The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #154 - Jake Steiner

TRANSCRIPT

Melanie Avalon: Hi, friends, welcome back to the show, I am so incredibly excited about the conversation that I am about to have. It is about a topic that I think is so important, and that affects so many people's lives, and isn't really talked about that much, and I was just reflecting on this. I don't think in the entirety of the show, I've really even approached this topic. So, I'm very excited. I am here today with Jake Steiner. He is the founder of Endmyopia and he's really just a wonder when it comes to the potential concept of addressing myopia, which is nearsightedness through-- Well, we're going to talk about it on the show, but taking charge and potentially fixing it, carrying it, I don't know, I guess, [chuckles] we'll find out the details about that. But yeah, so, there's just so much here to learn, and I'm really excited to jump in, and Jake, thank you so much for being here.

Jake Steiner: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Melanie Avalon: To start things off, would you like to tell listeners a little bit about your personal story? Did you struggle with being nearsighted growing up, did you have an epiphany one day of how you could address it? What's your story? Why are you doing what you're doing now?

Jake Steiner: I'm going to call an origin story one time. Ever since then, I'm having a superhero complex. Yeah.

Melanie Avalon: What is your origin story, Jake?

Jake Steiner: Yes. I started needing glasses when I was about 12, I want to say. And I'm in my 40s now, so that was fairly common back then. Once you're in school and you have lots of homework, you're spending a lot of time in front of books today, it's quite different with screens worse today. But my parents took me to the optometrist. My parents are both medical doctors and the optometrist says, you're squinting, you need glasses. My parents were quite upset about it. I was super excited because it was like an adventure, they have lots of cool frames, it's getting a lot-- [crosstalk]  

Melanie Avalon: Me, too. When that happened, I remember being like that.

Jake Steiner: Yeah, I was getting so much attention and there was a whole new thing. And then, when they were done, when we got to pick them up, I went outside downtown in this little town in Germany, and I was just amazed at the 3D-ness of the world. It was just so sharp and amazing. I love glasses. Every year to every few years after that, I got new ones upsetting my parents every time, because yeah, they were not happy that there was something wrong with me. But I liked it. But on the flipside, it made me-- I remember, I loved sports before I played water polo. I was on the rowing team. I really was into a lot of just physical activity. Wearing glasses turned me into a nerd introvert. I got bullied more, I started reading a lot. I thought I was clumsy, I was still swimming, but I stopped doing a lot of sports. And then that continued and then in my adult life, I became an analyst for large banking organization. I got into finance a lot, and then I became an investor, and then I retired early, because I was lucky. By that time I had -5 diopter super thick strong glasses, and I was single, and I was traveling, and strongly glasses are the smaller your eyes look behind them. So, these tiny little picky eyes and isn't that cool for a single dude? 

Then I went to the optometrist one day, because at night I couldn't figure out if taxis were available or not, because the little sign and light in them, I just couldn't read, and the optometrist said, I needed glasses, stronger glasses. That was the first time I went by myself in my adult life. I've never gone back since I was a kid and I asked why. The optometrist says, genetic. Just from schooling, just from general education, I'm like, “That can't. That's not how genetics work.” Humanity at large didn't lose their ability to see clearly in the last several decades. It's just not how genetics works. I went to the library, because that was before the internet was all fancy like it is today. I read the biology books and I found what causes myopia. It was weird because it's not a secret, it's not a mysterious genetic condition. It's very clearly explained. 50 years of clinical science explains exactly what causes myopia. And then I also found that glasses make myopia worse. Literally, it's just in the books. I went back to the optometrist, I'm like, “What's up with this?” The optometrist kicked me out of their office. It was a super jarring experience. They just kicked me out. I'm like, “I'm reading stuff” and they were like, “Well, if you're not buying glasses, you're not-- no need to be here.” That kicked off a journey that just rubbed me the wrong way. 

This has been almost 20 years now. I have figured out how to reverse it. I don't wear glasses anymore at all. I have 20/20 eyesight and then I started a blog just ranting about my experiences and somehow that became popular, and people started following it, and then people started trying stuff, and then people started messaging me. Before it was just friends and random people, but it turned into this now fairly big community all over the world and lots of people have done it. There're tons of improvement reports, tons of reports people having reversed to myopia. Optometrists confirmed everything. It's not my profession because financially I don't need to be doing it. I'm not looking for fame, but it's become this thing that just continues to exist, because people are excited about not being dependent on glasses and optometry is $100 billion industry that feeds on people's ignorance about how that I said works.

Melanie Avalon: Wow. Okay, that is quite the origin story. Then on top of being the origin story, talk about a teaser that you've discovered a secret that's not a secret to what is causing this issue. Can we clarify because I think a lot of people get confused between nearsighted and farsighted. Can we create some definitions? And also, I was looking it up and apparently, there's presbyopia as well. So, there's myopia, hyperopia, and presbyopia. So, what are all of these things? 

Jake Steiner: Nearsightedness, see, it's opposite of what you would think. Shortsightedness or nearsightedness means you can see clear at close distances but not far away. When you're shortsighted, you can see clearly at a distance, kind of weird and farsighted is the opposite. You can't see clearly up close.

Melanie Avalon: It makes sense, though, because nearsighted, you can see things that are near and farsighted, you can see things that are far.

Jake Steiner: Yeah, I guess, though. The farsighted is also called hyperopia and then there's presbyopia that's age related. Same symptom, so you can't read things up close. Hyperopia is if you're having that symptom, but you're not over 40 and presbyopia is the same symptom, but you didn't have it till you got a little bit older and then you start needing reading glasses.

Melanie Avalon: Okay. For the farsighted, we have farsighted and we have presbyopia. Wait, hyperopia?

Jake Steiner: Hyperopia. Yeah. 

Melanie Avalon: Okay, so, hyperopia and presbyopia, is there a correlation for myopia and fill in the blank? So, what's actually happening with the nearsighted and farsighted?

Jake Steiner: Okay, so, this is super, super weird. I recommend people go to scholar.google.com. That's Google's search engine just for clinical science. If you want to read the papers, peer reviewed clinical journals, super neat. I'm not saying the science is indisputable, but it's a better starting point than just a general mess of the internet. You type in pseudomyopia, P-S-E-U-D-O myopia or a long one that's used a lot is near induced transient myopia that gives away the spoiler. Near induced meaning caused by near vision, transient meaning temporary, and myopia, of course, nearsightedness. You're going to find tens of thousands of search results. This is pretty weird, because it's tens of thousands of results of peer-reviewed clinical science articles explaining what causes nearsightedness. So weird, it's so weird, and I couldn't believe it, because I'm not into conspiracies or when people talk about, “Yeah, the doctor’s hiding things and just selling me pills and blah.” I've never been big on that side and it's so strange to go-- They completely understand. Academia completely understands what causes bad eyesight but when you go to the retail optometrist, they claim it's mysterious and genetic. 

