The Dylan Gemelli Podcast - Episode #56 Featuring Dr. Bryce Appelbaum! THE VISION EPISODE! The Screen Fit Program, Training our brains for better vision, Negative impact of screen time, Comprehensive Vision Care and more!

Episode Date: October 9, 2025

Episode #56 Featuring Dr. Bryce Appelbaum!  THE VISION EPISODE!  Dr. Bryce Appelbaum brings his one of a kind vision improving program, the Screen Fit to Dylan's audience in one of the most "EYE OPENING" (literally and figuratively) episodes you will see this year.  Dr. Bryce is world renowned for being a pioneer in teaching about the brains effect on vision and this episode takes a deep dive into many aspects of vision most are completely unaware of.  Listen in to this masterclass from Dr. Bryce Appelbaum, starting with the importance of vision beyond 20/20, with an in depth explanation on different values and aspects of healthy vision.  Dr. Bryce explains how to truly understand functional vision problems and how we can train our brains to obtain better vision.  The conversation shifts to the truth about the negative impact on screen time and how it is becoming one of the leading culprits for degraded vision today.  Dr. Appelbaum discusses the importance and impact of comprehensive vision care as well as the the link between vision on ADHD.  The amount of highly unknown information relating to vision in this episode is beyond astounding and life changing!  DO NOT MISS THIS EPISODE!    TO SAVE $200 on the screen fit, click below!! screenfit.com/dylan   Get the Free Vision Health Guide: https://dylangemelli--screenfit.thrivecart.com/screenfit-vision-foundations/68422926e8826/   Free Vision Assessment: www.myvisionfirst.com/quiz   Follow Dr. Bryce Appelbaum on instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/drbryceappelbaum/?hl=en     Today's episode is sponsored by TIMELINE   To PURCHASE MITOPURE visit Dylan's landing page and use code DYLAN to save 20% OFF!! https://shop.timeline.com/DYLAN _______________________________________________________________________________ Get the Apollo Neuro for $90 OFF!! USE CODE GEMELLI to save https://apolloneuro.com/gemelli     TONUM supplements for the MIND AND BODY!   USE CODE "DYLAN" to save!!  https://www.tonum.com/DYLAN     THE BREAKTHROUGH MIMIO HEALTH FASTING MIMETIC SUPPLEMENT!  20% OFF with code Gemelli  https://mimiohealth.sjv.io/c/6588260/3323599/30611     TRULY Increase Your NAD LEVELS with WONDERFEEL NMN: https://getwonderfeel.com/?utm_source=DylanGemelli&utm_medium=podcast     MESCREEN: The world's first and only at home mitochondrial efficiency test Save $100 with CODE   DYLAN   https://mescreen.com/cart/47561239626013:1?discount=&ref=DYLAN       HIRE DYLAN ON THE MINNECT APP HERE: expert.minnect.com/@DylanGemelli     Follow Dylan on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Tiktok @dylangemelli and PLEASE SUBSCRIBE and leave reviews!!   MAKE SURE TO GO TO DYLAN'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL for MORE video content!!    https://www.youtube.com/@DylanGemelliBiohacking Email Dylan for booking, collaborations and/or to apply for the Dylan Gemelli Podcast [e-mail] Visit Dylan's Homepage https://dylangemelli.com  

Hey everyone, Dylan Jameli here today with an extremely exciting announcement. I am now on the Menect app as an expert. That is Patrick Bet David's app so you can hire me today. You can ask me questions about hormones, peptides, neuroscience, cardiology, cellular health, finances, faith, religion, whatever it may be. I am there. You can book me for your podcast and you can also apply to be on mine. But go over, download the Menect app. Find at Dylan Jemeli. I will answer either by all. audio by text, you can get video responses, you can even book a phone call with me. I'm extremely excited to be available to work with all of you, and I thank you all for your support, so check me out on MNect today. Today's episode is sponsored by my good friends at Timeline. Timeline is now offering the world's first ever longevity gummies powered by Midepere. You've heard me talk about the importance of cellular health and our mitochondria, which is why I have Timeline as my favorite and most trusted sponsor.

These are the only clinically proven uralithin A gummies for strength and healthy aging. We may be living longer lifespans, but are we truly living better lives? What if the key is not just adding years to your life, but life to your years? This all starts at the cellular level. As we age, our mitochondrial health starts to decline, and one of the keys to living longer and healthier is keeping our mitochondria healthy and strong and might appear targets this for us. Take control of your health now and live the life that you not only desire, but you also deserve. As a gift to all my listeners, you can save 20% off today by going to Timeline.com backslash Dylan to get started.

That's timeline.com backslash Dylan. I assure you, your cells will thank you. All right, everybody. Welcome back to the Dylan Jameli podcast, live on set. And it is always so much fun to get to see. my guests in person and have this face face off one-on-one conversation. And so my guest today, I love my guest today so much. And you're going to see that in the interaction. Soon as I met this man, we hit it off like this. I'm going to give him an intro. It is not going to do him justice.

And you will see why as soon as we have this talk. And he's in town for a convention that, of course he's speaking at because he's wanted. So my guest today is a neuro-optometrist, and he is extremely passionate about unlocking human potential through vision. He's the founder and CEO of My Vision First, and it's a leading practice specializing in diagnosing and treating functional vision problems across all ages. And he's a trusted authority in functional vision, and he's the creator of vision performance training, which is a transformative approach that optimizes the eye brain connection. It heals post-concussion vision issues and it builds long-term visual resilience. So through his work with My Vision First in screen fit and neurooptometry,

Dr. Bryce Applebaum has supported thousands of patients around the world to thrive in a heavy screen-used world because 2020 eyesight isn't the whole story. So we're going to get into that story. We're going to get into everything that he specializes in. And you're going to see extremely quickly why I love this man so much. So without further ado, Dr. Bryce Applebaum. Dylan, such a pleasure to be here. Amazing freaking intro. I'll give for that.

