Migraine is one of the most common and debilitating medical conditions in the world. Yet, despite its prevalence, it is poorly understood and often overlooked. One of the overlooked facts is that light sensitivity and migraine are actually closely related. Light sensitivity is one of the most common triggers and symptoms related to migraine attacks. In this episode, Dr. Charles Posternack, founder of Avulux, discusses the ground-breaking precision optical filter that has been providing relief to thousands of migraine sufferers around the world. Dr. Charles shares how it’s high time to address migraine more seriously and reach out to the world for the best cure it may have yet. Tune in now!
Learn more about Avulux at Avulux.com
Learn about the scientific studies about light sensitivity: https://avulux.ca/pages/understanding-the-science-behind-avulux-migraine-glasses
Want to offer Avulux? Contact defraim@avulux.com
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A New Treatment For Migraine And Light Sensitivity - Dr. Charles Posternack, Avulux
For this episode, I have a repeat guest. One of my favorite guests from a couple of years ago was Dr. Charles Posternack. He is a physician, a graduate of McGill University, and a fellow Canadian now living in Miami, Florida. Most importantly for this discussion, he is the Founder of Avulux. If you haven't heard of Avulux, it is a precision optical filter that is incredibly effective for patients who are suffering from light sensitivity and migraine.
I'm very excited. The first conversation that Dr. Posternack and I had a couple of years ago had a lot of traction. A lot of people were interested in the conversation. Avulux has come a long way since then. There are some cool and exciting announcements to make here. Make sure you stay tuned through the entire show. Thank you again, Dr. Posternack, for coming back on. I appreciate having you.
I appreciate that you're having me on as a repeat guest. I didn't blow it too badly the first time. All kidding aside, I’m excited, particularly in having the opportunity to spread the message and share the word about Avulux to something that I'm incredibly proud of, and from my perspective, is the legacy of my career. I’m a Canadian physician. I went through McGill Medical School and did my specialty training there. I'm neither a neurologist nor an ophthalmologist. As the father of two daughters who suffer from migraine, I got involved in this about ten years ago. What has transpired during those ten years is gratifying, particularly in how much and how many people are going to help.
I'm sure how many people it has already helped is pretty astounding, but the number of people that will continue to get benefit from this is amazing. You mentioned you're neither a neurologist nor an ophthalmologist, but I feel that it's almost more important that you have the family history that brought you into this. I have daughters of my own. I know how far I would go to help them to cure a condition that is chronic and that they're suffering from. That's almost more important than somebody who's simply researching it for the sake of becoming a successful researcher.
It's not even a job. It's a passion. It's something I committed to a decade ago. I was going to see it through to the end. In all honesty, when we began this project a decade ago, there was no guarantee. It has never been done before. There was nothing like what we were doing. It was the time in medical science when there was a strong push in the field of migraine. Whenever I say migraine, I choke up because it seems like everybody either has a friend, a family member, or a co-worker who suffers from migraine, or they themselves suffer from migraine.
To put into perspective, migraine is the third most prevalent disease in the world of all diseases. It doesn't get attention like heart disease or cancer. While migraine doesn't kill you, the disability it causes is enormous. That is why it is also noted to be the sixth most disabling disease in the world. It's a genetic disorder that if you're unlucky enough to get it, you do look for ways to manage your symptoms to get along with your daily life. That's the whole purpose of Avulux.
It was about ten years ago that the FDA did come out publicly and stated, “As medical researchers, we need to find better mechanisms and better ways to treat our patients who suffer from migraine." In the US, they're very expensive to the healthcare system. The reality is people suffer, and they struggle to get through their activities of daily living.
Through the conversations that I've been having with patients since you and I spoke a couple of years ago, and I've stayed in touch since then, I asked my patients much more thoroughly than I used to in the past. I'd say, “Do you have any medical conditions?” They'll say, “I get migraine.” I'll write it down and then move on to the next thing. Now I asked, “Tell me about that. How often? How severe? How does it affect your life?”
