Are you familiar with equine recurrent uveitis (ERU)?

It used to be called moon blindness. Here is an example:

Current traditional medicine treats ERU with antibiotics and steroids. This decreases the inflammation, thus clearing the eye of cloudiness.

But what caused the inflammation in the first place?

Find out on today’s Horse Mysteries Solved.

Links Mentioned:
shop.tuckerbiokinetic.com/uveitis-resolve/

Summary:
Summary by AI:
Renee discusses **Equine Recurrent Uveitis (ERU)**, commonly known as “Moon Blindness,” a painful condition in horses that causes squinting, tearing, and cloudy eyes. The disease involves inflammation in the eye’s middle layer (the **uvea**), which includes the iris, ciliary body, and choroid. ERU often affects the cornea, causing it to appear gray and cloudy.

In the past, ERU was thought to be common in Appaloosas, possibly due to their sensitivity to sunlight, but it can affect any breed today. The condition is recurrent because of the eye’s rapid healing process, particularly the cornea, which regenerates every 30 days.

Renee suggests that the root cause of ERU is **heavy metals** that accumulate in the eye’s **vitreous humor** (the gel-like substance inside the eyeball). These metals irritate the uvea, causing inflammation. Bacteria and immune cells then enter the eye to help clear the debris, which leads to the cloudy, weeping appearance.

She criticizes the quick recommendation by some veterinarians to remove the horse’s eye, urging more investigation into the root cause. Renee believes **parasites** in the horse’s body may help manage the heavy metals, as they can absorb them, similar to how **dandelions** absorb heavy metals from the soil. She also mentions **acupuncture** as a possible treatment to help reduce the heavy metals’ hold on the eye.

Renee also warns against over-deworming horses, suggesting that less frequent deworming may actually help manage heavy metals better. She promotes her own product, **TBT UVitis Resolve**, which she claims helps break the bond between heavy metals and the vitreous humor, allowing them to be eliminated from the body.

In summary, **ERU** is caused by the buildup of heavy metals in the eye, and treating the root cause—rather than just addressing symptoms—can help manage the condition over time.

Transcription:
Renee (00:01)
Hello, friends. Hello. Good morning to you. Today, I’d like to talk about equine uveitis, also called equine recurrent uveitis or ERU, and also my personal favorite, Moon Blindness. It’s just an elegant name, even though this disease process is quite terrible. Okay, first we must make a poll. Who here has gotten a cornea, a laceration, or just a cut from the horse’s tail? This has happened to me more times than I can count, honestly. I’m just sitting there minding my own business Maybe working on a horse, maybe grooming the horse, then then something, bam, tail hair. I’m just at that right perfect distance where the end of the tail of the horse just gets right in the eye, and it just cuts it a a little bit just through a layer, or maybe two cell layers of cornea. And does that hurt? Oh, my goodness. If you’ve had that happen, you know how much that hurts. And your eye starts tearing, and it’s squinting, and it just keeps watering all over the place, even though you’re like, You could stop crying now, eye, but it doesn’t. And you could use cold compresses on your eye, and that does feel better, right?

Renee (01:26)
It just cools the inflammation and the heat. But that’s not fixing anything. You just have to wait for the body to fix the eyeball. So one cool thing about corneas is that they heal really fast. You can get a whole layer of corneal cells done in a week. And in fact, the whole entire cornea, which is that clear part of the eye, that’s completely renewed every 30 days. The whole thing is brand new. And that’s a little clue on our name, moon blindness. Because moon meaning about every 30 days, sometimes these things come back on a regular basis, about every 30 days. Could that have Something to do with how fast the cornea can fix itself? Well, yes, that is a clue on today’s show of Horse mystery Solved: An Equine Recurrent Uveages. Okay, so if you have haven’t seen this in your horse or another horse. Let me describe it briefly because it’s just so you’ll know, if one day you walk out to see your horse and they’re just squinting their eye, it can be a little squint, it could be so squinted, it could be squinted shut, and there can be eye drainage, it can be clear, like just tearing and tearing, or it can be a little tears with some white, usually white, not usually yellow, but generally white And not continuous, just squinting and tearing.

