The Entrepreneur DNA - Why Your Eyes Are Killing Your Productivity (And How to Fix It) | Dr. Pam Theriot

Episode Date: April 10, 2026

In this episode, I sat down with Dr. Pam Theriot to break down something I didn’t even realize was affecting my performance—my eyesight. We talked about how screen time is crushing our productivity, causing brain fog, and even impacting our mental health. I learned that something as simple as blinking, taking short breaks, and managing screen exposure can dramatically improve focus and energy. If you’re an entrepreneur who spends hours in front of a screen and feels drained, this conversation might completely change how you approach your day. ‍️ About Dr. Pam Theriot Dr. Pamela Theriot, OD, FAAO, is an internationally recognized optometrist, TEDx speaker, author, and dry eye specialist. She serves as the Clinical Director of the Dry Eye Relief Center at Lusk Eye Specialists, where she helps patients overcome chronic eye strain and vision issues caused by modern screen use. With over 20 years of experience, Dr. Theriot earned her undergraduate degree from Rice University and her Doctorate in Optometry from UC Berkeley, followed by a residency at SUNY College of Optometry and a fellowship with the American Academy of Optometry. She is the author of Alleviate Dry Eye and has been featured in publications like Forbes and InStyle. Dr. Terriot is also a global speaker, educating both patients and professionals on eye health, digital device use, and practical strategies to improve vision and overall performance in a screen-driven world. Connect with Dr. Pam Theriot Website: https://www.pamtheriot.comFree Resource: https://www.pamtheriot.com/phoneInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/pam.theriot   About Justin: Justin Colby is the host of The Entrepreneur DNA and The Science of Flipping podcasts and a best-selling author. He is a serial entrepreneur with over and a seasoned real estate investor with over 20 years of experience. Driven by a passion to help entrepreneurs thrive, Justin created the Entrepreneur DNA community to support business owners in building wealth, systems, and long-term freedom. Through his podcasts, books, education platforms, and hands-on mentorship, he continues to help entrepreneurs scale with clarity and confidence. Connect with Justin: Instagram: @thejustincolby YouTube: Justin Colby TikTok: @justincolbytsof LinkedIn: Justin Colby Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What's up entrepreneur DNA? This one's going to make a lot of sense to you. If you feel a little foggy headed during work hours, if you've lost your creative touch, well, my next guest is not only a TEDx speaker, not only an author, she is a doctor and optometrist that helps us entrepreneurs overcome a lot of our brain fog, overcome a lot of our creative issues because she helps us get clarity, pun on words. Dr. Pam Terrio is here. How are you? Great. Thanks for having me, Listen. I'm excited about this. I myself wear glasses. So I would love to talk to you about what happens in our lives as entrepreneurs as we focus on these laptops or computers or phones and all the other things that can damage our eyes. I want to kind of just jump in. What's the number one cause or leading cause of eyesight going bad? For the entrepreneur specifically, it's dry eyes. I know that sounds a little bit crazy, but because we're on our phones and our computers all day long, we stop blinking as regularly as if you and I were sitting at a coffee table and enjoying a cup of coffee. We will be blinking three times more than we are while we're staring at our phone or our computer.

So the simple act of blinking really can overcome a lot of this, right? But it's not a very conscious effort. So I blink all day long. I'm doing it consciously right now because we're talking about blinking. But we don't really know when we're blinking. What can we do about that? So a couple of things would be to build blink breaks into your schedule. So if you're sitting down doing your work, whether it's on your phone or your laptop,

You want to take breaks about every 20 minutes. And it doesn't have to be a long break. It can be 20 seconds. Refocus your eyes across the room, looking at out the window, look at a clock across the room for about 20 seconds. When that's done, blink really firm about three times. That'll take an extra five seconds and then get back into work. What damages our eyes are the prolonged periods of time that we're using our digital devices.

two hours without getting up. That's what's really giving us the harm. We're all going to continue to use our phones and our computers all day long. It's just the world we're living in. But if we can take some short breaks and remember to blink, we'll do a ton better. So blink breaks are going to be important. Every 20 minutes you said. You gave a TEDx talk.

