Eyes Scrutinized Reflect the Body
Optometrist Veronique Baptiste Germaine discussed her knowledge of the influence of diet and behavior on eyes and her international experiences with eyes .
Veronique Baptiste Germaine has looked closely into many eyes both nearby and far away and noticed patterns in what affects our ability to see near and far.
“What goes on in the body is mirrored in the eyes,” she said
A New Rochelle optometrist, she appeared at the Warwick Health Fair recently, invited by her college roommate from decades earler, Rev. Dr. Anne Marie Bentsi-Addison Posey, of the Union AME Church. They had been students at Utica College of Syracuse University when Germaine, a pre-med technology student headed for medical school, was recruited by the SUNY College of Optometry in Manhattan to improve diversity in the field.
“They didn’t have enought optometrists who looked like me,” said Germaine. “I was interested because of the way what happens in the eyes reflects the rest of the body.”
Once in the program, a compelling opportunity she found there was the Volunteer Optometric Services for Humanity (VOSH).
“The concept attracted me right away,” she said.
She was president of VOSH for two years, one year during her residency. They went to Mexico twice with optometrists from South Dakota who were connected with a Lions Club in Mexico that hosted them. The first trip, around 1991, required three planes to get them to the city of Gomez Palacio in the state of Durango.
Apparently, much else had trouble getting to the community.
“People lived in tin can houses with mud floors , while the Lions Club members had houses with gardens inside the walls, and the wives cooked for us,” said Germaine.
When her group offered their optometric services, she said, “Lines were a half mile long. We had stations with translators. We used hand-held equipment and provided patients with donated glasses. We organized prescription glasses in powers so we could find them.”
The predominant eyesight problem people had was farsightedness because, she said, “They’re more outdoorsy, not indoorsy with technical work.”
Many had astygmatism, meaning that the surface of the eye is oval rather than round, perhaps because of genetics, Germaine said.
About two years later, during her residency, Germaine and VOSH visited the Grenadine Islands in the Caribbean.
“It was untouched, with goats roaming free and bright turquoise water,” Germaine recalled.
But with all the sun and ultraviolet rays, many people had cataracts, and most people needed reading glasses, she found.
Then in 2018, the group went to Haiti, where Germaine’s parents, who had recently died, were from. They had originally landed in Crown Heights in Brooklyn, and Germaine had visited her grandparents in Haiti when she was four. She would later hear about her grandfather’s work as an herbalist, growing the herbs he used for treatment. Those remedies would sometimes be used by her family.
However, Germaine found that many Haitians lacked basic medical care. A blind woman in her 40’s came to her, led by her children.
“She only needed surgery to see. We take it for granted here,” said Germaine.
Surgery was arranged for the woman with another group of traveling doctors donating services.
Visiting an orphanage, Germaine encountered a man dropping off a twin there after his wife had died in childbirth.
“A woman whose house had burned down asked only for underwear for her daughter,” said Germaine, who found herself overwhelmed with items to donate to the Haitians as she prepared for the trip.
“I had suitcases filled with donations, some with tags still on them,” she said. “Snacks, flip-flops. I didn’t want hungry people watching, so I brought lots of snacks. Some people had no shoes, so we gave them flip-flops. We saw evidence that aid was not getting to people. Rubble from the earthquake was still on the roads. We had a separate area where people could take what they needed. While I took care of people’s eyes, a nurse checked blood pressure.”
Germaine and others wanted to return to Haiti in 2020, but the pandemic and “instability” that resulted in kidnappings deterred them.
Meanwhile, since the pandemic, she said, “Nearsightedness is up, particularly in children, because of more computer use. I tell parents and kids they need to take responsibility for their eyes. When they work at a computer, after 20 to 30 minutes, they should look out the window or at the ceiling for 20 to 30 seconds. We’re not designed to be slumped with our nose in an i-pad. The monitor should be below eye level slightly. And we’re seated too long. We should sit and stand.”
The eye focus that driving requires should similarly be alternated with focus changes, she noted, and the dry eyes that staring at phones causes can be relieved with preservative-free tears or just more blinking. Blinking lubricates the eyes.
“Without enough tears, clarity is lost, and eyes burn and hurt at the end of the day, or eyes react with excess tearing and chronic inflammation,” Germaine said.
She has found that youth whose vision is weakened by too much close focus can restore their vision with “vision therapy.”
Germaine has also encountered children who have trouble with school work, particularly testing, because their eyes are not working together.
“They avoid work because of discomfort or fatigue,” she said, “but they can’t verbalize what the problem is. They fall apart in school or testing because they can’t focus, though their vision tests as 20-20. It’s likely a genetic problem.”
Germaine also encounters patients whose eye problems she traces to diet.
“Nutrition is downplayed, but it’s often a cause of macular degeneration and premature cataracts. When I see the eyes of people in their 70’s and 80’s, I can tell how they eat,” she said, noting the importance of green vegetables and lutein.
She recalled a patient in his forties who had been working four jobs and had not realized he had diabetes, but Germaine found the deterioration of his eyes to be a result of undiagnosed diabetes.
“It was too late to save his eyes, but if he ate well, he could save his kidneys,” she said.
Germaine describes her diet as “plant based.”
“I haven’t eaten chicken in 30 years, and the pork here is banned in 160 countries because of what’s injected in it,” she said.
She eats some fish, such as mackerel and sardines, dark green vegetables such as kale, broccoli and Brussel sprouts, Haitian squash soup, basmati rice and quinoa, mixed with cauliflower to minimize carbohydrates, and chayote squash, which, she said, helps with sugar metabolism. Her parents were diabetic and hypertensive, she said, so she is vigilant.
Germaine will be 56 this year but looks younger, her appearance perhaps reflecting lessons she has learned from looking into many eyes.
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