Renee (03:03)
It hurts. And it can be itchy, and some horses then will rub their eye on their leg or whatever they can find. And usually the first thing we’re thinking is there’s something in that eyeball. And we try to flush it out and call the vet, blah, blah, blah. And all those things are good. But the key is for equine recurrent uveitis, there is no foreign body in the eye. There’s no splinter, no piece of grass. It’s just when you actually can get the horse to open their eye, the cornea can be cloudy, gray. Maybe just a little part, maybe the whole thing. But when you start seeing a gray, cloudy eye and your horse is just weeping, it is scary. And we know it hurts because they’re squinting and tearing. And we’ve certainly all always hope, well, I’m not hoping for you to have this, but it does help understand how much the cornea hurts when it gets a little tear. I mean, hey, if you wanted to get some tail hair and just stick some on your eye, you could feel this. I don’t recommend that, but it’s a possibility. Anyways, so you go out and you’ve got a cloudy eye and it’s weeping, and sometimes you give it a couple of days and it goes away.

Renee (04:20)
But then it just keeps coming back again. The period of time in which it comes back does vary. Now, back in the day, that’s right, people, 30 plus years ago, when I was a young betanarian, we would almost only see Moon blindness, as it was called then, in Appaloosa’s. Isn’t that odd? If someone called and they said their Appaloosa had a weeping eye, we’re like, Well, that’s Moon blindness on the phone. I didn’t tell people that, but you just knew it because Appaloosa got that. It was a thing. We thought at the time that was because Appaloosa tend to have the pink sclera, like the pink third eyelid. It maybe made them more susceptible or sensitive to the sun. We didn’t really know, but we just knew Appalusias had. Now it is any breed, and it’s the weepy eyes and the gray cloudiness to the sclera. Not to the sclera, my bad, to the cornea. The sclera or the uvia is what’s inflamed. The uvia is actually the middle part of the eye, as they like to name it. The uvia includes the iris, the cilialiary body, and the coroid. That’s some anatomy, blah, blah, blah.

Renee (05:41)
But basically, let’s think about this. In equine recurrent uveitis, we have what appears to be a corneal problem. Because it’s all gray and the horse is tearing, so that’s got to be the problem. And in traditional medicine, we generally will stain the eye just to see if there’s a hole. So there’s this nice stain you can put on there. It’s non-harful. And if there’s a hole, the edges of the cornea of the hole, grab the stain, and then you can see this nice green to know if there’s a hole. It’s just to help us to treat it. Generally, treatment is antibiotics for the inflammation because if they think that’s caused by bacteria, and steroids, again, for the inflammation, just to calm it down and make it feel Now, that does calm it down, make it feel better, and it also decreases the immune system. Steroids always decrease the immune system. That’s why they work in inflammation, because what’s UV Uveitis. Remember that itis at the end of the word, I-T-I-S? That’s inflammation in Greek. I mean, that’s what I’m thinking. It could be Latin. I don’t know. But so all uveitis tells us is the uvea, part of the eye, that’s the middle piece, is inflamed.

Renee (07:03)
It doesn’t say why, but for some reason they’ve got us trained that if we can just put a label on it, just name it something, then, yes, satisfaction has happened. We have a diagnosis, and then we’ll just give her antibiotics and steroids, and all will be well. Unfortunately, all is not well. If you’re like myself and you look in several Facebook groups, I’m in one of these, Uveitis, and The rapidity with which people are just, not the owners. The veterinarians are just saying, Oh, this hurts the horse. Let’s just take the eye out. What? People, slow down. What? Yes, I understand. They do very well with one eye. I am not at all down on people who have had their horses eye taken out because the horse in pain and you want them out of pain. And they do very well with one eye. But could we just stop that? Because no one has even discussed why is this happening? No one even knows, but I’m going to tell you. But anyways, it’s just annoying. It’s just annoying. Okay, get to the point. You’ve got this inflammation in the middle of the eye. Where’s it coming from?

Renee (08:23)
It’s not coming from the outside. We talked about if the corne is lacerated on the outside, They got tearing, tearing, you can see it. Takes a couple of days, and then your eye is not as sensitive. It’s healing up really fast. But what if the inflammation is coming from the inside of the eye? Yes, inside the eyeball itself. There is what they like to call the vitreous humor. No idea why they call it that. Probably Latin, but it’s the Squishy part of the eye. It’s the eyeball, and it actually is like a gel. Yes, it has fluid in it, but it’s a gel-like fluid. I mean, you stick your finger on your own eyeball and just going to Squish it. It’s Squishy. All right? Now, picture this. If your nice Squishy jelly in there has, guess what? Heavy metals in it. Mm-hmm? Mm-hmm. That’s what it is. Then those heavy metals, which have an affinity to that part of the eye, They’d like to just stay there. The heavy metals causes the inflammation of that middle layer of the eye, the uvia. Because it’s heavy metals and they’re not supposed to be there, the body is trying to fight and get rid of those.

