to affect you at all. But for some reason, if you want to
go into the military, even the coast guard or anything like that, you know, you have to pass
these color plates, Ishihara color plate test. And then we have Farnsworth-Lantern test, which is
even more difficult. And it's interesting because a lot of people don't get the job they want because
they're quote colorblind and all there is have a very mild color deficiency that won't affect them.
I've gotten many people able to fly helicopters and become jet fighter pilots, commercial airline
pilots by simply writing a letter. The eye doctor writes a letter and they're able to get that
job. If they require you to pass an Ishihara color plate, well, we do have contact lenses. Not many
doctors know about this. They don't know how to fit them. They don't even know they exist. It's
called X-Chrome. X-Chrome is a contact lens, soft lens you wear on your non-dominant eye. And you
could pass every single plate on the color plate test. So that's something that's available,
X-Chrome for color vision anomaly. So anybody listening, if they want to go and pass those
color plates, ask your local optometrist to fit you in. We'll call around first because 90% of them
have no clue what you're talking about in an X-Chrome contact lens and you'll pass.
That's fantastic. Because like I said, that was the only stumbling block. I'm not saying that I
was maybe physically ready. When I was 18, I was very small and everything and life unfolds the way
it's supposed to. So I was obviously meant to become here and become a fireman and also be a
medic at the same time. But that literally was the only stumbling block and was totally discounted
the even possibility of doing it because there was none of that conversation. So I'm hoping that
someone out listening now, that might be the only thing that's in their way. And there you go,
you have a solution. So with the vision itself, my left eye to this day is amazing. Did all the work
for my right. My right was crap. And I went and had LASIK done, which I mean, I could pass the test
with the glasses on. But can you tell me something about LASIK? I have to say LASIK to me worked
phenomenally well. The recovery wasn't even close to as quick as they said it was going to be. I
had dry eye and itchiness for months, but I've still got 2015 on the test these days. So can
you give us a little history about that? And then, you know, is the current one the best one or is
there even better stuff coming? Absolutely. LASIK surgery has come a long way. I was actually with
Steven Brent, Dr. Steven Brent at the Eye Surgery Center of Louisiana, New Orleans in 1991, when he
did the first LASIK procedure in America. And then I opened three LASIK centers here in Florida.
And LASIK is really in the hands of a competent LASIK surgeon with new generation technology.
It's an amazing procedure, right? Remember what your mama said, you get what you pay for.
If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Be very leery or weary of these bait and switch
organizations that are claiming $199 per eye for LASIK surgery. Nobody's doing LASIK surgery for
$199. You're going to go there and then you're going to say, oh, Mr. Smith, your parameters aren't
correct. Now you've got to go up to $1,500 per eye if you want to have LASIK surgery. So, you know,
the going rate right now is about $1,500 an eye, about $3,000 to have LASIK. I always recommend
asking how many procedures the LASIK surgeon has done. You want that LASIK surgeon to have done
over 10,000 procedures. Simple as that. I mean, many of my colleagues have done over 100,000
procedures now. So, you want at least 10,000 because you don't want to be the first on the
block of the first 10. You want to have somebody that's very seasoned, a veteran at this. You want
to use new generation technology, not old technology from 20 years ago, 15 years ago. So, ask how old
is their laser. You want an all laser procedure where they create the flap with the laser, an all
laser procedure. I like the Allegretto. It's one of the best lasers out there, but many of the
companies make great lasers now. So, remember, good technology and a great surgeon with a lot
of experience. But also, you have to go two consecutive years with no change in your vision.
So, go see your local optometrist. If you're a minus two mile, that's a number. And then next
year, you're minus 250, you've progressively got a little worse. You should not have LASIK surgery.
Go two years with no change. Then you can have LASIK surgery. It's great for people that are
athletes. It's great for firemen, police officers that are in a potential situation where if their
glasses fog up or their contacts come out, their life could be in jeopardy. You know, racing cars,
racing motorcycles, things like that is great for those people. On the other side of the coin,
there's an old saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And if you can wear contact lenses
successfully or you like wearing glasses and you have no problems at all, why do surgery?
All right? Because surgery is not without potential complications. Remember, we minimize the
complications with good surgeons, a lot of experience, good technology, but even with the
best and most competent hands, the best technology, something can go wrong. You know, it's obviously
not purpose, purposely, but something can go wrong. Everybody's eye reacts differently to surgery.
So once again, if you have no problems, you know, why do surgery? But if you're a fireman,
you know, law enforcement, military, you know, a big athlete, extremely near sighted, where when
you take your glasses off, you can't see at night. So you jump up, you don't know if it's your wife
or a burglar in the house, then certainly these people are great candidates for LASIK surgery.
Yeah. See, the area where I found I had a problem was not so much in a fire because you can't see
anything anyway, pretty much, but it was driving to and from, especially at dusk. You know, you've
got your sunglasses and I think it's changed a little bit more now, but at the time it seemed
like you could just get the serial killer looking prescription sunglasses and then you'd have to
switch to the clear ones as it got towards night. And then having these two pairs, you know,
it would always fall over and then land on the diamond plate and get scratched or I could lose
them or I'd step on them. So that for me was a huge thing. And then obviously then when I was on a
scene, I could see a little bit more detail. I could see if someone was, you know, hanging out
of a window, even if it was several stories up versus that slight blurriness I had before. So
for me, it worked very well. I only had one eye done. That's all I needed to have done.
And it was about exactly like you said, about 1500. But I would say that investment was well,
well worth it. Right. Once again, it's your livelihood, the job that you're doing,
perfect for you. Yeah. Absolutely. All right. So the next was kind of transitions quite well.
I want to talk after this about some of the common problems that you see with vision, but
the one thing that LASIK doesn't fix is the aging of the eye, isn't it? So can you tell us
the difference between what LASIK does fix and then what happens as we age? Right. So when we
hit the age 40, that's called presbyopia. That's when the human crystalline lens in the eye loses
elasticity and we lose that ability to focus up close. LASIK will not fix that. So if you have
LASIK at 21 years of age, you're going to have great vision. When you hit 40, 45 years of age,
your arms aren't long enough anymore. You'll find you're holding things out further and further
to see clearly. And that's when you have to wear reading glasses or bifocals or progressive lenses
or a multifocal contact lens. However, there is some evidence now, and I've been leading this
whole field, this arena and research, there is some evidence if we consume certain foods,
more of certain foods, we can actually improve the focusing ability in our eye. And the big food,
one food that's a power food is wild Alaskan salmon. Oh, really? So wild Alaskan salmon,
not only very high in omega-3, but high in a super carotenoid called astaxanthin. This is what gives
the wild Alaskan salmon its orange color. It's the algae, something called hematococcus, that the
little fish eat and then the salmon eat the little fish and they get this astaxanthin into their body.