Basically, what causes it is your eye has a muscle in the front. It's called the ciliary muscle. Inside of the eye that moves the lens like a camera lens. When you focus at something up close, that lens bulges out, basically, to give you clear, close up vision. When you look at a distance that muscle relaxes and that lens flattens, and then you have clear distance vision. It's the auto focusing mechanism of a camera. Not designed for extremely long periods of closeup vision. A lot of people talk to me since the whole last two years and the COVID situation, people spent a lot more time in front of screens, they're having more eyesight distance vision issues. That muscle gets stuck. It's muscle spasm. Pseudomyopia, if you look that up on Google Scholar, it is very clearly explained as that muscle that's supposed to move freely to focus the lens for near and far vision gets stuck in closeup mode. There's not a genetic illness or defect. It's just you spend so much time staring at something up close that muscle was tight for so long that it doesn't totally relax. So, your lens is stuck in between close up and distance mode. The distance stuff seems slightly blurry. That is the first time you went to the optometrist that was what you had.

Melanie Avalon: So, is that different because I was reading that myopia was when your eyeball was too long and that farsighted was when it was too short. Is that different, the length of the eyeball?

Jake Steiner: Research. I love it. Yes. [chuckles] Yes, that's correct. That can be correct. There're lots of ways to end up nearsighted. But that's super common and what happens, so, it's a two-part story. The first half is you know muscle spasm. The first time you went to the optometrist, if the optometrist wasn't in the business to make money, they would have told you you're camping for a weekend, your eyesight would have improved. But instead, they sold you glasses. And then you go back to Google Scholar and you type in “lens-induced myopia” and that's also super weird to me, because you're going to get, again, tens of thousands of search results of just peer-reviewed clinical science that demonstrates that wearing glasses makes your eyesight worse. It's not a side effect or whatever. That specifically what it does and they tried this on fish. I don't know how they put glasses on fish but they did, chickens, monkeys and humans, you put minus lenses, the glasses you need for distance vision in front of the eye and interesting thing happens, so the eye is a fluid-filled ball, and it's never perfectly shaped, because it's not made out of glass or material that's immutable in shape. It has a built in mechanism to adjust the shape continuously from the day you're born until the day you die. Because the lens is in the front, and the retina is in the back of that eyeball, and the light has to travel through it to focus on the retina, mechanism built in to adjust the length of the eye. Part of the way that works just a super short version is the retina in the back of the eye, there's a mechanism that checks, does all the light focus on the retina? And if some of the light focuses in front of the retina, the eyeball shortens. If some of the light focuses behind the retina, the eyeball elongates.

What happens with glasses is, instead of fixing the muscle spasm, the glasses just move the light further back in your eye to give you back clear distance vision despite the muscle spasm. But the thing that also happens is that moving the light further back in the eye, some of the light scatters behind the retina telling the eyeball to elongate. Now, the thing you were talking about exactly a longer eyeball means more myopia, means you're more nearsighted is caused by the lens wear. You buy the glass from the optometrist, and a year later your eye will have adjusted thinking it's doing the right thing. It's a perfectly healthy eye will have increased in length. And now, your eyesight is worse and you need stronger glasses.

Melanie Avalon: How can it be caused by the glasses if people need the glasses to begin with?

Jake Steiner: They don't. The people need to relax the muscle spasm. The reason you can't see at a distance is because like a camera lens, the muscle has the lens stuck in closeup mode. What you need is for that muscle to relax, so instead of going to the optometrist in the beginning, you just needed plenty of distance vision time and not much close up time. I would have relaxed. The initial use of the glasses is to overcome the stuck muscle, moves the light further back in your eye, making the eye elongate.

Melanie Avalon: Is that why there's a stereotype around smart kids having glasses because they're reading books constantly and looking at things up close all the time?

Jake Steiner: Kind of. I think that's an interesting part of this whole story because people don't care about having to wear glasses and always say, “Glasses affect everything.” Personality, posture, sports performance, those things are really limiting you. One of the things is, there's a question of cause and effect. I wasn't that smart, I'm still not that smart or nerdy, but wearing glasses made me read books a lot, because I couldn't do other stuff much and my social interactions were limited. Kids start bullying you. If you show up in school with glasses, good luck. It's not kids are mean and evil, but your social interactions slightly change, because now when you're wearing glasses, you're training your eyes to look through the center of the lens. Your eye movement, your head movement, your neck movement is slightly different than a person who doesn't my glasses. You seem a little bit weird. Just a tiny little bit. If you interact with somebody wearing glasses, you're just assuming that that's who they are. But if you think about it, if you watch them knowing this, you're like, “It's little off.” 

You seem a little strange, so it affects your social interactions, so you tend to become more introverted. Books is a greatest escape. Today, now, that's a different story because since screens became the thing, the game has changed somewhat. But before that was the case, you can't do sports as well, because you don't want glasses knocked off your face. You get more fearful, you lose your peripheral vision, so your visual cortex says, “Be careful.” You think you're more clumsy, but it's really just your brain trying to stop you from doing something that affects you not being able to see. So, you get away from physical activity, you get away from people and till screen were the things, books were the escape route?

Melanie Avalon: I was actually going to say, because you're mentioning the sports, because I was trying to think of, what would be the most stimulating environment for a child where they're looking farther away more often? I'm assuming that's probably something like sports. So, have they done correlational studies on activities that kids engage in and correlating to, if they're nearsighted or farsighted? 

Jake Steiner: Not nearly well enough. To me, it's super frustrating, how underexplored this whole area is. Funding is necessary. A lot of studies have a desired outcome or at least looking at, “Okay, what are the options here?” It's a hugely underserved area in terms of how do these things really affect you. It's a fairly simple industry in that it’s a pair of glasses, just the lenses and glasses cost $2 to $5 wholesale to the optometrist. They cost nothing, clear curved pieces of plastic, but they sell them for hundreds of dollars. The average markup is something like 5,000%. It's a $100 billion industry glasses, then there's also contact lenses, LASIK surgery, all the consequences of high myopia that later have medical issue outcomes. The whole industry is really just focused on-- The academia says we understand what causes myopia and then the whole retail side of it just sells glasses. There's not a whole lot of in-depth research on what are really the consequences of these things on people.

