Number one misconception is that your eyes are gonna last forever because you wake up, you open your eyes and people don't understand that the eyes age like the rest of the body.

So you can see your skin, your face, your body getting older, but you really can't see your eyes getting older. There's so many, I always tell patients, don't wait until you get sick.

Don't wait until you can't see, start early. And there's some preventive things that you can do because over time we talked about the age around the eyes, but how about the aging in the eyes with cataracts, macular degeneration, glaucoma, floaters.

It's so important on a daily basis to protect your eyes from sun. Wearing a good pair of sunglasses, not to stare into the sun because the sun accelerates aging of tissue.

With glaucoma, I'm gonna give a shout out for an annual eye exam. This is Dr. Talks. Real talk from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.

Welcome to the iHealth Summit. I'm your host, Dr. Rani Banik, and today I am so excited to introduce my special guest, Dr. Elise Briscoe. Dr. Briscoe is truly a unicorn in the eye care world.

She began her career as an integrative optometrist. She's also a clinical homeopath. and now she is an international model. So we are so fortunate to have with us Dr.

Elise Briscoe. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. Your mission about holistic eye care has always been so close to me and resonates with me.

Absolutely. I think we think along the same lines and that's why I'm so excited to have you here to share your journey and your experiences with our audience and to hopefully help inspire them to live more holistic.

and healthier lives. But let's begin with where you started off, because where you started off is so different from where you're at right now. What were you doing in the initial stages of your career?

For 34 years, I ran an integrative wellness practice, multidisciplinary. So we had osteopath, Chinese medicine, acupuncture, optometry, of course. We even had plastic surgery, preventive cardiology.

I dedicated my whole career to helping people. see better and live healthier lives, but certainly using lifestyle as their medicine, not just writing prescriptions or doing procedures.

But then what happened is I was asked to start judging beauty contests. And I've always been known as the nerdy and the sporty girl, never the pretty girl.

I'm a boy mom, I coach AYS soccer and little league, and they said we want role models for the girls. So I did it and I fell in love with the pageant community because they're all about lifting up.

community for worthy causes. Then two years after that, I was asked to compete for Miss California. And I was like, there's no way I'm running ragged a single mom.

But I was the founder of a health tech company called Nearsight. I actually have two patents and I invented something to replace vegan glasses. Here's one of my patents.

And they said, will you win just by stepping on stage? And I went ahead and did it. It was a terrifying experience for me. had to learn to walk in high heels this high.

I've always just worn tennis shoes. Much to my surprise, I was crowned and I was the oldest ever crowned in a major beauty pageant. That led to my first modeling assignment to do the lookbook and a catalog for a Toronto Couture.

And I started getting fan mail from around the world. People saying because I'm eating healthy again, I'm doing yoga and dating again and dancing. And I thought, wow, I can reach more people than I can in the exam room where I'm seeing 20 to 30 patients a day.

The same reason. you're doing your podcast and social media is it's so powerful and you can get your message to people. it people, I realized that especially being in the fashion and beauty industry is that's really key to get patients to do what's good for them is they need to see that there is an exterior benefit that they can appreciate and see right away.

I really have to applaud you. You took this huge leap of faith, right? Most of us were doctors. Healthcare providers work stuck in our routine. We see our patients, we go to our office, we take care of our patients, and then we go home and spend time with our family.

But what you did is just completely off the beaten track. And again, I really admire you for taking that huge chance getting on that pageant stage. I wanted to ask you also a little bit about, said you had a practice that was not just focused in optometry, but on complementary aspects to health, whether it's acupuncture, traditional Chinese medicine, homeopathy is also one of your strong points.

How did you get into that? Like, where did that arise from? What came first? Was it optometry or some of these other health approaches? It's optometry first, and I have an autoimmune disease.

My mother has some serious health problems. Western medicine kept failing us. too, they kept giving him stronger antibiotics and steroids. And we met an integrative pediatrician who introduced us to homeopathy.

