“I believe that knowledge is power and we’re all trying to be have our patients and society become educated consumers. So as much as we can share knowledge, as much as we can share what we know with each other, the better.”
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Hi, I’m Virginia Doran of luminousbeauty.com. And I want to welcome you to another edition of the point to the point. A show, very generously produced by the American Acupuncture Council today. I’m extra delighted to have as my guest, Dr. Mark Grossman. Uh, when I met Mark in 1992, we were both going to acupuncture school in, uh, New York and Connecticut. Uh, but Mark is very unusual in that he holds the licenses in both acupuncture and is a doctor of optometry and, uh, to fulfill his dream of practicing holistic and integrative eyecare, he’s fully trained in acupuncture. Uh, even though he, he didn’t need to be to, uh, to be practicing. Um, and he’s also trained in nutrition and visual vision therapy, and he saw this significant void in holistic eye care, um, and not only, you know, filled in to practice that way himself, but he trains practitioners internationally online and in-person, and, uh, he’s published many books.
Um, the four ones that, um, are probably most notable and, and, uh, appropriate for this audience is Nash, natural eye care, a comprehensive manual for practitioners of Oriental medicine, where he goes into both, um, acupuncture and herbal prescriptions. And then he has a book, natural eye care, your guide to healthy vision. They sound similar or different book. It’s an 800 page texts, and it covers about every eye condition from both the Western and Eastern perspective, plus nutrition and supplements, herbs, clinical tips. It’s really a must have for every practitioners library. He’s also written a book, very interesting book, very unusual, greater vision, a comprehensive program for physical, emotional, and spiritual clarity. Uh, another thing that he teaches about and the international bestseller magic eyes beyond 3d your vision. Um, so you can find more information about his books. Trainings has specifically done products, but also about many, many different eye conditions.
His website is full of information. He’s very generous with his knowledge as he shares it to people and that’s natural eye care.com. So after that, um, uh, I, I asked you to, to, um, you know, speak on this because I think it’s so necessary and there’s not much draining or, um, awareness of this in our field. And also, um, I think that, uh, you know, if you could give some examples of like, say glaucoma, for instance, you know, a common condition that, uh, to give an idea how you work, the in-depth, uh, approach, you have to things. So thank you so much for being out. Cause I know you were in the middle of her work day. Uh, so, you know, if you can tell us how you got into this, that’d be very briefly. And then, uh, you know, what you want to impart.
Oh, thank you so much, Virginia. And I’m very, very grateful to you, Dr. Alan Weinstein. Who’s a master of putting this out the American acupuncture council, because I believe that knowledge is power and we’re all trying to be have our patients and society become educated consumers. So as much as we can share knowledge, as much as we can share what we know with each other, the better. And it’s very interesting. I was meditating this morning and I was saying, oh, I think I know what I have to start with saying, and you said it beautifully. How did I get into this acupuncturist? Usually have a drive. It’s like, oh my God, this is my calling. This is my calling of what I want to do in life. And my story was, I was already an eye doctor for, uh, 16 years had just finished paying off my student loans.
And then I went to a friend’s house. And in the middle of her living room was one of the first books in the Western hemisphere, an acupuncture called the web that has no Weaver. And I felt that I could remember it. Like it was yesterday. The book looked at me, I looked at the book. I said, I can’t believe I got to go to acupuncture school. Now I thought I had a way out because acupuncture wasn’t licensed in New York state yet. And as you know, as one of my, uh, classmates, we had to go to school in Connecticut first. So we went to school in Connecticut for a year. And then we spent the next two to three years in new York’s New York city. So I said, well, I guess I got to go. I don’t know why I’m going. Uh, I just know I have the calling and we’re going to talk about the call and we can talk about those moments in our life that we get those signals of what we need to do and how our vision, how not only our outer vision, but our inner vision affects how we are in life and how it affects eye conditions.
And we are in an epidemic. That’s an epidemic in society right now. Do you know that over 90% of young adults from 14 years and younger in China and Japan are near-sighted, if you don’t consider 90% epidemic, then the thing is, you know, and with the advent of computers and being online. So we need to take care of our eyes. And as we know in Chinese medicine, if you can go to the first slide Allen, we know that all the meridians go to the eyes, all the meridians go through the heart. So when we are working with people with high conditions, acupuncture, Chinese medicine, I believe is an integral part of the integrative medicine team that needs to be to help these conditions. I, um, about a month or two ago, I lectured at the east west integrative medicine department that UCLA that’s been going on for over 25 years.