It improves muscle endurance and muscle recovery in the body. It improves night vision, reaction
time. Great for a firefighter, all right? It also helps impregnate into the macula zone,
helping to filter out some of the harmful blue light that can be very damaging. It actually
impregnates into the skin so you don't have to use a sunscreen, but it will not block the vitamin D3
absorption. So wild Alaskan salmon, if you eat that frequently, then your focusing ability will be
better. Now you have to eat it almost every day. Now most people aren't going to do that. And it's
got to be wild salmon, not farm-raised salmon. So I actually developed a supplement called Fortify
Focus. And this is about eight years ago now. I've gone into the fourth revision of it,
and we've taken carotenoids, lutein, zeaxanthin isomers, and six milligrams of astaxanthin that
was in all the studies. And I'm 55 years of age. I've been on it six years now. When I was 49,
I had to wear reading glasses for anything up close. Now at 55, if I'm going to sit down and read a
small print book, I will put reading glasses on if I'm going to sit down and read it late at night
for a long period of time. But for my job purposes, I can read anything I need, my cell phone,
I can see anything I need up close ever since I've been taking this one little pill, Fortify Focus,
once a day. So remember, aging is oxidation and inflammation. And so astaxanthin is the most potent
natural anti-inflammatory known to man. And then the lutein and zeaxanthin in it add more oxidative
stress, combating against free radicals. So lutein, zeaxanthin, and astaxanthin,
those three combined help to combat against free radical damage, which is oxidation, or the rusting
of our body. So I call it a little anti-aging pill, combating against oxidation and inflammation in
the entire body, but targeting the eye. It actually crosses the blood retinal barrier,
getting into the eye. And now you've got to think about this. Everybody is on a digital apparatus
these days. We're all on an iPhone, an iPad, a laptop, a computer. We're watching TV on LED
screens. We have LED lighting now. So all of this emits blue light. And I've done a lot of research
in this area. Blue light is very damaging to your eye. We're seeing children now at very young ages
developing a form of degeneration in their macula that they shouldn't be getting until
they're 75 years of age. And we're just about 100% know now it's related to all this blue light
exposure. And so you can wear lenses now that actually guard against blue light. Blue light
defense is a great lens. And you can take a little pill that has the carotenoids. Remember,
lutein, zeaxanthin, isomers, and astaxanthin act like an internal blue light filter. And so my 11
year old daughter, Mackenzie, I make her when she's doing her work at night wear blue light
defense lenses and take one little pill a day of the Fortify Focus. I take it. My 89 year old
parents take it. I think I've got 250,000 people throughout the world that are taking it now. So
remember, if you eat the foods, you don't need to take the supplement. But realistically,
are we all eating wild Alaskan salmon, organic kale, organic orange bell peppers, and goji berries
on a daily basis? Probably not. Okay, well, a couple things I want to touch on from what you
were talking about. The very first thing was you talking about elasticity. A few years ago,
it seemed like one of the optical buzzes were exercises that you could do for your eyes.
Was there any validity in that? The see clearly method? Yes. Yeah, it was like, I don't know,
89.99 or something like that. Three easy payments. You know, that one, there was a class action suit
against them and they had to give all the money back is last I heard. I, they did a lot of marketing,
a lot of advertising for this. I had people that brought this into my office, the whole packet,
the book, everything and say it didn't work. It didn't work. It didn't work. And they were
actually targeting talk shows. All right. There was on talk radio, where people that are, you know,
between 25 and 55, 65 listen, the people they were going after were the LASIK markets. And it does
not work for that. You can do eye exercises all day long. I don't care if you're a minus four mile,
that means you cannot see in the distance at all. You got to put your glasses on your contacts and
you can do these exercises all day long. It's not going to change that. Now, that see clearly method,
it did have some validity to it. I mean, a behavioral optometrist, a vision therapist
can use that. I mean, that is tried and true for helping children in the developmental stages,
children that have a lazy eye, an eye that turns in or out, children that have accommodative and
focusing problems. They over-focus, they under-focus. Absolutely. That system is probably
really great for that. But to target people that are wanting LASIK surgery, it wasn't a good thing.
Right. Okay. So, so there's, there's some validity, but it's more of a narrower field than they let us
believe. Right. I think at the age from birth to about probably 14 or 15 years of age, certainly
the right forms of eye exercises can help the eye. And even as you get older, I mean, it can help
improve circulation to the muscles in the eye. So I even tell my elderly patients just to gaze left
and right on the wall, up and down, you know, just to get some extreme gazes in, you know,
can help probably strengthen the muscles a little bit. It helps improve circulation. Right. So,
or just go outside and be in nature where you'll naturally look around anyway, instead of at a
screen like we all do these days. Okay. So one of the, one of the big things that I harp on in,
in these podcasts is the ill effects of, of many of our jobs on us. And some are out of our control.
Some, I think we can take more of a control, but one area is sleep deprivation. Is there a specific
effect on, on the optical side as far as sleep deprivation is concerned? Sleep deprivation is
huge in this country. I was probably the biggest sleep deprived person you've ever met, you know,
and has developing six companies over the last 25 years. And I sleep like a baby now. And one of
the reasons for sleep deprivation in today's society is, is the blue light, right? It's everywhere. So
what happens is that blue light goes into the eye. It tells the pineal gland in the brain,
do not secrete melatonin, melatonin levels do not go up. Then you go to bed at night. You don't sleep.
You turn and flip over and you don't get a good night's sleep. You're not dreaming. When you dream,
that means you're going through REM phase of sleep. And that means you're sleeping. You're sleeping in
the right phase of sleep that is restful, that lowers cortisol levels, which is a stress hormone
in your body. But if you sleep deprived, cortisol levels go way up. Inflammation goes way up. People
get anxiety disorders, panic attacks, arthritis, all sorts of problems just from being sleep
deprived. Remember when we were talking about anti-aging, one of the biggest things is getting
a good night's sleep. So as a rule of thumb, I mean, one time I actually went, took the kids up
to the mountains up in Tennessee and we got there and it's up on the top of this big hill. We were
going mountain biking and kayak and white border rafting. And the actual cabin had no electricity.
