Lifestyle Choices

Many eye problems, from poor vision and eye watering or itching to premature wrinkles and crow’s-feet, can be eliminated and often prevented by improving general nutrition. Japanese expert on eye nutrition Jin Otsuka, professor of ophthalmology at Tokyo University, believes that eating refined sugar is one of the worst things you can do if you want to preserve your vision. He has shown in animal experiments that giving sugar in large quantities will make an animal myopic. This is

probably because sugar tends to rob the body of other nutrients essential for the health of the eye and for the nerves which supply it.

Another ophthalmic nutritionist, Stanley Evans, author of Nutrition, Eye Health and Disease, claims that much undernutrition that causes eye problems remains undetected, simply because requirements of specific nutrients can vary tremendously from one person to another as a result of genetic differences. Also, there is the fact that your need for various nutrients increases if you are under stress, drink alcohol, smoke, or take drugs. If you have an eye problem or if you find the skin around your eyes sagging or wrinkling rapidly, you might well be someone who needs more of the vitamins particularly important for eyes.

Vitamin A

The ancient Egyptians had no idea that liver is one of our richest sources of vitamin A, but they did know that eating it often improves poor eyesight. Vitamin A is responsible for good vision in poor light. This is why doctors gave extra amounts of the nutrient to pilots and paratroopers during World War II. But vitamin A also plays an important part in ensuring that your eyes‘ movements remain normal and in protecting the youthful appearance of the skin around your eyes.

Vitamin B Complex

The B-complex vitamins ensure the health of the eyes‘ nerve pathways and the myelin sheath that surrounds them. As always, the B vitamins all work together and have to be taken together. If you are not getting enough B₁, B2, pantothenic acid, B6, and vitamin E to meet your own needs, you risk gradual destruction of the myelin sheath, leading to visual disturbances and the faulty replaying of information to the brain.

Supplements of vitamin B2 have proved useful in eliminating eye watering and the commonly felt sensation of having sand under the lids, as well as in improving one’s ability to adjust to sudden light changes. A deficiency of B12 or a lack of folic acid can lead to dim vision, and the entire B complex is important in the preservation of youthful-looking skin around the eyes.

Vitamin C

Vitamin C is important to preserve the strength of the capillaries that feed the eye tissue. It also helps protect collagen fibers in the skin from degeneration and, therefore, helps to avoid wrinkles. If you find the area around your eyes wrinkling, you might consider increasing your daily intake of vitamin C to between six and eight grams a day. Smoking is one of the worst things you can do if you don’t want the area around your eyes to wrinkle, since it both robs your system of vitamin C and also tends to make you squint.

Vitamin E

Vitamin E has proved useful in the treatment of a number of inflammatory eye conditions.

Just how much of these nutrients you need for eye health depends on your own, inherited metabolism. But they play such an important part in eye health and beauty that it seems strange that they are so often ignored.

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