Having healthy eyes is very important to me since my mother was blind by age 60 because of glaucoma. Glaucoma runs in my family, five immediate relatives have it. There's no cure for it, just treatment, so if diet can help prevent this eye disease and keep eyes healthy I'm all for it.
When mom and dad told you to eat your carrots because they were good for your eyes, they were on the right track. As researchers continue to document that we really are what we eat, the role of nutrition in eye health becomes clearer and more important all the time.
More than 25 per cent of the nutrients we absorb nourish our "visual system" - our eyes and all of the nerves, blood vessels and tissues that support our vision. Indeed the concentration of Vitamin C in healthy eyes is higher than almost anywhere else in the body. It is not surprising then that proper nutrition plays an important role in preventing and treating problems such as glaucoma, computer eye strain, dry eyes, cataracts, and macular degeneration.
The best diet for healthy eyes should be a variety of whole foods with emphasis on fruits and vegetables. The body does not use each vitamin and mineral in isolation. The absence of one nutrient can affect the body's ability to use another; for example, proper amounts of magnesium and vitamin D are needed to absorb and utilize calcium efficiently. Without adequate levels of zinc, the body cannot utilize all of the vitamin A it receives. Similarly, the B vitamins are needed together, working best as a team.
Eating a variety of whole foods and omitting processed sugar and other junk foods will help your body to get a wide range of nutrients. The body can lose a significant amount of nutrients when we eat nutrient poor foods. For example, we lose chromium and B vitamins as our body tries to burn white sugar. Therefore getting our nutrients if possible through healthy foods that we eat is a key to keeping good vision. By Marc Grossman, O.D., L.Ac.
If you need help with your diet and decide to add a supplement you might want to get this free report Are Your Vitamins Safe? before you waste your money or take something that is quite possibly going to cause harm.
The ingredients in some whole food multivitamins will help your body absorb even more nutrients from the food you eat.
I'm working on keeping my vision, It was so sad watching my mother lose her independence. She missed reading and driving more than anything.
Beyond Organic Healthy Food
Completely agree with your nutritional advice, and synthetic vitamins. I avoid ingesting any man-made products whenever possible. Nature is perfect. Man is not.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with synthetic vitamins is that they are the "stereoisomers" of the natural form, so they have the same size and shape but they are exact opposites and do not super-impose on one another.
Imagine if your right hand was a key that unlocked a door and although your left hand mimics that key's shape, it still cannot super-impose so is a useless key, then you are left with a random molecule in the body that has little to know use, if not potentially cause harm because we have no idea what role it will take on in the body.
Take synthetic vitamin E for instance, it comes in the dl-alpha tocopheral form and the "D in that is the natural right hand (dextra is right in Latin) and the "L" is for left in Latin (sinister as in using your left hand is evil) then if we are taking 400 IU of vitamin E which is a pretty standard dose, it is of course mathematically only going to be equivalent to 200 IU as the Left "handed" molecules are not going to have any use or effect. As well as maybe cause more harm than the good that the "Right" Vitamin E, the natural form, d-alpha tocopherol.
There are also so many great foods to eat high in Vitamin E like walnuts, nuts, seeds, and cold pressed plant oils that we don't have to supplement it, we can enjoy it in our diet!
Beta carotene, another commonly used synthetic vitamin to watch out for is also easy to get in the diet by eating cooked squash, carrots, canatlopes and other yellow and orange foods.
Sorry to write a blogopedia on all that. I guess your blog just got me all riled up as I can't stand synthetic vitamins and wish everyone understood why they should avoid them!
Dr. Nicole
ReplyDeleteThank you for your well thought comments. We are on the same path about synthetic vitamins and the harm they can cause.
You explained why synthetic ingredients do not work in a human body very well. Thank you for this.
Yes, you are correct in stating we can get the vitamins from food. The problem is our food is not as nutritious today as it should be because it is loaded with pesticides, picked unripe, trucked too many miles and genetically modified.
My mission is to get people who take a multi vitamin, that is synthetic to know what they are ingesting. It does make me nervous and to tell the true it concerns me a great deal knowing how many people are supplementing with synthetic chemicals and they don't even know it, much less the harm these synthetics are shown to cause.
Ok, now I'm writing a "blogopedia" and did not intend to. I want to make a difference and educate vitamin users.
Again, thank you Dr. Nicole.
Robin Plan