Congratulations. That's pretty phenomenal. Thank you. What was your TEDx talk about? Exactly this. how to preserve your vision while living in a screen-filled world. Okay. So besides the blink breaks, let's go through what you were able to do on TEDx and what got you there. And let's talk to the audience about how they can preserve their eyes.

Absolutely. So a couple of things that you can do on your phone while you're holding it in your hand is think about how close are you holding it. So the further you hold it from your eyes, the better off you're going to be. the less stress it's going to be on your visual system. The other thing is the brightness of the image so we can turn down the brightness so that you still have that nice contrast and you're able to read, but the phone isn't so bright. And the third thing that really impacts how much we're blinking on our phones is scrolling. We're looking, we're concentrating because we're trying to catch that thing that's going to catch our attention.

the scrolling is keeping us from blinking. So less scrolling, more purposeful action as well on the phone. Okay. So what about phone versus laptop? Is there any indicators, say one's worse than another? Absolutely. The phone is worse. It's smaller.

It captures our attention a bit more. And we hold it closer than we would our laptop. Like right now my laptop, I can't even touch the screen where you are. And I could even sit further away and still see you. perfectly. So I could sit much further. It's being much less effort on our visual system. So as a whole, range is, regardless of you being near side or short-sided, range really is going to be, you know, where you're holding the laptop, where you're holding your phone. The further away, the better, no matter how you cut it, regardless of where your eyes are at.

Right. I would recommend that you get your, if you wear glasses, get them set for your working distance. So if you have a workstation set up at home and you know you have you, one, two, three, monitors, measure how far out they are, and where you need to be able to focus your eyes before you get those glasses. You and I just talk about my eyesight and just how I have a stigmatism in my left and then nothing really in my right, but all of a sudden my right eyes being like strained and painful. Talk to us a little bit about that. I'm 44 years old. Talk to us about like, what am I going through that maybe some listeners are probably going through that they don't even

recognize. They just think their eyes retired or whatever the case may be. Exactly. So what happens specifically in Justin's case is that the between the ages of 40 and 45, we lose our ability to focus up close. It's just a natural part of the way that we age. And that specific range of time is when our eyes can no longer focus up close as well as we did before we were 40. So reading glasses are the quintessential easy fix for this. Seeing your eye doctor, you could talk about reading glasses, contact lenses, or even now, there are some presbyopia correcting eye drops that you can put in your eyes.

Refocus use you so that you can see up close and last about 10 hours a day. What is your, now us entrepreneurs typically are in front of these devices all the time. It's probably most of society. What can we do? Like what are you seeing when you're working with business people, when you see a lot of people that are coming in, they're in front of the laptop all days? like what else besides just their eyesight going back? Like what is it causing in the human condition because your eyesight are strained because you're always trying to focus? Because what are you seeing

the result of that? I think there's a lack of productivity and creativity as we're struggling to see clearly. It can really cut back on how well we're functioning. It can even cause some anxiety and depression. And so as you tend to struggle with something, whether it be your eyesight or a pain in your shoulders or your back or your neck because of the position that you're in constantly, it can give you that chronic problem throughout the day can really start to build anxiety and that can lead to depression as well. Yeah. Is there a best use case for, you know, trying to navigate your day to day? Now you're talking. about 20 minute breaks, what is the best use case like in an ideal world? Do you think everyone

should get some level of prescription? Should they be wearing glasses? Like should they be doing anything day to day to try to solve for this? Because I can tell you my experience. My experience is my eyesight is getting worse and worse. It's getting strained to strained. I will leave my office and like my eyes feel like toast. Like bloodshot. My wife sometimes are like, oh my God, honey, your eyes. And in, you know, in, you. You know, and those are the days I'm most focused on the laptop. What can we do to prevent? Where are we preventing?

How do we prevent this type of stuff? Absolutely. So I'm going to flip the coin on you a little bit right here and talk to you about your teeth. So. Okay. Since you were two years old, your mom stood you on a stool in front of the mirror and you knew that you had to brush your teeth at the end of the day. This happened in the 1940s. We finally got toothbrushes and toothpaste we could buy at this store.

