One of the biggest struggles we see in medicine is the reductionist view of the body. You have a heart doctor, a foot doctor, a lungs doctor—each one a specialist, but often only in one small part of a larger, interconnected system. What we find most striking, and a little frustrating, is that this applies even to the eyes. We have cornea specialists and retina specialists, essentially a front-of-the-eye doctor and a back-of-the-eye doctor. But as anyone who’s ever faced a complex vision issue knows, you’re not a collection of parts; you’re a whole human being, and all your systems are working together.
It’s a mind-boggling thing when you consider this: about two-thirds of the content that gets into your brain arrives through your eyes. That means anything we place in front of your eyes isn’t just correcting your vision; it’s a filter for two-thirds of the data your brain receives. That gives us an extraordinary, often overlooked, opportunity to modify the incoming data in a way that can genuinely help.
The Problem with “Barbaric” Solutions
With conditions like photosensitive epilepsy, where bright light or flicker can cause the brain to go haywire, the traditional medical playbook often includes drastic measures. We’re talking about brain surgery, powerful pills, and medications that have their own severe side effects. One of the more extreme examples in neurology is a hemispherectomy, where a surgeon literally slices the brain down the middle to stop seizures. In ophthalmology, they may even perform surgery on a lazy eye for purely aesthetic reasons. These feel like barbaric solutions because they are. They involve cutting wires in a vast, intricate system, and we often don’t truly know the full consequences.
Z Blue Lenses Have a 96% Success Rate
What if the answer was something much simpler? Back to epilepsy. The human eye can see light from about 400 to 700 nanometers. A groundbreaking discovery found that a very specific wavelength of light—around 610 nanometers—is what often triggers photosensitive epilepsy. By simply filtering out and reducing the input of that specific wavelength, we can severely reduce the symptoms.
A 2006 study with 610 patients showed that an incredible 96% of them benefited from a lens that filtered this 610 nm wavelength. Now, here’s the best part: what are the side effects? If the glasses don’t work for you, you take them off. That’s it. How does that compare to the recovery from a major brain surgery or the unknown, long-term effects of a medication? It’s a completely different level of risk. This isn’t a plea to stop your current treatment, but an invitation to consider a powerful, low-drawback option that might be missing from your care plan.
Why Z Blue Is So Often Overlooked
This is a perfect example of how the medical system’s reductionism can leave you in the lurch. Ironically, ophthalmologists often don’t see filters and glasses as a solution to anything other than simple vision correction. Their toolbox is surgeries, pills, and ointments. Neurologists, on the other hand, are brain doctors, not eye doctors. They don’t think about putting something in front of the eyes to solve a brain issue—it’s just not their job.
With the study showing such remarkable efficacy, you might be tempted to just buy any old pair of blue-tinted glasses you find online. But chances are, that won’t be enough. The Z Blue lens we produce at Chadwick Optical is specially calibrated to block the exact wavelength from that study. We’re not just making a blue lens; we’re manufacturing a solution that is specifically designed to align with the scientific evidence.
While we are not doctors, we are a team of optical nerds obsessed with helping people. We are serious about this work and we’re here to help you, the determined practitioner, find solutions for your patients when no one else will.
Charlie Saccarelli
President, Chadwick OpticalAs President of Chadwick Optical, Charlie Saccarelli is the driving force behind the company’s mission to help every patient left behind by the current health care system. Under his leadership, Chadwick has grown from a simple optical lab into a trusted resource for practitioners around the world looking for ways to help the patients that “can’t be helped.” He is a master optician, a father, a bit of a nerd, and a passionate patient advocate who has lectured worldwide on all things optical.