I knew nothing about homeopathy. My family are physicians, surgeons. We don't learn about that in optometry school. And I saw it helped my son without side effects.

We took him off all medications. He didn't need surgery anymore. And I was like, what are all these little white pills? And I… I had to go back to school to become a clinical homeopath.

And then I realized how much I could help my patients at a deeper level addressing the underlying cause of their health problems rather than, and I'm integrated, so I'm not A or B.

I still write prescriptions. We have an IPL. I do refer out for surgery, everything. But it was much more powerful. It was less expensive. For our audience who may not be so familiar with homeopathy, could you describe?

the concepts behind it and some of the strategies that you use as a clinical homeopath? Yeah, so homeopathy enhances your own body's healing ability. It stimulates the immune system to do a better job.

So pharmaceuticals are valuable because if you're really sick and you have symptomatic, it will decrease the symptoms so that your body can have a chance to catch up and heal.

But if you read the When you go the pharmacy and you read your prescription, say it does not treat the problem. It treats the symptoms, and they even say that.

But homeopathy actually goes to what is the underlying cause of this? Why are you having an ear infection? Why are you having allergies? It could be a gluten intolerance.

It can be an allergy that's leading to the ear infection. You don't need an antibiotic because you're getting the infection. You need to treat the underlying allergy that's creating the fluid in the ears, et cetera.

same thing with the eyes. What is the underlying issue? Is it you can't just give someone an anti-inflammatory, a steroid or an antibiotic because yes the symptoms will go away temporarily but you still have that underlying reason that your tear glands are not producing tears or you have the inflammation.

So that's what homeopathy does. It uses a really small amount of a substance that triggers a healing response in the body. So it's safer because you're not giving chemicals or pharmaceuticals.

You can use it on infants and babies and on pregnant mothers. It's far less expensive and it treats the underlying problem. It may take longer because you're getting down to the root, but I truly believe in it.

And I always gave patients an option. Say I was treating an allergic conjunctivitis, which is itchy red eyes. I'd say, hey, I can write you a prescription.

I can give you homeopathic medicine, or we can just use self-care. Compress and eye washes. So a lot of patients would say, my gosh, I'm so grateful because my doctor does not believe in alternative care or complimentary care at all.

And they were grateful that I gave them options. So I think it's for any physicians who are listening out there, it's good to give your patients options.

Most of the physicians that I know actually use natural and complementary medicine at home, but for some reason they don't apply that in the practice.

I hope that hearing your story, more people will be open, at least their eyes will be open to the possibilities, that there are other strategies out there, there are other approaches to health that don't have to be completely founded in pharmaceuticals and or surgeries.

So I'm in a very similar kind of state of state of mind where I've integrated my training in functional medicine with ophthalmology so I completely hear where you're coming from.

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Your eyes are worth it. Can you give us an example, Dr. Briscoe, when you mentioned allergies, but what may be an example of a natural substance that our body makes that can help a particular eye issue?

With homeopathy, it's usually not substances that the body makes, but substances that we know will trigger that healing response. it'll irritate the body at a level that's not going to cause the disease, but it'll get the body's immune system, which is super powerful problem.

For instance, we are being bombarded every day by bacteria and viruses, but the reason we don't get sick is because your immune system is always fighting for you.

And you know that your immune system shut off is because when a person's passed away, then their body starts decomposing because you no longer have that system.

Examples are for dry eyes instead of using just a tear replacement, you want to treat everything from opening the tear glands with heated compresses and infrared eye mask to tear stimulation drops rather than to replacement drops.

So you want to send a message to the brain saying, hey, produce more tears. And and here's a good example of homeopathy too, is instead of knocking down the door with a machine gun or hammers, we use the key and that key knows exactly what to do to help your body heal itself.

Because your immune system is much stronger than any medicine could tell it to do. Wow. So it's really a matter of modulating the immune system through almost like microdosing, like tiny subclinical amounts of substances that primes your immune system to help to basically kickstart your own healing.