It's incredible how many people simply say, “I can't function. I close the doors and blinds, and lay down. I have kids. I have a job but I can't leave the house.” How much of an impact that has had on people's lives and people's productivity, and the economy even on a greater scale? I know there's a lot of data on that. I wonder if you'd be comfortable speaking about the impact it has on the economy. You've already mentioned the medical system. It has quite a burden as well.
What we know now about people who suffer from migraine is almost 1 in 4 of them are going to visit an emergency room in the course of the year. More than 50% of them are not going to be able to get through their workday. Almost 60% of them can get through what we commonly call activities of daily living, whether it is picking up their children after school, cooking a meal, going out on a Saturday night with friends, or attending a social event or a family event on a Sunday. When you're dealing with a disorder that would inhibit 6 out of 10 people, you do understand how severe it is.
When you're dealing with a disorder that would inhibit 6 out of 10 people, you do understand how severe it is.
I had a wonderful guest a little while back, Amy. She has an online community that she's built primarily on Instagram called The Migraine Life. She talks a lot about that. One of the biggest things is creating awareness about this condition. Up until I spoke to Amy, I would say, “It is just migraines. It's a headache.” She would say, “I stopped people from saying, ‘It’s just migraine.’ It's migraine. It’s a condition and a disease. I have a migraine attack.”
It is helping to change the perspective on it. That’s step one for many people because we often dismiss it as a headache. From your personal experience with your daughters and the patients that you've seen or dealt with through Avulux, it's much more than that. Before we go into the stats of the effectiveness or efficacy of Avulux, I would love to know the history of Avulux or some of the science that led to what it is now. We'll then talk about exactly what it is now and why it's such a precision filter.
Traditionally, in healthcare, when you're talking about treatment or attempting to manage symptoms of a disorder, conventionally and typically, we talk about pharmaceuticals. There's nothing to take away from pharmaceuticals. They've changed our lives for the better. Some of the research and incredible work that has been done in the pharmaceutical industry have been spectacular, but not everything can be treated with pharmaceuticals.
The reason being is people do develop adverse events or side effects or medication interactions. For some people like in the case of my daughter, after a few months, she would become tolerant of the treatment, and it wouldn't have the same effect. There are other medical devices, particularly in the space of migraine like neuromodulators, that work. When you look at treatments, you typically think of pills. This is why it's important to get the word out.
People sometimes look at me and say, "How can glasses treat a migraine attack? How could they manage a migraine attack?" It's something that almost surprised me and that gets back to history. Probably nothing is more intimately related than light and migraine. This is something we've known about for years, yet no one ever thought about using light and the manipulation of light as an actual way to manage the impact of the actual disorder of migraine itself.
What did we know? We know that between 80% and 90% of people who have migraine suffer from light sensitivity. We know that 30% to 60% of all migraine attacks are precipitated by exposure to light. We know that once you're in an attack, exposure to light makes it worse, and usually will intensify it, which is why people run to a dark room. What people don't know is 40% of all people who suffer from migraine experience light sensitivity as a sole symptom in between attacks.
When the FDA asked for the inclusion of the “most bothersome symptom” that a migraine sufferer has in addition to the conventional headache disorder, the number one symptom was light sensitivity. You have this incredibly intimate relationship. Now it required medical science to understand, “How does light impact migraine? How can that turn into some kind of management property?”
That all started with the science in early 2010 and all the way to 2020. We learned that at the back of a retina, there’s a smaller number of cell types. They are intrinsically photosensitive called retinal ganglion cells. One of these cell types is what's called a melanopsin-secreting cell. When these particular cells are stimulated, they'll release a photo pigment which is a protein called melanopsin. It is thought that photo pigment would then go through the optic nerve and act directly on the thalamus of the brain, which we know is the pain center of the brain.
As that research was established, they were looking for how exactly these cells get stimulated. There was a very elegant study done in 2016 at Harvard. They took migraine sufferers and put them in a dark room, then they expose them to different colors of light and different wavelengths. What they found was light in the high-end of the blue spectrum that’s about 480 nanometers, as well as light in the red amber range of about 590 nanometers would stimulate the cells to release melanopsin. They found as well that green light soothes them.