Before that, people's teeth just fell out of their mouth, probably around between the ages of 35 and 45. They just lost their teeth. And there was nothing they would do. They just get false teeth, right? Back in the 1800s, George Washington, he had these false teeth. So before this, we didn't know what to do. there was nothing to prevent it, people's teeth fell out. Now, we know that we must brush our teeth twice a day. We have toothpaste, toothbrush, floss, mouthwash, and we do it, right? We don't leave

the house without brushing our teeth. We're afraid of our breath being bad, but how much more embarrassing is it to walk around with bright red eyes, right? Like, that's embarrassing too. So are there steps that we could take every day to prevent your eyes from getting red tomorrow? So absolutely, there's four things we could use. Artificial tears, which you and I just talked about, having a bottle of artificial tears, by your desk, that could rehydrate your eyes. Number two is hygiene.

So you've never thought about brushing your eyes, but the biofilm that we get on our teeth, that we have to have scraped off the dentist twice a year and we brush off on the daily, that biofilm is also on our lids. And for women, now if I were talking to your wife right now, You'd be like, oh, yeah, of course I clean my eyes every day because we wear our makeup and we remove our makeup at the end of the day. And then we'll wash our faces with a different face wash.

And then I would even recommend washing your lids with a lid and lash cleanser. That's going to get rid of that biofilm that's on our lids. I think I have it because I went, you know, so concerned of my eyes from our first conversation, I went in again. And I got a prescription in my right eye now that I have to go get. So that's another thing. But they gave me this spray. And I can even show this spray to you guys. Like it's a spray and you just rub your eyes.

You wash your hands. You spray it on your eyelids. You rub your eyelids and it comes your, I don't know, the glist come to lock or whatever. So the spray, it's a hypochloris spray. And it is antiseptic. So you can just spray that spray on your lids. You can leave it there. You could rub it in.

And it's going to keep that bacteria that normally live on our lids and lashes. It's going to keep the bacteria at base so that we're not having the redness, that irritation, the stinging and burning. Absolutely. You know, I went through, I mean, it must have been like all of Q4. I had a sty and you can't really, maybe you would be able to notice it a little bit. It's essentially gone, but it lasted 90, at least 90 days, probably more, right? I mean, it got to a point where my wife is like, you need to do something more.

I'm like, I've gone to optometres twice. What are sties caused by? How do we prevent them? It was so annoying, right? because I'm public facing. I am in front of people all the time. And you can't get rid of it. Like there's no, well, I don't think you can go pop it.

I didn't try. But like it's not like a zip. Like you pop it. It's gone in a couple days. Like it was there for a very long time. Right. So it's like a cavity. So if you had been doing the spray and keeping your eyelids clean 30 days before,

you got this dye. You probably wouldn't have gotten this day. But because we have that bacteria that live on our lids and lashes, something got into. your eye, dirt, dust, pollen, who knows, you know, just something flew in on one of those oil glands, and then the bacteria got trapped in there, and it caused an infection in an oil gland. And so then it gets big and red, and yeah, if you put enough warm compresses on it, probably some white pussy stuff came out of it. But yeah, it takes a long time for it to completely resolve. Some antibiotic

weightment can help, sometimes swallowing an antibiotic pill can help. But, but, you know, It can take a long time to get great. It gave me a three oil, is that right? Oh, great, yeah, to help your oil glands be healthier. Absolutely. You know what I'm talking about? Because I'm giving you the things, right? And for everybody, I was actually, Dr. Tario was telling me, like, I use for all those

that are able to see the sustain clear drops. And they're basically tears. She gives it a thumbs up. I'm not making any money off this. Maybe I should. But, you know, pristine, S-Y-S-T-A-N-E, hydration, P-S-S-S-S-E, They are, I would tell you guys, you can find it in TVS. They're not cheap.

This is not your $6 eye drop bottle. This is a $25 eye drop bottle. But I promise, just like doctor tells everyone right now, like it helps. It just makes your eyes almost go, oh, I needed that, right? Some relief. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

So is, you know, again, in the public eye, upon I'm not. intended, but it happened. You know, I went to a conference. Someone came up to me in the health space, not an optometrist or in the eye industry. And they're like, oh, are you stressed out? I was like, I don't know. Yeah, I got some stuff going on or whatever. And he's like, yeah, I could tell by your sty.

