Why We Get Eye Diseases

Why We Get Eye Diseases | 0 comments

Orthodox Eye Doctors have little or no training in nutrition and subsequently may tell you that there are no known causes of these conditions. We concur with a different group of Doctors who have found that it is contributed to significantly, or exacerbated by, malnutrition or nutritional deficiencies. Everyday we need the following to sustain vibrant life and health:

  • Proteins, fats, carbohydrates.
  • 13 or so Vitamins
  • 20-60 Minerals (the number depends which scientist you believe)
  • 12 or so Amino Acids
  • 10 or so Essential Fatty Acids
  • 6 or so Digestive Enzymes (from plants)
  • Oxygen
  • Pure Water
  • Probiotics (the healthy bacteria that should be in your intestines)

All of the listed factors need to be in place as they all work interactively or as co-factors to each other and any deficiency will result in a malfunction. For example, there are over 80 enzymes at work in your body that need zinc as a co-factor.

Only the uninformed would claim that these essential nutrients are in the average UK diet (even if your ageing digestive system could absorb them). Are you absorbing your nutrition? I will try to explain what may be going wrong with your eyes as simply as possible.

You need many specific nutrients to help counteract an essential part of your body’s energy creation called, free radicals. Free radicals are partly caused by sunlight acting upon our eyes, from cellular combustion when we create energy and oxidation from oxygen activities in our body. We should have two specific antioxidants in our eyes, Lutein (lu-teen) and Zeaxanthin (zee-a-zan-than). They help to counter this free radical activity. A substance called ATP; created by our cell to provide all of our energy for life and cellular cleaning and regeneration is a third major help. We can conclude therefore that it is necessary to have these nutrients in, abundance, in our eyes.

Why do we not have them? Let us look at the antioxidants Lutein and Zeaxanthin. These are found in abundance in dark leafy green vegetables. There are five reasons why you may be lacking these nutrients in the eye:

1. You simply do not eat enough of them every day. See the list of vegetables and their Lutein content.

2. As we get older we do not absorb food from our digestive system as well as we did when we were younger. This is mainly caused by lack of HCL (acid) in the stomach and a lack of digestive enzymes in the food. A study shows that the average 70 year old has only 20% of the beneficial enzymes available compared to a 20 year old. This is in the main caused by overeating enzymatically dead foods. There is an urgent need to increase enzyme intake, either by way of specific foods or supplements to help make up for this poor absorption, for example a small glass of Apple Cider vinegar just before each meal will stimulate some digestive juices.

3. Food intolerance to wheat or dairy is very common. This blocks the uptake of nutrients in the digestive tract. If you have this problem you will probably suffer digestive problems such as indigestion, acid reflux: and bowl diseases such as chrons, piles, colitis, IBS etc (This intolerance can also have a Genetic factor).

4. Eating too many grains, cereals and dairy products can replace or block proper nutrition. Wheat, grains and dairy are not appropriate nutrition for humans, I know many experts disagree but they may have got you into this mess in the first place (more later). The negative aspect of these foods is made much worse by factory processing).

5. The blood system can suffer clogging up as a result of the inappropriate diet in 4. Poor absorption and smoking (studies show smokers are 2.5 times more likely to get eye disease), causes the tiny veins in the eye to block thereby starving your eye of essential nutrients.

ATP is a nutrient produced in your own cells for all of your energy needs. Your body needs the equivalent of your own body weight of ATP, every day, to supply its energy needs. To produce this, your cells (as well as essential fatty acids) need to absorb Oxygen and Glucose in a ratio of 80% to 20% for the huge amount of ATP needed. This ATP is essential as discussed earlier not only for your body’s physical energy but for cell cleaning and cell regeneration needs. Unfortunate this process causes a damaging, combustive, free radical activity (oxidation). These free radicals damage the healthy cells as a result and can only be stopped by eating a good amount of fruit and vegetables with their powerful supply of antioxidants. The antioxidants Lutein and Zeaxanthin are the specific antioxidants that alleviate this free radical activity in the eyes and are therefore vital for the healthy ageing of your eyes and the rest of your body.

Premature aging and degeneration is believed by many researchers to be caused in part by an ultimate deficiency of ATP as well as free radicals. Too much glucose (from eating starchy foods, sugar, potatoes) and foods that easily covert to glucose, and a deficiency of oxygen from poor breathing, or insufficient aerobic exercising can upset this delicate 80% Oxygen:20% Glucose balance, thus causing an ATP deficiency. When this happens the cell reduces its output of ATP and produces a toxic substance called Lactic Acid.

The ATP deficiency will result in you suffering from an energy loss which may cause you not to exercise enough. To make matters worse you may also mistakenly take in more sugars and carbohydrates to try to give you more energy thereby poisoning your cells regeneration even more. This by a process of glucose damage to your cells is known as Glycation. Even worse is that glucose damage to proteins known as glycated proteins which produce 50 times more free radicals than non glycated proteins and research indicates Glycation may also be prime factor in brain diseases. A lack of antioxidants, ATP and the extra work caused by Glycation will inhibit your cells ability to regenerate thereby causing overall premature aging and DAMAGE TO YOUR EYES.

Anti-Aging Theory – There are good studies on animals in the laboratory which show that by greatly reducing calories (the biggest culprit is grains, cereal, potatoes and sugars) the life of animals on low calorie: vegetables, nuts and seeds, doubled, compared to those eating high calorie foods. The animals eating low calories foods did not suffer from age related degenerative diseases as suffered by the high calories group. Do you need any other motivation for cutting back on grains, cereals, sugars and potatoes? – See the Glycemic Index of food for balanced blood sugar foods.