Melanie Avalon: Did myopia not even occur until we reach a certain point of civilization? Do hunter-gatherer societies not even have myopia?

Jake Steiner: Yeah, you wouldn't have lasted very long in a hunter-gatherer society. The first documented cases of myopia or more than a few was 16th century monks. Monks got myopia. They were the only ones. The glasses were invented around the 16th century, as far as we know. It was because monks started to not have great distance vision and they were the only ones who knew how to read and write. So, that's where the whole thing started. Then not a whole lot changed till 19th century, where education started reaching a lot more people. That's where Bates method became popular there, early 20th century. And then the increase was fairly gradual from there and then you saw a huge jump again, recently, the last 10 years or so, where myopia is getting into younger and younger people. Now, Hong Kong, Singapore have an incident rate of myopia in school aged children of over 90%. 90% of kids need glasses, basically. 

Melanie Avalon: To clarify, is everybody born with perfect vision or without these issues?

Jake Steiner: No, actually, not at all. We're all born hyperopic. We're all born farsighted. 

Melanie Avalon: Oh, okay. 

Jake Steiner: Yeah, all babies, babies can't see your face when they're small. They're so cute. [laughs] I already have two of them and they are just so cute. But yeah, they can't see your face. The eyes are too short. Then the misconception is that the eyeballs grow longer, which they don't. The mechanism that I talked about before that adjusts the length of the eyeball happens from the environment and the light going into the eyes. The baby's eye is too short, but the eye is figuring out what is the correct length. So, the baby goes from hyperopic to seeing clearly by spending a lot of time looking around.

Melanie Avalon: That explains why because now with screens and our modern lifestyle, really young kids are looking at things up close like screens a lot.

Jake Steiner: It's terrible, it's terrible. And so, for context, weirdly and I don't know, because Endmyopia is not a very professional style of destination and I'm not treating this like, I'm not a medical doctor, I'm not an optometrist, I'm just an investor. I'm just a guy who figured out how to fix my eyes. But we've become a huge destination. I get hundreds of emails every day. I can't read all my emails, but they get organized by the admin. I know what comes in. Ten years ago, I didn't hear from parents. It was a little segment once in a while. Now, it's mostly parents and it's every day. If I haven't read my email yet today, because it's early in the morning, but I promise you there's going to be dozens of parents emailing me saying, “Hey, my five-year-old went to the optometrist. They say, my five-year-old needs glasses.” It's super sad. My first response to that is always iPads are not babysitters. If your kid is holding a phone in their short little arms watching cartoons, the child will get glasses, because the muscle spasm happens.

Melanie Avalon: When we do get glasses or contacts how does that solve the problem? I know it's a very basic question, but how does that allow us to see if our muscles are having these spasms?

Jake Steiner: Yeah, so, the muscle spasm, if you take a camera, and you set it to manual focus, and you put the focus on something up close, if you then move the camera to look at the distance, everything is going to be blurry because the camera lens is set to close up. The muscle spasm does the same thing. It leaves the lens stuck in closeup mode. It's not broken. There's nothing wrong with it. It would just need time to relax. But if you had a manual camera just set to closeup and now you're trying to see the distance everything's blurry, the muscle is still in closeup mode. What that means inside your eye is the light that you need for the closeup part of the light is focusing in front of the retina, not on it. That's why everything's blurry. You need the light to move back a little further to hit the retina and that's what the glasses do. They just move the light back, which is the job of the muscle, but the muscle’s stuck. It's almost like if you took a camera, a camera lens stuck in closeup mode, if you put glasses in front of it, the distance on the camera would look clear. So, they're just compensating. The glasses are just compensating by moving the light back.

Melanie Avalon: Or, if you had a broken arm and instead of letting your arm do things you just started, I don't know, carrying your arm around, like, you never-- you did everything for your arm and never used your arm, let the arm do its own stuff.

Jake Steiner: It's a symptom fix. It belongs in the 16th century. Again, still to this day talking about it, it's just strange, because these journals that I mentioned that explain how this works, they're optometry and ophthalmology journals. These are publications meant for optometrists and ophthalmologists. It boggles my mind. It's super strange. There's a retail optometrist who sells you glasses and then there's the optometrist who is in academia, who does this research. Not profession, but it's the same area of specialization. The people in academia go, glasses caused this. And not a question. It's well explored. And then they print these journals and they send them to the people that sell your glasses who never apparently read them. It's super weird.

Melanie Avalon: Here's a huge question. I was myopic growing up and I got like you. I got glasses in middle school, and then I got contacts, and I wore contacts up until two years ago, and then I got LASIK. [chuckles] I'm just going to be honest. It was the most life change-- It was incredible. For my experience of it, it was incredible. If it's the case that this is something where the eye is adjusting-- that muscle’s getting stuck and it's adjusting, how can a surgery seemingly magically fix it and not have any problems? I know people say that they get problems later on, but I was super nervous about doing it and so, I pulled my Facebook group, and I asked people for their experience with LASIK, and I probably got over hundred answers, and nobody who had actually gotten LASIK had a bad experience. The only people who said negative things were people who said that they had heard of people having bad experiences, but everybody who got it, which is probably almost hundred people, all positive. I'm not trying to say that that's the way to go, but it seems if what's going on is, it's your muscle adjusting to your environment, then technically wouldn't you get LASIK and wouldn’t you just go right back to your problem before because you're I would adjust again? 

Jake Steiner: That's a good question. I don't know how far to go with the answer, since you already had LASIK. Lenses move the light further back in your eye for lenses that fix your shortsightedness. It doesn't matter what kind of lenses they are. Glasses and contact lenses are the same thing. But they refocus the light onto your retina. It’s all they do. The contact lenses are just a more sophisticated way. But if you took it out, and if you took a picture of glasses and contact lenses and zoomed in on the contact lenses, you would find the same exact shape. It does the same thing.

Melanie Avalon: Never thought about that. 