Oh my God. And we did an international conference, which I was part of the panel on Chinese medicine and vision. So the need is there, there were some amazing acupuncturist, like one of my colleagues and co-teachers Dr. Andy Rosenfarb who specializes in vision and Chinese medicine. So what I want to really put out today is how important and how Chinese medicine can be part of that team and myself. And I’ve been practicing for over 40 years as an optometrist. And what are we up to now, Virginia 26, 28 years, 26 years as an acupuncturist. And I didn’t even know when I was in a, I doctor school, optometry school. And I would say, excuse me, why did they get a cataract in the left eye and not the right eye? And they go, you mean, you want to know why I said, yeah, I’d like to know why.
And Ted Kaptchuk said it beautifully. He said in Western medicine, in which I was trained, we look had, how does X cause Y but in Chinese medicine, what do we look at? What is the relationship between X and X and Y? And I believe that all disease dis ease in the body mind has to do with relationships, relationships, to our environment, to the trees, to the oceans, to our, uh, families, to our friends. And what are, what is the goal of every acupuncture or Chinese medicine treatment, balance and harmony. And when we have balance and harmony and Chinese medicine speaks about it beautifully, we have no stuck energy. And I believe in my experience that almost all eye conditions, uh, due to stagnant energy. So let’s go to the next slide. Allen integrative medicine envision, we need an integrative approach. You know, I lectured at the integrative healthcare symposium and there were acupuncturists in the audience, functional medicine doctors, natural paths. Yes. I always tell people who I see, I’m just a little part of your team. We want to do integrative medicine. Next slide.
Can I interrupt a second? I went recently to an eye doctor to, you know, just have a checkup and tests. And I don’t think I’ve actually ever done that as an adult. And, um, you know, they dilated my eyes for something. They put some other drops in. I mean, for three weeks, I could barely see, and, and my eyes didn’t adjust back, you know, the dilation, but they were cloudy from the second. They put the first drops in and, um, you know, all they could suggest was a drug. And they said, oh yeah, it’s not, it’s not, it’s no problems with it. But I looked up the side effects of the drugs. It was every organ, every organ. And it was going to change. It could change the color of your skin, your eyes, but they thought, oh, no, this is totally benign. So there’s such a need for what you do, you know?
And for some and others to know about it, really, we all should be trained in this specialty because it’s, you know, what’s going on is kind of barbaric really anyway, sorry to interrupt, but you’re never interrupted. And yet at the same time, I talked to you about it and you were like, oh, we have, you know, we have technology and ways to do it, that you don’t have to be dilated. Oh, there’s different versions of these different medications without the preservatives. That cause a lot of the effects side of it, you know, why don’t other doctors know this?
So as somebody in both professions with both hats on I, doctors are really, really nice people. They really try hard. But as we know with most Western medicine, we have limited things in our toolkit. We have medication, we have surgery and that’s it. We are looking at the eye as an isolated organ. I had a patient I’m going to see later at my last patient today because he was told she has eyelid cancer, but I started talking to her. And what are the lids related to in Chinese medicine, the stomach and the spleen. Is she having problems with her microbiome? Is she having issues? Is she seeing a functional medicine doctor? Yes. But the eye doctor said, oh, you’ve got bumps on your eyelid. You know, it’s maybe it’s eye cancer, but I’m just saying, we need to look at the relationships. And remember when I just said before, um, well, why did you get a cataract in your left eye before the right Chinese medicine in most people?
Right. I father I male, I yang. I left, I feminine yen receptive. So when I really look in, I mean into why somebody develops macular degeneration, glaucoma cataracts, and why they may get an in one eye versus the others, I’m going to talk to them. What’s going on in their relationships with their father, with their husband. I mean, I’ve got stories, I’ve got stories, you know, after 40 years. So let’s keep going because this is just a preview because I really want acupuncture is to, to, to get the power that they have for this kinds of treatments. My website, natural eye care started about 20 years ago. My business partner in that is, uh, Michael Edson. And Michael is an acupuncturist also. So we refer to acupuncturist all the time because it’s both are bent. Uh, you see a pho a phone number there, (845) 255-8222.
The direct number for Michael, which is the new number on our website is 8 4 5 4 7 5 4 1 5 8. But you can go to the website and Michael loves talking to acupuncturists and we are there as a service to help you work with your patients. Next slide, Allen. These are some of my books beyond 3d magic eyes. Those of you who are old enough know about these 3d pictures that you relax your eyes and then a hidden picture comes out. Uh, it was published. We, uh, they sold over 30 million of those books. I wrote two of them. I’m the medical consultant to them. Uh, I got there, but after they sold the 30 million, so I didn’t really profit from it. Um, but those magic eye pictures, uh, one of the tools I use not only to help people’s eyesight, but to help reduce liver stagnation through the eyes, the greater vision book was written because I do believe in the Mati body, mind and spirit of all eye conditions, natural eye care that I wrote with about twenty-five years ago, which was the book before it’s time with a good friend of mine, Dr. Glenn sweat out is in Hawaii. Um, and then we can go to the next slide where we expanded on it to that 800 page, 2000 peer review references book, uh, on natural eyecare. And that book is also available on Amazon and then on Kendall. And we also divided it into about five or six smaller books because that’s a very heavy book, but it is, it is. I have had the 10 different doctors help me with it. So it is, uh, a really good resource. Um, next down, next slide.
