If you are eating the right foods that are good for your heart, then you are doing your eyes a great favour. Seriously, foods that help keep your heart healthy also prevent premature aging of eyes. The reason: both the heart and the eyes function on the same principle. Like your heart, your eyes are also vascular and have a network of blood vessels and capillaries that help them to function. These blood vessels and capillaries send nutrients and oxygen to the retina that helps your eyes stay healthy. