Protecting Your Eyes When You Have Hashimoto’s or Graves Disease

Introduction and Guest Background 0:00

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Reversing Hashimoto's and Thyroid Disorders Summit. I am your show host, Doctor Anshul Gupta, world thyroid expert and I am really excited for a special topic discussion. You know, we have not discussed this before. Thyroid eye disease, lot of thyroid patients, whether you have hypothyroidism, graves disease or even sometimes Hashimoto's conditions have been affected with thyroid disease. And our expert today has had tons of experience and she is going to share her views and also actionable steps that can help you.

First of all, treat the thyroid disease as well as prevent from getting it so let me introduce her first and then we will go into this discussion about the thyroid eye disease. So Doctor Rudrani Banik is a board certified neuro ophthalmologist. She runs a private practice which is based in NYC, as well as she's associate professor of dermatology at Mount Sinai. Doctor Banik is also certified in integrative and functional medicine. She focuses on the root cause of eye diseases and uses strategies based on nutrition, botanicals, lifestyle modifications, and supplements.

Her expertise is often featured as an expert in her field, having appeared on Good Morning America, the New York Times, Today Online, CBS Evening News, NBC, ABC, Fox, The Washington Post, and many more. Media outlets. She has been awarded Castille, Connolly, Top Doctor and NY Magazine's Best Doctor in Ophthalmology annually since 2017. She is the author of two bestselling books, Beyond Carrots Best Foods for I held A to Z and Doctor Rani's plant based Visionary Kitchen. She founded the I summit, the first online free educational event which focuses entirely on integrative strategies and preserve vision.

Doctor Banik also shares valuable insights on eye health and migraine on our podcast, the Eq podcast. Doctor Banik, welcome over here. Oh, thank you so much, Doctor Gupta, for having me and for that kind introduction. Absolutely. So I'm really excited for our discussion today. But, you know, as I always like to start my topics with personal stories and almost each and every MD I've interviewed over here, including myself, we all have a story behind that propelled us into the functional medicine route.

So did you had a health journey of yours or a health scare, which also started your journey into functional medicine? I have, and, it was quite a difficult period in my life that I'll share with you. So, so since my early 20s, I had migraine attacks, and initially they were pretty, sporadic, you know, maybe once or twice a year. Not bad at all. But then once I got older, especially in my early 40s, I was going through a difficult period in life, both at home and at work. A lot of stress and my migraines started to come more frequently.

Personal Migraine Journey Into Functional Medicine 3:14

And there was a period when I had a horrible migraine one day and it never went away. So my episodic migraine transformed into chronic migraine. And I had a migraine every single day. And living in New York City, I went to some of the top headache specialists, my colleagues here in New York. And what they kept doing was they just kept prescribing me medication after medication. Nothing worked and it actually sometimes made me feel worse. It gave me brain fog. I felt like I couldn't function, and meanwhile I still had to see patients and take care of my family and all that.

So finally I said, there must be a better solution than to take these pharmaceuticals that are not working and causing these side effects. So I started to do some research and lo and behold, there's actually a lot published out there on supplements and diet for migraine. And none of my doctors had ever asked me like, what are you eating? What are you drinking? How much are you sleeping? How much stress do you have? Like, none of them had ever addressed any of that with me. And I said, you know what, I'm going to try this approach.

So I stopped my medications, started to try supplements, change in diet and better sleep. Some stress management and things finally started to get better. And then one of my I was telling my, one of my colleagues the story of my migraine. And he said, well, have you ever tried an elimination diet? And I said, I don't even know what that is like, what's an elimination diet? And so he explained that what it does to me, and he said, you know what? You should really go to this course sponsored by the Institute for Functional Medicine, go attend their course on mitochondrial health and maybe you'll learn some insights to help you with your migraine.

And I said, I'll try anything. So I went to the AFM course and I my mind was blown. I said, oh my goodness. Like this. These approaches, these functional medicine strategies, I never learned about them in medical school. It's biochemistry. It's, you know, immunology. Like what? It's a gut health microbiome. Why did I never learn any of this in medical school? I was blown away and I instituted those changes. I finally started to get better, and it changed inch my life so much that I decided to get certified in functional medicine through AFM.