Jake Steiner: Yeah, it's just much smaller, and it's soft, and it fits on your eye. It does the same thing. It just refocuses light working the same way. It's just a different material, it's just a way cooler more advanced way to change to shape where light focuses. LASIK is the same as a contact lens. The contact lens is just a lens that reshapes light at miniaturized version of glasses. With LASIK, instead of sticking a contact lens in front of your eye, the shape change is cut into your eye. It's basically a permanent contact lens. It's no more a cure than glasses or contact lenses are, it's the next evolution. Glasses were first, 16th century. It took us a long time to come up with a new thing. Technology evolved. At first, they were glass like hard contact lenses. It was rough. And soft contact lenses, now, they have stuff that you can even leave in your eye, which I don't recommend. But the light changing properties are cut into the cornea of your eye and that's the magic of LASIK, basically.

Melanie Avalon: I want to go a little bit deeper here, because I'm trying to understand, because if that's the case that you can actually reshape the eye, that would make it sound you're born with a certain shape that could be reshaped. Is that not what is happening there?

Jake Steiner: The problem first was a muscle spasm. And then the eyeball elongated from the lens wear. Because of the eyeball being longer, you need stronger glasses. And stronger glasses are the same as stronger contacts, is the same as a LASIK surgery cutting further into the cornea. The cornea is the front part of the eyeball, is shaped into this lens shape, basically. You don't need to do any of those things. You don't need to wear glasses, you don't need to wear contact lenses, you don't need to have LASIK. You can just reverse the elongation of the eyeball, and you can reverse the muscle spasm, and you can get back to 20/20 vision that way. Yeah, that's a little further down the road. First of all, you’ve asked before like, if you had LASIK and your eyes were not getting “worse before,” your eyesight was stable, then the LASIK is fine. If you were getting strong glasses every year and then you had LASIK, then the same thing will continue to happen. Because LASIK is not a cure. It's no different than wearing contact lenses. If before LASIK, you kept needing stronger contact lenses, you will also see poorly again after LASIK a year or two or five later. If your vision has been the same for years and years and years are not changing anymore. It's just static at whatever your level was, then the LASIK will do fine. There's a fair amount of people that I get that had LASIK a longer time ago, five years, 10 years ago that are back to the eyes are not as great as they used to be. There's an easy fix for that though. So, that's not a big deal. 

The other thing with people who haven't had LASIK yet, if it works out fine, it worked out great. You're good. There's nothing to worry about in terms of your eyes going to fall out five years later. If you had issues, it would have been right after. I don't really do podcasts, but because this is such a popular topic, I had a podcast episode with Dr. Morris Waxler. He is the former head of the FDA surgical devices division and he got LASIK approved. He's in his 70s now. He's got awesome Einstein hair going everywhere. He is the man who got LASIK approved to FDA. I'm not really trying to plug my podcast. You could chat with him. Brilliant guy. We had an hour conversation. Since he got it approved, I was shocked that he would talk about it. We go way back, so I was just surprised he would do it in a public forum. He says there're pretty significant issues and the FDA had zero long-term testing. For example, they cut the cornea, so all the nerves are cut. So, you don't have any pain sensation. It takes a year for that to come back. The FDA didn't test for that at all. He says dry eye is a fairly significant potential issue. Not for you, since it worked out fine. But he says, around 30% of people that get LASIK tend to have dry eyes and that's not really something that can be addressed or reversed after the fact.

He went on for an hour explaining how the structural integrity of the eye is affected. For example, you can become a fighter pilot because that flap never heals strongly enough to support the structural strength of the eye. It was just an interesting conversation. I would caution people who haven't had LASIK to take the chance. Even if you say it's 95%, you're going to be fine. It's going to work out great. If it doesn't, the consequences generally are not fixable and can be really severe. Especially for a procedure that you don't necessarily need, you take a longer route. You know what I mean? It’s like getting your stomach stapled to lose weight versus learning and understanding diet and exercise to accomplish the same thing. I would recommend approaching LASIK with caution.

Melanie Avalon: I will definitely put a link in the show notes and the show notes will be at melanieavalon.com/myopia to that podcast interview. So, people can check that out. No, it's interesting, because I'm so torn on this because I hear everything that you're saying and I don't take it lightly at all. And I also agree with the stuff you're talking about financial interests in the glasses industry and contacts, and I'm going to dive deep into your method to actually reverse it on your own. I just know from my experience of LASIK that it's one of the things where it just felt so life changing and so incredible and so amazing that I'm just very torn. [chuckles] I'm torn, I'm torn.

Jake Steiner: And that's totally cool. I totally get it. I almost had LASIK. I got close, but I was too scared. I was like, “Huh, I don't think I can do it.” But yeah, I get it totally. You need these crutches all your life and then all of a sudden, you do this thing, and then you open your eyes, and you can see perfectly. I'm totally with you. And if it worked out, it worked out. That's great. Before you get it, I would listen to that dude just because at least you know how far the FDA went or definitely didn't go in making sure that this is safe. It's just one of the things. If you want to take the chance and it works out, it's awesome. But if you and I were friends going way back and you said, “Hey, I'm thinking about doing LASIK.” I would point you to a bunch of these things and be like-- There's a big Facebook group, LASIK complications. And yeah, I talked to the admin once or twice. Her dry eyes are so bad, she has to wear goggles. There can't be any air movement in front of her eyes. It's a big group. I don't know. Big like 10,000, 20,000 people that are suffering and that's not a fixable thing. She's still so upset. Oh, she didn't want to talk to me because it's just rough. If it worked out it's great. There's nothing to worry about. If you feel confident in the choice, then totally fine. I'm not one to judge stuff. I'm just saying there're some risks maybe and there're some alternatives maybe.

Melanie Avalon: Yeah. No, and I super appreciate it. I'm all about more information, the merrier for everything. So, that is great. It made me think of a question. You were saying that if my eyesight prior to the surgery was stable compared to getting progressively worse then it's less likely that I'll have more issues afterwards, mine was stable. It actually alternated between-- Every visit, I wouldn't know it would either be the same or it might be one step better or one step worse, but it alternated between three. It wasn't on a downward trend. It just wavered between these three different things. Is it in negative? It’s like negative 1.75 to negative 2 and negative-- Yeah, so, somewhere in that range. My question from that is, people whose eyesight is getting progressively worse, what is the difference between the person whose eyesight-- they need glasses, they have a prescription, but it's not getting worse compared to the person who it is getting worse. Is that all just epigenetics, it's all just their lifestyle, and what they're doing with their lifestyle, or is there some evolutionary thing in the eye that decides if it's going to continue to adjust and get worse?

