♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> cheryl: i'm cheryl jennings. our babyboomers vision loss according to a poll released americans worried about vision loss more than they fear ca,

hivaid, heart disease and other problems. chronic dry eye is one of the most common ailments of vision impairment. carolyn johnson looked at new technology. >> on a bad day, driving can be a challenge for helen. >> it's seeing clearly and you see a glare. >> her normal vision is fine but the blurriness comes as a condition called dry eye. she is forced to athlete it with drops and compresses throughout the day. >> whether you get up in the morning, eyes are swollen and definitely red and they have a burning sensation. >> you have relatively oil. >> ophthalmologist says the condition is caused by a lack of oil. today he is going to treat the root cause of the problem with

lipo-flow. first technician performs a laser scan of helen's eyes to measure the amount and quality of the oil as well as her natural pattern of blinking. after analyzing the deet he places two cups on the helen's eyes. they are designed to reach the oil glands beneath the eyelids. >> it warms the lids and melts the oil and then using a computer program, it applies gentle pressure and gets the extra oil from the glands. >> joining us is lillie mosaddegh. she has treated patients with this new technology. doctor, thank you for being here. i have this procedure done by your office because i have a terrible dry eye problem. you have given me a lot of advice. its comprehensive program. one thing just doesn't fix it.

what causes dry eye. >> chronic dry eye, its long-term process. so because it doesn't appear overnight it doesn't disappear overnight. there is no one thing that fixes everything. dry eyes come in different categories. >> cheryl: and with the animation your office looking at the redeye, i can relate to that. this is frontier science video and this is one of the indicators, right? >> people with dry eyes could get redness and eye could be uncomfortable and sometimes it's hard for them to focus. >> it looks like a fingertip pressing on the eyes. >> the glands, these are oil glands inside the human and they produce the oily part of the tear which is to keep the liquid part from evaporating.

>> is there one person more likely to have a dry eye condition than another? >> we see it across the ages and in different occupations. this being the computer age as people are staying at the monitors longer they are dealing with it at a younger age. people that suffer from roscasea it affects the eyes and babyboomers are dealing with dryness and aging and some of it is basically hormonal. post men put a al women are also -- menopausal women are go also having problem. and because of the factors the eyes could be exposed to swimming and other things. >> and computer?

>> the computer, we have to keep the eyes healthy as they look at computers. >> cheryl: you put me on a lifft of different things? >> let's start by talking about dry eyes basically. dry eyes, if it contains a lot of different categories. to simplify things, some dry eyes are volume problem. the eye doesn't produce enough tears but the other category is when people come in i'm tearing all the time. they say, you know consistency is important, it's not just the volume. if you don't have enough, it's like a salad dressing, if yodonv don't have enough and ingredient doesn't work, the human tears has the oily part plowed by the glands, it has the liquid part

and if you don't have enough of everything, volume doesn't work. so you want to treat dry eyes, you have to see which one of the problems is the underlying cause. >> cheryl: for me, it's taking a lot and i'm taking supplements. >> i'm looking at your eyes and you look beautiful and the eyes look great. you have to be basically put you on medication to get normal tear production and supplement that with nutritional supplements and new technology available to hit this problem. we have to hit it from all directions. >> cheryl: doctor, thank you so much. i appreciate all the help and i'm sure folks at home do, too. when we come back we'll hear from one of the top experts on the leading disease causing

vision loss in older adults.

>> cheryl: welcome back to "beyond the headlines", i'm cheryl jennings. age degeneration, macular degeneration, their central vision deteriorates from going from normal to of having blind spotted. macular degeneration make straight lines such as bathroom tiles look blurred. joining us to talk more about is professor robert bhisitkul, he is a specialist and treats diseases. so i know your work is amazing. macular degeneration is in my family. it was horrible thing to see.