Is that kind of a way to describe it? Yeah, yeah, and I use homeopathy as part of a toolbox. In the office, we'll use very sophisticated diagnostic tools.

If a patient had dry eyes, back to that, because I was just reading today that over 80 % of people who use computers and are on digital devices have suffered from dry eyes because you don't blink as much.

Your blink rate slows down by 80 % because The pixels on the screen are electronically refreshing. So it's really moving. The picture of your computer screen, you'll see all the lines on it's moving.

So your eyes, your brain slows down your eye blinking so that you're not blinking while it's moving. So the tear glands just end up getting clogged up.

So I would use a digital imaging to actually see if there's clogged. clogged tear glands, have any of them atrophied or been damaged. We will send home self-care and then I'll use in the office IPL radio frequency so we can actually use light and use the radio frequency to heat up and treat inflammation.

So it's a combination of everything. But it's not a one man show. Like I would prescribe fish oils to patients. would do lid massages instead of giving really harsh lids, scrubs or foams that have detergents in it, I would use something like, I don't know if you've heard of Zocular, but they use okra-based ingredient that is actually more powerful than antibacterials.

And this was in the NIH that I was reading their publication on it. So I'll use things like that to use as natural as possible. But again, I still use pharmaceuticals, write prescriptions every day.

I'm no longer in practice now because I'm modeling around the world, but it's a combination of everything. gleaning the best out of all these different knowledge bases to help patients.

I love it all. It's so much in tune with my philosophy as well. It's not one or the other, but it's taking the best of both worlds and using them together.

And every patient is different, right? So not every patient is getting the same regimen. It's based off of what may be going on in their own system. that's causing the issue.

So this has been such a fascinating discussion thus far, Dr. Briscoe. I've always wondered about homeopathy. I've always seen there are certain drops that used to be on the market in the US.

I believe that they're not currently on the market anymore that were homeopathic eye drops. And they had ingredients like ibrite and then number of other ingredients that I can't even pronounce, but I think believe there are certain herbal ingredients.

Are there specific herbs or other botanicals that you use as well or you have used as well for certain eye issues? I think can expand a little bit on the eyebrow because you can still get that in some drops and you can get it also as homeopathic medicine because that is actually an anti-inflammatory.

And I don't know if you knew this, but it is a mast cell inhibitor, meaning that it inhibits the cells that would release histamine, makes your eyes teary, itchy, and red, it actually stops what's happening.

So iBright or ephrasia is a really great homeopathic medicine that you can use. And most of these do not require prescription, but you still really should work with a homeopathic doctor or an integrative optometrist or ophthalmologist to direct you.

It's so much better than self-prescribing because there's so much misinformation on the internet. But I iBright for eye fatigue. I love Rutagrav, Rutagrav violens.

I just call it Rutagrav. It actually, it's an analgesic, it's antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, and it helps decrease the strain of the tiny little eye ligaments around your eyes because the human spends, what is it, like nine, 10 hours, 15 spins.

I think it's almost 11 at this point. It's crazy. It's mind boggling how much time we spend on screens. Yeah. It's so tiring too. When I was in practice, I saw patients four days a week and I did research and wrote one day a week.

And the day that I was in front of the computer most of the day was more tiring for me than the days I was seeing patients. Your eyes move thousands of times across the page and they're always focusing.

It's a lot of work, even though you're sitting still, your eyes, please treat your eyes well. They are workhorses for you. Absolutely. So if somebody wanted to perhaps try some of these homeopathic strategies.

Is there like a daily routine that you recommend or is it you use the products as needed? How does it work? The typical dosage would be five pellets under your tongue, let it melt.

That'll be two to three times a day as you start to see improvement. You decrease that. Most places like Whole Foods carry a 6C and a 30C. Unless it's neurological, they're pretty interchangeable.

If it's neurological, like it's related to nerve pain or something like that. You'd want to use the higher dosage or if you're sensitive to it. But again, it's easier said than done.

It's so much better under the guidance of a clinical homeopath or an integrative holistic doctor who knows how to use that. But then you can't just use that in isolation.