Hey, man. I'm known for my intros. That's all I'm good at. I'm psyched to be here, not just to leave the conference, but to connect with you and talk about what we can all do to unlock potential through vision. I love it. And I appreciate you taking the time. I know you're in town.

It's short. You're not here long. And I know I get a little flustered when I have to go to events. And it's like, I got to be here and there. And you drove out of your way to. come do this with me. It's greatly appreciated. I value your time and more so than that, I value the friendship I've been building with you. So thank you, man. I appreciate it. It's absolutely mutual and I love what you're doing. Thank you. And to be able to get vision

in the conversation for your community, like that's, there's nothing better in that. Well, look, dude, I mean, you see the glasses right here. What are these? Oh, man. I don't know much about it, to be honest with you. I'll give you a little backstory. So when I got health insurance for me and my wife through our own business, she always goes to the optometrist or the vision. I don't even know what it's called. Anyway, I said, you know what? I think I should probably go.

And I went and I couldn't tell you exactly what I had, but I knew my vision wasn't the greatest and we did find some things. Now we went to Costco, which isn't great. So I figured they screwed up everything and I was getting headaches. And anyway, I went to Lens Crafters. They fixed me up and I've actually had to get one grade higher. I'm pretty low thickness and I don't wear these often. Are they far away or from close?

Yeah, further away. It's supposed to be. I'm on the computer all day. So like when I do this and I take it off, it's like, whoa, what happened? You know? And tanning bed, sun, time, wear, tear. But I think that vision is one of those things where like when you're getting insurance, for instance, it's like, well, that's part of it.

You don't think about it. And I'm so thankful I went. And I never realized just how much it was affecting me. And then I start talking to you. and it's like you opened up this whole other spectrum of vision, how it affects health that I honestly, as in depth as I am in health, never crossed my mind.

So I really, I want to dig into all of this with you today, but I want to get into your background first. Where did you start? What's your background in college and your studies? And then what made you so passionate about vision? Yeah. Well, I mean,

I'm a product of this work. And as a kid, I was an absolute mess. I had these visual developmental delays. And what that meant was I had trouble focusing my eyes. My eyes didn't work well together as a team. I had poor depth perception. I just felt so lost in space.

And on the soccer field, I had no idea what was going on. I would swing and miss every time in baseball. And I was a reluctant reader. I struggled in school. I had interpersonal connection issues because my sense of self and space was not developed yet. And fortunately, was able to access vision training. at the time, which taught me how to close the gap between where vision development was and where it needed to be.

And I look at all my success in life athletically, academically, even interpersonally, to what was done by optimizing this eye brain connection. And so for me, there was a no-brainer. I was going down this path. I thought I wanted to do sports medicine, but decided I could actually do that through vision, which has been really fun. But now, I mean, I'm on an absolute mission to just raise awareness, to let people know there's so much more to vision than just 2020 eyesight.

But also, let people know what's possible when we can really unlock our potential through vision and through this eye brain connection and the train that can take place where any brain at any age can be enhanced and optimized in terms of vision. Excellent. And see, you talk to me about this and I'm going to let you talk about it because it's certainly not my wheelhouse,

but the different ways that vision affects are overall health and how it, obviously quality of life. And I laugh because you brought up baseball and I keep thinking about Major League with Rick Vaughn, Wild Thing, you know, and in, but when he got the glasses, everything was fit. Everything changed. I'm glad to bring that up because first of all, it's a great movie. It's the best. And he's the man in that. But too, I mean, that's eyesight. Yeah. And eyesight's important. But eyesight is a symptom. And it's our ability to focus light clearly, the ability to see. And I'm not anti-glasses. I wear contacts myself. But vision is so much more complex. And what we're talking. about is how the brain filters, organizes, stores, processes, all the information coming in through the eyes, and how the brain knows what to do with that information to derive meaning and then direct the appropriate action. So from a vision perspective, vision is a direct reflection of brain function. And even hearing you talk about not even knowing why you're wearing these glasses and when you're wearing them, I mean, that's a problem. And yes, that probably

sharpens things. But if we look at how your brain is then organizing that information, how your eyes are working together as a team, how well the eyes brain and body are integrated and using information coming in through the eyes for your benefit, that's really what where the missing pieces for so many people. Yeah, because I would prefer to wear those for the style and not for the need, you know. And do you feel like you want to take them off a lot of times? Yeah, like you see, I took them off now. I just wanted to make sure that I didn't stumble upon anything when I was giving your intro and I fine. Yeah.

But it does make it really sharp and, you know, in the different setting and environment. But generally, I don't wear them that much. There's 20 happy is where we should all be targeted. Right. Rather than seeing the 20-20 tiniest little letters because not everybody sees the same. Mm-hmm. We don't all have to see the same. Well, and you brought up symptom, you know, and I, you know, and what I do,

it's always like, well, let's address this beforehand and not treat. Let's prevent, right? and they're proactive rather than very proactive so let's get into all of this then you've got the screen fit you've got these different concepts that most people wouldn't know anything about i mean let's face facts a lot of the things that i've learned over time is that things that seem obvious are not diet stuff yeah practical everyday things people that ask me what's biohacking and i'm like man it is not spending millions of dollars is get up get outside you know do these things these basic things So break down for me the things that are, we should all know and then the things that we don't

and that you could understand like, man, you wouldn't know this. Yeah. So I gave a TEDx a week ago. Yeah. And the title of it was why everything we know about vision is wrong, which is literally this. I mean, I'm sure a lot of people listening to this, he heard you talking about vision. And we're kind of thinking, well, he's wearing glasses. Like, why is this even a problem?

And most of eye care takes a complete reactive model. intervention of eye disease looking at structure. Here are glasses, lenses, contacts, whatever, to get you to see tiny letters. But nobody's looking at the next steps there and what the brain does with that information. And so there's so much out there that's obvious in terms of like, well, if you can't see stuff,

you've got to be able to see stuff. And driving, you've got to be able to see a certain size letter to read a street sign. Right. But what about depth perception and reaction time and peripheral awareness and not just knowing where the car is, but being able to anticipate where it's going to be? at high speeds from different directions.