describe the people and what it is and how it affects them? >> cheryl, things have change a lot since your father's time so it's nice to talk about macular degeneration. it's most common cause of vision loss in elderly patients. it's fairly common. once you hit the age of 65, about 10-15% of patients have some form of macular degeneration. the vast majority of patients have the mild form and they will never have their vision affected by this, whether small deposits in the retina we call drusin. over the years they caning on to lose vision. one of the ways they go from the mild form of macular degeneration to the wet for hav where you have leakage and bleeding right in the bull's-eye of the retina. >> cheryl: can you see it? >> no, the patient can't see it themselves. they will notice problems that

you are talking about, the blind spots, blurry vision, distortion that is what the patients notice first. >> cheryl: when do you know it's time to see a doctor? >> everyone past the age of 55 or 60 should get a check up with their ophthalmologist. if you have symptoms, blurry visions, blind spots, those we like to see urgently. that is something you want to see that week or that day because we have new treatments for the west form of macular degeneration. >> cheryl: what is involved, surgery or treatment? >> wet form, we have had great drug that has can reverse the vision loss or stabilize the vision. they are called lucentis. new drug aleya. they are drugs we inject directly into the eyeball which sounds gruesome but most of my

patients after they have been through it couple times, it's not that bad. we have treatments very regularly, treatments we give it as frequently as every month. >> cheryl: does health care cover this? >> yes, that's right. >> cheryl: is that fantastic. what kind of success rate? >> about 70% of patients get benefit compared to your father's time period when we didn't have anything. >> cheryl: the steps that people can take to lower the risk because i was worried it was hereditary? >> there are factors in macular degeneration and in the future we will be able to plea district risk based on genes but it's not that strong of inheritance. >> so what are some of the

things we should do and do reduce risk? >> screening with the ophthalmologist and i are given a diagnosis of it one thing that helps for sure is stopping smoking. then there is also some benefit from high dose vitamins, it's been shown in patients early form of macular degeneration. >> cheryl: does sunlight or exposure to chemicals? >> there is a thought that u.v. exposure might be a contributor but we don't have proof of that. >> cheryl: what would be your best advice? one of the things people don't realize, sometimes you can lose your license. so where would you start? you said around 50? >> at the end stage, some patients lose their legal driving. i would see around 55, make sure you get a screening. if you get a diagnosis of

macular degeneration, start the vitamins and get regular follow-up. now that we have great treatments for this, if you begin to have the symptoms of vision loss from wet macular degeneration. get it right away because we want to start the treatments early in the course of the disease. >> cheryl: thank you so much. we do have to take another break. we'll hear about a local organization to help visually impaired people. we'll be right back.

>> cheryl: welcome back, i'm cheryl jennings. in a survey of 1,000 adults, they found that 75% had loss of independence and top concern if they ever lost their eyesight. joining us is joshua miele from the smith kettlewell eye research. he has been living with vision loss most of his life. you have been teaching me a lot. i can't wait to share this with people. please explain how you lost your vision? >> i was born with sight but i got burned very early in life and i found through my entire life, grade school, high school, college, graduate school as a blind person and i am a blind scientist working, as you said the smith kettlewell eye

research institute. basically i have devoted my research and career identifying better ways for blind people to get access to the information they need in order to be highly functioning contributing members of society just like anybody else. >> cheryl: you are a living example of that. we have great things we want to show people. you talked about developing the tools people need. there are so many obstacles that visually impaired people face in the workplace? >> sure. everybody faces obstacles, blind people don't have a lock on that, but we do have certain things that are in particular difficult for us. one of the biggest things for blind people is getting access to the information that they need. so information comes in all sorts of forms. it comes in printed materials and it comes on the web. it comes in tables and graphs stuff likorts of stuff like th.

really those are the most difficult challenges for blind people to get access to all of the information that is so readily available to their sight colleagues. >> cheryl: you brought something really cool. a periodic chart and talking pen. i'm going pull this over just to let people. we put a microphone on this pen so you can hear what it says. if you can walk us through. >> basically this is a pen with a computer inside. it's a piece of paper. it has markings on it. so i can feel the lines of this periodic table and i can feel the braille, but all it says in each cell in braille is the abbreviation, hydrogen is h, but i if i use the pen to tap on the cell, first it will tell me