So let’s talk just a little bit. The only thing worse than being blind is to have sight, but no vision. Where does vision happen? It happens in the mind. That was a quote from Helen Keller. Next slide, Dalai Lama, in order to carry a positive action, we must develop here a positive vision. One of the real keys in Chinese medicine is the person has to have it in their belief system that the, this kind of thing can help. You know, we’re not there to convince people. We want people to feel positive and if they can conceive, if they believe it, they can conceive it. Next slide. This is, uh, something which my magic eye books are based on vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others. You know, we need to see the bigger picture and what does Chinese medicine do? It sees the bigger picture next, and this is how I sign all my emails.
And I’m going to give you all my personal email, um, today, because you’ll see if you have any questions that come up, because the question is not what you look at, but what you really really see next slide. Okay. And here we go. No, no, that’s good. We got to go to Shakespeare. The eyes are the windows to your soul. We know about that. People, the Shen the spirit, the pilot light our eyes tell us how much our spirit is connected with our soul. And I believe that through the eyes we can help people, uh, go through their soul’s journey next and Benjamin Franklin, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So nutritionally Chinese medicine wise, if we can get people on good visual hygiene, the dentists talk about dental hygiene, plus your teeth, brush your teeth, brush your teeth, but we’re on computers. Yeah, because 11 hours a day on digital devices, we need to do visual hygiene. We need to take care of our bodies and our mind next.
And this is the integrative medicine approach, which is, I think the Chinese medicine approach imagine a oriented towards healing rather than disease, where physicians believe in the natural killing capacity of human beings and emphasize prevention above treatment in such a world, doctors and patients would be partners towards the same ends. And that’s why the minimum I’ll see patients or clients is I say, I want you to come in after we’ve worked for awhile, once a season, as the seasons change, as you are going to be relating to your environment different than, uh, we need to do a tune-up. So on all my clients, I say the minimum I’m going to see you is once we get everything balanced and in harmony is once a season. Next slide. So these are some of the allied complementary practitioners I might refer to for different eye conditions. Um, and acupuncturist is right there.
And even though it’s, it’s not on top, let me tell you, uh, my partners in my practice, my PA one partner is a chiropractor and the other partners, and as an acupuncturist. So, uh, acupuncture and chiropractic are some of the biggest referrals that I make in my, um, uh, integrative team approach, along with natural paths and functional medicine practitioners. But at different times, I may use any of these different complimentary practitioners. Next, this is the office I rent space in. This is the outside next slide. The reason I’m showing this is the waiting room before COVID where now we have people six feet apart. Next next one, contact lenses next, because contact lenses from an acupuncture standpoint, what they do is they put people who are very near-sighted. They create a larger retinal image size. So actually just switching people from an eye as an eye doctor from glasses to contact lenses may open up a whole way of Le less liver tree stagnation.
These are some of the, this is some of the high end technology that’s available today because, and I can help you as acupuncturists, uh, read the reports on this and, uh, talk to you about the findings on some of these tests, in terms of Chinese medicine. These are pictures underneath the retina. They take pictures underneath the macula, underneath the optic nerve. They take a 3d picture of the eye. And as, um, Virginia said some many times we don’t have to even dilate the eyes. Do you know, as we said, the eye Embrya logically physiologically and neurologically, what is it? It’s brain tissue. If you continue to mind, you can change your eyes. We all know about the neuroplasticity of the brain. Therefore we have neuroplasticity of the eye and you know, that you can diagnose, uh, Alzheimer’s disease early through retinal photos. Yes. This thing is out there. So the technology today in the eye will give good insight to people’s eyesight. Next slide. Okay, let’s go to slide 23. [inaudible].
So, as I said, the hi is brain tissue. Do you know that there are studies that in multiple personality disorders, they all had different prescriptions. Oh, very interesting. Mind, body spirit, next slide and trigger points. Uh, both me and Virginia. We had the pleasure and the utter gratitude that we were able to learn from. Uh, one of the, the pioneer of trigger points, Janet Trevell who wrote these two giant giant books, even bigger than my book on trigger points. And when I learned that it’s the neck, the shoulder, the upper trapezius, going to the sternocleidomastoid up to the suboccipitals that many vision problems come from, because why not that that happened? Because people have poor posture when they’re on devices and things tension. Exactly. Next slide Allen, the spleen is surveys is the neck muscle. So when we’re doing trigger point therapy, we can help with pain in the eyes.