It had electricity, but the guy had not paid the bill. And so our cell phones didn't work up there
either. I got to tell you, we did not, it was, it was around Halloween. So it was kind of cool. It
wasn't hot. So it wasn't that bad. We actually did, we were there for five days. We read everything
by candlelight at night. When it got dark, we actually went to bed. It's the best sleep I've
gotten probably in my entire life. We felt so rejuvenated after that five, six days because
we were sleeping. I mean, it gets eight o'clock at night. We got in the bed and we went to bed.
And it's because our melatonin levels were going up. We didn't have all this artificial lighting
that's simulating the sun telling the brain, don't secrete melatonin. So as a rule of thumb,
to sleep better at night, you make your room as dark as you can. You don't want any
LED light is from anything. LED lights, take some electrical tape, put it over the smoke detector,
the carbon dioxide detector on your TV, unplug the clock radio, unplug anything within 15 feet
of your bed. You don't want any electrical current within 15 feet of your bed. Put your cell phone
in the bathroom, put it on high so you can hear some emergency if you're on call, but don't put it
by your bed. So everything away from you, make your room as dark as you can and turn the air
condition down as low as you can tolerate it. Dark and cool and you'll sleep a lot better.
So rule of thumb, you don't want any visual stimuli three hours before bed. Now that's hard
because people want to watch TV, they want to watch the news, but if you really want to sleep
well and practice anti-aging, no computer work, iPhone, iPad, television for three hours before bed.
Well we had two episodes now in sleep. One was Kurt Posse, he was a Navy SEAL turned MD.
And then just about two episodes ago I had Nick Littlehales who is sleep coach to some of the top
sports teams in the world. And he was saying that recently he's done exactly that for his own home
where he's just trying an experiment where he does candlelight as soon as it gets dark.
And I think he reported pretty much the same thing. So it's amazing when I start having these podcasts
overlap with each other and blue light is a massive one. And he was explaining that the light
from a fire, light from a candle, light from the stars, because it doesn't have the blue light,
you don't get that stimulus of it's daytime now. And they had the technology of when you do work
some wonky hours, you need to kind of break that cycle and then simulate the daylight. Then you
deliberately put the blue light into your life. Right. And you can go to a website I created
called bluelightdefense.com. And people can go to that bluelightdefense.com and you can see links
to some studies from Harvard, some really legitimate studies. You can see some of the stuff
that I've written on there about blocking and filtering the blue light. I mean, it's a problem.
And the optometry and ophthalmology is seeing that now we're trying to address what can we do. So
right now the best is to take the supplement that I talk about, the Fortify Focus, to block it with
the correct type of lenses. A lot of lens companies are now coming out with lenses similar to blue
light defense lenses that are filtering the blue light. The thing about blue light defense,
it blocks 99.9% of the most detrimental to your retina blue light, which is 411 nanometers.
It blocks 99% of that. Right now most companies are blocking 20 to 30%. So that's why I like the
blue light defense. There's a few other lenses on the market that do that, but they're few and far
between. But I predict in the next year, and I know this for a fact, that some of the big lens
manufacturers are going to the same monomer that's used in the blue light defense lens. So it's going
to become mainstream in just about all glasses soon. Right. My wife just got it and she hates
going in any stores that have the artificial light. It gives headaches and all that kind of thing.
And why wouldn't it? I mean, it's not light. It's not something that we're used to looking at.
Okay. So specifically then we talked about sleep deprivation and inflammation. Are there any other
eye problems that you tend to see a lot in police officers or firefighters or paramedics
or military even? Well, you know, I see a lot of cataracts. Okay. And that's because a lot of these
people are around toxic chemicals, they're around a lot of heat, trauma, all right. You can get
trauma as a fireman or a policeman. So, and then a lot of times their primary care physician is
putting them on steroids for the inflammation they have in their body. All right. Things like
prednisone and delta zone. And that creates cataracts as well. A type of cataract called
posterior subcapsula cataract. The good news is cataract surgery is relatively simple. It's a
10 minute procedure. It's painless, no needles anymore. It's almost an all laser procedure and
a little ultrasound. But I do see a lot of cataracts. I see a lot of dry eye in this area.
So using some good lubricating eye drops periodically. Believe it or not, taking a good omega-3
fish oil is a good idea. Omega-3 has been shown to help quell the dry eye, help reduce dry eye
symptomology. Hydration is very important. Most of us do not drink enough water. If we're drinking
water, we're drinking this purified water. Not to mention any names for legal ramifications,
but there's a lot of bottled water. Quite frankly, the majority of bottled water people drink,
it's purified. So it's either reverse osmosis or distilled. You want to buy something, a bottle
water that says spring water because it's alkaline and has minerals in it so the minerals don't
leach out of your body when you're drinking something due to the laws of osmosis. So hydration
is important. Using artificial tears, taking omega-3, that'll help the dry eye. Dry eyes,
sandy, gritty, burny, teary, itchy eyes. And you know, you guys are on call all the time.
And it might be a long day and then you have to wake up in the middle of the night to go to a fire.
Well, your eyes could be dehydrated. They dehydrate when you sleep at night. By the end of the day,
they're starting to dehydrate. And if you're having to drive relatively fast through a dark,
you know, dark area, your vision has to be good. That's why you had LASIK surgery. Well, if your
eyes are dry, the optics of the eye can drop as much as 75% at night. So that's why it's a good
idea to have some artificial tears handy at the firehouse. And right before you get out in that
rig to go drive to the fire, you know, put some lubricating eye drops in the eye, especially if
it's in the evening because it's going to improve optics dramatically. Race car drugs,
it's going to improve optics dramatically. Race car drivers that do it, if you have 12 hours of
Lamans, 24 hours of Daytona, you know, race car drivers will put artificial tears in their eyes
because the optics of their eyes are going to work a lot better while they're driving.