If you have eye strain and fatigue, we talked about using the hot compresses with infrared mask, using the hot compress to open up and push out, open up to…

to your glands and then taking breaks every 20 minutes, look away for 20 seconds, 20 feet away and let the eyes go the glass. It's like, you don't go to the gym and just keep working out for eight hours straight.

We're working our eyes out for eight hours straight. It's unnatural, right? What we're doing, our lifestyle these days and modern technology. Yeah, I love all those tips.

You've given us so much amazing information, Dr. Briscoe. We are gonna take a very short break, hear from one of our sponsors, and then we'll be right back on the iHealth Summit.

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Love your eyes with Soothe. your essential partner for health and vision. Welcome back everyone to the I-Health Summit. We're chatting with Dr. Elise Briscoe, who is truly a Renaissance woman, optometrist, homeopath, and now international model.

Let's talk now about beauty, because I know that is one of your strengths. are like such a role model out there on the runway promoting beauty for not just I-Health, but overall health.

So what are some of the beauty strategies you use yourself in your daily routine? Could you share that? Yeah, I'm happy to because I combine the knowledge that I have as an integrative optometrist and clinical homeopath now with my experience as a model.

And I'm realizing, thank God I've lived a clean, healthy life because I would not be able to model after 34 years of being in practice if I had not led such a healthy life.

And I just wanted to show here's one of my. Yeah, I don't have my Harvard. But I was in Harper's Bazaar USA last month and I was just in cosmopolitan.

So it starts with sleeping. You can't cheat sleep. You definitely need to sleep. Hydration is super important. And I'm talking about beauty from the inside out because a lot of people say, just what creams do I use or what makeup do I use?

But the beauty routine starts way before I get on the runway with the skincare, with the self So hydration, I drink a lot of water. I love coconut water.

And I also take collagen because we start to lose collagen after a while. So I put this in my smoothies every day. This one happens to be by Sane. These guys don't sponsor me at all.

I just love it. And then when I'm on the road, don't have, it's harder for me to make my smoothie. So I just take little gummies. It's my little treat.

But, then fish oil, fish oil. my gosh. My dermatologist is what recommended that. And I've Carlson fish oil literally for 13 years. I don't dare stop it.

But so that's what I take internally. sleep, I meditate, I work out because working out not only is good for your body, oxygen and blood circulation to your eyes.

When I wake up in the morning, I drink two glasses of water immediately because I want to jumpstart the lymphatic drainage system. So front load your water.

Absolutely. I load my water. want it. And then I do facial yoga because that. Could you demonstrate? Could you show us like one of the exercises you do?

When I first was introduced to it, I was like, what is this? But now that I've done the research on it, I've actually seen, because I don't have any fillers or anything.

And if you guys do the math, being in practice in 34 years, I've been around for a while, is facial yoga can increase the muscle tone, just like when you're working out your body.

So you have more firmness on the muscles supporting the eyes, the face, the jaw, neck to lift it up more. also in stimulates collagen production. don't really understand how that works, but I've cited so many references that say that.

And then you also get the lymphatic drainage system going because you're moving the toxins just very lightly because the lymph nodes are just, the lymph system is just right underneath the skin.

You don't have to do a deep massage. So something simple that you can do at home that I do almost every morning when I wake up, my water, stretch, and I want to get sunlight right away.

So I open up the window, get that sunlight going. so my body knows it's time to wake up, because I don't drink coffee. Then this is super simple. I'll take my two middle fingers, put them on either side of my nose, and then, sorry, I haven't done my nails, and then I just smooth out on both sides and make a light circle up and out, and I'm moving up.

And this is helping to drain any, if you have some puffiness under eye bags when you wake up, you do that about 15 seconds, do it three times, and then it's even better if then you, end up taking it down to your lymph nodes because there's some lymph nodes right in front of your ears and behind your ears and if you take it down there you're actually moving through your body.