That's what we should be deciding whether somebody's capable of driving or not, not whether they can see something tiny. So, you know, I think a lot of the big things are, what's obvious is that everyone thinks vision just gets worse as we get older. Yeah. I hate that. I mean, that's like saying cognition has to drop

when you get older. Yeah. Those are common. That happens, but that's not normal. Right. And, you know, glasses, prescriptions changing every year. They are changing because you've adapted to the lens you're in. based off of the visual stress from your environment

and not having the tools or foundation in place to support that. And then you're needing something stronger or different to maintain that same clarity. Right. So for an adult, for instance, if your glasses prescription for distance changes every year of the eye doctor, warning signs that there's a functional vision problem there that's causing that. And very often, that's your focusing system,

the inside muscles of the eyes. Yeah. Like an old school camera lens, we want them on auto focus. Yeah. They're stuck on manual focus. You need help with lenses, to give you support there. So as we age, you know, in our 40s, most people realize their arms aren't long enough

and they have to hold things far away to need reading glasses. But that's like jumping into a wheelchair when you're spraying your knee. You stop using the system. Yeah. You use it, you lose it. That happens for so much of our body and so much of health, but for vision as well. I mean, we can prolong the need for reading glasses for anybody at any age if it's caught early enough with the right exercises, with the right work, with the right motivation.

And also we can make that so we can do more with less for anybody at any age based off of the setup that we're in. So when you were talking about like the need to change lenses and stuff, my brain goes to that's like when you're taking medications and your body adapts. You need a little bit more. You need a little bit more. And before you know it, you'd need like 20 ibuprofen for it to even work anymore because your body desensitizes to things, right? Totally. And I mean, you've done so much work in the metabolism space. and you can have supplements, you can have medications to help that,

but also you can train your body to be more metabolically flexible. That's right. Sandrith vision. Like you can rely on higher powers, higher prescriptions, but also you can train your brain how to get your eyes to work together as a team. That's what I'm looking for. That's what I want to get into. Because when I first met you and you started getting into this,

I'm like, huh? I mean, it makes sense the way that you're explaining it, but on the surface, an everyday person, you assume, well, my vision is just going bad. Like my hearing's just getting a little weaker. You know, that's just the assumption. That's what everybody throws your way. And that's why internally I was like eaten up when you said about, oh, you know, the common thought while you're getting older is just inevitable. I hate that.

I hate that because you can stop it. You can prevent it. So let's talk about that in terms of vision. And also the attention piece. And we talked a lot about how ADD and ADHD often aren't that. They're often functional vision problems causing the exact same. symptoms. I mean, so much of this, if you can't control your eyes and their ability to focus, you can't control your mind and its ability to focus. As simple as that sounds, like we are in a

society where we're slapping labels on behaviors rather than looking at the root cause. Yes. So to get back to your point, so much can be done to train the brain. We can develop better synergy between the inside and outside muscles of the eyes. We can develop better eye hand coordination. We can develop better ability to take an entire room. I mean, when you walk into a new environment, like a lecture hall or a mall or grocery store, there's all of this sensory input coming at you. And you've had a head injury or if you have functional vision problems, it can feel like an overload. But we can train the brain to process central input and peripheral input at the same time.

You can feel safe and feel like you're confident in space regardless of what's coming at you. Wow. And that's wild. You don't really think, once again, commonly thought that you could train your eyes or train the muscles in your eyes. That just doesn't resonate. And it's even more so it's training the brain. It's using the eyes to rewire the brain to change her using vision by working on the eyes. Really?

So there's certain, I mean, we have protocols. We rely heavily on tech and low tech, but take an augmented reality setup or virtual reality setup. We can make it so that the world appears different in your eyes have to converge or die. diver to address the brightness, the contrast of the glare, and then teach your brain how to control these systems with better self-regulation, better self-monitoring. We work with elite level athletes and SWAT snipers and Navy SEALs who already are at the top of their level, but small percentage points in certain areas can have a cumulative effect to lead to massive shifts.

Yeah. So you've got people that come to you that aren't necessarily suffering. They're enhancing. Absolutely. I mean, most people I see have problems, but absolutely we do a lot of it, sports vision enhancement. Yeah. We do a lot of biohacking vision where somebody says, you know what, I've gone this far without glasses or in this current setup. I want to be able to go even farther, go my whole life without needing that. There's work. You got to do the work. Just like to get into good shape, you got to do the right work and keep it up. Yeah. If you stop going to the gym, you're not going to

be in the shape you're in. But a couple minutes a day can have a massive impact. That's why I always say Michael Jordan didn't stop. shooting shots man he didn't stay the best because he stopped you've got good yeah you it's a daily thing i read every day you know and uh that's the only way to stay up on current information but just think how rare that is though do you many people don't read anymore they're on audio books because it's so much easier to digest with their ears in their eyes yeah i can't do that i can't do that i try and the only thing i do is bible in the year but i'm still watching it and listening and the words are popping up on the screen so i can read

read it. I can't just listen. I need to see stuff visually and then I absorb that way. That's what it's supposed to be. Visions are dominant sensory system. It should be guiding and leading. But honestly, in this screen heavy world that we're all in, where screen times a new pandemic, so many people are avoiding reading and avoiding using their eyes because there's just an overload that's hard to withstand. If you gave me personally the option, 100 out of 100 times I would take the hard copy book and read it as a opposed to anything else. So much better for your visual system.

So much better for the eye brain connection. I find it easier to absorb the information. And I'm wondering if, is there a, now that we're talking about that, I didn't have this plan, but is there a correlation of the ability to take in information reading it on a screen that is negatively affecting you or from, like I say, a hard copy or whatever? Is there a correlation there? So there's very different visual skills needed to read. on a book versus on a screen. I mean, on screens, there's the glare, the brightness, the contrast,

but there's also more eye movements, they're more sporadic, they're less organized, you're not going methodically across the page in a linear fashion. Your eyes are darting around that much more. Yeah. Your focusing system, your eye-teaming systems are doing very different work on an artificial 2D device that's blasting high-energy light at you for hours on end versus tactically holding a book. by holding the book, your brain gets prop receptive feedback to know where this is. Yeah, yeah. And it's easier for your eyes to know, okay, I need to point, align, and focus on these words that methodically go across the page.

