Does keeping cataracts at bay start in your kitchen?
If you or someone you love has suffered from cataracts, you know they’re nothing to fool with.
It can feel like someone is slowly turning out the lights on your vision. Even simple tasks like reading a newspaper or driving a car can become impossible.
And before long, you could be scheduling a painful surgery to try to save your eyesight.
But a new study out of England proves that there’s a way to slash your cataract risk and keep your eyes healthy well into your golden years.
And all it takes is one simple diet change.
If you’re looking to put the brakes on your cataracts, loading up on some oranges, yellow bell peppers, kiwifruit or broccoli may be the answer.
All those foods have something very important in common. They’re off the charts in containing high amounts of vitamin C. And that may just be the answer to keeping your vision sharp in your 60s, 70s, and beyond.
A new study from King’s College London has turned up some remarkable facts about cataracts — and how to slow their development to a crawl.
First, this research, which looked at over 300 pairs of twins for over a decade, put out to pasture the idea that genetics are the most important factor in your cataract risk. Your genes appear to affect it to some degree, but the lion’s share of lowering — or raising — the risk seems to be all up to us.
And although cataracts are thought to go hand-in-hand with those 60 and older, they can actually start decades earlier.
Cataracts occur when the lens inside our eyes (which mostly consists of water and protein) becomes cloudy due to oxidation. But the fluid that bathes that lens is (or should be) high in vitamin C.
And that makes perfect sense, because as an antioxidant, vitamin C can help prevent that lens from oxidizing and clouding over.
So by increasing your intake of vitamin C, you’re also making the vitamin “available” to your eye fluid to keep the lens well protected.
In fact, those in the study who had higher intakes of vitamin C-rich foods were able to slash the risk of their cataracts progressing by an impressive 33 percent!
And unlike the typical cataract sufferer, the twins in the study who ate more foods high in C saw their lenses get “clearer” by the time the decade-long study concluded.
Their eyes were actually getting younger, instead of aging!
Now, the researchers said that they were looking at dietary sources of vitamin C, not supplements. But foods rich in the vitamin aren’t exactly hard to find. They include:
- Sweet peppers, in any color! A large yellow pepper, for example, will give you close to 600 times the recommended daily value of vitamin C
- Feel like going to the tropics? Then include some guava in your lunch. A cup of the fruit will provide over 600 percent of your daily requirement of C.
- Dark green leafy veggies are another good way to up your vitamin C. Vegetables like Swiss chard, spinach and kale will all add to your daily dose.
- Strawberries will soon be in season and are another good way to get more C in your diet. Even just one large berry will give you close to 20 percent of the daily requirement for vitamin C.
If there ever was an easy way to slow, and even prevent a common disease — one that’s the number one cause of blindness in the world — this is certainly it.
And it reminds us once again that Mother Nature’s bounty has Big Pharma’s products beat hands down!
Sources:
“Health buzz: Diets rich in vitamin C can protect against cataracts” Samantha Costa, March 24, 2016, U.S. News & World Report, health.usnews.com