Was there any relevance to that or is it literally greed, like bacteria got in my glands? Well, one thing you could have been doing it is you could have been rubbing your eyes and you didn't have clean hands. And maybe that's what they were referring to is that, boy, you're probably your your eyes are irritated and you're touching them more because the sty is kind of a sign that, yeah, there's a bacterial infection on your eyeball. So somehow you got that bacteria in there. Now, I've also gone through abrasions on my eyeball, which I hope no one ever deals with because it is beyond painful for a very long time.

I mean, the only reason I say that is. I said, there's no real way to stop that. But, you know, when you start spraying stuff in your eye and rubbing your eyes in a general sense, you get a little cautious of that. Yeah, of harming your eyes. Is that what you mean? You don't want to. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Like, again, knowing best practices and what to use and things of that nature. Like, because painfully, I had this abrasion. You don't want to hurt your eyes. Right. Yeah. The eyes have more nerve endings than anywhere on your body. It is really painful to get a grain of sand, a speck of dust in your eyes really is painful.

Now, let's talk about the entrepreneur who's just frustrated right now because of their eyes, like the creative loss. Let's talk about the brain fog, the creative loss in their space, dealing with issues that maybe seem easy, but they can't figure it out. Is there a connectivity to those issues in our eyes? Absolutely. that you know half of what we're experiencing is coming through our vision all day long so when we we have a blurred image when our eyes aren't functioning at their peak it can really slow down our brain functioning so that we're tiring our eyes then at the end of the day we're having more brain fog as well yeah and so how do we do that do we go to so there's two different

doctors, right? Optometrist and ophthalmologist? Correct. Aha. Why would you go to which one? Absolutely. So optometrists are technically vision doctors who prescribe glasses and contact lenses. We can also prescribe most medications. And ophthalmologists are surgeons. So they're medical doctors who prescribe medications and do eye surgeries. So if you were like, forget these glasses, Dr. Terrio, I'm getting LASIC. Right? Then you would see an ophthalmologist. If you needed a glaucoma surgery or a cataract surgery, you would see an ophthalmologist. But probably for most of your listeners, entrepreneurs, who are under the age of 60, you would go to see an optometrist. And we could work out what's, you know, holding you back as far as

Do you need prescription medication to help your eyes make more tears because you're not blinking as much and you're straining your visual system? Or do you need a specific pair of glasses with some blue light blocking to decrease your eye strain, help you sleep better at night and focus you on your work? Now let's talk about nighttime. Us entrepreneurs that you don't get a lot of time, at least I can speak for myself. I don't get a lot of time to scroll. So I'm not overly worried about me like scrolling. But at night, I do try to relax and watch some TV with my wife. And I've read countless things about like stay away from screens within about the last hour of you going to sleep.

Any truth to that? Is it a little? It doesn't matter. A hundred percent scientifically proven. 100%. So any of our screens, television, computer, cell phone, tablet are emitting blue light. Blue light is wonderful. It comes from the sun. It tells us to wake up as we get blue light into our eyes. We go, yay, let's be awake. Let's the serotonin of our circadian rhythm is released into our system. And then if we were outdoors at the end of the day, the sun sets and melatonin is released. And we start to calm down and we start to relax and then we go to sleep and we stay asleep. But if we are stimulated by blue light towards the end of the day after the sun has

already set, you're giving your body mixed signals. It's like, oh, I look out the window and I think I need to go to sleep. What you're putting in front of my face makes me think that I need to be awake against. So doing something, blue light blocking glasses or this dark mode on your phone or on your laptop will decrease the blue light that's coming out and that'll help you to release that melatonin that you need to go to sleep and stay asleep. Is there a time frame? Is it within an hour or so? Exactly.

About an hour. About an hour, yeah, to really stop any blue light emitting screens. So even, you know, my bedroom is rather large, right? The TVs, it's a large TV, but it's not that close to me. Does that, like, lessen it or no, because it's a TV in it emits a blue light? It's still emitting some blue light, but you're not right up close to it like you would, if you were watching movie on your phone in bed. That's right.