And now I use these strategies and almost all of my patients, whether they be my migraine patients, which actually, it's kind of ironic that I have migraine myself, and a lot of my patients have migraine, but I used it for them. I saw the tremendous benefits, and I also use it for my patients, whether they have dry eye or macular degeneration or thyroid eye disease. And I've seen some really incredible improvements using functional medicine approaches. So that's a long to make a long story, kind of to tie it all together like it's changed.

Functional medicine has changed the way my own health trajectory has gone. But also the path for my career and now for my patients. Absolutely. And that is so powerful that, you know, once you have gone through it yourself, then you can see the power of these simple lifestyle changes, you know, which can be so profound. So thank you for sharing that. So why not? We just kind of delve into the discussion, you know, what is the connection between thyroid and eyes. Right. Because we see a lot of thyroid patients will have different kinds of diseases.

So first please tell us, you know if there is a connection between thyroid and ice or not. And what is that connection. Yeah. So it's something that these two organs you normally wouldn't connect. You know, what is the thyroid have to do with your eyes. But what I'll tell you is that when patients have autoimmune thyroid problems, whether that be Hashimoto's or Graves, the body's creating antibodies against certain receptors on the thyroid gland. And there are similar receptors in the eye socket.

So similar looking receptors, and the muscles of the eye socket. And also that there's fatty tissue in the eye socket as well. So when the thyroid gets involved by the the immune system kind of going haywire, creating antibodies, those same antibodies are cross reacting in the eye socket and causing inflammation. So that's the bottom line is that it's autoimmune due to these autoantibodies circulating in the bloodstream that are affecting both of these organ. So that's good to know. So now obviously like you know when I see my Hashimoto's or Graves disease patients, we see a variety of eye diseases going on with them.

Obviously the most common people are worried about all those bulging eyes, which typically will happen with graves. But tell us like more about in terms of lesser known eye diseases that people might have, like dry eyes or anything else which Hashimoto's or thyroid patients might be prone to have. Yeah. So thyroid eye disease, there's actually a spectrum of manifestations. And the bulging component is something the medical term for bulging is proper ptosis, where people have like their eyes look like they're they're, you know, literally coming out of their eye sockets.

And the worst case scenario, that's kind of more of the, I would say, more the severe stage of the of the disease of thyroid eye disease. There are other milder stages and some people may not even connect that this is related to my thyroid, but in fact it may be so the milder parts or milder forms of thyroid eye disease can include, as you mentioned, dry eye, but also puffiness. So many people will have puffiness of their upper lids or their lower lids. They may describe them as eye bags. And it looks puffy because again, there's an autoimmune process going on that is affecting the soft tissues in the eye socket.

So that's a manifestation where sometimes people wake up with really like a lot of swelling of their lids. Uncomfortable feeling. Of course, the cosmetic appearance looks very kind of like people haven't gotten enough sleep. They look tired all the time. So that's one component. Dry eye is another very, very common component. Now dry eye can happen in anyone really, but people with thyroid eye disease really get a more,

How Thyroid Disease Affects the Eyes 9:08

bothersome type of dry eye where they feel this scratchy ness. They feel like there's like sand or gravel inside the eye. And that's because, again, the surface is inflamed, the eyelids are inflamed. And imagine this is the surface of urine. Here's your eyelid kind of opening and closing as you're blinking. Imagine if both surfaces are inflamed when they're when the eyelid is opening and closing. It's creating friction. And there's a rubbing. And when there's that sensation, people again feel this discomfort.

Sometimes even pain, they can have redness, burning, tearing because of dry eye from thyroid, eye disease. And then sometimes the surface of the I can also look swollen. So actually the white part of the eye can get red and swollen and even bulge. So not the entire eye bulging, but just the very surface. But watching. And that's something that we call chemo assist. So that's the medical term for it, CHB Mozzies. So that's the milder stages of thyroid eye disease. And then as we get into the more moderate and severe forms, that's when people can have a little bit of bulging, more congestion, redness sometimes even double vision.

So this is something that people really need to be aware of. If you have autoimmune thyroid problems, either Hashimoto's or Graves, watch out for a double vision where people may actually see two images side by side. So you're looking at it as an object, for example, and you may start to see like a shadowing of that object, kind of like a ghosting of that object, or maybe even two separate split images. And the images may be side by side, they may be one on top of the other, or they may be kind of diagonal or oblique, and it may not happen all the time.