I’m putting this all together into one study. It was a series of studies performed at different times. What we essentially created was a map. If we could create a lens that would block out the light, at the high end of the blue range at 480 and block the amber-red at 590, but let the green light through, maybe this can have some kind of management effect. That was the challenge.
We had to sit there and figure out how to create a lens. Once we did create the lens, we then had to decide whether it can pass through the phase-two part of a scientific trial. In other words, if I gave this lens to 100 migraine subjects, will they get better? If they won't, it stops right there. If they do, then the next thing in today’s world of evidence-based medicine is, is it a placebo or a real effect? That was Avulux’s ten-year journey.
Our first iteration of the lens came out in about 2016. It was what we call the thin film that we applied to the surface of the lens. The problem with that is it was a very messy technique. It made the lens very dark. Because it worked by reflecting the bad wavelengths of light, you are required to have a wrap frame. You had these very dark lands with a wrap frame. It would be very expensive to produce the equipment to make these glasses. You could never scale them up. What it did is it gave us a bit of encouragement that in fact, "Maybe this is going to work."
With that lens, we continued. We did our provisional pilot. What we did was we essentially handed it out to patients who suffer from migraine. What we found was astonishing. We told individuals, “Put these glasses on at the earliest onset of a migraine, whether it's an aura in your case. Maybe it was a little bit of tingling in your head, but you knew that was going to bring on a migraine, and then see what happens.”
What we found was when 38% of people put these glasses on at the earliest onset of a headache, they never evolved. They never develop their typical migraine. It was very funny communicating with them. They said, “I thought I was getting a migraine attack. I put the glasses on, but they didn't come. I guess it wasn't even getting one.” We knew what was going on.
We found another 36% of people where it took longer to help relieve some of their light sensitivity and migraine symptoms, but they found that they could either eliminate or reduce the dose of medication that they were taking up until then. From my perspective, the most important was the next extra 18%. These were people who didn't get completely better, but that's okay. These were generally the more severe cases of migraine called chronic migraine sufferers. They were able to continue with their activities of daily living. At the end of the day, that is the most important thing
It’s not like Avulux has to be used alone. It can be used with medicines or with other migraine treatments. The important thing about Avulux is it tries to help a person get through their activities of daily living. We eventually got a little more sophisticated in our lens development. Around 2018, we partnered with a military contract company to develop a new lens using nanotechnology.
The important thing about Avulux is it tries to help a person get through their activities of daily living.
Essentially, that is the Avulux lens now. There are photoactive dyes incorporated into the matrix of the lens. What they do is absorb the light at 480 and a 590 in a very narrow notch. It allows the green light through. Essentially, it follows the science as closely as we could possibly make it. The nice thing is when you do have a precision filter like that or what we call a narrow notch filter when you're looking through the glass, it's not too dark. It doesn't distort your color.
People have to be able to tolerate wearing your lens. Avulux’s lens looks like it has the lightest lens when you look through the lens. After a few minutes, you don't even know that you're wearing it because it doesn't distort light. That was the lens that we took. We progressed upon to do what we call an evidence-based medicine clinical trial. We hired a third-party clinical research organization to do a double-blind randomized clinical trial comparing Avulux with a placebo. To cut to the chase, we reached the highest scientific standard. We were able to prove that Avulux both clinically and statistically significantly was better than a sham lens in both the alleviation of migraine pain and light sensitivity at 2 and 4 hours post-application of Avulux. That's when we knew this work.
Migraine Treatment: Avulux, both clinically and statistically, was significantly better than a sham lens in both the alleviation of migraine pain and light sensitivity at 2- and 4-hours post-application of Avulux.
Thank you for outlining that. It's quite a journey. This show is a lot about the entrepreneur's journey and entrepreneurship in general. There are many hurdles. There are many times when someone might have said, "This is too expensive. It's not going to scale. It's not worth the effort," but you stuck with it. As you said earlier, you are going to see this thing through, and you have. It’s cool to get to a point where you have a military optical contractor.
