Eye Health Solutions

Tara.Marshall. Introducing to you.. our newest employee @ EHS! Here is a little 'get to know ya' about Tara, our newest employee.  She will be working with the Doc's in the exam rooms as a scribe.   Hi All! My name is Tara, and I was born and raised in Knoxville, and graduated with the class of 2009. My husband Jared works at 3M and we have two beautiful children, Carter (9) and Jadyn (8). In my freetime, I enjoy watching the kids in their sporting events, taking our two dogs Tank (lab) and Jax (shih tzu poodle) on walks, reading, and last, but certainly not least, shopping :)  I'm looking forward to meeting all of our patients at Eye Health Solutions :)   1. What is your favorite movie of all time? Any Michael Myers movie- Halloween time is definitely my favorite!  2. If you had to pick one song to sing karaoke to... what would it be?  Pick just one?! " I Wanna Dance with Somebody"-Whitney Houston  3. How long does it take you to get re...

  Many of you have probably seen the viral videos of colorblind kids putting on glasses and seeing colors for the first time. They are emotional and we want it to be true. Here is one from ABC news.  Colorblind kid sees colors for first time Well, there is no doubt that the kid will see things "differently" than before, but that is much different than actually perceiving color the way most people do. Color vision defects happen due to genetics on the X chromosome that you inherit from your mother. Wearing a lens that simply filters light does nothing to change this. Also, there are many variations of color vision deficiency. How can one pair of glasses know which colors to correct? Also, how does someone who has never seen color normal even know they are seeing color normal? Well, finally science to the rescue. These folks proved it was not possible.  Science for the win It makes for a good story and also greases the wheels for Go Fund Me accounts but ultimately these are...

  Lizzy I was born and raised in Knoxville, and went to college at UNI. I graduated in May of 2020 with my bachelor's degree and moved back to Knoxville with my husband, Nick, who is also from Knoxville. Nick and I will be married two years in January. Both of our families are local, which is such a blessing. In July, we got our pup Watson. He's a Lab/Great Pyrenees mix who is currently 47 pounds and just over four months old. He's the most adorable big baby. We also had a little niece born at the beginning of September who we can't wait to spoil. I enjoy reading, especially fantasy, WWII memoirs, and Christian fiction. Many can attest that I bring a book with me EVERYWHERE. I also love watching tv (anything by the CW) curled up underneath a cozy blanket with a candle burning next to me and hammocking when it's nice out.  I began working here at Eye Health Solutions in June in the patient care area, so you will see me at the front desk. I'm smiling beh...

The title of this post is a great question. As an optometrist I did not think I would ever work from home but here I am listening to webinars, doing blog posts, and research from home. Ultimately we need to get back to seeing patients and delivering top quality eyecare. The answer to the question in the title is never. Our reality has been fundamentally changed and this was from a virus which although deadly, has a relatively low mortality rate. Imagine a virus such as H5N1 (avian flu) that has a mortality rate of 60%. Remember that one, it is still out there..... We can't live our lives in fear, we can only control what we can control. Hopefully we learn from this and we are better prepared down the road if something more dangerous or something similar comes along. To relate this back to eyecare and our office, I don't think you will ever see a kids play area or magazine rack again. Honestly, I would hope you do not see those in any office waiting room. We have removed ...

Well, it seems like eons ago when I did this  previous blog post . In re-reading that who would have thought we would end up where we are now. A couple quick things to comment on. In a  recent study  it was shown that the virus is not transmitted in tears. This study was only 17 people but was very well done. None of the 17 had traces of the virus in their tears. Now to be clear you can still inoculate yourself through the mucus membranes of the eye but new tears do not seem to shed virus as far as we know currently. The second thing to comment on is signs of conjuctivitis or "pink eye" associated with the virus remain very low, at about 1%. In the office we have installed breath shields on our microscopes and changed how we interact with patients to minimize chance of contamination. We are fortunate that our office is not a place where sick people go and we do not have the aerosol issues that our dental colleagues have to deal with. There is always risk, and we w...

