You CAN protect your vision….Today's post:  Tuesday, 4-10-2018

Cataracts, glaucoma, and macular and retinal and optic nerve degeneration can cause you to lose your vision.

But these conditions are preventable and even more reversible than is widely known.

Besides the good health lifestyle we teach that prevents the things that reduce circulation or damage your nerves in general, there are several things that specifically prevent or help reverse such damage.

Cataracts are caused by damage to your lens in each of your eyes.  But if you add the things that reverse the damage to stopping the things that cause it, you can stop them from getting worse and can even get some reversal.

Cataracts are caused by damage to the lens in each of your eyes from ultraviolet rays. 

But going outside in sunny weather -- AND in mid-day overcast surprisingly -- provides enough high ultraviolet damage to do this damage.

Some of the nutrients and actions we list have prevented this from happening to Aborigines who are very exposed to this kind of ultraviolet daily.

So reducing your exposure to strong ultraviolet AND doing those things and some others can keep cataracts from getting worse or even reduce them.

1.  Instead of going outside for vitamin D3 which many people already do because of work but not all, take 10,000 iu of vitamin D3 and vitamin K2 for your D3 levels instead.

2.  When you do go outside particularly when driving, always wear shatter resistant dark glasses that both cut polarized glare AND filter out much of the excess ultraviolet.  Also wear a brimmed hat that allows you to block sun from above or just to the right or left of where you are looking.

Also note that at mid-day bright or even darker overcast still has the level of ultraviolet intensity high enough to cause damage. 

Your eyes compensate in a way this is NOT what it looks like; but a light meter used in physics or photography DOES show that high level of ultraviolet is there!

3.  Do all the things you can from the rest of this list.  But add them to taking astaxanthin because it’s a very small molecule antioxidant carotenoid in fish swimming in cold water such that it protects them in water too cold for larger carotenoids to work.

Your eye and its lens and your retina and the interface between it and your optic nerve all have very little direct access to blood flow or nutrients carried by your blood.

Astaxanthin both delivers the effects of a carotenoid and an antioxidant to all those places.  It also apparently helps deliver other eye protective nutrients that you eat or take also!

4.  Eating a wide variety of foods that contain alpha carotene and lutein and zeaxanthin and hundreds of other carotenoids is also known to protect all of your eye and the retina and its pigments as well! 

Taking larger amounts of lutein and zeaxanthin can overdo it.  But eating those organic vegetables daily delivers the correct amount and all those hundreds of co-factors.

Orange and yellow vegetables and dark green ones are high in carotenes.  (In broccoli and green leafy vegetables the dark green hides the carotenes.)

The two foods that work best for this are wild caught salmon cooked with the skin left on and eaten and organic avocados.  The omega 3 oils in the wild caught salmon and the monosaturated fat in the avocados help make their carotenes and the others you eat bioavailable.

5.  Taking bilberry extract and eating organic wild blueberries have been shown to protect and even revive the pigments in your retina.  This has been shown to prevent night blindness or even reverse it!

6.  Dr Al Sears sent an email today with some others that can also help:

The increase of the ability of your eye to drain excess fluid from taking astaxanthin may help prevent glaucoma which is caused by excess pressure building up in your eyeball.

Dr Sears also found research that *Ginkgo Biloba….boosts healthy blood circulation to your eyes and reduces inflammation. 

And studies show that supplementing with this herb improved the vision of people with glaucoma.”  Taking 60 mg a day will do this. 

Ginkgo may also boost protection of your optic nerve and enhance your eye’s blood circulation.

“L-Taurine. This amino acid strengthens the cells of your retina and protects your lenses from drying out.

It helps prevent age-related vision loss including retinal ganglion cell degeneration.”

I take 500 mg of taurine four times a day for heart protection.  This apparently may also help protect or restore your vision.

7.  Your eyes are also a direct connection to nerves in your brain.  This means that all the things that protect your brain and nerves protect your vision!

AND, the things that cause new nerves and nerve repair or help do so also protect your vision in this way.

Notably taking DHA and omega 3 oil and eating wild  caught fish plus NOT eating any hybrid wheat and otherwise eating in a low inflammation style that we have often posted on does this.

So does regular exercise that releases the nerve growing and repairing BDNF growth hormone.

In addition NOT taking statins and taking the ubiquinol form of CoQ10 and taking PQQ is known to help keep the mitochondria in your optic nerves healthy and may even help remove senescent ones and save damaged ones that can be saved. 

Statins do the reverse of these beneficial things.  Other more effective ways to protect your heart and lower inflammation that do not are dramatically more desirable and preferable!

Also taking bacopa and quercetin seems to enhance these effects

Lastly taking 2 a day of the sterol supplement from Bluebonnet that contains the beta sitosterol and stigmasterol that have been shown to restore the sense of smell by removing beta amyloid from the nasal nerves.

This may also work in the retina and optic nerves since they are similar and in a very close location.