So at least you've got that going for you. You could wear your blue light glasses while you're watching the television, though. What a move? Never thought about that. What about children? Screens, I'm guessing your answer, but how do screens affect children? Their eyesight, does it damage it? You know, I have very young children.

I have a two-year-old. I have a five-year-old. We don't really let them on their screens too much. I mean, they have some level of access. But talk to us about children and the damage it does to their eyes. So the big difference between you and your kids as far as screen time and eyesight goes is that your vision isn't changing and developing anymore. Yeah. Well, use isn't developing.

So their eyes and their brains are constantly developing. Their eyeballs are still growing. and there is a specific length of eyeball that we all want. If we spend too much time looking up close, our eye actually grows longer than the average eye, and you become near-sighted. So giving more near work to children under the age of 20 will actually cause their eyes to grow longer.

I know 20, you're like, those aren't kids no more. children under 20 I'm like 20 is like an adult but our eyes still change until about 2022. They're still changing. They're still growing. The visual system between our eye and our brain gets locked in around age 8. So the way that we see if you have a lazy eye, if one eye doesn't see as well as the other eye before you're the age of 8, then the lazy eye may never see as well as the good eye for the rest of your life. So really important to get your, especially your five-year-old in for an eye exam, even if you think little Justin C's fine, you want to get them in for an eye exam by school age. Is there anything to do to strengthen children's eyesight or make them,

I don't know, better eyesight or strengthen it or correct some, you know, not great vision? Yeah, absolutely. So before that age of eight where the visual system kind of locks into place, there's eye exercises that can be done by a vision specialist. You know, sometimes wearing a pair of glasses can help correct at those younger ages. And there's a process that we go through from birth to age eight called immatropization, which really doesn't matter. But the way that the eye is growing. and you're going towards what you have been all your life, a zero power. You didn't need glasses, right? That is the goal of the visual system is to get to a point where we don't need glasses to see across the room to see the board where the teacher is teaching. And so if we can help the eyes in that time frame with lenses, then all goes well.

So that is actually out now. Is this something relatively new where we can use for kids? heat their eyes really strong or help them grow strong, I guess. Is there like a proactive approach that we can take besides just not telling them to look at a screen? Right. So having them not have a lot of time with their devices up close and kids are the worst, man, you hand them a device and they're like in it. Why? I literally swear to my son. Like two inches.

We have an 80 inch greed TV in our living room. He's on it. Right. I'm like, brunty, like what? Why? I don't understand. Why did they do that? All of them do it.

It's very exciting. It just, it draws them in. And parents always bring their kids in so the eye doctor like, Johnny can't see. He's standing two inches from the television. I'm like, it's not because he can't see. But they'll tell me, oh, but I sit him back on the couch and he gets up again. It's more of the stimulus of it than the vision part of it. Well, you just helped me out, by the way.

Because I was like, I think we got to bring him in. I think his eyes are bad. Right. Now, coloring, I'll give you another coloring. He loves the color. Man, he gets this close to the paper. Yeah. I'm just like, brother, you need to be able to see what you're coloring.

Push it away. Yeah. So for that, I give the kids a, you put your elbow on the table, and then you put your chin in your hand, the palm of your hand, and you can't get any closer than that. So they've got to sit there and they can color. But it will block them from getting closer because their elbow is on the arm.

the table. So that is also someone natural. I mean, you're literally answering my own question right now because I was like, honey, I think Jace is his name. We ought to go bring him in because he literally is this far away from the paper when he's calling. And it's like right there. And I'm like, I can't even see anything. Right. But kids have such amazing visual systems. They can focus up close so well. It's easy for them. Right. And so getting up close is it's not straining, you know, to them in the moment over time. But, yeah, so you want to, you know, have them. It is natural for that to occur. Yeah.

Parents don't need to rush to the doctor to say, my child's blind. Oh, my God. No, but, you know, an eye exam, and the school age kids is so important. Absolutely. Do they, what age can a parent take a child for a normal eye of exam? Is it? Right. So there's a nationwide program called Infant C, Infant S-E.

where you can get an eye exam for your child from an infancy doctor for no charge before the age of one. So it's really a screening for some very deadly but uncommon eye diseases that can happen before the age of one. And also for kids who may be at risk for developing lazy eye and getting them to an eye doctor before the age of one and getting them into the system to help strengthen the lazy eye. you know, find this, this deadly cancer that is very, very rare, but it shouldn't happen. I think most cancer is rare. It's just, you know, some don't get talked about very often. But it's good to have an awareness. And this would be another reason. And by the way, I want everyone to get a hold of you if they possibly can. Where would they want to get a hold of view? Right. So two best places would be in my Instagram is pam.com.