It may come and go. So it may be that you have only double vision when you wake up in the morning and then after maybe a few, you know, minutes or maybe an hour or so, the double goes away. But make sure that you're just aware that this could be related to thyroid, so that when you go to see your provider, you mentioned these symptoms to them because it's very important for them to know that you're having these symptoms so they can evaluate you and try to figure out really what's going on, what's the root cause of these symptoms that you're having.

Absolutely. So again, thank you for explaining, you know, the whole spectrum of this disease because as you mentioned, most people will be just worried about those, you know, proper doses or just bulging of the eyes, but they never can put other symptoms of I, you know, correlated with thyroid. So thank you for explaining that. So I mean also tell us a little bit more about the pathophysiology. Like, you know, you mentioned that, you know because of the autoimmune component, you know, like there is inflammation which damages the eyelids.

So you know, is inflammation. The only reason of causing these, like symptoms and signs of eye problem. And if that is the case, then why? You know, this inflammation is so high. You know, in these people, maybe some of the root causes that you kind of share something about that. Yes. I would say inflammation is the, manifestation of all this. But there are triggers to that inflammation. And yes, the circulating antibodies are triggers, but some people have circulating antibodies like they'll have anti thyroid peroxidase antibody levels in their blood, but they don't have thyroid eye disease.

Or they may have anti thyroid globulin antibodies or anti thyroid receptor antibodies in their blood markers. But they don't actually have thyroid eye. Is it. So having the antibodies is one thing. But then superimposed upon that something else is triggering the tissues in the eye socket to get inflamed. And looking at this from a functional medicine lens, usually it's one of two things. Or maybe it's three things actually. Environmental trigger, for example, toxins in the environment. And we know that it's very clear that air pollution and toxins that are released by things like smoking or even vaping, cooking fumes, barbecue fumes or just forest fires, these types of air pollutants can activate thyroid eye disease.

So that's something I've definitely seen is when

Symptoms and Spectrum of Thyroid Eye Disease 13:24

you're exposed to a lot of unhealthy air, a lot of particulate matter, matter in the air, or even toxins that are inhaled into your bloodstream, that this will propagate some of the findings of thyroid eye disease. So maybe you had a predisposition because you have Graves or Hashimoto's. Maybe you have some of these circulating antibodies, but then you get exposed to poor air quality and then it gets triggered. So that's one thing. The second thing, again, using a functional medicine lens that I've identified in my patients is their diet.

And certain types. And perhaps we can we can have a discussion about what you've seen as well, Doctor Gupta and your patients with both autoimmune thyroid and thyroid eye disease. But the dietary triggers I found that are most common amongst my thyroid eye disease patients are either dairy or gluten, or interestingly, nightshades. Now, this is something that patients may not be aware of that you know, maybe it's the foods that they're eating a lot of. For example, I have some patients who love nightshades, like tomatoes or potatoes or peppers or spices.

And unfortunately, these foods sometimes fall into these classes. This large class of nightshades. And they eat a lot of these foods, and then their thyroid eye disease gets triggered. So it's important to do a diet history. So when I meet with my patients, I ask them, okay, what are some of the foods that you have a lot of we go through that sometimes we even do food testing, food sensitivity testing, IgG testing, sometimes IgG testing as well. But, to really identify which foods may they be, may they be sensitive to so that's the second kind of, modifiable, trigger that I've seen in my patients.

The third thing, which is almost universal in my thyroid disease patients, is their levels of stress. And almost always I find that when people have active thyroid eye disease, when it first gets up to feed it, they are going through an incredibly stressful period in their lives. And most of us have stress. It's normal to have stress as normal as a human being, to have stress. But it's how we respond to that stress that makes the difference. So if you have high levels of stress, but you have ways that you're modulating, that you're taking long walks or you're exercising or you're listening to music that comes you down, that's wonderful.

But when you don't have that, those outlets for stress is when stress can be a trigger for this autoimmune process going on. So that's what I've seen in my patients. And I would love to to discuss with your doctor group that what you've seen in your patients to see if you've seen similar patterns or maybe, perhaps other things that you've seen in your patients who end up with I would I disease, what are they encountering and maybe what are some of their their triggering and my, mediating types of factors in their lives.