Okay. Now is, is, I know it's very simplified, but is the eye repairing itself when it's closed
during sleep? Absolutely. The cornea is one part of your body that regenerates. And so when you
sleep, let's say you scratch your eye, all right, you get a corneal abrasion. It's a lot of pain
because the cornea has more nerve endings than any part of your body, but close your eyes. When
you go to bed at night, that epithelium starts to heal and grow back. And so I can see people with
horrendous corneal abrasions or pieces of steel in the eye and we have to remove the rust. So we
have to use a drill in the cornea to remove the rust. And you know, we've iatrogenically created
a massive abrasion on their cornea. They're in severe pain. Well, 24 hours, it's healed 80%,
48 hours, it's usually healed almost a hundred percent. So the cornea does heal very rapidly
in most healthy, non-immune compromised people. But as you get older, right, and you become immune
compromised with different diseases, then the cornea doesn't heal. And that's one of the biggest
avenues that I see that patients come in with severe dry eyes, but the Lang I Institute, my
average age patient's 75. So I see patients over a hundred. And so these people just simply using
artificial tears isn't enough for them. Right. Yeah. Cause that's another thing about every
third day, us being awake. I mean, some departments awake pretty much all night.
That's one day in three that they're not able to repair their eyes. So I'm sure that has a long-term
effect too. Absolutely. Okay. All right. So I was just going to transition to something. I forgot
what it was now. Oh, that's right. So you were talking about foreign objects in the eyes. So
that's a real bone of contention for us on the EMS side. We'll, you know, we'll get called for a 911
call and it will be, you know, foreign body corneal scratch. And, you know, these patients are expected
to be taken to the ER. Let me put it very bluntly, who is the best kind of professional to treat
that kind of injury? Not like a knife sticking out of the eye, but something a little more minor.
I mean, the emergency room isn't the best place to go because they're not prepared for that. You
know, go to your local optometrists or local ophthalmologists because they have the slit lamp,
the bio microscope, they have the technology, they have the training. We have certain types of
Alger brushes, spuds, things that we can get foreign bodies, microscopic. I mean, we can magnify
things a thousand times or more if we have to. And so we can get the smallest little particulate
matter out. A lot of times you'll go to the emergency room, not to put down the emergency room,
great place, but you know, you have a red irritated eye and they think you have pink eye. They put you
on an antibiotic drop, okay? When it wasn't pink eye, it wasn't, it was something that was in the
eye that they didn't know you had that was creating this problem. Or it was a virus and an antibiotic
does absolutely nothing. So the gist of this story, if you learn anything from this podcast,
if you have a red irritated eye, go to the eye doctor, whether it's the optometrist or the ophthalmologist,
it doesn't matter. Both of them are capable and trained to treat it medically and even surgically
if necessary. Okay. So then, um, this is kind of a general question, but at what point would you go
to the ER? Are there any specific, uh, anatomical signs for the eye where you're like, okay, this
is out of our, our non-emergence state? Yeah. I mean, it depends on the emergency room, right?
So here, luckily enough, we have, you know, university, Florida, shans, uh, university,
South Florida, Tampa general. So these emergency rooms do have ophthalmologists that are on call,
residents that are on call. So if you have a sudden loss of vision, you know, um, a whole curtain
comes over your vision and it's, you know, it's midnight. You can't go to your local eye doc.
Well, you could go to an emergency room that has ophthalmology on call. If they don't, if it's a
hospital, uh, it doesn't, then it's waste your time. You can't go. They can't do anything. And
you're going to sit in the emergency room for seven hours and they're going to charge you $1,500 and
they weren't able to do anything. So usually a university based emergency room, uh, you know,
if it's a, you know, 30 minutes more to drive, that's where you need to go. If you're having
some kind of significant eye problem. Now, obviously if you get an acid in your eye or
something like that, you can go to the local emergency room, but the key for something like
that, a chemical gets in your eye of some sort, whether it's a base or an acid, you got to irrigate
your eye out and the faster you irrigate out the better. So here's an example. Let's say you're
drinking a Coca-Cola, believe it or not. And somehow acid just gets in your eye immediately.
Don't go upstairs and go in the shower, throw that Coca-Cola in your eye, believe it or not.
If you can drink it, you can put it in your eye immediately. The faster you neutralize the chemical
in your eye, the better. And then get to the sink and lavage your eye for, you know, 10, 15 minutes.
Then you can go to the emergency room because they can help with the pain and they can help with it.
So that's an emergency. A true ocular emergency is any type of chemical, acid or base in your eye.
That's an emergency, has to be treated immediately. A central retinal artery occlusion is an emergency,
but most emergency rooms aren't going to handle that. That's when an artery gets occluded. They
have to give you a clot buster. And usually it's a retina specialist that would do this,
or they got to do central paracentesis where they puncture the eye, lower the pressure immediately.
And so very rarely would the emergency room even know what's going on there.
An acute angle glaucoma attack is also something that's when you get severe pain in the eye,
blurred vision, and you're actually throwing up. You throw up severe pain and blurred vision.
That's usually an acute angle glaucoma attack. The pressure's gone up to 70, 80 or even 90 in your eye.
And I guess you definitely could go to the emergency room for that. They probably won't know what to do,
but they could call a doctor on call and they could start an IV. They could give you a diamox.
They could put some drops in their eyes. And many emergency rooms should be aware of what that is
also. Now emergency rooms are starting to check the pressure in the eye, and that is a true emergency.
So that's another one you could go to the emergency room for as well.
Okay. Because there are two things. Firstly, what you just described from the paramedics point of
view, we would think that was probably a bleed, cerebral bleed with the blurred vision, the
vomiting, but it would be obviously intracranial pressure that was going up. And then what you
said about the ophthalmologist being on call, the two hospitals that you named were what we call in
our field level one trauma centers. So that's kind of a good correlation as well. If we do have
something where there is more trauma to the eye, knowing that those kind of doctors are on staff
there too, I think is very helpful for me as a medic to know that's part of the chain of care.
All right. So one last one with optometry before we transition into the supplement size. What are
some of the biggest myths in optometry by the general public?
Right. Well, you know, they're thinking, oh, an optometrist isn't an eye doctor, okay? An optometrist
isn't trained, you know. If you're not an ophthalmologist, you know, you're not a doctor,
which that's crazy because you have to go to four years of college and then four years of optometry
school at a minimum. And now many optometrists are doing a one year in a residency or two year
residency and another year to two in fellowship. And they're trained every bit as good as an
ophthalmologist in disease management and treatment of diseases like glaucoma, conjunctivitis, you
know, lacerated corneas, and now surgical intervention as well. So depending on the state,
many optometrists are doing laser procedures, photorefective keratectomy, which is a form of
lasik surgery, you know, glaucoma laser procedures and things like this. So it's changed dramatically.
