Does the fate of your eyes depend on what you eat?

If you or someone you love is at risk for age-related macular degeneration, here’s an eye-opener!

Researchers at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) have just discovered a way of eating that may be able to prevent — even reverse — this vision-stealer.

That’s some pretty amazing news, since there’s no drug or procedure that can cure macular degeneration. In fact, it’s the most common cause of blindness there is.

And what these scientists have confirmed could be a way to keep your eyes healthy and your vision sharp well into your golden years.

Seeing is believing
Macular degeneration can turn your world into a hazy blur. It destroys your central (or “straight ahead”) vision, while leaving your peripheral (or “side”) vision intact.

The most common form is called the “dry” type, where the eye’s macula thins out, and small pieces of protein start to grown on the retina. Not only is there no cure, but there’s not even a treatment for it.

For the less common and more serious “wet” type, abnormal blood vessels start to grow underneath the retina that can leak and damage the macula. That can steal your vision even faster than the dry kind can. Treatments such as drug injections into the eye, laser therapy, and even surgery are used to try and restore some degree of vision.

But in the case of both forms of this blinding eye disease, it looks like that ounce of prevention is what may turn out to be the “pound” of cure. Because as a new study has confirmed, your diet can play a remarkable role in keeping your vision clear and focused as you age.

NAS researchers wanted to see what effect eating foods low on the glycemic index would have on mice. (This has also been investigated in people, too, which I’ll tell you about in a minute).

As you’ve already read right here in eAlert, the glycemic index is basically a measurement of how much any particular food will raise your blood sugar. If you already struggle with high blood sugar, you need to stay away from foods that score pretty high on the index, like sweets, white bread, bagels, pasta, and potatoes.

It turns out that mice are no different — and researchers were able to trigger AMD-like eye damage in mice, just by feeding them high-glycemic foods!

However, what was particularly striking was that when they switched their high-glycemic diet with a low-glycemic one midway through the study, the retinal damage either stopped or reversed.

The researchers summarized their findings by saying that making those dietary changes, no matter what your age, “can protect against development of AMD.”

As I said, this isn’t the first time a low-glycemic diet has been found to protect the eyes.

Over 10 years ago, researchers from a number of prestigious institutions around the U.S., including Tufts University and the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center, published the results of testing that theory on close to 4,000 people from 55 to 80 years of age who were at the beginning stages of AMD.

After following this group for eight years, they concluded that anyone at risk can help protect their vision by limiting the amount of refined carbs they consume — the same exact thing the NAS researchers found in their mice.

Of course, not all carbs are taboo. Low-glycemic scoring foods include ones such as 100 percent stone-ground whole-wheat bread, steel-cut or rolled oats, most fruits, and non-starchy veggies. Here’s the basic rule of thumb: The less refined or processed a food is, the lower it will score.

And how you cook it matters, too. Baked potatoes, for example, score lower than mashed.

But probably the best part of lowering the glycemic index of your diet is you’ll be eating to benefit not only your eyes… but also every other part of your body as well!

“An eye to health: Diet and age-related macular degeneration” William C. Ou, BS, Charles C. Wykoff, MD, PhD, June 27, 2017, Medscape, medscape.com