And you can, I would imagine, if you tried reading for X amount of time on a book versus X amount of time on the screen, it's not even close to the fatigue and the productivity that is that much more enhanced with paper. When I have to go through studies and they're all on the screen, I just find my, I either get lost And it's not because it's difficult. It's not because I can't comprehend it. So this is so tangible for most people. If you were to make a fist and squeeze your hands as tightly as you can,

after a few seconds, your hand starts to hurt. Yeah. But if you were to let go and come back and take breaks or not squeeze your fist, you can hold tension for longer. Yeah. When we're on the screens, our focusing muscles, which are behind our pupil are locked up. And they're literally under tension over time.

Unless you're trying to get super buff, tension over time is not what you want on your visualism. That's what causes headaches. eye strain, fatigue, dryness, irritation. I mean, all of these things that are, the symptoms that are choices now that we can avoid if we know better so we can do better. Yeah. It's almost as though you're not just doing sight vision,

but it's like a correlation of brain training. Absolutely. It's, I mean, neuroplasticity. Yeah. We know exists for any brain at any age. We are tapping into new pathways. We're creating new pathways, but we're literally rewiring the software with the right protocols.

and the right type of work to allow for our brain to function differently. And, you know, when you think about just the normal stress response, when the autonomic nervous system goes into fight or flight, from a vision perspective, our pupils widen and we get this tunnel vision effect. That's literally how we're operating on a screen. And so you're under stress on a screen, which changes your thinking, changes your attention, changes your visual function, and then your brain starts operating differently.

And that can impact so many aspects of life. Even like patients after a long work day coming home and being with your family and like you have a short fuse because you've literally been in fight or flight for most of the day. I mean, there's so many buckets that are so crucial. But I mean, even just like happiness and mental health. That's where I was going. I mean, like the amount of patients that will share that literally the work that we did with them saved their life because they were driving over a bridge and all of a sudden they were. they were aware of what they weren't aware of and they got locked in even more centrally and they got into this panic attack or and started not trusting what they were seeing or somebody who is planning

meetings earlier and earlier in the day because afternoon or in the afternoon they hit that afternoon slump and there's brain fog and there's fatigue and there's just loss of happiness with the work and what they're doing because literally their brains operating differently than it was previously. I mean that piece is huge and so we see a lot of people with anxiety with ADD or ADHD with even like much more substantial mental health challenges, notice like a curtain's gotten lifted after their eyes start working well together and their brain starts listening to that information. I think that's one big piece.

Sleep. I mean, sleep is like the most important thing we can be doing for our bodies. Not lying. Yeah. You know, people that are blasting their tablets and their phones before bedtime, it's throwing off circadian rhythms. It's throwing off melatonin secretion. It's also getting them into.

this hyper aroused state where it's really hard to shut off your mind many times throughout day, especially when you're laying in bed at night. Yeah. I've, man, you know how many years I have been doing that? And I always told myself, that's not what you sleep like shit. You know, and in reality, and I don't do it anymore, I'm kind of like playing Mike Tyson punch out on regular Nintendo TV before I go to bed now. But you know what?

I'm sleeping way better. And I believe it's through prayer and lack of this. And if you are on the screen. the bigger the screen the farther away. Yes. And this gives everyone listening an excuse to go by the biggest TV you can burn and says put it out on the wall

as far as you can away from you. It's what I did. It's what I did. Seriously. And you know, it's actually made a significant difference. I can't believe how much of a difference. I used to sit, do all my fantasy sports at night. Like the stuff that I just don't have time to do

during the day. But then it's just like I don't, I'm not a big day scroller. Right? And that's kind of like when I was doing that, which one clearly, bad for your sleep in your eyes, but two, just not good for you in general. It's just not good things to even worry or care about. And so, and I stopped doing that. One, the obvious you brought

up, but two, it kind of doesn't convolut your mind with a bunch of BS too. So there's a lot that goes into it, right? But even, I mean, you are educated, you are proactive. Your, your health is important to you. And even with that, you have these struggles, right? I mean, the vast majority of people have no clue what we're even talking about. They don't even have a file on this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's tough, man. I mean, it's tough for everybody. That's why I like to humanize everything I do so people know.

Just because I teach it or live, it doesn't mean it's easy. And I'm not anti-tech. I'm very pro-tech. Yeah. But we're in a world where screens are everywhere. Yeah. And especially for kids who don't have the brain development and the vision development to support even this. I mean, we're creating massive problems for people.

Well, and that's just it. They're brought up on it. So they don't know any different. So for a lot of these kids, you can't even fault them because they've never held books. Right. You know, one of the things, when I was doing online classes and everything and your textbooks are all e-books and stuff, I hate that. I despise it. I actually would buy extra the textbooks because in the tuition, it's like you get the e-books.

Well, I don't want the e-books. So I'd actually go out of pocket and go buy the regular book, even if I barely used it. I mean, there's studies that clearly show better retention with handwritten information and with flipping through pages and using. tactile feedback as well as multi-sensory integration to learn process and then store versus just being spoon-fed or blasted information that it's hard to have a meaningful experience with that. Well, and that's part of writing stuff down. It's part of reading it and not just taking a voice note and listen to in it or, you know, whatever. It's all about seeing it and training like you're talking about. And now I understand so much why you do what you do in the

the broader spectrum impact that it has. And that's kind of what I wanted to highlight here. And when something that we're doing is changing lives and it's building health and it's enhancing quality of life and longevity. Yeah. I want to listen. I tell every patient that we work with in office, if we are not completely changing your life, one of us is doing something wrong here. And that's the potential this work has. And that can be true with our online programs as well. But in office is customized and it's high level. And it's really, really, really intense work, but work that creates lasting changes that are yours to keep when you're done with it. Well, let's get into that because I want to give a full, broad explanation of everything

