Commonly, patients ask holistic practitioner Susan Moss, OD, at Eyes Are Precious in Houston, Texas, for guidance on nutrition, supplements or alternatives even before she has a chance to bring it up, she says. “Patients ask me. They’ll say they’re noticing floaters or they wonder if there is something they can do to minimize their chances of developing age-related macular degeneration,” she says. “There’s no forgetting to talk about it because patients ask.”
As an integrative medicine specialist, Dr. Moss will talk about diet and offer supplements or herbal remedy prescriptions. All of these are a fundamental part of her comprehensive eye care practice, she says.
“It’s part of every exam. If I have children who spend hours looking at device screens, I’ll talk about the protective qualities of kale and spinach to bolster blue-light protection. It’s not taking away from any other part of the exam to have those conversations,” she says.
LIFE-LONG HABITS
Dr. Moss says that her own careful oversight of her nutrition and food intake started early—and tragically. “My mother encouraged me to eat whole, natural foods. When my father died from a heart attack when I was 16, my mother and I both stopped eating meat,” she says.
While diet is of course a personal choice, Dr. Moss says that so many patients tell her how much better they feel after following her holistic guidance. “I saw a severe dry eye patient who came in holding a cloth to her left eye. That’s how much her eye was bothering her,” she says. When she began to feel better under Dr. Moss’s care, “it’s such a win-win. I’m always happy when I can solve the patients’ problems, and they’re happy when they feel better.”
She only wishes that patients would come to her sooner. “So often, they’ve been seeing a lot of physicians and been prescribed a lot of medications. They feel like they’ve spent a fortune and it didn’t help them,” she says.
If that patient’s vision and comfort improve as their severe dry eye or other conditions resolve, that patient becomes an advocate for Dr. Moss’s practice and a holistic approach. Friends and family members of these patients can see and sense how much better the patient is doing and ask to be referred, too. “It’s such a wonderful feeling to know that we can impact patients’ quality of life,” she says.
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Related: Learn more about the Ocular Wellness and Nutrition Society.
Featured photo credit: Getty Images