hydrogen, capital hsm, atomic number one. >> so it tells me that hydrogen, that it is h and atomic number one, but braille takes up so much room we can't squeeze all. if i tap again. >> atomic weight,1. 1.01. atomic mass density. >> so what we've done the form of the periodic table for the blind person can study chemistry or physics or anything else. periodic table is one of the crowning achievements of modern physics. a blind student without the ability to sort of see how it is laid out will not be as readily successful in technical fields as his sighted classmates. so what we've done is make it what it is shaped like and you get all the information out of

it. this is just one type of information that we really focused on research on developing better approaches so blind people can be successful. >> cheryl: before we run out of time, we have 45 seconds, you have a project that describes video. >> yeah, video is more and more important. it's being used everywhere, education and employment and entertainment. very often people miss important pieces of information. we have developed a set of sourcing tools like wikipedia so we can describe what is going on in streamed video and have it available and still experimental we see this as a future for video accessibility for blind people. >> cheryl: we have run out of

time. we are going to post this information for everybody at home. we do have to take another break. when we come back, we're going to hear about a valuable community resource. stay with us, we'll be right back.

>> cheryl: welcome back. we have been talking about attacking care of our eyes and some of the leading causes of vision loss. with us is lisamaria martinez from the light house for the blind and visually impaired. i love your name. you had vision loss for most of your life. >> yes. i lost it from an allergic reaction. in my case the doctors don't know what i reacted to that was the cause. >> you have not let that stop you one bit. i love this organization.

they do so much to help people. can you describe that for folks at home? >> lighthouse has been around since 1902. we started off in a reading room at the public library and we expanded over 111 years to our location today which is on van ness. we provide services to have problems with vision. people come to us and we teach them braille, technology, using adaptive equipment. cooking and most recently we've established an employment program. i have to say in the two years the program has been around, people who have gotten jobs, cumulative salaries is over 800,000 and we're very proud of that. >> cheryl: people think if they lose their vision and they can't get a job and you are there to help. how many people?

>> we help about 3,000 people all over northern california. our headquarters is in san francisco but we have locations in marin, eureka, berkeley and newest location in san leandro. >>. >> cheryl: what are the ages? >> from elementary school age to all the way to hundred plus. [ laughter ] >> cheryl: we have a young person at braille machine. so you have a lot of programs, employment immersion, talk about that? >> it's been around for only a few years. we give group and one on one attention to people who come in, most people who come to us have lost vision later in life and they want to stay employed. they come to us and we work on them to stay employed. maybe they lost their job because they couldn't keep up

with their demands. we talk about resume writing and talk about skills blind person, mentoring whether you are visually impaired or blind. >> cheryl: you have to boost the spirit. i know you have had success stories. >> most recently we had a client with the department of labor, couple months ago. we had a woman who is in her 50s that found her first job ever. she struggled a lot because of her vision and facing some of the attitudes that employers have and capabilities, she found a job.

>> cheryl: that is fantastic. before we run out of time. enchanted hills camp. >> enchanted hills camp is in napa. 311 acres, beautiful acres. every summer we have a camp for children, elementary school, high school and we even have an alumni camp session. >> cheryl: this takes money? >> it does. all of our services takes money. it is through generous donations of people all over the country that our services can happen. >> cheryl: you have an convenient coming up? >> we have several events throughout the year. one of which is cycle forsyth. every april we have 2,000 people in napa who get on their bikes, single bikes and tandem bikes and raise money and this year we raised over 40 k. >> thank you so much. we're going to put it on the

website. thank you for being here. >> that is all the time we have for today. big special thanks to all of our guests. for more information about today's program, go to our website at abc7news.com. we are also on facebook and twitter. i'm cheryl jennings. have a great week. we'll see you next time. bye for now.

previously on live big with ali vincent; mom and i headed to universal hollywood studios for a live big adventure. she got on my nerves a little bit at lunch. no sour cream, but then our first live big challenge. there we go. my mom had a little bit of problems getting on and off the mechanical bull. but she did win the challenge but let's just be fair only because she gave the guy 20 bucks to throw me off. but a win's a win. right? when i became the first female to win the biggest loser life focused on calorie counting, diet and exercise and although all that stuff is still very important; i'm realizing that to truly live big i need to live life to the fullest; doing new things and challenging myself; so now on live big with ali vincent everyday wou