Jake Steiner: Hmm, that's a good one. There are genetic markers that determine how readily your eyeball elongate. Basically, what that means is, you and I both get glasses, but you’re western and I'm Asian. This isn't a racist thing. Some of these genetic markers occur a lot more in certain Asian populations. Your eyes stay the same, my eyes get worse because the marker is for my eyeball. The system in the eye that causes it to elongate to adjust to glasses is more responsive. So, that's one thing. Another thing is, you and I might be playing video games, but after video games you go outside, and you go skating, and I go play more video games, or I watch TV. While we appear to have the same habits that are not good for eyes, you tend to do more things that are better for your eyes than I do, so maybe your eyesight doesn't get worse like mine does.

Melanie Avalon: Ooh, and that's a question. I remember now. Mine was going between negative 150, negative 175, and negative two-- Is that right? Are those numbers that make sense? 

Jake Steiner: That makes sense.

Melanie Avalon: Okay. How quickly for a person who is just living their normal life and experiencing vision problems can it change? Does it actually change during the day? If I gone and have my prescription taken at a different time during the day might it be different, or compared to the next day, or is it more months, weeks?

Jake Steiner: That's a big can of worms because the fluctuation that you experience is your eyesight is never the same and that measurement that the optometrist does is not objective. If they're doing it in a dark room compared to a room with natural good ambient light, your vision is going to be much worse in a dark room. Your pupils are wide open, the eyesight, your retina has rods and cones on it and it switches between rods and cones depending on the lighting. In low lighting, your vision is not as good. If they stick you in a dark room and then for example they have a projected chart instead of a printed chart, the optical quality of the projected chart in a dark room is crap. You can have 20/20 eyesight in outdoor shaded environment and in that dark room you might need a minus 1.5. If you ate a pizza and had a Coke, and you're having a major insulin spike, and you had 20/20 vision before it could be a minus one right now. If you're stressed because you're having a fight with your partner, your eyesight could be a half diopter worse. I could go on forever. You've been binging on Netflix, your eyesight is definitely worse, you didn't sleep well, your eyesight’s worse. Conversely, you went hiking for a weekend and life's awesome, you're looking at an eye chart outside and in your backyard, you have perfect vision.

Significant amount of fluctuation both from lighting, and environment, and your mental state, easy to measure. That's the thing I always recommend people to. You can check your weight with a scale, you can check your eyesight with a measuring tape and it's super, super simple. I think it's the most revealing thing that you can do for your eyesight is you buy a measuring tape. I like the little fabric ones that they use for clothes. They're $1 in Amazon. For example, if you get minus two, let's say, so, you take a book, and you hold in front of your face, it's perfectly clear. You pick a distance where the detects is just razor sharp. And then you slowly move the book further and further away from your face. At minus two, you could move the book to 50 centimeters, sorry, I don't know inches, and you would see the tiniest bit of blur. The reason I magically know that it would be exactly 50 centimeters is because 100 divided by 50 is two. And two diopters is the glasses you would need for perfect eyesight and it's all you need. You do not need an optometrist to measure your myopia. You need an ophthalmologist for eye health checkups. I recommend eye health checkups. But if you want to know what strength glasses will give me perfect eyesight, all you need is a book, a measuring tape, and figuring out that distance. 

In your case, it would just be at 52 centimeters you would notice the tiniest bit of blur, because at 50 centimeters, the formula is 100 divided by the distance equals diopters. That's all you need to measure your eyesight. And that fluctuation that you experience and it goes up and down would be fixed or addressed by you measuring at home and then figuring out, “Okay, how bad was Netflix for me, how bad was a pizza for me, how much good lighting do I need for better eyesight?” It's a long answer.

Melanie Avalon: That's amazing and it's probably a good thing I didn't know that because I probably would have been doing all the experiments all the time or maybe that's a good thing. Yeah, I was reading about blood sugar, and how you mentioned the insulin. I think the blood sugar can actually, literally diffuse into the lens, and make them swollen, and affect our eyesight?

Jake Steiner: Yeah, if you're diabetic, you also have myopia, it's pretty definitive. All those things affect your eyesight. The thing that I never understand, in the very beginning you said, it's topic I never talked about. It's always stabbing me in the heart a tiny little bit, because everybody says that. It's such a strangely underexplored topic and people don't care. I used to play this game. I'm like, “Okay, you could blindfold, you put in front your eyes, how long can you wear?” I'm like, “How unimportant are your eyes to your daily life?” It's weird because we care about diet, and how our hair’s doing, and do we have the right amount of muscles, but vision is so underappreciated. You know what I mean?

Melanie Avalon: I was thinking about it. I think the only time we have discussed eyes, I had David Sinclair on. He's a Harvard researcher who specializes in aging. He may have been able to reverse aging in the eye or in rats maybe. But that's the only time. But I know the facts about the eye are mind blowing if people actually learn them. I think, isn't it the most metabolically active part of our body, I think?

Jake Steiner: Possibly. I don't know. My specialization is super specific just to--

Melanie Avalon: The myopia.

Jake Steiner: Yeah. And you have bad eyesight today, you don't want to have bad eyesight, here's how you fix it. That's all my-- Yeah.

Melanie Avalon: Well, speaking of how you fix it, so, you have this magical answer. [chuckles] I bet people are just dying to know. What do people do since the issue is muscle spasms and getting locked in certain positions, is it something with exercising your eyeballs?

Jake Steiner: I'm lazy for exercises. There are no exercises required. Amazing. You don't have to buy any eye vitamins, you don't have to do an exercise. I like the magic idea.

Melanie Avalon: Okay, bring it on. [chuckles] 

Jake Steiner: That you not to do anything. The short version and I'm not going to-- Yeah, you elaborate or have me elaborate as much you want. But the short version is, every time you went to the optometrist, you got strong classes. You didn't really because you got lucky. Yours is really low. But for a lot of people, minus three, four, five, 10 happens and it happens gradually. My approach is gradually making it unhappen like we're just going down instead of going up. The hypothesis and this all up to now, you can look at the science and it's really clear. There's no question what causes myopia, there's no question that glasses make it worse. There's a huge question as to why my method works that my detractors like to point out. And my guess is that your eyeball shortens. We've had people that measure the eyes before, during, after showing that the eyeball has shortened, but there's not nearly enough data for me to claim that that's definitively the case. But the short version is basically, you were slightly weaker glasses. If you're wearing a minus two before, you go to minus 1.75. And then your eye is a very slightly challenged, you can still see everything, you recognize people, facial expressions, you don't have any trouble, but if you're reading the menu in a DarkStar box or the subtitles on a TV show, you notice that it's takes a little bit of challenge. Three or four months down the road, the challenge is gone and you go from minus 1.75 to minus 1.5, and the same thing happens again. There's a little bit of challenge that lasts for three or four months, and then a challenge is gone, and then you go to minus 1.25, and you keep doing that till you no longer need glasses.