It's mechanically stimulating the flow of lymph and helping to detoxify. Now along those lines so I've done the smoothing then the next thing I'm going to do is actually work on the muscle so I'll do the V here that I was here before and then without moving my fingers I'm giving enough resistance, I'm closing my eyes and try this doc, because you'll feel it that you're giving this resistance and that's actually strengthening the muscles without squinching or anything like that.

Blank normally? Is that what you're doing or you're doing a fourth hold? Hard blank while you're holding your fingers like this. I can definitely feel that, yeah.

There's so many facial yoga, I'm just showing the eyes since I'm an optometrist. And then the last one is the big eyes. So now you do this and you open your eyes a little bit and you can feel again against the eyes.

So three simple things with the facial yoga that you can do that really helps. Another question I get asked a lot too, oh and by the way before I do that, I usually put on some eye cream because I don't want to have stretch marks and pull along the eye.

the eyes and everything I do is well thought out. I vetted everything out. So I use something called herbal face food and they have an eye cream. And the reason I choose this is it's a hundred percent botanical.

There's not one artificial ingredient in this. And so I use literally feed this, it feeds my skin. And what's interesting is when I was doing pageants, I hadn't seen my makeup artists for a couple months when I started using herbal face food.

And then she saw me and she said, what did you do with your skin? Cause I'm an open book, can see. I have no pores, it's super smooth. And it was really noticeable difference with that.

So I used that. And then I used the power of stem cells. Because stem cells actually go to damaged cells and help to repair it. And there is a in Beverly Hills, Dr.

Nathan Newman, who has invented this line where he uses plant stem cells to increase collagen, elastin. That increases firmness so that when you pull your skin, jumps back rather than being really creepy.

So I use, it's called the STEM company and I use their, give you exactly what it is, the regenerative skin, regenerative serum and then the night and the day formula.

We'll include all of those links that Dr. Briscoe just mentioned. So if anyone wants to consider trying any of the products you mentioned. you can easily access those links.

So Dr. Briscoe, I know you are super busy flying around the world, spreading your message of holistic health and what people can do. Have you come across any myth or misconception about aging and vision that you'd love to dispel today?

Anything people always say to you that you say, that's just not true? Well, the number one misconception is that your eyes are going to last forever because you wake up, you open your eyes and people don't understand that the eyes age like the rest of the body.

So can see your skin, your face, your body getting older, but you really can't see your eyes getting older. There's so many, I always tell patients, don't wait until you get sick.

Don't wait until you can't see, start early. And there are some preventive things that you can do because over time we talked about the age around the eyes, but how about the aging in the eyes with cataracts, macular degeneration, glaucoma, floaters.

It's so important on a daily basis to protect your eyes. from sun, wearing a good pair of sunglasses, not to stare into the sun because the sun accelerates aging of tissue.

With glaucoma, I'm gonna give a shout out for an annual eye exam. Glaucoma has no symptoms. That's the weird thing about the eyes. There's really no pain or warning sign.

had dinner with a friend last night who had a retinal detachment and he said, I didn't know something was wrong with my eyes until there was a shadow in front of my eyes.

One more day, he could have gotten blind and I'm not over-exaggerating. So it is essential because you can't tell yourself if you have a problem or not to get that annual eye exam.

Like you don't wait until you have a terrible toothache to go to the doctor, the dentist. You go twice a year, get your teeth cleaned. Your eyes are not replaceable.

You can get dentures and implants for your teeth. You cannot get an implant for your eyes. So please get your eyes checked every I always tell my patients, there are so many health checkups that we get.

We go see our annual, see our primary care doctor for annual checkups. get our blood work done. You see the dentist twice a year. We go for our mammograms and colonoscopies, but what about our vision?

Like it's just not something that people recognize as a priority, but it needs to be. It really should be on your checklist of things that you do proactively to prevent issues going forward.

So important. Thank you for bringing that up, Dr. Brisco. No, absolutely. I still get my eyes checked. Yeah. And I just sweat myself. Yes. Put that on your calendar, everyone.