that one can expect to go through your program in person and online. So let me first say, so vision performance training. It's kind of like physical therapy for the eyes, but really for the brain through the eyes. Okay. With the intention of raising to somebody's awareness, what their eyes are doing, how they're taking. in space, how the brain's processing information, so they can learn how to self-correct, self-monitor, and reroute what is not functioning the way it's supposed to be. And so we rely on tech, we rely on low-tech, we rely on incorporating movement and balance and cognition and vestibular input. So it's a really holistic approach because vision doesn't operate in isolation of these systems. Right. But it's also

allowing development to take place that maybe has been bypassed. So no one is born with the ability to read. No one's born with the ability to use our eyes to track to converge to focus or even to see in 3D. It's all developed through our life experiences. Right. And it's either learned appropriately through the right sequencing of milestones or learned poorly and that leads to these imbalances. Pretty much every functional vision problem is either a maladaptation, a bad habit. Or it's using your brain a different way that it's wired and then going down that rabbit

hole of feeding the symptom. Got it. Okay. It's a great breakdown. Very factual. I love it. I love it. Okay, so we've got this program, My Vision First.

Yeah, so my vision first is the practice. We have real busy local practice, but we do these vision performance training boot camps or intensive programs where literally every week we have people from all around the world flying in. It's 12 hours of work of active training with really thorough evaluations beginning and end of the week. And that's kind of the reboot,

but then we put you on a really, really badass home program with a customized virtual reality platform where we give you a headset. You go in, wherever the game is, chopping fruit, popping balloons, but we're adjusting the oculus, so you're having to converge your eyes or diverge or adjusting the brightness

or the contrast, the glare, wherever it may be. We then get your data and your answers adjusted on the back end. You go back in next time you're playing a new game, but it's at a whole new higher level of demand. And so we're chipping away at the work that needs to be done from a virtual setup

along with also a three-dimensional. setup where you're relying on cards and strings and other things where we're teaching you certain exercises and sequences throughout that to keep making things more involved and more integrated. And then at the end of that time, I mean, it's many people, they just need the weekend office, the home program, and they're good to go. Then we have others with really complex cases like eye turns, lazy eyes, massive head injuries, strokes, where oftentimes they need more than that, but then we just, you know, have them come for multiple weeks. Do you have success rate percentages on people that come through? I do. And this is going to sound aggressive, but it's

100% success. And the reason I say that is we're just very picky with who we work with. And we do see people with guarded prognosis, but we together determine what looks like success. Like, what are our goals? Why are we doing this? If somebody's saying, I'm in a minus 10 prescription, and I have terrible headaches, and I get motion sick all the time, and I'm tripping over my feet and not trusting what I see when I'm going up and downstairs. Out of that, we figure out, all right, what is attainable? With enough work, a lot of that's attainable, but the glasses prescription is probably not going to change.

But everything else, like how you then function in life, that changes dramatically. And since switching to this intensive protocol, we have flipped my profession upside down. Really? And the amount of targets on us of, oh, my God, you're saying that you can get people out of reading glasses and five years ago, I would have said that's impossible.

And now, I mean, we're at 95% of our adults after the intensive either have a weaker reading prescription, no reading prescription, or can do more with less. And that's something that we never even pushed the envelope to see what was possible up until COVID when everything changed. So you have, like I see here, people come on the site, they take a quiz that you have on and then that determines to you if you can help them or what extent you can help them to and you kind of have maybe like a consultation with them pre to kind of figure out. We have our operations really dialed in.

Yeah, which is amazing. Sure. So the quiz brings us to who are you talking to on our team? Okay. You start off with a what we call a discovery call, but more like what are you looking for, where are the pain points, where the opportunity for improvement. And then depending on, you know, the path, every single patient we see, even local patients.

We do a virtual consult first to make sure you're in the right place, you're for the right reasons that we can help. And then the testing piece, that's the one piece that really has to be done in person just because it's so thorough

and so dialed in, but we determine, like, what's the right step? And for many people, it's, I just want to start the cross, I want to cross the start line. I want to get going on my journey to a vision improvement.

And in others, it's like, I've had terrible migraines my whole life. And I can't leave my house without feeling like the world's closing in on me. And for those people, it's a very different setup where let's just, let's take baby steps, but let's get you to a place where you can live happily and unlock so much of what's been holding you back through this eye brain connection. Okay.

So let's just make an example, create an example, I'll use myself. So somebody like me, I don't know the number here, but I know it's one of the lightest numbers that you have here. They up to me one. I think they, I want to say they had like, oh, it stretches an S, maybe. It takes things from being blurry to HD. Yeah, and I don't

I don't want to say, something in my. Stigmatism? Stigmatism, that's it, yeah. So somebody like me, would you be able to get me out of these? Definitely maybe. Okay. It depends. But it's possible. In many cases, yes. Okay. We would be able to do testing to know for sure. Yeah, of course.

But if these are, I mean, rarely wearing these and having to be a mild prescription. Yeah. A stigmatism for instance, by definition means the eye shape more like a football than a basketball. But there are aspects to a stigmatism that are not based off of structure. They're based off of function or that focusing muscle we talked about behind the pupil that is maybe saying, oh, it's easier to focus this way, but not as easy to focus this way. Yeah.

And in those cases, oftentimes astigmatism can decrease or even be eliminated. But if anything, we can make it so your prescription is not going to increase. Yeah. or that you don't need these as often. I mean, that's pretty much a guarantee just based off of this setup and what you've shared that I'm using them. So, you know, somebody that's like had glasses for 30 years, they shouldn't go in with the expectation. I'm not going to have to have glasses, right? I think this type of work is so much more than just not needing glasses.