I mean, I think 80 years ago, optometry was a two year program. But now an optometrist is,
like I said, your primary eye care physician that would do everything except major internal
surgery. Then they'll refer you to the ophthalmologist that's fellowship trained in that
particular area. So it's just like if you got a little ache in your knee, you don't go straight
to the orthopedic surgeon and have knee surgery, right? You go to your primary care physician,
you got a little arthritis, you go to the rheumatologist, but you don't go straight to
the orthopedic surgeon. You can think of it like that. The optometrist is kind of like the primary
care physician of the eye and the ophthalmologist is kind of like the orthopedic surgeon. It's the
surgeon of the eye. Okay. Now one more optical question I just realized I missed. You are
developing a form of eye protection for extreme sports and I'm assuming it would probably be very
pertinent to tactical athletes as well. Could you tell us about that? Right. I've been working on
it for many years and I've got some really cool prototypes. I'm testing one right now driving
200 miles an hour and I've done things like we've gone kayaking with them and flipped over in rafts
and mountain biking and put all the elements on the lenses to see how they react. So what I wanted
to do is develop a lens that is almost impermeable to scratching, that's impact resistant to a 22
caliber bullet, that increases your contrast. So depending on the particular sport, it can
benefit you whether you're golf or baseball or driving a race car, whatever you're doing,
it's going to increase visual performance. A lot of sunglasses have terrible optics. A lot of the
lenses are made in China and the optics are terrible. You put them on and you actually see worse
than when they're off. And so polarization isn't always ideal. Polarized lenses are great for if
you're on the water. If you're a fisherman and you're on the water at the pool, it blocks the
glare. But polarization blocks one whole meridian of light. And so if you're on the water, you're
going to see a light. And so if you're mountain biking, you're going down a jagged downhill under
the canopy of oak trees, it can be very dangerous wearing polarized lenses because you can't see
the detail of that jagged and you're going to hit one of the rocks and you're going to endo and
potentially break your neck. Also, if you're riding a motorcycle, a street bike, we call them
crotch rockets or even just a cruiser, you never want polarized lenses because when you're coming
down a turn relatively fast and it has an oil slick in that turn or a water slick, you don't see it
because you don't see the glare because the polarization blocks the glare. So the only time
I recommend polarized lenses are for people that are fish or on the water or if you just want
driving glasses and you're not an aggressive driver, then absolutely polarized is good. So
I'm trying to develop lenses that have extreme optics. They're non-polarized with different
dimensions, totally impact resistant, but that are very comfortable and we're trying to work
in an ergonomic design that if you're playing a sport where you bend over or you look to different
extreme angles, you're not going to see the frame. It's not going to interfere with your vision.
So we try to take all that into consideration and I'm still in the process of working on it in my
free time. Okay, because yeah, I mean the way you describe it, that would definitely be something
that we want because I know just the scratch. I know my wife's not going to listen to this,
so I'm going to say it. She bought me some Oakleys with her discount voucher she gets at her place
and I took my shirt off, the damn things fell off my head and then time little scratch already in
them. So the scratch resistant in our profession is huge because we're not walking around just
getting them to put them neatly back in the case and clean the lenses. Sometimes we get a few
seconds to put them down when we're getting toned out for a fire or something like that.
So yeah, there is technology out there that can make the lenses almost impervious, but it'd be
scratching in a plastic type of monomer, not a glass lens. It's just that it's relatively expensive
and I want to make these sunglasses cost affordable. I don't want them to be $300.
I want them to be at an affordable price for most people.
Brilliant. Okay, so the other area that you are very entrenched in is nutrition. So I'm going to
start with a very blanket statement and then we can kind of hone in and talk about some of the
things that we were talking about before we started recording. What are some of the biggest
nutritional errors that we're making as a nation that are causing so much disease that we're seeing
at the moment? It's our diet. The typical American diet is pro-inflammatory. It's very high in omega
6, very high in sugar, carbohydrates, and it's pro-inflammatory. And so that's why our country,
everybody's obese. They're overweight and they have inflammation that's on fire in their body.
Remember aging, oxidation, and inflammation. So the number one thing, and I preach this to my
patients, to my radio listeners when I lecture, is you got to adjust your diet. I like the paleo diet
the best. You know the paleo diet, you don't have to be on a low carb diet. You don't have to be on
the Atkins diet. I mean some of these diets are very bad for you because there's no nourishment.
There's no vitamins. A lot of people lose weight very quickly on them, but they become immune
compromised because there's no nutritional value. There's no vitamins and minerals,
but they do lose weight and that's important. But you can lose weight and be healthy at the same time.
Actually I created a diet, you can google it, the Lange diet, Lange diet plan, and it's a modified
version of the paleo diet. And the paleo diet uses what God put on this planet. No processed,
no overly processed foods. There's no pasta, there's no bread, really there's no rice,
nothing that doesn't grow from the tree or that's natural. You can eat beef, you can eat chicken,
you can eat turkey, you got to prepare it, fish, you can eat fruits and vegetables. Milk is not
really in the paleo diet, but that's where I disagree with it. We use goat milk and A2 cows
milk in the Lange diet because I think it's actually very good for you. So we got to get
rid of the typical pro-inflammatory diet. I mean you ask people what do they have for breakfast.
And most of my patients had a piece of toast, had a bagel and a cup of coffee. I had some cereal and
orange juice, sugar and more sugar. I had a donut, I had a pop tart. The most important time to eat
protein is breakfast and supper. And it should be protein and vegetables. So an egg omelet, free
range organic eggs and saute it in coconut oil and put some kale and spinach and maybe mushrooms
and bell peppers sauteed in there and a big glass of spring water or green tea. That should be your
breakfast. Or you can make a smoothie with a good whey protein we'll talk about in a minute, but stay
away from those carbs. Remember your blood sugar is as high as it gets first thing in the morning
and then you're putting sugar on top of it and you wonder why your kids aren't making good grades.
You're giving them the colorful sugary cereal that they love, a glass of chocolate milk and then they
can't pay attention in class because their pancreas over secretes insulin and then they drop. They
start to go down and they mind can't think, they can't concentrate. So they get labeled as attention
deficit disorder, learning disabled, hyperactive and it's the breakfast. Breakfast is most important
meal. So start using protein and vegetables. I don't even like fruit for breakfast. Fruit is for
snacks or for lunch. No fruit for supper. Supper should be like boiled chicken and some boiled
broccoli or some tuna fish and a tuna salad or something. You know a salad and a lean piece of
grass-fed organic beef and some vegetables. Fruit is for lunchtime or for snacks. You know you can
have a little slice of pineapple and a handful of nuts as a snack in between meals. We should eat
five meals a day. Three regular meals and then two small meals or two snacks in between. That keeps
our metabolism going. Keeps our blood sugar from yo-yoing up and down, up and down. But yeah the
diet is the number one thing we need to adjust and we need to go to a anti-inflammatory diet.
