AMA #6: Eye Health, Why We Yawn & Increasing Motivation

The episode opens with Andrew Huberman introducing himself as a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine and framing the session as an Ask Me Anything, or AMA. It belongs to the premium subscriber channel, which the host says was started to support the standard Huberman Lab podcast, released every Monday at zero cost on YouTube, Apple, Spotify and other feeds.

A second stated purpose is to raise money for human research at Stanford and elsewhere on mental health, physical health and performance. According to the episode, the tiny foundation has agreed to match every dollar the premium channel generates for research studies, which doubles the total funding available.

Subscription terms as described: $10 a month; $100 paid at once for a 12-month subscription; a one-time lifetime option. All are listed at hubermanlab.com/premium, where existing subscribers can also download the premium feed. Non-subscribers can hear the first 20 minutes of the episode before deciding.

The first listener question asks about vision that is deteriorating both close up and far away, and what exercises, behaviors and supplements help the aging eye. The answer is framed as applying regardless of age: view things both close up and far away across the day. The host notes that many people now spend much of their time looking at phones, computer screens, books and paper, roughly 9 inches to 2 and 1/2 feet from their eyes.

This pattern is described as unprecedented in human history "as far as we know," tied to the arrival of the smartphone. The episode connects it to a dramatic worldwide increase in myopia, or nearsightedness, rising especially fast in children and young adults, and also in adults who view things at 2 and 1/2 feet or less.

I am not saying that viewing things at 2 and 1/2 feet or less is bad for your eyes, that is simply not the case.

The qualification matters to the argument: close viewing itself is not presented as harmful, but maintaining or improving vision is said to require distance viewing as well, ideally for several hours per day. Listeners are invited to estimate how much of their day is spent within 2 and 1/2 to 3 feet versus at 4 or 8 feet, such as conversation across a table, or at many hundreds of feet, such as on a screen-free walk. The host suspects that for most people the far-viewing share is shrinking each year.

The mechanism offered is structural. The lens of the eye can move, and the front-to-back length of the eyeball is affected by how close or far a person views things, especially during development. A classic experiment, described as performed in chickens, mice and humans, places an occluder (a black screen, cardboard, or an image such as black and white checks) near or far from the eye and measures effects on eyeball length, lens structure and visual acuity.

In the episode's summary of these studies, exclusive close viewing during development without long-range vision lengthens the eyeball. The lens then focuses the image in front of the neural retina, the light-sensing layer at the back of the eye, rather than directly on it, producing nearsightedness. In farsightedness the reverse occurs: a shortened eyeball causes the image to focus behind the retina. The host says this explains well why children who look at screens or books up close often need glasses.