We're already dealing with sophisticated lenses. In the case of the contractor who helped us develop this, they were in the world of lasers. They’re making glasses to protect the military, particularly pilots, from exposure or disorientation if lasers were pointed at them. It was thinking out of the box. We’re reaching out to smarter people than we were, and incorporating all of their knowledge and insights. We’re tying it together with what we knew from the science, and then sitting down and coming up with a product. What was interesting too is it was a real evolution, because we came up with the Plano lens well before we came up with the prescription lens. That's just since 2022 that we were able to come up with that.
It's not leaving any stone unturned and making sure you find every way to bring this thing to life, and it has come to life. You mentioned some of the numbers. They're astounding that such a high percentage of people who were the lens found some level of benefit. Some completely avoided their headaches. Some got a moderate amount of benefit. Some got a little bit, but that's more than they're able to get from anything else, so they could continue with their day.
For most people, when I talk about Avulux, it's a non-pharmaceutical option. It can be added to anything that you're currently doing without any side effects. I wonder if you could tell me a little bit more about the efficacy that you've been seeing or the data that you've been collecting from people who wear an Avulux?
The efficacy has been unbelievable. We've been involved in selling our Plano lens and our prescription lenses for quite a while now. What we typically see is approximately 95% of the people who purchase an Avulux lens are people who are self-referring. They're making their understanding that they do suffer from migraine and that they do have light sensitivity. That is the criteria that will determine how effective Avulux is. If you do have latency with your migraine, chances are it's going to work.
From our experience online, as well as doing pilots with other large-object optometric groups and others who are doing clinical research, between 90% and 95% of people who try Avulux will respond to it. As we talked about, it doesn't mean it's going to go away completely or that it's going to be phenomenally better. The fact that 95% of people keep it is because it does help them get through their activities of daily living. When you think about the fact that light is the most bothersome symptom, it makes sense. You're helping them get through their day. Look at our days since COVID. How many of us spend our days on a computer all day long being exposed to a digital screen? You can understand and see how important an option like this is.
Speaking of light, most of this conversation is going to be about light, but the most famous type of light is blue light. a lot of times I have patients come in who are migraine patients. I'm talking to them and digging in a little deeper about their symptoms. They'll tell me, "I'm thinking about buying some blue light glasses from Amazon. I bought them already, but now I'm thinking about any better blue light glasses that should help me."
We know that there's a lot of debate on the blue light topic. It seems to be leaning more in a certain direction that blue-light blocking is not as helpful as we thought it once was, or that some people would like us to believe it is. I'd love for you if you could first share your understanding of blue light and its effects of it, then where that fall in the conversation with Avulux. It’s blue light versus Avulux if we're going to try to create a hot take here.
No problem. It's like trying to compare an egg with a baseball bat. I don't want to profess to be an expert in blue light because I'm not. Typical blue-light blockers block blue in a much lower wavelength range between 420 and 450 nanometers. That's not going to have any effect on patients who suffer from migraine. The science is very clear that the stimulation and then the elicitation of the impulse of the melanopsin-secreting cell occurs in a very narrow band at 480. You're not even hitting the right wavelength. Is there any anticipation that a classic blue-light blocker would work on a migraine? The answer would be, “Absolutely, not.”
Migraine Treatment: The stimulation and then the elicitation of the impulse of the melanopsin-secreting cell occurs in a very narrow band at 480. You're not even hitting the right wavelength.
To reiterate, this is one of the most important things. I love that Harvard study and the graph that comes out. It's easy to understand. If you haven't seen the graph or if you haven’t tuned in to the previous conversation that I've had with Dr. Posternack, they have these migraine patients. They took them in a dark room and expose them to certain wavelengths of light and colors of light.
The graph that comes with is perfect. It's like for blue light, the bars go up. Amber light, the bars go up. Red light, the bars go up. Green light, the bars go down. That's expressing the patient's pain or sensitivity to light. It's very easy to see the difference. Blocking blue light is important, but that 480-nanometer range is where it's important, and then there's a different type of lens, which has been very popular in the discussion for migraine, also in concussion TBI, that type of space. That's the FL-41. I wonder if you can give me a little bit of background on what FL-41 is, and why it's been believed to be helpful.