Well, its Sunday morning and we lost an hour. I am sure more people missed church today than almost any other Sunday or a few people showed up at the wrong time (guilty of both of these myself in the past). There is no debate that we are hard wired to wake up with the sun and go to bed at night. Every cell in our body has a circadian clock. Morning sunlight in your eyes shortly after waking up is a great way to set your clock and tell your body it is time to get moving. It also helps with sleep in the evening as your clock has now "been set". Despite all the hype around blue blocking glasses in the last couple years morning sunlight is going to have a high level of blue light which is beneficial to your sleep/wake cycle. That is why blue light in the evening can disrupt things. What can we expect this week by messing around with the clocks: 1. Car accidents will increase on the Monday following the spring forward. 2. There will be more workplace injuries tomorrow a...

I just finished reading the book "Bottle of Lies" by Katherine Eban. It is an inside look at the generic drug industry. To answer the question I put in the title of this blog post - maybe or maybe not..... I won't give the complete rundown of the book but would encourage you to read it if you are at all concerned about the medications you or your family take. One of the things that jumped out at me was that U.S. drug manufacturing plants can be inspected any time any place with a surprise inspection from the FDA. Foreign plants in India and China, which is where many generics come from, get six weeks notice before an inspection. SIX WEEKS!!!!!! I can't help but thinking of how my house looks if I know I have company coming over vs someone just pops in unannounced. I have seen this first hand in our office. Latanoprost is a medication to lower pressure in the eye. There are currently at least 19 different manufacturers of this medication. I have many patients taki...

Happy Friday once again. I have had kids home with snow days the last 2 Friday's so it seems especially quiet this morning. I am reading headlines about the 2020 novel coronavirus outbreak so it seemed fitting to discuss this a bit along with how it relates to your eyes. This also applies to the influenza B outbreak going through Knoxville schools right now as well. We have all had a coronavirus infection at some point. It is a common virus and your symptoms would be like any mild viral infection and presented as a mild to moderate cold. The difference with this one is that it is new or "novel" and our immune systems are poorly equipped to fight it. This is similar to SARS, MERS, or even the Spanish flu where common viruses change and become much more potent. Two years ago I did some traveling in Japan and in Asian countries post SARS it is common to see surgical masks on people just walking around in public. Culturally this is done more as a courtesy if someone is si...

Greetings all. Its another snowy day and schools are closed so hopefully if you are home with your kids they are outside playing in the snow. To follow up on the last couple blog post on diet and detecting Alzheimer's disease through retinal scanning I have had a few questions on what do you do to prevent it? It is a great question and unfortunately we are far from having all the answers. However, there are things we can do to lessen the risk.  I look at these things like investing money. If you do a little early it can pay big dividends later in life when it counts. If you have a family history of dementia, like I do, you become interested in not going down that path if you can make choices to avoid it. 1. Get enough sleep. I can't take credit for the quote and it escapes me whose it is. I saw it in Dr. Matthew Walkers book on sleep which I highly recommend. "The amount of people that can get by on less than 7 hours of sleep rounded to the nearest percent and express...

Happy Friday everyone! It is currently cold and freezing rain, so a far cry from the 60 degree temps we enjoyed on Thursday. Such is life in the mid-west. I have been aware of this for the last couple of years but an article hit USA Today on January 6th so I thought it would be good to discuss it briefly. First, just a little basic anatomy.  The retina is a direct extension of your brain. It is not an exaggeration to say we are looking at your brain when we look into your eye at the back of the eye where the retina is. It is obviously much easier and less expensive to look into the eye than look at your brain via an MRI or PET scan which can cost thousands of dollars. Research is being done with a retinal scanning device called an OCT that would be able to pick up early changes in the retina consistent with the plaques that form in the brain with Alzheimer's disease. Imagine being able to run a simple, inexpensive (a couple hundred dollars) scan and determine if there is disea...

Happy New Year! It is the start of a new year and people are making their resolutions and reflecting on the past year. One of the common resolutions I hear is to be healthier by exercising more and eating better. The British Journal of Ophthalmology published a study on dietary choices and the development of eye disease. The study was published in December 2019.  The eye disease studied was age related macular degeneration, AMD for short. In my world we have known that diet is a risk factor for years, and talk to patients daily about it. The study showed that the standard american diet, SAD for short, was linked to increase risk in development of AMD. I think we all understand that better lifestyle choices can help prevent cardiovascular disease and protect your heart. This study shows that we should also be eating well to protect our vision as we age and prevent blindness. Dr. Jason