I totally agree that, you know, toxins are one of the major things almost 90% of my patients are going through, whether it's heavy metals, environmental toxins, you know, as you mentioned, air pollution or either more toxins, you know, that causes a lot of issues with my thyroid patients. And diet is always foundational. So gluten, dairy, you know, like, you know, soy, corn and sometimes nightshades and things definitely are causing that too. And stress being the case, I typically also sometimes sees infections as a major reason for a lot of that inflammatory markers to be high.

Like, you know, like we know about gut infections, specifically overgrowth of bad bacteria or certain parasites, and then plus reactivation of certain viruses, which long Covid is one of the new ones, but the old ones, we already know about Epstein-Barr. So I certainly feel that, you know, the ones that you mentioned are the top ones. And then sometimes the infection bees, if they are doing everything else and not getting better than I typically feel, their immune system is riled up sometimes with those infections that we have to kind of look for, and then maybe work on their immune system.

Absolutely. And speaking of some of the topics you mentioned, mold is definitely mold exposure. I've seen, I always have, you know, when patients have very active thyroid eye disease, I tell them, get your home tested, get your environment tested for mold, because it's possible that that's lurking there and it may be contributing to may not be the only factor, but it may be contributing to activation of your thyroid eye disease and one other, infection that I would say, is something that we need to investigate is Lyme.

And I happen to live in the northeast, where, yes, there is quite a bit of Lyme, in, in my patient population. But, it's something that I do include as part of the workup. Could they have Lyme or chronic Lyme? Yeah. Lyme is one of those interesting things that, you know, we think that there are only pockets, you know, where the Lyme disease happens. But the new research suggests that Lyme is across the world, you know, like, you know, where there was no Lyme in certain countries, you know, now they're actually able to test and check even Lyme disease over there.

So, you know, like, I think this is one of those mysteries that, you know, I think in the next maybe ten years or 20 years, we are going to solve what this chronic Lyme is. And how it is being transmitted. I think we do not know the complete picture yet. And then obviously therapies, you know, how to control it, you know, and also make it better. So yes, I think that chronic Lyme, you know, is that mystery piece which is always hanging. And some of the things that we need to still learn more about.

So thank you for sharing that. Now let's get a move towards okay. Well, you know, certain people have thyroid disease or they want to prevent getting the thyroid eye disease. Let's first talk about like what is the conventional treatment. Right. You know, if they go to conventional doctors what will they be offered. And then we can obviously talk about more about like functional medicine approach of how they can improve it naturally. Sure. So the conventional approach has typically been a wait and see approach.

So just wait it out, wait until something happens. And then once it happens then we'll we'll manage it. We'll we'll do what we can. And it's a very reactionary approach. It's not a proactive approach. It's passive. It's reactionary. And I find that when we when I used to use that approach, people would come in with already such advanced stages of disease. And then in that situation, we need to pull out the big gun. And in conventional medicine we have, you know, some of the big guns include using steroids, whether that be oral steroids, topical steroids, IV steroids, and yes, some people.

Absolutely. They're already coming in with an advanced stage of thyroid eye disease.

Root Causes and Triggers of Eye Inflammation 19:48

Unfortunately, they need that because otherwise their vision is at risk. And they're just, you know, it's too risky not to use the steroids. So we have to balance the risks and the benefits of some of those types of approaches. In some conventional, approaches, we wait until double vision develops or until the practices get so bad that someone may have corneal exposure or optic nerve compression from their properties. And in that situation, we may have to resort to surgery, which is a last stage kind of resort, like a you know, the final stage is we can do nothing else.

So let's just operate and try to fix this problem. And, again, for many years before I discovered functional medicine, I used to rely on those pathways and those, you know, that kind of, algorithm. You wait until some someone develops this particular symptom and sign. Then we do this, you wait until this happens and we do this. But now I've really having the functional medicine toolkit. Under my belt. And understanding these pathophysiological mechanisms, I really try to catch it at a much earlier stage.

So let's say somebody, you know, I'm looking I'm evaluating a new patient, and they have Hashimoto's on their list of medical conditions, even though they may not have any thyroid eye symptoms at the moment. I have a discussion with them about it saying that these are the potential symptoms that may come about. And yes, you have this autoimmune predisposition. What can we do to try to prevent it from developing? Because you don't want that to happen, right? You don't want to look like your eyes are bulging out of your eye sockets.