And it's hard for people to do because a lot of people aren't liking fish and they're not eating
the fish that helps give them the omega-3 that they so urgently need. So taking a good omega-3
fish oil is a good way of even if you're eating that Burger King Whopper every now and then.
Let me remember everything in moderation. Taking a good omega-3 fish oil between 1500 and 2000
milligrams of fish oil in the triglyceride form. I created one called Fortify Super Omega.
Will help lower the inflammation in your body related to that nasty diet. So that's a good way
because a lot of people aren't going to change their diet that much but they could certainly
take two fish oils a day. Now when we talk about omega-3, over-the-counter omega-3, you can people
can test their omega-3 and find out if it's good or not. Simply bite your omega-3 in two, squeeze it
in a styrofoam cup and see what happens. If within 10 minutes it rots a hole through that cup you
got to think twice about putting in your system. 95% of all fish oil you buy over the counter is an
ethyl ester molecule. That means it has ethanol attached to the backbone. They use that in the
distillation and purification process. They don't take it out because it's expensive to remove.
We do a process like that but then we remove the ethanol and replace the triglyceride backbone the
way fish naturally have it in the sea. Makes it absorb much quicker. It doesn't go rancid.
You don't get the fishy burp back either but it lowers inflammatory markers in your body.
So C-reactive protein, tumor necrosis factor, arachidonic acid, things like this go down if
you're taking the proper omega-3 fish oil. So I always preach that to patients. If you're going
to take anything, if you only took one pill, not a multivitamin, it'd be a good omega-3 fish oil.
Not krill. I think krill is a nutritional scam personally because there's no omega-3 in krill.
The small little pills they're giving you in these omega reds has less than 100 milligrams of omega-3.
So you'd have to take a whole bottle to get enough. So take a good triglyceride form omega-3 fish oil
and you'll find that next time you go to get your blood chemistries done at your primary care
physician, they're starting to normalize. Okay. Yeah. I think one of the best catch phrases I
guess you could say is I think it just hits it right on the head about where we're at at the moment
is that we're overfed and malnourished. And those two don't make sense initially but as you were
saying, if you're not having that spectrum of color on your plate, you can be completely stuffed and
put nothing but bad stuff in your body versus as you're saying, smoothies and salads and
vegetables that will still be delicious and fill you up but now you're nourishing instead of harming
your body. Absolutely. Colorful, especially vegetables. So you get kale and spinach,
orange, red, and yellow bell peppers, put some onions and some broccoli and some radishes and
you know, put a little salad dressing on it or gently steam it, gently saute it, and a wild piece
of Alaskan salmon or some chicken or some beef or pork or whatever, that's a meal. You know,
you don't have to have, and you know I love spaghetti and meatballs, let me tell you,
and every now and then you got to have some lasagna, some spaghetti, but for the most part
you don't because most of these are filled with gluten and a lot of people have gluten sensitivities,
they have celiac disease, but the thing I don't like is most of this is genetically modified so
there's a lot of pesticide and that's why we see so many people with irritable bowel syndrome and
acid reflux. It's from the foods they're eating, all the gluten, the FODMAP vegetables, these are
fruits and vegetables that cause fermentation in your gut. A lot of people have reactions to
these type of fruits and vegetables, not everybody, so I can actually listen to my patients and I'm
their eye doctor but I'm also their nutritional guru and I can find out based on their history
and their diet, you know, what's causing their bloating and what's causing their lack of energy
and we can simply totally adjust their diet, take the foods out without even doing any blood tests
and anything to look for sensitivities just based on the case history and looking at their stomach
if it's bloated and tender, we can adjust their diet and their lifestyle a little bit and help
them dramatically, but they go to their primary care physician oftentimes and they prescribe
an antacid and that's just masking the problems and actually it's creating problems down the road
because these antacids actually block the absorption of many nutrients causing a malnourished
environment. Yeah, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, don't a lot of these antacids actually cause
more pyruvic acid as well? Right, they secrete because it's an antacid so your body overcomes
by secreting more acid and so it can actually, in the short term, it can be beneficial but if you
use them chronically long term it can be a horrendous problem for people. Right, brilliant. All right,
so we were talking about dairy and I told you that, you know, my story and I think anyone who's
listened to all the podcasts probably heard this, I had IBS, I had stomach issues my whole life,
grew up on a farm, drank milk by the pint like it was water and then four years ago stopped dairy
and almost overnight realized that that was the underlying cause of a lot of my stomach issues
but we talked about A2 milk and I literally, I think it was either today or yesterday, saw a
commercial for the first time, never even heard of it. So could you tell us what A2 milk is and why
you do use that in the goat's milk? Right, I started, you know, promoting A2 milk about two and a
half, three years ago now and now it's becoming very vogue and maybe it's due to my radio program
but so thousands of years ago the typical cow went through a genetic mutation and the beta casein
protein actually went through this mutation and it's an A1 beta casein protein is linked to irritable
leaky gut, cancer, diabetes, and autism in children and think we all know people that have all these
things and they've been drinking milk all their life. So goat milk has never gone through that
genetic mutation. It has a beta casein A2 beta casein protein. It does not cause any of those
things, all right. People don't like the wild taste of goat milk for some reason. You acquire the taste,
all right, but now the A2 cow company from New Zealand is now in the United States and they
actually genetically test every cow to make sure that they haven't gone through the genetic mutation
producing A1 beta casein and so I have many patients, many colleagues, many friends that
were in the same situation with you and they thought they were lactose intolerant. That was
the problem and they can drink A2 cow's milk and have no problem at all. So you're getting the
benefits and I like the whole milk because that fat in that milk is actually good for you. This
is a grass-fed A2 cow so try drinking A2 cows. Promise Land is another one you can buy that's
from A2 cows or goat's milk and it's great because milk has eight grams of protein in one cup. So if
you're making a protein drink, a lot of people are using almond milk or coconut milk or soy milk,
God forbid, stay away from soy, all right. It screws up your hormones but there's no protein
once again but milk does have protein. Two cups of milk is going to have 16 grams of protein.
So that and some eggs in the morning for breakfast with some vegetables and you're in good shape.
