Eggs for your Eyes?
Eggs for your Eyes?
I have a friend named Barb who’s very health conscious. She exercises every day and avoids junk food. Barb’s not a vegetarian, but she eats plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, and she hasn’t smoked a cigarette in more than 20 years. But when offered a plate of eggs, Barb practically recoils in horror. Why? The cholesterol, of course.
Unfortunately, Barb is still under the spell of the anti-egg mania that still lingers from the 1990s – the heyday of the cholesterol boogeyman. Back then, mainstream nutritionists treated eggs like some kind of poison. Eggs, they told us, would raise our killer cholesterol.
Two recent studies easily refute that ridiculous warning.
As reported in NetDoctor, study number one tested two levels of egg intake, versus zero egg intake, in a cohort of 24 women. Cholesterol levels rose in the zero intake group. Meanwhile, lutein and zeaxanthin levels increased in both of the egg groups, but cholesterol levels did not.
As I’ve noted in previous e-Alerts, lutein and zeaxanthin are carotenoid antioxidants necessary for general vision health and for lowering the risk of age-related macular degeneration.
In the second study, researchers asked 33 subjects over the age of 60 to eat one egg each day for five weeks. Cholesterol levels didn’t budge, but blood samples showed that lutein levels increased by more than 25 percent, and zeaxanthin levels increased by nearly 40 percent.
Sources:
“One Egg Per Day Boosts Eye Health” NetDoctor, 9/22/06, news.netdoctor.co.uk