FL-41 is a very interesting technology and it came out in the ‘80s. If you speak to the individual who invented it, the word FL stands for Fluorescent. It was originally created to mitigate the effect of the flickering of fluorescent light when that was popular in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. You'd be working in a store where you'd have these large fluorescent lights above you, and they would constantly be flickering on and off. They were very uncomfortable.
FL-41 is a technology that has been very old. It's a technology that's been around for a very long time to treat migraine. If you look at a graph of the absorption and the reflection of light, FL-41 does not block anywhere near the amount of 480 and 590 that we do as a position filter, but it also blocks green light. It essentially is not allowing the healing light through. What it's doing is it's not even blocking enough of the high blue and then the red amber range.
It's letting in the red amber because it's got that tint to it. Studies have found that even that red range is uncomfortable or potentially harmful for patients who are suffering from light sensitivity and migraine. The biggest key when I talk to my colleagues about FL-41 is when you're talking about light sensitivity as we have from the Harvard study, that green light has been shown to be soothing, and the FL-41 completely blocks that out. It's not helpful in that regard.
Those two comparisons are probably the most common comparisons that I get when I speak to my colleagues about how we can help mitigate migraine and light sensitivity symptoms that our patients have. They'll say, “Blue light blocking or FL-41,” but we find that those only help with small parts of the spectrum. In fact, they don't help with other parts that we need to help with. That's where Avulux comes in.
On the topic of FL-41, one of the companies that have been very prominent in that space is a company called Axon. I'd love for you to tell me a little bit about Axon. There's some big news here with Avulux and Axon. I'd love for us to share and celebrate this. if you wouldn't mind, maybe give me a bit of background on Axon and what's happening now.
Axon Optics has been in the industry for a very long time. They've always been the gold standard in the world of glasses. The company's ownership included a very prominent neuro-ophthalmologist and an optical engineer, Dr. Brad and Dr. Steve Blair. They are the original inventors of the patent of what Avulux is now, essentially the blocking of the 480 and the 590-nanometer wavelengths.
It's always been a very respected company. It's a company that has led the industry. They're probably the most visited website in and around the migraine space. It is very exciting because Axon has decided that they wanted to offer their customers the best and the greatest of what they consider to be for the management of light sensitivity and migraine.
They've essentially stopped selling FL-41. Now they have become an Avulux provider. Their reasoning is quite simple. There was nothing bad about FL-41. It did help a lot of people and it probably still does. It just does not have the science behind it that Avulux does. It doesn't have the proven clinical that Avulux has. They felt that this time, they want to offer the best and the most appropriate option for those who've been their customers for a very long time.
They were the biggest name in FL-41. Dr. Brad Katz, somewhat of a pioneer in this space, realize that what was happening at Avulux was more helpful to patients than FL-41, so much so that they've combined forces now. What does that look like from practitioners looking to Axon? Are they going to come to Avulux and there are no more Axon Optics available at all?
The Axon Optics company still exists. They just don't sell FL-41 anymore. They converted everything over to Avulux technology. Any provider that used to work with Axon is more than welcome to work with us. We would love that. Our goal is without a doubt to get the Avulux lens to as many people who could benefit from it as possible. My dream, and other eye-care professionals in North America and around the world, is that they would be able to at least offer Avulux as an option to their patients.
The takeaway is that eye-care professionals should and they will become the first-line caregivers for people who suffer from migraine. All they have to do is stop when they bring their patients in. Ask them, “Do you have to suffer from migraine? Do you have light sensitivity?” They'll be shocked by how many people will say yes. Being exposed to Avulux, you're going to change their lives.
Eye-care professionals should become the first-line caregivers for people who suffer from migraine.