And then so adding to that, you were telling me about your recovery shake that you
developed or come across. Well interesting, you know, during some blood studies that I've done,
I've done thousands of blood analysis on my patients with macular degeneration over the last
15 years and one of the biggest nutritional deficiencies macular degeneration patients have
and then patients, people over 50 in general, is glutathione. And so I tried using L-glutathione,
inocetyl cysteine, different things to stimulate glutathione. Nothing really worked but whey protein
does. Whey protein concentrate much better than an isolate because it has the good fats which has the
imuglobulins in it and so I actually was using some whey proteins that you can only get prescription
wise. They were very expensive because the whey proteins you buy over the counter are kind of like
the fish oil you buy over the counter. Most of them are coming from China, not to knock China,
but I wouldn't consume anything in my body that came from China right now and most of them,
the protein has been bleached, most have been filled with growth hormones to produce more milk,
antibiotics, steroids, and then the grass if they are dewy grass has pesticide on it but most of
them are fed grains and so the grains are genetically modified grains skewing the whole omega 3 profile
in the milk. So I started researching because I wanted the best of the best for myself, my family,
and my patients and came to the conclusion New Zealand is the best place to get these cows.
So we went and started a company well years ago, four to five vitamins, but we used this to be able
to buy bulk direct from New Zealand and we're using A2 cows and it's not necessary for whey protein
but we're using because the whey protein removes all the casein protein but we're still using that
herd and we're using a concentrate non-bleached whey protein concentrate. This is non-denatured
because New Zealand does not heat the protein to denature it the way America does over 300 degrees.
So the protein molecule is much more bioavailable all the immune globulins remain intact something
called covalent bonded cysteine is in it that converts to glutathione. Remember glutathione
is this big deficiency in most people over 50 and most patients with macular degeneration.
So I developed fortify super protein we have it vanilla chocolate and now one called naked
fortify naked super protein and I think it's the ultimate protein in the United States right now.
And so what happens is I also developed for my patients so they're not having the bagel and
orange juice for breakfast. They're having a protein smoothie they take a scoop of this
they can take some white A2 milk or goat's milk put a little kale maybe a banana and some blueberries
peanut butter or almond butter blend it all together and they got a protein packed smoothie
smoothie with antioxidants anti-inflammatory for breakfast keeps them going until lunch.
So post-recovery is something that's really great and I did a lot of research on this.
You can type in Google the ultimate post-recovery workout drink I come up number one in the world
and so after a lot of research it's very simple it's chocolate milk watermelon and fortify super
protein one scoop. So one scoop of fortify super protein has 21 grams of the fastest acting whey
protein two cups of chocolate milk not the organic chocolate milk A2 chocolate milk or harai or um
promised land chocolate milk or goat's milk if they make a chocolate milk and that's giving
you another 16 grams on top of the 21 grams of protein and then a big giant wedge of watermelon
and you blend it together you drink it one minute to 30 minutes after working out whatever your
workout is bike rider triathlon swimming hitting the weight the gym you know the weights you know
boxing whatever it is rowing and it's the best post-recovery workout drink because right after
working out you want to have high glycemic index chocolate is high glycemic index watermelon is
the highest glycemic index fruit known to man so you have that watermelon is high in l citrulline
that converts to l arginine vasodilating the blood vessels bringing the combination of whey protein
and long acting casein protein from the good milk to your muscles it's an amazing post-recovery
workout drink it works i've got literally thousands of patients taking it now body builders
you know power lifters professional athletes all doing amazingly well okay i might have to try that
because i'm working towards uh kind of like the the hell week the of the fire service that we get
to volunteer for and pay for in the fire school here um so i'm doing a lot of training and gear
and all that kind of thing so it'd be a good time to try that and see if i can tolerate the a2 as
well so i think i'll remember that post-workout yes pre-workout you don't use chocolate milk
pre-workout and you don't use watermelon you lose low glycemic index so blueberries strawberries
uh a scoop of the protein white a2 cow's milk or um goat's milk and you can put a little manuka
honey manuka hundi is uh also gives you some prolonged energy very good for digestion as well
okay fantastic now i'm gonna wrap up in just a moment um but i want to touch on one thing that
we just just glossed over so um from my understanding soy in in the japanese um original form where it's
uh uh i'm forgetting the word now but um fermented um is it is a very good source of protein and in
the healthy version but what is it that we do here that makes soy bad and what is it doing to the
human body yeah the only soy that's any good is organic fermented soy and then again in
moderation i wouldn't do it every day uh the fermentation process you know really releases
probiotics and enzymes that are incredible for the digestive system so i have a little miso soup and
a little tempeh and that's in the lang diet uh that's once or twice a week on the lang diet plan
the problem with the soy here 99.9 percent of it is all genetically modified and uh you know that's
a whole nother talk show and i personally would stay away from gmos no matter what anybody tells
you right and there's a lot of evidence why um so genetically modified products you just don't want
to ingest but soy uh even edamame you know it's most of that's genetically modified if you can find
you know um organically grown soy and they can guarantee it's non-gmo which i don't think it's
almost impossible these days then in moderation it's okay but soy is a phytoestrogen just like
red wine is so men out there especially you don't want to eat a lot of story you don't want to drink
a lot of red wine women maybe but not men because it's going to lower your testosterone and raise
your estrogen levels and you don't want that men don't want that right i've seen a lot of men doing
the wine tasting that explains a lot yeah remember everything in moderation a good a little pino noir
pino noir has the highest amount of resveratrol which is very good for the retina all right but
these are patients with macula degeneration that are 85 percent of the time they're in the
macula degeneration that are 85 years old and they're probably not you know ravaging a 30 year
old woman they're probably not having a lot of sex and they're certainly uh not going to have
any more children so you know if you're going to have something that raise your estrogen lowers
your testosterone if you don't want to go blind that's a different story but for most men virile
men you know a little wine in moderation is okay if you're going to drink it drink a pino noir from
the northern region of either new york or oregon uh that has the highest amount of resveratrol but
remember everything in moderation a good beer is probably better for you than than wine they add a
lot of sulfites to the wines these days too if you get them from europe it's different they're not
adding additional sulfites sulfites occur naturally in the wine we don't have to add more the fda makes
us add way too much that's one reason you get headaches you know you have five or six glasses
of wine and you feel in no pain and then you wake up in the morning you have one of the worst headaches
it's the sulfites preserving your brain ah yeah see i i get migraines so that was one of my
triggers and like when i go home and uh portugal and france where my mom and dad live um yeah i
never have an issue with that at all but here i mean there's certain wines now yeah it's obviously