You don't want to have double vision. You don't want to have it. You don't want to have risk for vision loss. So let's see what we can do to, modulate that and prevent it. And prevention is key. I always tell my patients an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure when it comes to your eyes, so don't let it get to that stage. So let's see what we can do to talk about dietary modifications, to talk about minimizing your exposure to toxins, or perhaps eliminating toxins that may already be in your body.

And what can we do to support your gut microbiome? To help your microbiome tone down any risk for inflammation or propagating this autoimmune predisposition that you have? So I talk to them about all of that. I talked to them about supplements because we know that. And I'm sure you must use this also in your practice. Just Doctor Gupta, we know that selenium is very effective for thyroid eye disease. So sometimes even patients may not have clinical symptoms and signs of thyroid eye disease. I would still put them on selenium 100 micrograms twice a day.

Or if they don't want to do a supplement, make sure you're having Brazil nut every day. 3 to 4 Brazil nuts in your diet. Other foods that are rich in selenium. So these are the things I talk to about my patients using a functional medicine approach. Also including we're talk I was mentioning earlier about the gut microbiome keeping that healthy, making sure that you're having live probiotics in your diet, as well as prebiotic foods that those healthy gut bacteria thrive on. So making sure that you're including all of this as a proactive approach to hopefully prevent you getting clinical symptoms and signs of advanced thyroid eye disease?

Absolutely. I think you nailed it down in terms of telling that do not wait till the end. You know where your eyes are already damage and your suffering, and then making, you know, taking steps to improving it. The key is that if you are diagnosed with an autoimmune condition, then that is creating or damaging all different parts of your body and you don't want to lose your eye. So definitely prevention is the key over here. And this is where you need to start working. So I am so glad that you are having a discussion with your clients.

You know, which when you see their history and addressing it, you know as soon as you are meeting them. So that's that's a very important thing. Now I want to focus a little bit more on the nutrients piece of it, which is specifically good for eyes and stuff. You know, we all know about like, you know, as you said, different things which are might be good for thyroid like zinc, selenium and other things, but specific vitamins, minerals or nutrient foods that are really good for the eye, you know, like or thyroid disease particularly.

Please share about that. Sure. So, there are many nutrients that are important for it. But then I do talk about these nutrients in my book Beyond Carrots. But a lot of people, immediately when they think about their eyes and they think about nutrition, they immediately turn to carrots and say, oh, if I just have a few carrots a day, my eyes will be fine. That, unfortunately, is a myth because you can eat ten carrots a day and it does not guarantee you good eyesight. What you really have to have, instead of just one food, one nutrient is a diversity.

Your eyes are very active. Metabolically. They're very high. They have a very high metabolic rate. They create a lot of waste products. They create a lot of free radicals in their metabolism. So you need a diet that is rich in anti-inflammatory nutrients and also antioxidants. And there's a couple of nutrient groups that I'm going to highlight right now that you should really strive to include in your diet. And I'm sure you've heard this before, probably in the summit from other speakers. But when it comes to diet, the omegas are very important, particularly omega three star HRA and EPA, which are found mainly in fatty fish.

But you can also get them to a certain seeds, the precursors to omega g EPA can come from, seeds like chia seeds, flax seeds, hemp seeds. So I make sure that my patients are including those types of foods in their diet. So not only are they anti-inflammatory for the eyes, but they also help to support a healthy tier for them. And we need that to fight against dry ice. So make sure absolutely that you're getting your omegas. And if you think that you're not getting enough omegas through diet, make sure that you're taking an Omega supplement.

And I typically recommend an Omega three supplement. And with at least 2000 to 4000mg of omega three so much higher than, I think what conventional doctors would recommend for their patients. Make sure you're getting a high quality omega, whether that's a fish oil omega or an algal oil based omega. It doesn't matter to me of just make sure that it's a high, high amount.