The one thing I love about being on your show is you have great reach. You have great respect. This is such a great forum for us. To be perfectly honest, it was from your first episode a couple of years ago that we were fortunate enough that an eye-care professional in Australia listened to it and hooked us up. Now we are a mainstream lens in Australia. We got our class-one medical device approval there. It was through your outreach from this show. For anyone who is tuning in, we'd love to have you become one of our distributors. I promise you, your patients will be very happy that you do.
It's very good to know that we have an audience in Australia. We know that they're tuning in. In that last conversation, we had stuck with a lot of people across North America and clearly in other parts of the world. I'm happy that it helped support such a useful product. That's something that's going to help so many people. We can do this to make the optical industry and healthcare system better. That's amazing.
We'll go into how ECPs can get their hands on this in a second, but I want to go back to what you mentioned about becoming the first line here. I don't think eye-care providers have wrapped their heads around how we can be the first line of treatment and healthcare provider for somebody who's dealing with migraine. We're told in school, we're experts on the light, optometrists. Optics is our expertise. If we know that light is the primary symptom and trigger for these patients, we have the power to now mitigate that, especially with tools like Avulux at our fingertips.
It's important to start to wrap our heads around that and realize we have the power to help many people. I’m comparing myself to myself 2 or 3 years ago when I would write down migraine and move on to the next thing instead of writing down migraine, let's ask a couple of more questions. Let's see if light is one of the key symptoms or triggers, and now offer. The minimum thing we can do is let the patient know that there is a tool and treatment option out there that could potentially help them.
I feel like we're doing a disservice if we're not at least doing that even if we don't sell it ourselves, “Just so you know, this technology exists,” but if you're going to talk about it, you might as well be selling it. I want to make a quick comparison. Anytime I talk about implementing a new treatment protocol, strategy, or whatever it might be, the easiest comparison or analogy I can make is to dry eye.
Dry eye is one of the biggest topics in eye care these days. When I started venturing into the dry eye world a few years ago, I thought, “Where do I start? I don't think I have enough dry-eye patients. I'm going to have to start marketing and bring people externally.” Some of my colleagues and the experts in the space were like, “Just mention it and say the words out loud to your existing patients. You'll be surprised how many people have this issue that you can treat right there in your exam room.” That's absolutely the thing.
We implemented a very simple questionnaire. I know that's one of the strategies with Avulux as well. Implementing a simple questionnaire triggers a conversation, “You scored XYZ on this. That tells me that you're having these symptoms. Here's how we can help.” I went from thinking that maybe 10% or 20% of my patients had dry eyes, to now saying 75% of my patients are dealing with some form of dry eye.
The same goes for light sensitivity migraine. You start asking your patients when they even give you a hint of they might be dealing with light sensitivity or migraine. If you implement a questionnaire, that would help you even more. You start mentioning it and you'll realize there's a very large proportion of your patients and existing people in your exam chair, clinic, and office optical that are already dealing with it. It’s not like you got to bring this product in and start advertising like crazy. Have the conversation. That's where it all starts. Going back to what you said about having providers across North America, Australia, and other countries offering this to patients, who can offer this and how can they start to do that?
Any eye-care professional who has an interest in what's best for their patients can do it. All they have to do is contact us. We have all the materials that they would need. We have a training program that we can help them with. We have a very cool ECP starter kit that we learn from our best practices in Australia. Essentially, it is a package that comes with three Avulux fit-overs, along with sales materials for the patient and a light questionnaire.
Essentially, it's on a dry-erase marker. It asked the patients, "Do you experience light sensitivity Do you experience it in association with migraine?" Some very simple questions. If the patient answers yes to any one of them, have the conversation. What's cool and what we've learned from our previous experience is to have these fit-overs in your office. If the patient is symptomatic at the time, put them over their existing glasses. They tell you, “This is soothing. This is cool.” Maybe they don't know, they don't have the history, they're not sure, or maybe they're waiting for a migraine to come. They can take it home with them. Leave a deposit. Take the fit-overs. This way you know you're going to help patients.
We've created this kit that literally within 24 hours, anyone who wants to become an Avulux distributor can be educated and have everything that they need to start selling Avulux to their patients the next day. It is our goal. We do want to get this out to as many migraine sufferers as we possibly can. This is a disease that has been under-treated for years and years. If we have something as simple and non-invasive as what we have with no adverse events, they can only get better.