Melanie Avalon: Okay. Well, wait, well, here's the question. But there was a point where I didn't have glasses, go back to that girl like me in the past before I had glasses and I can't see. What would she do if she's never had glasses?

Jake Steiner: Yeah, the first pair of glasses that you get is compensating for muscle spasm. You could get glasses at that point that would be weaker than-- If they told you minus 1.75, I'd say, get a minus 1.25 and only wear them when you can't see stuff. Don't leave them on. Because the number one way that your eyes get worse is you're wearing glasses when you don't need them. But if you're wearing those all the time, computer use and then you sit in front of the computer and read books for 14 hours every day, then a year from then the minus 1.75 would no longer be enough. If you take them off every time, you don't need them your eyes wouldn't get worse. The other thing is you would have been surprised at changing some habits or being more aware of distance vision, and using it more targeted would have improved your eyesight fairly noticeably, most likely. I'm not saying that this is a definitive truth. But for a lot of people, it's like, okay, the problem was really the closeup focus and the environment of the closeup focus, and how much we're compensating with, you started archery or volleyball and you started reading eye charts. Maybe six months from there, your minus 2 would have been a minus 1.25 anyway. There's a lot of flexibility in how well your eyes can actually see.

Melanie Avalon: I really wish they would do some studies on this, if a kid who has trouble with their vision and then they start doing sports or something if it changes?

Jake Steiner: Who's going to pay for it? That's the problem. 

Melanie Avalon: That's a good question. Yeah. [laughs] Yeah, that's a very good question. Okay. Basically, so the approach is that you get glasses or contacts that are a little bit not quite exactly what you need to see. They're slightly less. So, there's a slight blur when you use them and then you don't use them that much, but then when you need to see something far away you put them on to look at that thing?

Jake Steiner: Depending on how strong your glasses are. In your case, yes. Somebody who's got minus 5 is always going to wear glasses. For example, in the minus 5 example, which was me, you would get one pair of glasses for computer use, because remember when I said only wear them when you need them, with minus 5, you need them all the time because you're very squinty at that point at any distance. I'd get a minus 4 for computer use, even less minus 3.5 for computer. So, now, I sit in front of the computer that will be like you taking your glasses off. But mine are so strong that going a diopter and a half lower, I'm going to see the computer clearly, but only that distance. So, that is super relaxing for your eyes, by the way. For anybody who were strong glasses today and just generally has discomfort from closeup, you're not even really noticing it, but it's maybe not that pleasant, if you have a minus 5, if you buy a minus 3.5 just for computer use, you use them for a month just for your closeup. If you ever put on your minus 5 in front of your computer, you're going to immediately feel nauseous, and they're going to seem way too strong, and it's going to be super unpleasant because you're so habituated to this eyestrain from-- The glass is meant to give you clear distance vision to infinity and use them in front of a computer that’s 60 centimeters from your face is super strenuous. If you rebuild the strain awareness by wearing weaker glass in front of your computer, it's going to be amazing and you will never go back to wearing full power glasses for your close up.

Melanie Avalon: I will say, just as a quick testimony to this. Brad Kearns is who connected us who I've had on the show and I'll put a link to the show notes with him. But he was saying, he was like, “You got to have this guy on.” He's like, “I started doing his exercises and I improved.” He was giving me stats, but he was just praising the method. And so, I was very much impressed and very excited to talk to you.

Jake Steiner: Brad doesn't wear glasses anymore. He's done and he was wearing for reading and for distance. He's got a lot of energy to begin with. I love Brad. Brad’s great. 

Melanie Avalon: I just smile when I think about him because he's just so funny and so energetic, Mr. Triathlon.

Jake Steiner: Yeah. He's out of glasses and I was super happy because I talked to so many people. Normally, it's in one ear, out the other, but Brad was all about it. He kept in touch, and he was so excited when he was like, “I don’t wear them for everything.” He needed them to read and he needed them to see clearer distance, and he's really physically active. So, he did love that. He's not needing corrective lenses for anything.

Melanie Avalon: That's weird that he had them being what he does. There goes my theory about extreme athletics.

Jake Steiner: All you need is to remove the barrier from letting eyes do what they want to do. I have a podcast. I'm not advertising it. I only talk to people who improved their eyesight. It's not big, it's not a lie. Sometimes, I feel you need to hear from other people and whenever it's people that are into sports like surfers, it’s so easy. They improve so quickly, because at that point, all you're doing is removing the thing that's stopping them from having better eyesight.

Melanie Avalon: They're in the environment that hopefully would support the goal that they're trying to get to. 

Jake Steiner: Yeah, Brad plays golf. Golf is the world's perfect sport for improving eyesight. You're following a tiny little white ball in a green field like that is the perfect exercise for the eyes right there.

Melanie Avalon: Wow. How long did it take Brad? How long does it take people in general? I guess that question depends on where you're starting or does it depend on where you're starting?

Jake Steiner: For Brad, it takes half as long as everybody else. But in general, it's almost a diopter a \year. So, 0.75 per year is the standard average and that translates to every three to four months, you can reduce a quarter diopter. I am giving you-- This is the short version, like the full-- All the details on the practical approach, we could spend hours talking about that. But the short version is, every three to four months your eyes in generally have adjusted. If you have good habits, you're not completely addicted to your screen, you can make a reduction every three to four months.

Melanie Avalon: Speaking of the screens, so, what are your suggestions? What are you doing with your kids? You said you have two babies? 

Jake Steiner: Yes. 

Melanie Avalon: What do you suggest for healthy habits for how we engage with up close devices? And also does it matter, is there a difference do you know between reading books up close for a long time compared to screens with blue light and that exposure?

Jake Steiner: With kids, my answer’s extreme and I'm not saying you should do this, but I moved them to an off-grid jungle where there's no internet. It didn't work out, because the jungles in Myanmar and Myanmar now has a civil war. So, we literally had to dramatically get them out of there and it was just out of a movie.

Melanie Avalon: That was recently?

Jake Steiner: That was recently. Yeah, there’s civil war started last year and it's real. They are killing the neighbors. Yeah, it's super intense.