Conventional Treatment vs Prevention 26:10

Now next I'm going to highlight the group of nutrients. And this is a very large group known as bio flavonoids. And these are nutrients that come from plants. And these nutrients protect the plant from disease or from, inflammation or from infection. And so when we ingest these nutrients, they confer some of those benefits to our eyes as well. And the particular ones I'll highlight within the bio flavonoid class are Christian, which comes from, usually like deeply red or purple pigmented foods like red onions, cabbage, grapes, wine or maybe not wine, but let's stick with grapes.

And so again, like they think of like deep red, deep purple as Chris apples, even Christian. And then also, anthocyanins. And I know it's kind of a long name to remember, but anthocyanins provide, pigments to certain foods, like berries, for example. So like deeply pigmented berries, like purple berries, like blueberries, blackberries, bill berries. Depending on where you live, you may have access to other types of dark berries. Also, even some of the red berries like, raspberries, goji berries, strawberries.

These are very helpful for the eyes. They've been shown to help, you know, protect the optic nerve, lower eye pressure, which can be an issue in thyroid eye disease, where from the all the swelling and congestion, the eye pressure can go up. So I found a lot of benefits with those. And even other things like spices like curcumin for example, which comes which is the active ingredient in the spice. Turmeric is very helpful for thyroid eye disease. So I found benefits with those types of nutrients in one's diet.

Now of course there are many others I could go on and on and on. This is one of my favorite topics, but if I had to highlight the groups, I would say those those few groups. Absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing that. Because again, everybody knows about a healthy diet. But I think like, you know, knowing about some specific food groups, you know, that you shared is nice that people can focus a little bit more on those, you know, obviously, like, you know, we can have a whole discussion of couple of hours about what is a healthy diet for the eyes.

And then you know that is a long discussion with some other day, but I want to give them bite size, you know, like, you know, a thing. So one is a diet piece that we spoke about that definitely. You know, like, you know, you shared certain groups. Anything else besides that, whether you want to touch based on supplements or whether you want to taste, you know, touch based on something else that you found very useful, specifically for protecting the eyes. Yeah. So supplements I that is more of a individualized approach.

So not everyone you know there's no like blanket supplement I would say okay, take this for your thyroid eye disease. After, you know, evaluating a patient and seeing where they're at in terms of their, their level of thyroid eye disease, whether it's not they're mild, moderate or severe, I may recommend a certain supplement regimen. But the other thing I would say is now this goes back to, kind of the, the air quality that I was talking about earlier. Oftentimes there are allergens in the air other than air pollutants that I mentioned, but sometimes allergens in the air can really worsen thyroid eye disease.

So a simple tip that I give my patients is get a high quality air filter in your home, or get maybe 2 or 3 units and put one in your bedroom right by your bed. So when you're sleeping at night, it's filtering out some of those allergens in the air that can be, perhaps, you know, a contributing to your thyroid eye disease. Flare up, put one by your workstation. Now, this is very important. You know, wherever you spend most of your day, let's say you're working from home or even if it's in your office, you can get a small portable, air filter and put it right there.

So it's literally filtering out, some of these allergens right by we know where you spend maybe 6 to 8 or 12 hours a day, depending on what you're doing. And then and also think about your screen time because when people are on screens, now this goes beyond just thyroid eye disease. Many people can have this problem is their eyes dry out because they're staring at the screen. They're not blinking enough. Normally our eyes blink about 15 to 20 times a minute, but when and we're staring at a screen, as we're doing right now, you know, we're on this, we're on this zoom call.

Doctor Gupta and our listeners are on their computers or devices watching the summit. You're not blinking enough. You're only blinking instead of 15 to 20 times a minute, you're only blinking about 3 to 5 times a minute.

Eye-Supportive Nutrition and Supplements 30:38

Because you're so focused on what you're looking at. So make it an effort to blink a lot. Sometimes to take a break from the screen in I care. We always talk about the 20 2020 rule and 2020. You think about perfect vision, but what the 20 2020 rule is. Every 20 minutes, take a break from your screen, look away for 20s and either stare at something 20ft away. So that's 20 minutes 20s of a break. Look at something 20ft away. Or just close your eyes for 20s. And when you close your eyes, you allow the tears to spread over your corneas.