We can help with glaucoma, which, um, I’ll talk about very briefly after, but I really wanted you to know that trigger points, uh, whether you do it through deep tissue or you do it through acupuncture could be very, very helpful in, uh, treating, uh, eye problems. Next slide again, the SCM, a biggie player, especially with musicians, especially like violin and Viola players. Ah, because those people I’ve got studies on how that affects a stigmatism. So yeah, the eye and the body and posture are very related. Next slide. The psoas muscle. If you have a tight psoas muscle, sometimes it relates to a vertical imbalance between the two eyes. So again, we have to look at the whole body next.
Okay. That’s it for the slides on. Thank you. So I’ve got about six minutes. I’m going to give you an overview of glaucoma because glaucoma is so we can do so many things because glaucoma is a disease, this ease of the optic nerve. But the only thing that I doctors having a toolkit of glaucoma is medication with lots of side effects and surgery, and they even have people. And then what they say is, oh, oh, we just have to lower the pressure. But look at that. Here’s the, here’s the optic nerve. Yes. According to physics, if you lower the pressure in the eye pressure hitting the optic nerve, that’ll be helpful because the higher the pressure, the more it could possibly break down the optic nerve, normal pressure and glucometers between 10 and 22. But wouldn’t it make sense to also build up the ocular blood flow to the optic nerve?
Wouldn’t it make sense to work on neurodegenerative neuro uh, uh, neurodegeneration? I mean, that’s what, uh, the eye research is showing. We want to have, um, things that are helpful for the nerves. So nutrition very helpful for that alpha-lipoic acid N-acetylcysteine, um, sublingual, vitamin B12, the B vitamins. So nutrition, very helpful acupuncture super-duper for, uh, helping with ocular blood flow and circulation because circulation, that’s why studies show that as little as aerobic exercise, four times a week can help with, uh, lowering the pressure. But what is one of the, some of the main things in Chinese medicine? You know, we all say liver, liver, liver, nice, but in Chinese medicine and glaucoma liver is a big player because it’s the stagnant liver cheat that can add to, to, uh, CA um, Livia, hyperactive, liver, young, that can cause a high eye pressure. So I’m always trying to bring the pressure down, bring it down.
I want to deal things with the earth element. I may have them stand in dirt, rub a, a ball on kidney. One, bring the energy down. So liver three, liver aids for blood, uh, gallbladder 20 to release the tension in the occipital. Uh suboccipitals so liver kidney very, very important. Especially sometimes the pattern is a kidney yin and Liberty in deficiency. So there’s basically, this is where it gets a little tricky. There’s like six different kinds of glaucoma. Some glaucoma is due to more due to inflammation, such as pseudoexfoliation glaucoma. Some glaucoma has normal tension, normal eye pressure, but has what we call large cupping in the optic nerve. And therefore, you know, we can lower the pressure, but it’s more about getting more blood flow to the optic nerve and, uh, helping the nerves. And then there’s the eye, the glaucoma that has high eye pressure.
But again, the tool dry doctors is just lower the pressure. So we can see very easily how Chinese medicine can have an effect. And going back to the muddy bind spirit stress, oh my God, they have studies that show that stress can increase the eye pressure. So even in the regular literature on Western medicine, so we want to relax. That’s why my favorite formula that I created with my, uh, acupuncture partner, Jason Elias, and we called revision. And what is it based on B Florim and Pini combination. Why, because what is that called relaxed wander? And I added some bilberry and some Ginko, and I added a little Licey and chrysanthemum to bring energy to the eyes. So we really want to do Western Chinese herbs coleus and air vinegar. That’s very good to lower eye pressure. So I really, what I really want to share with you and hope you get a, and if you want to learn more, I am totally available.
My personal email is D R Grossman 20 twenty@gmail.com. I really want to let you know that the ability for Chinese medicine to help with chronic eye conditions and basically all eye conditions, is there that Nick, that place that you, if you really into it, that you want to add to your practice is there. And you will, you will have patients. My friend and colleague, Andy Rosenfarb is busy, busy, busy, and he trains, uh, acupuncturists in a special kind of acupuncture called micro acupuncture. So again, thank you so much for your attention and your time. And hopefully listening to this, uh, again, knowledge is power, and I hope that you become part of an integrative medicine team to help people in the world keep their precious gift of sight. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much, mark. And thanks again to the American acupuncture council, um, Virginia Doran signing off from luminousbeauty.com and yeah, Yair Maimon is next week. So, so he’s always got something interesting. I hope you’ll check that out too. All right. Goodbye. Bye.