Yeah. Not using reading as a sleeping pill. Right. Getting rid of your motion sickness. Being able to know where the ball is, it's you can play with your kids. being able to not bump into walls or knock things over because you're reaching for a glass

but the glass knocks over because you think it's in the wrong place. Or as crazy as it sounds, people who misplace their keys. That is a vision problem. That's looking for the keys here, here, and here, but not looking at them or I'm here. Or when you're talking to somebody

looking at your left eye, you're right out of your nose but you can't see the whole face in one picture. That's vision. Right. Let's talk then about the kinds of different expectations

that you see people have that come in, okay? Because I'm sure there's a lot of broad expectations. So I'm appealing to everybody out there listening. It's really not just one particular problem. There's a slew of different issues that you help with, that you address that is inviting to so many people because I want to give the spectrum of the audience of, if somebody's listening to this, like,

oh, maybe I don't fit into that. Well, maybe you do. And you just don't realize it. Totally. The low-hanging fruit is reading. Okay. somebody who's losing their place with reading, skipping words, skipping lines, not remembering what they're reading. They're thinking about what's for dinner rather than what they're reading,

having to go back and reread. Somebody's been mislabeled or labeled with dyslexia. Dyslexia often is not dyslexia. It's a hidden functional vision problem impacting the ability to read. If you look up dyslexia in the dictionary that says difficulty reading words. I had somebody in two weeks ago who is an adult woman. She has two kids. She's homeschooled them. she never learned how to read and has identified as dyslexic her entire life that's she's that's who she is it defines her there's a lot of emotions tied to that by the end of the week she was reading really and day one i mean we measure her eye movements with an eye tracker on a screen and on a book measuring exactly what her eyes were her eyes are dancing all over

the place yeah you can't read if you can't organize your eyes to be able to decode and process appropriately. So I would say I've never met somebody where we couldn't improve their reading ability. That's out of tens of thousands of patients. So I think the one piece that this can really help, this type of work can help for everybody is reading. I could be way out in left field here, but I don't think I am based upon what you say. And I'm careful because I don't like to ever categorize everyone because I think that's not fair. It's just not. But I think that a lot of times diagnosis and I'll compare it to like putting everybody on a statin. For example, because their cholesterol is X

increased on what you're perceived level it's supposed to be, which anyway, I'll relate it to that by me saying with ADD or stress-related issues. I feel like that they're so quick to throw you on 20 different pills that you got to stay on forever that turn you into a zombie or robot and never actually fix anything and may fix one thing but give you 20 other problems, like a stat. Do you feel that there's a high end misdiagnosis of ADD?

It's just a simple thing to slap on everybody, almost like a built-in excuse is what I would call it. Do you feel like what you do with brain, exercise, vision aid? Do you think there's a correlation there with ADD? This is not a do I think. This is, I deeply know. There's not a blood test that says you have ADD or ADD. Right?

Show me. It's based off of symptoms and behaviors. Yeah. Research just came out that shows 15 of the 18 symptoms associated with ADHD have a visual component that's treatable. Really? The amount of kids we see who they're doing poorly in school, they've got ants in the pants in the classroom, they're not reading, they're not learning, and they're on like,

one med didn't work, must have been the wrong one. Let's try another one. Let's add, let's increase the dose. Yeah. Yeah, we're not even lifting up the hood to see what's, causing that dysfunction. Now, there are some people who do have ADD or ADHD, but even still, our ability to focus our mind is so intimately related to our ability to focus our eyes. And if you cannot control your eyes, you cannot control your mind. Yeah. So from that standpoint,

visual attention is so important for everything in life. And it, there's not a coincidence that the prevalence of ADD and the HD is drastically increasing. And also so too is the visual stress from life drastically increasing. Screen times being introduced at early and early ages for kids, now taking over all aspects of life. As humans, our visual system is intended to guide movement and to focus in the distance far away, a natural light scanning the horizon for the saber tooth tiger coming at you, right? Now we're taking those same skills and blasting them up close for hours on end. And our visual system that evolved for, that was created for back in the Kadenland days is now clashing against these modern day demands that we're all under.

At a minimum, those are incomplete diagnoses. Yeah. Until you've ruled out functional vision problems that cause the exact same shit. And how many people would you say, this is like a, I feel like I'm an attorney asking questions here too. Like how many people would you say, go to a doctor, go in and say, I'm all over the place, I can't focus, and have a doctor bring up anything that you're saying? it's almost nobody.

There's so few of us who do this. Right. And, you know, my specialty is, we're not taught any of this in school. Yeah. It's extra training, extra residency, extra fellowship. But then even with that, even if you're board certified in this space, diagnostically, you know exactly whether vision is interfering or whether it's where it needs to be. But then how do you close the gap in the treatment that's needed?

This isn't like PT for a sprained MCL where you're getting a dozen sessions for grade one. Yeah. Two dozen for grade two. anyone you go to in town it's the same work. There's not consistency yet on what vision training looks like. And so this is something at a minimum, everyone listening needs to just know, like, we need to be putting our vision first and at least looking into vision as having a relationship with all of these other challenges.

My goal when I do this is to enlighten people so that they understand when they go do something, there's always way more to it than what you're. led to believe or told. And the goal here that I have that I feel like I was put here to do is it's not promote Dylan. It's promote everybody that I know they can give this kind of message to people and help them to see everything like from a broader perspective and to not just accept things. And to question what the specialists or the doctors are telling them. I mean, doctors are so myopic in terms of like the specific symptom they're chasing or what they know but not looking at the whole person.

And that's why people like you are so important that I love to give as much spotlight or talk to as I can because the more that I can put it out there to let people see, then they can understand what they're missing and why whenever they're told there's not an answer there is. I so love that and so appreciate that because I look at my purpose is changing how the world is looking at vision. Yeah. And to avoid unnecessary struggling because of these hidden functional vision problems. When you know what to look for, they're not hidden. They're right in front of your face. And you say that and it's like that's what you're doing in two ways.

Like, you know, metaphorically and actually physically, right? And I think letting people see that and understand it is so important to know that there are people like you exist because, you know, you get into a lot of these situations and you feel hopeless. We should be realizing, we all have so much potential in so many areas. And what's happened to us as hopefully can make us stronger, we can learn and grow from it. But then there's so much more possible when we're listening to our intuition. Yes.