You're lubricating and you're giving your eyes a break from the screen and from blue light. So whether or not you have a thyroid eye disease, try to incorporate some of these healthy screen habits into your life, and you'll immediately see the benefits of the relaxation of your eyes. The better lubrication of your eyes, the comfort will improve of your eyes when you're on devices all day long. Absolutely. I think each and every one should do that, including me. You know, like we are all culprit of this because, you know, unfortunately, you know, either, you know, a lot of our work is around the screen time, whether it's on a laptop or on our computers, you know, or like watching something.

So we need to give that a break. So thank you for sharing that a very useful way. You know, like how you share that you can break it down and make sure you're following those rules. So that was really very powerful. So I know we also you know sometimes I forget. And so I'll set a timer on my phone. So the timer goes off I'm like okay it's time to take my break. And if you can't do every 20 minutes I understand we're busy. We're working at school, do every 30 minutes, maybe do do every 45 minutes.

But do what you can. Make sure you're giving your eyes a break and, you know, just let a chance to reset and recharge. I think we always talk about giving a break to the adrenals, you know, for stress purposes and things, you know, taking those deep breaths. But nobody thinks about giving a break to their eyes. So I think that's so great that, you know, when you are giving a break, you know, you just can do multiple things at the same time. So closing your eyes and taking certain deep breaths, you know, will help, you know, obviously working on your eyes as well as your adrenals at the same time.

So that is so important to take these breaks and help your body to work better for you. So thank you for sharing that. Also. Absolutely. I think we can keep going on with this discussion, but I think we are coming to the end of our discussion today. Anything else that you want to share with people or. I think we have enough that we are giving to them. I would say, make sure that you see your eye doctor once a year. You know, if especially if you have a diagnosis of Hashimoto's or Graves disease or just any thyroid issue, see your doctor once a year because they can do your exam, they can dilate, you take they can take a look in the back, make sure everything is healthy.

They can check your eye pressure. This all needs to be done. Make it an annual health checkup. We we see our primary care doctor once a year, we get our labs done, we see, you know, we get maybe a mammogram every year, maybe we get a colonoscopy every five years. We see our dentist twice a year. But how many people are actually going to see their eye doctor once a year for your annual checkup? Even if your vision is perfect, even if even if it's 2020? Please, please, please, please make that annual eye checkup, especially after the age of 40, especially if you have a thyroid condition.

Absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. Actually, I should start recommending that to my patients too, because I never knew that, you know, that would be useful. So, you know, yes, unless they have a problem, I would never recommend my thyroid patients to go and see an eye doctor. So that is actually a tip for me also to make sure that I am making them aware that this is something that I should. They can get checked their eyes too. So thank you for doing that. And then obviously people want to know more about you where they can find you as well as I think you have a great summit and a master class about things.

So please share a little bit more about where people can find more information. Sure. So thank you. Thank you again for having me. The best way to find out more information of some of my resources is my website drrudranibanik.com. And there you can find my podcast called the IQ podcast.

Screen Habits, Eye Care, and Where to Learn More 34:48

I have a few episodes on thyroid, which you may find interesting. And Doctor Gupta, I hope to interview you as well on my podcast. I have my books there. I'm also on Instagram. That's my main social channel, so you can find me on Instagram at Doctor Rudrani.Banik And then I have a summit called the AI summit. We're launching our 2026 summit in May, so please, it's a free summit. Please join us if you want to learn more about your eyes. And I have a thyroid eye disease Masterclass, which I am, revising and relaunching in 2026 as well.

And there you can find a lot of it's, it's, a didactic session, meaning I, I share a lot of information, I share slides, I share a lot of visuals. So you can really understand what thyroid disease looks like. And I give the the range of options for treatment, from conventional medicine to functional medicine to what I like to call integrative medicine, because that's bringing me together both worlds. And I really share some of the best, strategies that will work well for thyroid. So please, if you're interested, take a look at that.

Absolutely. Definitely check out all those resources. They will be all listed in the description so you can check it out. You know, a lot of great information coming from a very authentic academic person. So I will definitely recommend you to check that out. I think this is what we have today. Thank you so much, Doctor Banik again joining us and sharing your expertise. And thank you so much for give that. Absolutely. So I think this is it. You know like I'm sure you want to watch this episode a couple of times to get all the information and all the recommendations that she has given to you.

So please make your notes and then start implementing those things. And this is it for me for now. We will see you again next time. Take care till the time. Bye bye.