Migraine Treatment: We need to get Avulux out to as many migraine sufferers as we possibly can. This is a disease that has been under-treated for years and years. If we have something as simple and non-invasive as what we have with no adverse events, they can only get better.
From any treatment standpoint, to have something that is effective and has no side effects or no adverse events seems like The Holy Grail. That's what everybody is hoping for and working towards. This is helping a lot of people. It's not necessarily going to help every single patient eliminate every single migraine, but it's going to help them feel better. On the other side, there's no downside to trying it and wearing it. That's amazing. ECPs out there, if you're interested in helping your patients in mitigating these symptoms, make sure you look into this. Dr. Posternack, where can people inquire further about Avulux?
We'd love you to visit our website at Avulux.com. There are tons of information on that website. All you have to do is reach out to us. Contact us through the website. We'll make sure you get started. We will do everything we can. We'll hook you up with our finishing labs. You can have your own lab. That's fine too. We have semi-finished. We can get to you, it doesn't matter how. Reach out to us and we'll make it happen.
I would encourage you to go to the website and read the science. The science is real. You'll be able to see a link to our clinical research. Read some of the testimonials. These are very real and honest testimonials. It's heartwarming to read some of the things that people write down. We're not here to treat or cure migraine. We're here to manage the impact of light sensitivity on those who have migraine. Many of them do have light sensitivity. By managing this one symptom, you can completely change their lives.
By managing this one symptom of light sensitivity, you can completely change the lives of people who have migraines.
Make sure you reach out through the website. The starter kit is something that's super helpful. I feel like when I'm implementing a new technology, I need my handheld a little bit. I need some simple instructions on steps 1, 2, and 3 on how to get the ball rolling. Having that beautiful starter kit to the box and everything well-made is going to encourage not just the ECPs, but their staff as well. That's always important. It is getting your staff, your front desk, your office manager, and everybody else on board, and speaking to patients the same way about these things. That's wonderful.
Thank you, Dr. Posternack, for coming on the show. Thank you for sharing all this wonderful information, and helping us bring awareness to this topic that is often neglected and overlooked, and realize how many patients we can help, and how many people around the world can be helped by such a simple and easy-to-implement technology. Anything else you'd like to share before we wrap up?
If you're going to be going to the Vision Expo Eastern New York City, please come by and see us. To put it into a more tangible perspective, in Canada, there are about six million people who suffer from migraine. In the United States, it's approximately 47 million. There are a lot of potential people who are waiting for your help.
Thanks, Dr. Posternack. It’s always a pleasure to chat with you. I'll see you in New York. I'll be there. If you're there, also give me a shout. I'd love to connect with everybody out there. Make sure you start by Avulux and chat with the rest of the team there to see what they're up to. Thank you, everybody, for all the support. I will see you in the next episode.
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About Dr. Charles Posternack
Dr. Charles Posternack is the Co-Founder and President of Avulux, the company behind the world’s only lens clinically proven to block the harmful lightwaves that trigger and worsen migraine attacks.
After a long rewarding career as a practicing physician and senior healthcare executive, Dr. Posternack followed his heart to co-found Avulux. His two daughters both suffer from light sensitivity and migraine, and he set out to find an option that would help them. Today, those same women are two of the many Avulux success stories from around the world, and Dr. Posternack hopes that countless others who suffer from migraine and light sensitivity will enjoy similar life-changing benefits. Real-world experience shows that 90 percent of Avulux users find they can resume their daily activities while using Avulux lenses to manage the impact of light.
Dr. Posternack has been in the healthcare world for more than 30 years. He has held leadership positions as a CEO in both the not-for-profit and for-profit sectors. Dr. Posternack received his medical degree at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and did his specialty training there as well. He has lived in the United States since 1992 and has held senior roles at the Cleveland Clinic and HCA Healthcare. He was also an Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Schmidt College of Medicine at Florida Atlantic University.