And finding doctors who are partners, not just somebody who's telling you what to do and you have to listen to them, to making decisions together with all of that. I don't even fault a lot of them because it's what they're taught now. Totally. You know, and it's up to every single person to look into everything. and figure it out and find it. And so that's why, you know, there's so many different people to listen

to and to follow. And that's why it's important that we work together and get this kind of information out there so people know that. Oh, grateful for that. Yeah. I, like, if I wasn't in this space, I'm still a researcher and I would look, but somebody like you, I wouldn't know that there was a practice or even that that was a thing. Yeah. And when you break it down, it makes so much sense and it correlates with so many different things and I'm like wow and I think what you're doing is beyond incredible actually because it seems like an impossibility so how possible is this for people like what does it take what do they have to do let's I mean how can we make this a reality that people can go and do it because I want everybody to

know yeah and I mean I'm very realistic that most people listening to this are not going to be able to fly to Maryland and spend a week with us because it's a heavy lift. Right. Right. So that's where that screen fit program comes in. I mean, I created that during COVID when I saw firsthand what screens were doing to my young kids at the time, realizing like, oh, my God, this is a problem for them, but also for mankind.

And if you don't get ahead of this, like, we're doomed. So screen fit is literally the way to just get started. Okay. And it's kind of like doing body weight work at home instead of going to the gym. You're going to get better result, better shape, better results faster. if you're at a gym with a trainer with all the equipment. Right. But not everybody has a gym across the street.

Exactly. So ScreenFit is there's two different courses. Each course has 30 lessons. Each lesson is 10 to 15 minutes to do. It's one lesson a day. If you did it five days a week, there'll be six weeks. And you get it and use it as long as you like. There's no expiration date on there.

Really? So you can buy it once for your family and the whole family can go through it. But it's all meant to be vision exercises that don't require equipment, that you're watching a video of what to do, but then you're putting the screen down. It's not more screen time to treat screen time. And then you're doing these exercises, whether at a stoplight, in the bathroom,

at the dinner table, when you wake up, whatever it is. We've had thousands of people go through it with 100% of people who've finished the program seeing a reduction in symptoms. 100%. Now, if you don't finish it, that's not going to be you. Right. But we've had as young as five as old as 89,

and it's really designed to teach the visual skills needed for reading or screen engagement for driving for life at a level that can kind of be a one-size fits all approach for everybody. And more complicated stuff needs more than that. But it is something that has blown my mind in terms of how successful has been for people just eliminating unnecessary struggling. You only get into it what you put, you know, right? I mean, you're going to get out of what you put into it.

And I always like to say that the people who say like exercise doesn't or says vision exercises don't work. Those are the same people saying exercise doesn't work. Like you got to do it. You got to know what to do. Call me crazy, but you got to put the effort in. So if somebody comes in person, do they also get this opportunity to do the screen fit online that comes with? Yeah, that's at the end of the, so we say it's like a six month program with us when you come in person. So it's the weekend office, three months of dialed in home exercises with regular calls with our team, and then we put you in a screen fit, which can extend at least another three months but longer.

But we put everybody in that. It's a great maintenance program. We have a lot of pro athletes who use certain exercises from that program as their pregame ritual. We have others who make this just part of the school day for their kids. And it's simple stuff. It's eye push-ups. It's eye stretches.

It's going on walks, but actually intentionally opening up your periphery while you're on a walk. So you can not just see the mailbox here. in the house here, but you can see them both simultaneously, and you can learn how to look soft and open up your side vision. So somebody wants to come do the whole whole damn thing, come to Maryland to you. It's a five-day program?

A day program. So what's the expectation on that daily and what are they? So evaluations Monday morning, about two-hour evaluation. And then a follow-up evaluation on Friday, going over all the same test with a ton of objective data where we can actually show all the wins. Yeah.

And then 12 hours of work during the week. So it's usually... Three hours a day. About three hours a day. And that's where the reboot is. That's where the heavy lifting is. But then you're continuing that beyond. And we're holding you accountable.

And we're making sure that you're doing the work. We're even getting your data from the VR platform to know, Dylan, you said you were doing this every day. Like, you haven't been in since three weeks ago. What are we doing here? So it's a little bit of handholding there as well and accountability, which is important. So do you do the teaching yourself or is it somebody else? I have, I'm blessed with an incredible team. We have a bunch of doctors, a bunch of therapists.

I used to do it all myself and then realize, man, not possible. Not even not possible. It's better when we have everybody involved with all the care. Yeah. And we put a lot into the intensives. I mean, high touch points, VIP treatment, but also like you're working with a doctor one-on-one, the entire time. And it's completely customized. So your first session we planned based off of the testing. And then how hard we push you, what we do, the paths we take, the lunges we're making into new networks, that's based off of your responses, is adjusted in real time.

So at the end of the week, you're going to get an evaluation. You're going to know. I mean, yes, you'll know earlier in the week. Yeah. And I mean, we have, depending on the case, we can predict, all right, by Wednesday, here's what you're going to notice. By Friday, here's what you're going to notice. But it's not uncommon for people to not only be improving outer vision, but then also really tapping into inner vision.

And we've partnered with an amazing energetics coach. We've partnered with an amazing confidence coach, health coach, where for certain people, we're kind of unpacking it all together because vision health is brain health and brain health is body health and body health is influencing everything. and so somebody with terrible systemic inflammation that they know or don't know about or somebody with really bad brain fog. We're incorporating supplements and nutrition protocols and lifestyle modifications

because without addressing those you're leaving so much healing still on the table. I love that, man. So you're really digging in and you're addressing everything because that's one of those things I always tell people and I'll relate it to what I do. It's like you can come in

and I can put you on every diet plan and supplement in the world, but if we're not like hormonally optimized and like mentally stable, there's a lot of things that I have to look at first to ensure that you're going to get what you need because otherwise you're just spinning your wheels. And I'm sure you see so many clients who are like, give me all the supplements and all the red light panels, but you realize like, okay, you're eating trash, you're not sleeping and you have stress everywhere in your life. Yeah. You can't get the outcomes you deserve without hitting those too. Dude, if I had a penny for everybody that said, how do I lose weight or how do I do this?

