Is Your Computer Screen Ruining Your Golf Game?

Sundog’s TrueBlue sunglasses prevent the macular degeneration that results from exposure to iPads, computers and smartphones.

Did you know your retinas are rusting?

Let Dr. Michael Tolentino explain.

A physician at the Center for Retina and Macular Disease (seven locations in Florida, where baby boomers go to retire and experience failing vision) with degrees from Brown University, Harvard Medical School and the University of Massachusetts, Dr. Tolentino developed all current treatments for wet macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy.

He clearly knows his stuff. So it’s best to pay attention.

“Macular degeneration is an oxidative process,” he says. “The wavelength of light that causes photo-oxidation is in the Blue Light spectrum, which has the next closest wavelength to UV light. Most people know how harmful UV light can be, but very few know about Blue Light.”

A generation ago, the only exposure we had to Blue Light occurred when we went outside, Dr. Tolentino continues. Nowadays, our exposure to high-definition images on smartphones, iPads, and computer screens—plus greater use of fluorescent light bulbs—has enormously increased our exposure to Blue Light, and it is having a very negative effect on the health of our eyes.

But it doesn’t stop there. Dr. Tolentino adds that exposure to Blue Light towards the end of the day – social media on an iPhone or watching Netflix on your iPad in bed, can also have a marked impact on our overall physiology.

 “At this very second a number of tumors are being created in my body,” he says. “When I sleep at night my body turns on what is called the Circadian Rhythm—basically our bodies’ natural biological processes over a 24-hour period—which turns on my Tumor Suppressor Gene or antioncogene. This gene surveils my whole body and kills all those tumors. If you don’t get the proper sleep, you damage the Circadian Rhythm, the tumors won’t be suppressed…and guess what.”

Tolentino adds several studies have shown that disrupting your sleep/wake cycle can increase your chances of developing cancer “several-fold”. It can also be the cause of cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, and depression.

If this wasn’t strong enough, Tolentino goes on to say the health problems that arise from use of tobacco products or consumption of high-fructose corn syrup will “pale against those caused by exposure to Blue Light.”

“We’re raising a generation that will experience chronic health problems of which blindness will only be one,” he says, rather alarmingly.

A golf web site is probably among the last places you’d expect to read this stuff. But we figured it’s better coming from us than not at all.

So what are we going to do about it? And what does it have to do with golf?

Dr. James Gallas, a leading eye scientist and CEO of Photoprotective Technologies, has developed a lens called TrueBlue by infusing polycarbonate with Melanin (“the body’s own sunscreen”) and Ocular Lens Pigment which absorbs Blue Light, stopping it from reaching the eye without blocking other types of light.

Not only is that good for the long-term health of your eye, it also helps prevent what Tolentino calls “light scatter,” thus improving the performance of the eye.

Given the importance of vision in golf—tracking shots, reading greens, finding balls—you can’t underestimate a product that increases our ability to see.

The first eyewear company to license this technology, Sundog, offers 20 frame designs with TrueBlue lens. Prices range from $69.99 to $89.99 and two frames—the Bolt and Mach—sold out of their initial product run within a few weeks.

The Internet and TV news tell us there are a million things we need to be worrying about these days. Blue Light is just another to add to the list. But TrueBlue, together with Sundog, is offering golfers a simple and very reasonably priced solution.

Best part? You can look cool improving your vision and saving your eyes/overall health from potential problems down the road.

truebluelens.com;

sundogeyewear.com/collections/trueblue-lens

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