SHIELD Your Eyesight (2 Simple Ways!)
Guard yourself against macular degeneration
If you have age-related macular degeneration, you know how difficult it can make life.
Not only is the looming threat of blindness in the future, but long before that happens, this disease impacts your ability to read, drive a car, or even to recognize faces.
And, like so many other conditions that leave mainstream medicine scratching its head, this common problem has no cure.
But there are ways to prevent it.
And researchers have just identified this protective “vision duo” – it’s two key ways to make sure you never have to experience this dreaded condition.
Age-related macular degeneration, or AMD, causes your central vision to become blurry. It’s like a smudge in the center of your glasses that never goes away.
This is caused when the macula of the eye — the central part of the retina — deteriorates.
The key to preventing AMD is protecting your eye’s macula — and researchers have identified two important ways to do that.
They compared samples from people from Mexico to those from Ireland.
The Mexicans had significantly higher levels of macular pigment, which helps protect the retina from damage by absorbing blue light.
Low levels of macular pigment are considered a risk factor for macular degeneration.
Here are the two factors that determined the concentrations of macular pigment:
- Sunlight exposure. More sunlight exposure was connected to significantly higher levels of macular pigment.
- Consuming carotenoids. Carotenoids are yellow pigments in foods like carrots, pumpkins, and corn. Macular pigment is yellow in color because it’s made up of specific carotenoids like lutein, zeaxanthin, and lutein.
Not only did the people in the Mexican group spend more time outdoors, they also likely consumed foods that boosted these eye-protective nutrients.
Protecting your eyesight from this incurable condition is yet another reason to make sure you’re spending plenty of time outside in the sun every day.
And for added protection, consume foods higher in carotenoids (think “orange” foods).
And for an even bigger boost, consider a supplement that contains carotenoids like lutein, zeaxanthin, meso-zeaxanthin, and lutein.