Melanie Avalon: And you lived there?

Jake Steiner: I lived here. Yeah. It was a peaceful place. It was super cool and the baby mama’s from there and she said I want to go back there. So, we built a house there, completely off grid, super cool like well and solar and everything. Part of me being so open-minded about it is because I wanted my kids to grow up not in school where every other seven-year-old has a phone. Just formative years, playing, getting bored, I'm a huge proponent of boredom. Creativity happens after you're bored long enough and I don't want to take that away from my kids. That overstimulation, and oversaturation, and just being constantly surrounded by things that are not good for a small child. So, I went with that and that's not necessary. But also, whenever we were in the city, he wasn't allowed to hold phones. Whenever people would give him phones, because he's small, he wants to play with them. He learned really quickly that cartoons and stuff can happen and we travel a lot. We take an iPad, but we would put the iPad on the bed, and he'd be on the opposite end of the bed, and he didn't even talk yet. But scooch back was one of the first words he learned. He was so little. He was so tiny. I can't believe that he knows this already. He’d say scooch back and he couldn't even walk. He’d just wiggle his way back on the bed because he knew that was too close to the screen.

Melanie Avalon: Yeah, no, that's amazing. If parents actually-- Because that would be something that-- I'm getting so excited. That'd be something that the kids would like learn as just a habit.

Jake Steiner: He knows. That distance is super key. The bed distance, the iPad’s on one end, little him is on the other end, and we have a pillow there that denotes the separation, that's a super great distance. The iPad isn't that big. His eyes are even like they're working for seeing stuff clearly. That's super great for his eyes. If you gave him a phone to hold in his short little arms that would be super terrible for his eyes. At this point, now, that's how he functions. He doesn't want to hold a phone. He's so used to that distance that he's good with that. 

Melanie Avalon: Wow. Okay, that's really motivating. I'm going to start sharing this information as something for people to really consider for future generations, because I think people definitely look at the social aspects and the issues with technology and all of that, but I don't think a lot of people are thinking about this aspect with the eyes.

Jake Steiner: Print an eye chart. If you have kids, print an eye chart hanging up at home. It's the same as a scale. If your kids have good eyesight, good for you, good for them. But you print an eye chart, you should print an eye chart post-LASIK. Everybody should print eye chart and just have it up, because just like what we talked about before, your vision fluctuates. And you put it up somewhere in your house, and then you mark-- just put a piece of tape on the floor where the right distance is because there's three-meter chart, there’s six-meter charts, there's all kinds of charts, and then just in passing, take a look at it. And then you're having a great day or a bad day, just take a look at it. You're going to start noticing how much your eyesight varies. I just think it's good for you. It gives you great context for another part of your biology that gives you feedback that you otherwise don't notice. For kids, if your kids have good eyesight, sometimes, just look at the chart. When that moment comes where the chart can't read the small line that it could read before, we need to make sure that we're clear on distance with computer games, with phones, with homework stuff, are we getting an outdoor hobby, are we still doing enough things? Really easy to compensate at that point and much better than going to the optometrist and getting glasses.

Melanie Avalon: Would another part of the outdoor part of it have anything to do with our eye’s exposure to natural sunlight? I was reading today that it has something to do with how it affects dopamine in the eye and how that inhibits the growth of the eye, I think?

Jake Steiner: Oh, what you were asking before about the books versus screens, and the blue light and stuff, so, it’s like McDonald's. I compare it to McDonald's or Coke and Coke Zero. Your eyes are getting worse from closeup and then from glasses. Those are the things that are the single largest contributor to the issue. People don't know this. But if you tell them this, well, that makes a lot of sense. Nobody wants to think about it, nobody wants to face that reality, and nobody wants to go I have a screen addiction, and I shouldn't watch four hours of Netflix every night. When somebody comes out with blue blocking glasses and goes, “This will fix it.” It kind of does right like there are some metabolic effects that are not my specialty. For sure, the blue light is an issue, there's stuff. The problem is the four hours of Netflix. The problem is Coke and then Coke says, “No, no, Coke Zero. There's no sugar in it. Now, you're good.” McDonald says, ‘We have salads, we're all set.” It's the substitute and digging really hard for alternate solutions or-- Yes, outdoor in sunlight, sure, absolutely. There're tons of effects. There're discussions about how much UV light you need and positively may be affecting your eyesight. There're all those things going on that sometimes frustrated me a tiny little bit because the solution is much simpler. You can be in all circumstances and your eyesight will be great or terrible based on how much time are you spending up close. Is that muscle stuck and did somebody sell you glasses? You know what I mean? It's the 90% and that gets ignored in favor of a complicated, but there could also be this going on and people love it, just like they love eye yoga and eye vitamins. Nobody wants to face the simple truth that we just spend way too much time for our screens and we don't have any interesting hobbies.

Melanie Avalon: Well, I was going to say an analogy would be like, you are having a bad diet for you, but then just trying to take vitamins or something.

Jake Steiner: Wonder Bread fortified with vitamin. 

Melanie Avalon: Yes, yes, exactly. [chuckles] Well, this has been super, super amazing. For listeners who would like to learn more, and implement these protocols, and end their myopia, do you have programs on your website or more information? How does it all work?

Jake Steiner: I call it open source mainly because I'm lazy and I already have enough money. Everything I know, it is terrible. We have courses, but they’re usually “sold out,” which really means I'm kitesurfing and I don't want to do support. There's over 1,200 how to articles and guides on our website in myopia.org. We've got a terrible YouTube channel that has tons of videos also explaining lots of things, we have a big Facebook group won't be, it's like some 20,000 people. They have a big forum that's 90,000 tons of community and resources basically to DIY this. Figure it out. I think it's a super interesting journey that just starts with just measure. Even if you're like, “Yeah, whatever, I'm going to do LASIK maybe or I’ll like my contact lenses.” Just measure your eyes. Just print an eye chart, just get a measuring tape, just for the experience of how much that varies and how much you can affect it. And then read through the site. I have an email guide that walks you through all the basic stuff. And then the community for support. There're tons of people doing this, and there're tons of people asking questions, and there're tons of people communicating about their progress.

Melanie Avalon: Well, we will put links to all of that in the show notes. Can I ask you a slightly controversial question and then a happier question to end things? The controversial one is, I knew you were coming on the show, and I was looking into your work and everything, and talking to you and from what I've researched, this is such an incredible, valuable resource that you're offering people. It's literally life changing. You're a bit of a legend. Kind of to bring things full circle from the beginning with your origin story.

