At Natural Health Strategies we believe that how we treat our bodies, and what we put into our bodies, affects all aspects of our lives. This includes our vision! Dr. Charles Bittel III, a holistic Optometrist, also believes this concept fully. This is why he looks beyond conventional treatment alone to help his patients. Keep reading to learn more about his background, his approach, and how he can help you and your family improve the health of your eyes.
Name: Charles Bittel III, O.D.
Title: Optometrist
Company: Charles Bittel III, O.D., Inc.
Location: Yorba Linda, CA
Degrees: BA in Psychology from UCLA & Doctor of Optometry from Southern California College of Optometry
Areas of interest: Primary Care Optometry, Dry Eye and Ocular Surface Disease management, and Myopia Management in children
Years of Professional Experience: 14 years
Find him on Instagram: @charlesbittelod
Check out his website: drbittel.com
Meet Dr. Charles Bittel III,
a Holistic Optometrist
- What types of services do you provide?
We provide primary care optometry services for patients from around 4 to 104 years old (we do not see infants and toddlers). This includes prescribing glasses and contact lenses for distance, computer, and near vision, and everything in between. We also treat ocular health issues not requiring surgery such as ocular allergies, infections, foreign bodies in the eye, etc. Within our primary eye care clinic, we also apply a special focus on the areas of Dry Eye and Ocular Surface Disease management, as well as myopia management in children.
- What reasons should people consider seeing a Optometrist?
First and foremost people need to make sure their eyes are healthy. In children, this includes making sure that there is not an underlying prescription that could be preventing their visual system from developing properly or hindering their learning experience. In adults, it’s making sure that there are no silent ocular diseases such as glaucoma that are damaging their eyes while being completely asymptomatic.
People also often silently suffer from conditions like dry eyes, headaches, or computer vision syndrome and live with symptoms that they assume are normal, when in reality a visit to an optometrist could greatly improve their daily quality of life.
- On average, how long do you work with an individual?
Generally we just see patients once a year for routine care. If we have a patient suffering from Dry Eye Disease, the journey is much longer. Dry Eye and Ocular Surface Diseases are chronic, progressive conditions and people often will seek treatment only after they’ve been suffering from symptoms for a while, often years. Which means that by the time they are ready to commit to managing their condition, the disease stage is advanced and requires months if not years to get them to a place where they can comfortably manage their symptoms. For most of our dry eye patients, once treatment is initiated, we will follow up in about 2 months and then as needed from there.
- What got you interested in practicing Optometry?
My father is an optometrist so I suppose that’s where the interest began. I was always around the profession but did not know that’s what I wanted to do for a living until my second year as a psychology major at UCLA. I liked the idea of practicing clinical psychology but wasn’t sold on it as a profession. It seemed like what my father did was a nice balance between science and psychology so I began taking pre-optometry courses in addition to my psych courses and the rest is history.
- What 1-2 things do you believe differentiates you from your contemporaries?
First let me say that there are a lot of phenomenal optometrists out there that specialize in a variety of fields such as specialty contact lenses, vision therapy, pediatrics, and ocular disease. Those that are fortunate enough to be successful in private practice tend to be not only great optometrists, but good people as well, who understand the importance of listening to and educating their patients. I think where myself and other successful optometrists stand out is in looking beyond conventional methods of treatment so that we can help those patients that don’t fit into a particular box. Over the years I’ve tried to keep an eye out for emerging treatment options that may be beneficial to my patients that I have not been able to help with conventional treatment options. I think we must be willing to bring new technologies into our offices and take the time to educate our staff and patients on the benefits of those new technologies.
- How big of a role do you think a person’s overall health plays in their eye health (or vice versa)?
I know a person’s overall health plays a huge role in the health of their eyes. The eyes are highly vascular and subsequently vascular conditions such as hypertension and diabetes can be devastating to ocular health if uncontrolled. Smoking increases the risk of developing macular degeneration by 3-4 times and causes the development of cataracts at a younger age. One of our primary recommendations for someone at risk of developing macular degeneration, in addition to not smoking, is to eat green leafy veggies on a daily basis because the nutrients from those foods are highly beneficial to macular health. And one of the main reasons that we are seeing an increase in Dry Eye Disease is because people generally have diets that are too high in Omega 6’s and too low in quality Omega 3’s. Therefore, one of our main treatment approaches for Dry Eye and Ocular Surface diseases includes taking a quality Omega 3 supplement.
- Do you have any recommended resources to share (books, seminars, websites, etc)?
There are some great websites that highlight a few of the unconventional approaches that we take towards treating our patients.
- https://dryeyeandmgd.com/ : This is a great website that explains Meibomian Gland Dysfunction and its correlation to the vast majority of dry eye cases. It explains the complexity of our tear film and why simply using artificial tears is rarely successful in managing dry eye symptoms.
- https://www.paragonvision.com/ : This website highlights the global increase in myopia (nearsightedness) and what we can do to slow down myopic progression in children. Conventional glasses and soft contact lenses are not the best treatment options for progressive myopic children, and this website focuses on Othorkeratology / CRT as a treatment option that cannot only correct a child’s vision, but slow down their myopic progression as well.
- https://www.neurolenses.com/ : Neurolenses are one of those technologies that we brought into our practice to help our patients whose symptoms of headaches and eyestrain were not being helped by conventional glasses. This website highlights the importance of our 2 eyes being in alignment and working together in order to achieve clear and comfortable vision. With their progressive prism technology, Neurolenses have helped many of our patients who could not achieve clear and comfortable vision with conventional glasses.
- Do you have a saying or motto that you live your life by?
“Less is more.” This is a saying that I love and that I work very hard to live by. I tend to over-explain things, especially to patients, when often a more concise explanation and recommendation would be more impactful. When treating patients, especially our dry eye patients, we may need to start with a handful of treatments to get their symptoms under control, but the goal is always to reduce the number of things they need to do daily to remain symptom free. The more treatments or recommendations or prescriptions you give a patient, the less likely they are to be compliant. And in life in general, “less is more” is still a great motto to live by. If you’ve got your family and your health, you should be good. All the other “stuff” can just complicate things. But again, I work to live by this motto, I am certainly not always successful in doing so.
- Anything else you’d like to share?
If you are coming to see us from Rebecca, or anyone else practicing naturopathic medicine, you are already way ahead of the curve. Understanding that how you use your body and what you put into your body affects all aspects of your life, including your vision, is key to turning the corner on managing chronic conditions. Following naturopathic recommendations will begin the shift of moving your body in the right direction. If you need some fine-tuning for vision or eye related issues, we’d be thrilled to have you as a patient.