And once that quick answer, I would never have to work again for 20 lifetimes. So the losing weight is the eyesight improving. Yes. Right? Like you do all the stuff to find health and then your weight's going to drop. Yes. You do all the stuff to optimize the eye brain connection, then your eyesight's going to improve. If we have it all lined up the way that it's supposed to be.

Every problem has a solution, but it takes an effort. It takes work. It doesn't solve itself. It doesn't correct itself. And there's no such thing as a genie in the bottle or a magic wand that I can wave that's going to fix it. I always tell people, I'll give you all the tools. I'll give you all the understanding. I will give it all to you.

But it's ultimately up to you. And it's people want the quick fix. Yep. There for sure are big wins and incremental changes day to day that we can identify with vision. You can identify with just overall health. And as long as that can be the carrot that you put in front of yourself to dangle to say, okay, this is working. I'm staying motivated.

When you start seeing results, it's pretty hard not to just be even more all into what you're doing. Right. Small daily habits and fixes and corrections, you know, corrections. They accumulate into heavy big wins. You never, you're going to have big days. You're going to have shit days. You're going to have common days. But if you just try to figure out one.

thing every day that positively changes, dude, you go back and look like two months back and go, holy shit. It's like you look at yourself in the mirror every day. You can't really see, right? But if you take a couple of pictures and you look and you're like, whoa, you know, I was just shopping for new wheels on my truck and looking at it and I'm like, I don't know if that looks really cool. And then we did a side by side picture.

I'm like, let's do it. You know, but that's that's that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, the reality of things is when you look at things every single day and you don't look at the broad perspective of things, you miss it and you don't see it. And I think the old adagee, it's a marathon, not a sprint, goes with everything in life. Absolutely. Really? And from my perspective, screens, they're not going anywhere. No. And we can absolutely develop a foundation to thrive in this digital world, but for most people, you need outside work to make it happen. Right. It's 100%. it's only going to get more

prevalently used and depended and relied upon. So let's thrive in that world rather than just like figure out how to, yeah, how to manage it. It goes back to the, do we have to just accept that? Or do we kind of say this is,

this is what it is what we got to work with. So let's fix it. Totally. You know, and adapt to it. So awesome. All right. So I have a coupon that you've graced my audience with

that they want to take advantage of this. It's a huge... I was going to say, isn't it a pretty significant? So it's right now, if you look at Screenfit on Screenfit.com, it's at $4.97. Yeah. And because you're the man and are several times talking, I've just felt so connected to you. We're going to drop at $200. Really?

So it's $297 for anybody if they use your code. Code is Dylan. I would recommend taking my man up on that offer because even at the price point that he's got it at, you're getting way more than you would ever dream of getting by going to the optometrist or doctor to put you in a pair of these where you got, I mean, this pair alone, I want to say was five or six hundred bucks. Now, granted, you don't have to buy an Armani pair, but I'm for the sale. Yeah, well, good though. I mean, but you know, you go in there, you buy, you buy a couple pairs in case something happens. You're over 1,1,200 in. One of the coolest

things is people we ask everybody for just like sharing their experience after going their screen fit you know people who say oh my god I haven't bought a new pair of glasses and X amount of years do you know how much that saved me yeah alone is pretty cool like I said I would love to just go buy some frames that are dope like this that look to plain glass with nothing in them you know that would be my ideal thing save me a lot of money or not need to like change or buff that up because you're functioning well through that set up. That's just it. And I'm joking here a little bit, but in reality, I don't like wearing those, man. I don't like having to put those on to sharpen what I'm seeing. I'm working on spreadsheets a lot

because I'm doing a lot of things for different companies I work with and I do a lot of numbers. And I'm looking and I'm like, man, I'm going to screw this up because I can't see the numbers. You know, I'm looking off screen. And it sucks. I don't want to do that. And even like missing numbers. That's, I mean, that's, that can be a massive problem. Yes. And then for you, if we, when we, when we, increase accuracy. We're going to slow down eye movements, but then hit the gas with speed, and then your brain and your eyes start functioning

at the same speed. Yeah. And then it's like you can scan across, take in more space with each eye movement, but not have to go backtrack. Yep. And not have to think, oh my God,

I need to get my mind focused because it's so taxing just to use your eyes. Well, I'll leave it with this with everybody. I'm going to, once I do this, we'll go back through it. And the conversation is going to be about what I went through and what I did. Let's film this, the end of that Friday. And then round two.

We'll do it and we'll see just what I went through, how it changed. And then people can get an even more in-depth thing of what to expect and get an idea of it. But I would urge you, after listening to this, seeing the importance, getting that huge of a discount, take advantage of it what you can. I would urge that. So my brother, tell everybody where to follow you. I'm going to link everything. My code will do all of that, but just so listeners that are listening to can. Appreciate it, man.

So my vision first.com. That's our website. Everything's housed under that. And then Instagram, Dr. Bryce, Applebaum, but we spell Applebaum, EL, not L, because my ancestors wanted to make things hard for us. So it's on there. You'll find it quickly. Oh.

They don't sound as nice as, as as a. Applebaum. But this has been such a pleasure. Your passion and your desire to help people just came through the first second I met you. Appreciate it, man. On steroids here today. So I just really appreciate what you're putting out there for the world. Dude, anytime. I'm just glad we got to talk in person and do this live. Yeah. I already know it was going to be awesome, but superseded expectations. Thanks for taking the time because I know it's not easy and going here and there and having to go back and speak and do everything. So I appreciate it, brother. Really. My pleasure. I'm glad to meet you and thank you for the opportunity.

You got it. All right, everybody. Stay tuned for plenty more to come. Dylan Jameli and Dr. Bryce Applebaum, signing off.