Please today. If you haven't been in the past year to go see your eye doctor, put it on your calendar. For children, nine out of 10 school age children have never had an There is uh a one out of five kids have a visually related learning problem like a tracking problem, eye-teaming problem, a focusing problem.

And you're not going to catch it unless you test for it. I've had ophthalmologists who bring their children in to see me, because I did a post-doctor fellowship in children's vision.

So they bring their children in for eye exams with me, and then they're horrified that their child has a vision problem because they're not allowed to.

Because they never check their own child's eyes. You can't tell if you're seeing correctly or not, because you're unable to compare how you see compared to someone else.

If someone doesn't respond to you when you're talking to them, they may have a hearing problem. I've had kids come in who have diplopia or double vision who did not know that was abnormal until I tested them, found out they have a lazy eye or strabismus.

And the parents are like, why didn't you ever tell me that you see double? And the kid will say, I thought everyone saw like this. I think it's normal.

So please have your kid's eyes checked too because it may be interfering with their academic performance, their ability to catch a ball. I was the team optometrist for the Anaheim Ducks and the NHL.

And I was able to use sports enhancement training to actually help them see faster, more accurately, to guide their hands so that they can. You have so many important messages, Dr.

Briscoe, but I think the most important thing I hope listeners will take away from this part of our discussion is have an eye doctor on your health care team.

eh Yes, you have multiple different professionals, health care providers, but your eye doctor should be an essential member of your health care team at any stage of life, not just for older individuals, but younger people too, especially given the amount of time we spend on screens these days, all kinds of things can happen.

want to encourage people too that it's never too early to start taking care of yourself and it's never too late to start either. You're so true. Don't wait another 10 years.

Dr. Briscoe, this has been an enlightening conversation. I'm so glad we had this discussion. I learned about homeopathy. You answered so many questions that I've had floating around in my mind and glad to hear some of those products are still available.

If anyone wanted to learn more from you, perhaps follow you on social media. How could they find you? The is Hollywood eyes because I practiced in Hollywood.

So Hollywood, E-Y-E-S on Instagram, on TikTok, it's Hollywood dot eyes and on YouTube it's Hollywood eyes, Dr. Lise Briscoe. And just DM me, let me know that you saw me on Dr.

Ronnie's show and let's start a conversation because health really should be your lifestyle and your medicine is the strongest way you can take care of yourself better than waiting till you're sick and taking drugs.

Let's use the way you live so that you can live better. And I also, the reason I do this is I want to help people embrace aging rather than fear it. It's bound to happen to all of us, right?

Like we can't get away from it. So we might as well embrace it and continue to function as best we can. I think a lot of people associate getting older with losing their ability to do certain things, but that does not have to be the case.

And you're the perfect example of someone who's been able to do that. Yeah. And I'm sure you've had the same thing. I've had so many patients come into my office who are 40, which I consider a baby and say, Dr.

Briscoe, I'm old. And I'm thinking, You're barely at your halfway mark. Are you gonna feel sorry for yourself? Because you're old for the next half of your life.

You're just starting to get to the good part. uh Yeah, I love that. So important. It's about mindset, right? Part of it is what we do, but part of it is also having a mindset that is positive, that's helpful, vibrant, and it will reflect from the inside out, as you said earlier.

much under your control that you can prevent and even reverse health problems. And it doesn't cost much if you incorporate that into how you eat, moving every day, sleeping, meditating, using good products.

Yeah. So much for sharing your incredible insights with us today on the iHealth Summit, Dr. Briscoe. I will have all of your links included for the products and also your social media links.

If anyone wanted to reach out to you, they will be right under the interview so you can easily access them. But again, thank you for joining us, Dr. Briscoe, and thank you all.

for being here today on the iHealth Summit and I will see you all very soon. Thank you for tuning into Dr. Talks. We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health.

Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your wellbeing. For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website, www. DrTalks.com.

Stay connected, stay healthy and join us next time on Dr. Talks. Real Talks from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.

Elise Brisco, OD

Eye on Healthy Aging through Homeopathy and Lifestyle