MEET THE FORMULATOR
Ahmad Tarabishy, MD

Vitreoretinal Surgeon
Board-Certified Ophthalmologist

Founder, TruVista
Managing Partner, Retina Specialists of Tampa

TruVista was not born in a marketing meeting.

It was born in a clinic full of patients losing their sight — and in the memory of a childhood in Damascus.

Dr. Tarabishy is a practicing vitreoretinal surgeon who treats macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, and retinal disease every week. He performs vitreoretinal surgery and administers anti-VEGF therapies to patients with advanced AMD. He is the founder and sole formulator of TruVista — the only eye supplement in the world built around Terfezia desert truffle extract.

“I grew up visiting my grandparents in Damascus, where desert truffle was something people gathered around with special reverence. Forty years later, my clinic is full of patients losing their central vision to macular degeneration. The science told me these two things were connected.”

— Ahmad Tarabishy, MD — Vitreoretinal Surgeon & Founder, TruVista

Credentials & Training

  • BOARD-CERTIFIED OPHTHALMOLOGIST
    American Board of Ophthalmology — the credential held by ophthalmologists who complete the full written and oral examination process after residency.
  • VITREORETINAL SURGERY FELLOWSHIP
    Fellowship-trained in vitreoretinal surgery — a subspecialty requiring an additional 1–2 years of advanced training beyond ophthalmology residency, focused exclusively on diseases of the retina, vitreous, and macula.
  • MANAGING PARTNER, RETINA SPECIALISTS OF TAMPA 
    One of the Tampa Bay area’s leading retinal specialty practices, providing medical and surgical management of macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, retinal detachment, and other vitreoretinal conditions.
  • ACTIVE CLINICAL PRACTICE
    Dr. Tarabishy continues to practice full-time retinal medicine and surgery. TruVista was formulated by a physician who treats AMD patients daily — not by a formulation laboratory working from published summaries.

Why Desert Truffle

The path to TruVista began with a conversation with a scholar of ancient Arabic texts, who mentioned that desert truffle had been specifically revered for eye ailments in authenticated traditional manuscripts for over a millennium. What followed were many hours in the peer-reviewed literature.

What Dr. Tarabishy found was not folklore. Modern research reveals that desert truffle (Terfezia claveryi) contains a constellation of bioactive compounds — ergothioneine, naringenin, resveratrol, and a full macular carotenoid complex — that protect the retina through five distinct biological pathways implicated in AMD. Pathways that the AREDS2 formula, for all its clinical merit, was never designed to address.

I grew up visiting my grandparents in Damascus. Some of my earliest memories are of the kitchen filling with an aroma I have never encountered anywhere else in the world — the smell of desert truffle being prepared for the table. As a child I did not know
its name or its biology. I only knew that it appeared rarely, that everyone gathered around it with special reverence, and that the people I loved most treated it as a gift.

Forty years later, I am a vitreoretinal surgeon in Tampa, Florida. My days are spent caring for patients with macular degeneration — watching the disease rob them, slowly and irreversibly, of the central vision they need to read a grandchild’s face, to drive, to live independently. It is one of the most humbling diseases I treat, because even with the best tools medicine currently offers, I often cannot stop it. I can only slow it.

The path from that Damascus kitchen to TruVista began with a conversation. A scholar of ancient Arabic texts mentioned, in passing, that desert truffle had long been revered in the Arab world specifically for the eyes — that its use to treat eye ailments was recorded in some of the most authenticated traditional texts. I remember exactly where I was standing when he said it.

What followed were many hours in the published literature.


What I found was not folklore. It was a convergence of peer-reviewed research
confirming that Terfezia desert truffle contains a unique combination of
compounds that protect the retina through five distinct biological pathways —
including ergothioneine, naringenin, and resveratrol — that the standard AREDS2
formula was never designed to include.

TruVista exists because my patients deserve the most complete
macular protection the science supports. It exists because a thousand years of
traditional wisdom and a decade of modern research are pointing at the same
ingredient. And it exists, in some small way, because of a memory I have
carried since childhood — of something rare and extraordinary being shared with
care.

With respect for your vision,
Ahmad Tarabishy, MD
Vitreoretinal
Surgeon  |  Board-Certified Ophthalmologist
Founder, TruVista|Managing Partner, Retina
Specialists of Tampa




“The AREDS2 formula is excellent. But it was designed in the 1990s. The science has moved. My patients deserve a formula that has moved with it.”

— Ahmad Tarabishy, MD

Why a Retina Specialist Formulating This Matters

Macular degeneration is not an abstract concept to Dr. Tarabishy. It is the daily reality of his practice — the patient who can no longer recognize faces, the one who had to surrender their car keys, the one asking how much longer they will be able to read. This is the clinical context in which TruVista was formulated.

When a vitreoretinal surgeon — a physician who injects anti-VEGF medication into eyes affected by wet AMD, who performs membrane peels on patients with advanced macular disease, who has spent a career at the intersection of retinal science and patient care — chooses to build a supplement, the formulation decisions are different. The ingredient selection is grounded in a clinical understanding of what AMD actually does to retinal tissue, not in marketing trends.

Every ingredient in TruVista was selected because a retinal specialist reviewed the published mechanism, evaluated the biological plausibility, and found the evidence compelling. That is what “ophthalmologist formulated” means when it comes from Dr. Tarabishy.

Formulated by a retina specialist who treats AMD patients every day.

*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Dr. Tarabishy’s role is as formulator of TruVista dietary supplements. Nothing on this page constitutes medical advice or a physician-patient relationship.