getting more progressive in the stores but yeah i find a good organic wine that says no added sulfites
on it very difficult to find all right so i'm going to wrap up with some questions you've been
very very generous with your time and uh we need to get and uh get out there and do some preparations
for this hurricane um so uh very first question uh is there a book that you recommend to people
can be about this or it can be about something completely different or a fiction wow a book
somebody asked me that and i was being interviewed before i i just you know i don't have a lot of time
to read um i haven't read a lot of books i mean because i've been working literally since uh you
know college started and since i work i'm 18 19 hours a day uh sleep deprived um i read a lot of
journals all right that are directly related to the businesses that i'm in
i think people that have the time and the ability to sit down and read a book by candlelight very
relaxing you know if you want to fall asleep war and peace right sit down and try to read war and
peace candlelight i guarantee you'll get tired and you'll fall asleep yeah or any college textbook
all right so what about a movie and or documentary wow my favorite movie
i tell you one of my favorite movies it was a long time ago was the champ
you know and the reason for that is you know i i people say i'm not that sensitive but i actually
nobody knows this but i actually cried in that movie it's the only movie ever in my life that i
shed a few tears and the champ was a long time ago you can probably rent it and look at it but
it really got to my sensitive side it's the only movie ever oh really um i like gladiator too
gladiator is a great movie that was yeah i cried like a little girl in a lot of movies so i guess
i don't have the same problem um all right so what do you do i mean like you said it yourself
you work very hard you've poured yourself into not just this business but multiple businesses
so what do you do to decompress well i try to i try to get to the gym every day if i can every
night at least and usually it's working out later in the evening or early early in the morning
and then try to get some cardiovascular exercise usually on uh saturday morning or sunday morning
sunday monday and tuesday i try to bike 50 miles on each of those days um or row so i'm either
biking doing some form of you know fairly extreme cardiovascular exercise hit the gym and then
every other weekend i'm racing cars now so um i'm actually scca full competition license
i'm driving a 2017 viper acr extreme voodoo 2 there's only 31 of them in the world i put michelin
slicks and some headers and did a little engine work and and you know racing in the advanced class
and doing quite well just won the class at sebring last saturday and heading to new
orleans to raise i gotta tell you um and there is one thing about releasing adrenaline when you
release adrenaline you also release beta endorphins beta endorphins are natural pain relievers
natural anti-depressants and i tell you when i i have a need for speed that's why i did the whole
motocross thing and until racing cars i i couldn't find a sport that really released the adrenaline
made me feel young and made me feel good i mean golf doesn't do it for me fishing doesn't do it
for me mountain biking does a little bit road biking definitely doesn't do it for me triathlons
don't do it for me but i noticed when i was driving my car on the streets too fast on the
interstate on the verge when you're waiting for the blue lights behind you um that did it and so
you can't really do that on the street so i went to one of the track days at sebring and got
really interested into it and then i took the bondurant race school courses over in arizona
and did formula one race cars and i got addicted to it about four or five months ago
and so uh that need for speed's coming out but i mean after i'm in a race i feel i get out of the
car i don't feel 55 i don't have knee aches neck pains i literally feel 21 22 years of age
and i think everybody needs to find a way to help release their beta endorphins you know it's like
when you're doing when you're running and you hit that wall okay when you hit that wall and you run
a little bit more then boom you start feeling good again that most people don't get to the wall but
you know people that do marathons they understand this and triathletes and iron man competitors
because that's the release of beta endorphins and everybody needs to figure out a way especially as
you get older how can they release the beta endorphins safely yeah well we've we've narrowed
our field so much as far as safety as well we're in this comfortable little box and i think a lot
of people that i've interviewed that have you know broken out of that have had you know success and
happiness and and all these other areas because you think about original man we weren't sitting
in a climate control box watching electrical devices all day we were out you know running for
our lives and hunting and fishing and swimming and running and all these other things during
storms yeah so i think that i mean it makes perfect sense martial arts is mine and having
someone try and knock me out is kind of adrenaline rushed yeah absolutely so all right so my next
question is is kind of a new one i started asking um can you think of a person who would be an
invaluable guest on this podcast to talk to the first responders of the world
i tell you if my dad wasn't 89 years old my dad okay would have been would have been great he's
been a guest on my radio show many times i gotta tell you my success is directly related to my dad
you know he taught me the value of hard work all right um you know you don't get anything for free
no matter what you do he didn't push me into medicine you know he said whatever you do
you know do the best job if you dig in a ditch be the best ditch digger and you're going to own the
company and i think my dad instilled moral values in me and and work ethics that quite frankly i
don't see these days in employees so yeah but he's living in mississippi half in new orleans it'd be
difficult to get him here but if i had to pick somebody it'd be you know my mentor is is is my
dad and he's probably one of the reasons i'm where i'm at today uh is because of the values that he
instilled in me brilliant okay i love that answer all right so to wrap it up then so people listening
now um where can they find you where can they find the fortified products everything we've talked
about today right so um the lang i institute is based in the center of florida in the villages
you can learn a lot more about what we do at dr michael lang.com don't spell doctor just dr
dr michael lang.com that actually will link up uh to a section social media you can follow me
on twitter facebook pinterest google plus linkedin instagram from dr michael lang.com and that will
also link you up to my other companies of fortify vitamins which is fortify.com you can learn about
the research behind the products that we've developed a whole line of whole body supplements
not just i vitamins paleo simplified is a company of mine where we make paleo bars paleo granola
that's uh from the website blue light defense uh and a few other companies all link from
dr michael lang.com so pretty much that website will also give you some videos uh of me racing
or you can go to two youtube channels which i think are also on that website either dr michael
lang youtube or ocular health channel youtube and they've got a lot of videos of my radio shows
um and also me recumbent biking or car racing even some motocross videos okay and what's the radio
show called uh ask the doctor i've been hosting ask the doctor uh since march of 1993 non-stop
wow a little bit longer than me i'm hitting 10 months right now all right well thank you so
much i think we've really delved in some things that and i love podcasts and i delve into a lot
of fitness and health um we just don't discuss a lot of things that we talked about today i
haven't heard anything talked about with the a2 milk and and you know many of the areas so it's
it's definitely going to be another gold mine i think for people so i really appreciate you
giving me the time especially the end of your work day here we're sitting here it's dark outside now
so thank you so much fantastic i enjoyed it anytime you want to do it again just let me
know i'll always be available for you brilliant well thank you