Jake Steiner: I want a statue. Can I just say that? I want a statue, I want a statue. 

Melanie Avalon: A statue, I'll put that on the to-do list. See if we can get that erected. So many people in your community experiencing these life changing stories of how they're fixing their eyesight, but there's also these tangents in the Reddit world. If people who are not happy with what you were doing, I'm wondering, what do you think's going on there? Why do you think people are not open to this idea that you have or to this work that you're doing?

Jake Steiner: Oh, my God, I love those. Whenever I find one, I quote it, I post it. There was a really good one recently where somebody said, “It only improves your eyes, not your myopia.” I'd love that one. It's just classic. 

Melanie Avalon: Oh, all right. [chuckles] Wait, that's great. 

Jake Steiner: Okay, a few things. Number one, I'm wrong a lot. I'm a big fan of people telling me that I'm wrong and how I'm wrong. I would much rather have somebody point it out to me than me sounding like an idiot for the next 20 years.

Melanie Avalon: Yeah, that's amazing. That's how I feel. I'm like, “Tell me how I'm wrong. Please.” I want to know.

Jake Steiner: Yeah, especially now, because it's still small compared to how big it could get. If somebody points it out today and a thousand people laugh at me that's cool. It’s better than-- I'm not saying it will, but what if it blows up and then we figure out that I'm an idiot. For one, I think skepticism is incredibly important with topics like this. There're tons of stuff on the internet that is risky, dangerous, misleading, misguided. Whenever somebody comes to me and is skeptical but logical, I'm a big fan by all means. Please do with everything because you're going to run into so many crazy, crazy things, if you're not skeptical. Skepticism, I'm a big fan of people poking holes into what I'm saying. I'm a huge fan of please, please do that. Then the third thing is, I think my parents are both medical doctors. My dad believes statin drugs are the answers to heart disease. I've been on podcasts that deal with this extensively and I've gotten some great lessons and education on what goes on. I don't take statin drugs and I pointed out to my dad some of the things I learned, at documentaries I've watched, and CAC scans, and all this stuff. He doesn't want to hear it. That was one of those moments where I was like, “This is not a stranger. This is not some random person. This is my father, who really cares and worries about heart disease” and here, I'm like, “Here's some really, really insightful things on why statins may not be the answer.” He does want to hear. 

I asked a psychologist friend of mine and he's like, “Well, it's our reality or perception of reality is, there's pillars that hold our reality up.” Things we've learned that we found to be true, that define reality for us. If those are really easy to change, we're going to lose our grip on reality. If suddenly tomorrow the Earth is not round, that's a big-- What else is not true? It's really traumatic for the brain and we really resist changes and things that we've decided are true because if we do that then what else is not true. It's going to unravel how we see the world. So, Reddit, especially, optometry, that's what people believe. If you own the business and if you've told people for 10 years that myopia is genetic, that is your reality. You can't just go, “My reality is wrong,” because number one, your ego, number two, what happens to all the people that have told this? Number three, what else in my life that I believe that's totally not right. People defend ideas that they believe very vigorously and I respect that. I used to be really critical and outspoken about retail optometry. And I'm becoming much more respectful, because I'm looking at, while I don't believe you're right, I understand how important it is to your sanity to not be traumatically influenced. You can gradually maybe change your perspective, but for today, when you're first exposed to a guy who says all of this is nonsense, I understand why you hate me. It's totally reasonable.

Melanie Avalon: I love that so much. I think for me, one of the most enlightening things was when I started reading the split-brain studies, where they have patients basically where the left and right brain aren't communicating the way that they would be normally and so, they're able to do tests where only one part of their brain sees something. In the experiments, the participants will literally makeup stories like makeup complete lies, but they think it's true and it's because the language part of their brain hasn't seen the information that it needs to create truth or to know what's happening. So, it just makes up a truth and the people believe it. Ever since I've read those studies, I'm like, “Okay, I know nothing.” Literally, literally, my brain could be just like making up a story about everything. So, that frees you from what you were talking about with, what you thought was so true is threatened by an alternative truth. Yeah, it could threaten your reality and you could question everything in your life or you could just realize that that's the way it is with everything that anything might not be true. So, that's what we just got to keep seeking truth and seeing what lines up.

Jake Steiner: And meanwhile to all those people as much-- Like I said, I appreciate all of it. And also, it's weird because some of those people that are trolling are just aggressively upset, they don't realize that that adds to my entertainment a huge amount. I'd love it. You know what I mean? I post them all the time. The one-star reviews are some of my favorite things because they're just often hilarious.

Melanie Avalon: That's so funny. That's amazing. Well, I love that. And so, then the noncontroversial question, it's the last question that I ask every single guest on this show and it's just because I realize more and more each day how important mindset is, so what is something that you're grateful for?

Jake Steiner: Everything every day. I'm super negative by default. I don't know if it's my upbringing, or my nature, or whatever, but I get up in the morning, and I try to spend time just thinking about all the things that are amazing. I'm super spoiled in my life because my life in general is just amazing. Having found this and being around so many people that are excited about this, and being able to contribute something positive to the world instead of just sitting in the back complaining about it, feeling I'm adding some value is amazing. Just being healthy, and living in a place where things aren't locked down, I'm sorry to anybody who is just-- I think it's super important just to be grateful because it's just as easy to focus on the negative and I don't have a thing because just everything is pretty amazing.

Melanie Avalon: I love that. Well, thank you so much, Jake. This has been absolutely amazing. I as well am so grateful for the work that you're doing. It is truly paradigm shifting and not just on esoteric theoretical level, but it's literally changing people's lives. I'm really excited. Listeners, you have to let me know if you try this method and the changes that you experience would be really, really excited to hear back. So, thank you for everything that you're doing. This has been absolutely amazing, and we have to stay in touch, and talk again in the future.

Jake Steiner: Thank you so much. I'm grateful for you having me on also, even though, it's late.

Melanie Avalon: Oh, I know. Well, I am a night bird. I actually think for this conversation, it was probably worse for you having to get up early than me staying up late. If you're like me, if we're both like we said, if we're both not morning people. 

Jake Steiner: I do not love mornings at all, no.

Melanie Avalon: Really, me neither. [chuckles] All right, well enjoy your day.

Jake Steiner: Thank you so much. 

Melanie Avalon: Bye.

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