My last name is spelled the riot. Easy way to remember. And my website, Pam terrio.com. And I did make a downloadable for your audience. So pamterio.com forward slash phone. Since we're talking about ways to keep your eyes healthy on the phone. There you go. So Pam Terrio, T-H-E-R-I-O-T-R-I-O-T dot com for slash phone. And then go communicate with her.

She's phenomenal. I just want everyone to get more knowledge. I'm trying to ask for the people, if you will. But, you know, we want to make sure people are doing. out any words of advice to be proactive moving forward for whether you're an entrepreneur, whether you're a business owner, whether you're a parent trying to help your kids. What are some general proactive approaches to keep your eye strong, to, you know, get better? I mean, I don't know if you're going to answer, like get some corrective surgeries sometimes. Maybe that's an answer.

What are some proactive ways that people can go about keeping their eyes strong? Well, you know, our phones don't damage our eyes overnight. These little habits that I'm a about to share with you can really help prevent the damage that we're doing on a regular basis. So hygiene, we talked about earlier. Using the lid and lash scrub, the hypochloris spray on a daily basis, lubricating our eyes, keeping a bottle of those great artificial tears while we're sitting at our workstation, doing our creative stuff, taking some blink breaks. Every 20 minutes, take a blink break.

Every two hours, get up. Get up on the computer. Look far away. Look out the window. Hydrate. Get some water. Walk. Do a lap.

Then come back down. It's the prolonged time that we're spending on our devices. Number three would be, or would that be four, let's set a bedtime when we can put our devices down. I know all of us entrepreneurs, we feel like we've got to work all day long to get it all done. But your brain will work better if you do. take a break, right? That whole brain fog at some point, it's just too much. We need to shut it down. Take a break. If it's nighttime, if the sun has set, pick up a book, you know, read a novel on pages instead of on your Kindle and, you know, having that blue light admit to you. So, but the most

important part about all of that is that you need your rest. Seven to nine hours is what we adults need. So that our brain and our bodies can function again the next day. These helpful tips can really make a difference. These small habits that we can put into place will really help our eyesight and our brain power going forward. I love it. And so everyone, pam.tario.com forward slash phone. These are very practical tips you were given. And anything else that we haven't asked about or anything that you'd want to bring the light that maybe is what's the biggest misconception or misunderstood part about our eyes?

Is there anything out there that we haven't discussed? I would say if you have not been to the eye doctor in the last 12 months, make an appointment. See your eye doctor. There are so many new things that have come in the last three years. You'll be amazed. If you haven't been to the eye doctor lately, how technology. has changed, the innovations that we've had in your vision care have really are phenomenal. So make your appointment. See your eye doctor once a year. What do you think about LASIC? Do you think it's gotten

good enough? I mean, you know, that's not your department per se, but when someone's frustrated with contacts and frustrated with glasses and they're just frustrated as an adult, worth it, not worth it? Too many downsides. All upside. What is your professional doctor? So it's really very, very personal depending on your prescription and your eye health, but in general, it can absolutely correct your vision. I have had LASIC myself. I work for a LASIC surgeon every single day. We do workups in my clinic for LASIC surgery. So it's still happening. There's still tons of innovation in LASIC and vision correction. There's new ways to correct vision without contacts and glasses. And if that's something you've been thinking of, talk to your eye doctor about it.

Yeah. Well, this is Pam Terrio. This has been the entrepreneur DNA. I am Justin Colby. If you think a couple of people need to know a little bit more about their eyesight, make sure they reach out to Pam. Make sure you share this episode again, Pamterio. Pam. Dot Terio on Instagram and pamterio.com forward slash phone. Pam, I greatly appreciate you. Thank you so much, Justin. I was so glad to be here. All right. Talk soon. See you guys. Bye.