Healthy Vision: Prevent and Reverse Eye Disease through Better Nutrition

179 Pages·2014·3.63 MB·English

by  Neal Adams

HEALTHY VISION
Prevent and Reverse Eye Disease through Better Nutrition
NEAL ADAMS, MD
Lyons Press
Guilford, Connecticut
Helena, Montana
An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield
Lyons Press is an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield Distributed by NATIONAL
BOOK NETWORK
Copyright © 2014 by Neal Adams All rights reserved. No part of this book may
be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information
storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing
from the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Information available Library of
Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Adams, Neal.
Healthy vision : prevent and reverse eye disease through better nutrition / Neal
Adams, MD.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4930-0607-6 (alk. paper) 1. Eye--Diseases--Prevention--Popular
works. 2. Eye--Diseases--Nutritional aspects--Popular works. I. Title.
RE51.A33 2014
617.7’1--dc23
2014037143
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
The health information expressed in this book is not intended to be a substitute
for medical advice and is not intended as a medical manual. The information
should not be used for diagnosis or treatment, or as a substitute for professional
medical care. You are advised not to self-diagnose and to not skip seeing your
doctor. You are advised to seek medical care from a health care professional.
Dedicated to my wife and children
CONTENTS
Introduction: Our Eyes See It All
Part I: How to Maintain and Restore Your Vision
Chapter 1: The Power of Oxygen
Chapter 2: Fighting Inflammation
Chapter 3: Optimizing Blood Flow and Blood Vessels
Chapter 4: Feeding Your Genes and DNA Throughout Your Life
Part II: Treating Eye Conditions
Chapter 5: Macular Degeneration: When the Cleaners Stop Sweeping
Chapter 6: Retinitis Pigmentosa: A Gene That Steals Sight
Chapter 7: Diabetes and Your Vision: A Focus on Diabetic Retinopathy and
Macular Edema
Chapter 8: Glaucoma: Silent Sufferers
Chapter 9: Cataracts: Foggy Vision
Chapter 10: Dry Eye: No More Tears
Part III: Eating for Healing
Chapter 11: A Visionary Palate
Conclusion: Building the Right Team
Appendix: Prescription for Your Plate
Selected Bibliography
About the Author
INTRODUCTION: OUR EYES SEE IT ALL
In good health, vision is our most important sense. Over one-third of our brain
function serves our vision. So where would we be without sight? For most, our
lives would be vastly different if we woke up tomorrow without our vision—a
scary proposition very few will have to face. As an ophthalmologist (a physician
who specializes in the anatomy, physiology, and diseases of the eye, and
performs surgery on it), what I do see every day is that most of us will encounter
—at some point in our lives—the general decline of our eyesight.
Perhaps you picked up this book because you’ve noticed a change in, or have
developed problems with, your vision—or have a friend or family member who
has. Perhaps you had to buy reading glasses for the first time, or recently
realized that you can’t read signs from the same distance as well as you used to.
Or perhaps it’s more serious—you’ve been recently diagnosed with cataracts,
dry eye, macular degeneration, or glaucoma and aren’t sure how to treat it or
prevent its progress.
Regardless of why you’ve decided to improve your vision, this book can help
you. As an ophthalmologist my passion is reading and studying the latest
medical science about eye health, so I decided to make those results known and
accessible to you. In this book, I’ll translate the most groundbreaking clinical
studies over the past few years into easy-to-implement advice that will help you
maintain or perhaps even restore your vision by what you eat. Young or old—
nearsighted, farsighted, or 20/20—we can all take action to help the health of our
eyes.
I can gauge a patient’s overall health just by looking in his or her eyes. Some
say the eye is a window to the soul—as a doctor, I know the eye is a window to
the body. That’s because your eyes often show how well your body is overall.
The back of the eye can be the first place we as doctors see signs of many
disorders such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and even life-threatening cancer,
before they appear anywhere else in the body.
In fact, the earliest sign that a diabetic is developing heart disease is found by
looking at blood vessels in the eye—no other blood test or scan can detect it
sooner. So when I examine a patient, I can often tell who’s been taking better
care of his or her health. Getting the right nutrition—a healthy diet full of fruits,
vegetables, fish, and whole grains—to feed your body (and your eyes) is an
vegetables, fish, and whole grains—to feed your body (and your eyes) is an
essential component of good health, because we truly are what we eat.
Most of what we’ll talk about in this book wasn’t learned in medical school,
but rather from years spent practicing as an ophthalmologist and reading the
latest research. Unfortunately, much of the scientific medical research—some of
which is promoted in the press or to the public—is convoluted and/or misleading
if not carefully understood. But embedded inside the data are clear links between
eye health and nutrition, and it is this exciting avenue to health that I intend to
share with you in this book.
These studies are surprisingly varied. For instance, we can learn about a link
between nutrition and eye health from astronauts in outer space. In the past
fifteen years, nearly forty astronauts have lived on the International Space Center
for months at a time, during which time nearly 20 percent of them developed a
problem with their eyes. Scientists later discovered that the astronauts who
developed eye conditions had lower levels of the nutrient folate (we’ll talk more
about folate in chapter 4) in their bodies even though all the astronauts ate the
same food (and even the same amount of that food).
It turns out the astronauts who developed eye problems had a genetically
altered weak pathway in their digestive tract that caused them to absorb less folic
acid and vitamin B12 (which help eye function) than their colleagues. Whereas
this weak pathway may not often cause disease in regular life on the planet
Earth, in outer space, it did. Though most of us aren’t headed to space any time
soon, it does show that changing your environment—and what you eat—can
affect and even damage your eye health. And perhaps this weak pathway does
affect the health of our earthbound selves in subtle ways. This book will help
you identify nutritional weak links so that you can optimize the health of your
eyes.
In my clinic, although I commonly get questions about whether carrots are
actually good for your eyes (the answer is yes), over the years I’ve realized that
many people don’t know much more about nutrition than very basic information,
let alone how specific nutrients readily found in our food can help eye health.
And though I felt I was helping the patients in my office learn this information, I
wanted to relay my message to every person in America concerned about their
ability to see. (Which, frankly, is a lot more people than could fit in my office.)
So I wrote this book. I suspect if you’ve picked it up, you have already
decided that you want to improve or protect your vision and eye health.
Wonderful! I’m really glad for you! It’s my goal to help you see your best for
the rest of your life.
First, it’s important to explain the inner workings of the eye before diving
into the details of what damages and heals your vision. Let’s learn a bit about
into the details of what damages and heals your vision. Let’s learn a bit about
how your eye works when all is well—before trying to fix it. After all, if you
were going to fix a problem on your computer, you’d have to know how the
operating system runs first—and the same applies for your body.
HOW THE EYE WORKS
The eye has many, many parts and processes, but for the purposes of this book
it’s only truly necessary to know the eye’s major components, the ones that
control your vision and are most affected by aging, environmental damage, and
disease. These include the cornea, the pupil, the iris, the lens, the retina, and the
optic nerve.
What you see when you look at your eyes in the mirror are the eyelids, the
whites of your eyes, and (in the middle) the iris, pupil, and cornea. The pupil and
iris make up what most people commonly call the eye; the pupil is the dark