Renee (09:45)
It’s just a constant battle. Part of the battle is bringing in more white blood cells, bringing actually more bacteria, because bacteria are simply a cleanup crew. If you got inflammation and damage, you’re going to have dead cells running around. Bacteria actually eat dead cells. They’re like a garbage truck, and they help clear stuff out. So the real problem with ERU is heavy metals within the eyeball, which irritates the uvia. So you have uveitis. And then the cornea is involved just by the way, because it’s part of the traveling of the white blood cells that are trying to help the UVA, the bacteria, the fibrin, all stuff makes it look gray. But that’s just the side effect of the inflammation because of the heavy metals. I know, you’re probably sick of me talking about heavy metals. I’m not sick of talking about heavy metals. They shouldn’t even be there. Jeez. Okay, why can’t the body just get rid of them. Well, it’s trying, and it can get rid of some. But these heavy metals have an affinity for the vitreous humor. Affinity just means their electrochemical magnetic being is attracted to the vitreous humor, and it likes to stick there, magnetic-like.

Renee (11:22)
Those heavy metals are not going to leave on their own. They like If they could, they would just get in the bloodstream and float around and go off to the liver and be filtered out. But they don’t want to. They have an affinity for the eyeball. So there they sit. And the eye is constantly trying You get rid of them. And guess what? Every 30 days, you have refreshed the entire cornea has brand new cells. And so because it’s healing so fast, it seems recurrent. And recurrent That means coming and going. It’s not actually going at all. It’s there the whole time. But the body is so fast at fixing the cornea that it seems… I hope that made sense. Okay, so what do you do? I would like to mention in here, please stop deworming your horse. I know. I know everyone thinks I’m crazy, and you probably just hung up right now listening to this. But really, the parasites What we call parasites, these little worm guys, they’re the body’s first line of defense for heavy metals, just like the real worms in the dirt, just like plants. Do you know the dandelions If dandelions are in your yard, they’re only there when there’s heavy metals, and they suck them up, and somehow they just magically dissolve them into unharful chemicals, and they’re just gone.

Renee (12:58)
And so what have we been told to do for dandelions. I know some of you realize that they’re good, but really, most of America, at least, oh, my gosh, you see a dandelion in your yard, you better get out the herbicide. Oh, my gosh. Why Have we been trained to do that? Well, you can think about that. Anyways, let’s talk about the horse. Horses, interestingly, sometimes they love dandelion, which we If the horse eats it at the right time and the right part of it, then it does act as a heavy metal collector. It helps the horse. Let them eat dandelions. And if you have a whole field of dandelions, just turn them out there. Just kidding. Although that wouldn’t hurt. So how are we going to get rid of these heavy metals that are stuck in the horse’s vitreous humor of the eye? Well, once again, the only thing I know of is the TBT products that I am making, link in the description. That is a product that the carrier is an herb. Yes, there’s an herb on the label, but the real thing is the energy. And the energy will It’s not magical, it’s just breaking apart the affinity or the bonds or the desire of the heavy metals to stay in the eyeball.

Renee (14:24)
Once the heavy metals don’t have that affinity, then, yeah, now they’re going to start floating out like like I said, out the bloodstream towards the liver. Also, hopefully, will be absorbed by what we call parasites in the horse, and it’ll just suck them right out. It’s interesting, isn’t it? We didn’t use so much dewormer 30 years ago. That was a once, twice a year thing. People think the more the merrier on dewormer, and look at all these problems we have. Of course, we have plenty of heavy metals everywhere nowadays, so we have to figure out what we’re going to do about it. We can avoid it as much as possible, and then we have to find these ways to make it work. The other way, besides the TBT UVitis resolve product that I made, acupuncture can help with this. If you do acupuncture, generally, just all around the eye and there’s certain, well, not really, ting points, but eye points around the eye, that can help change the affinity also, and it’ll help it move But you need to do that on a regular basis, but it definitely can help. So there you go. It’s just heavy metals, once again, destroying our horses lives.

Renee (15:40)
But now you have something that you can do about it. And thank you for all of you guys who asked about international shipping. I am working on that. I’m planning to get that done sometime in 2025. Sorry for this delay. It’s a bit a lot of hoops to jump through, but I’m working on it. Again, thank you for listening. I hope this explains ERU or Moon Blindness, and I’ll talk to you guys next time. Bye-bye.

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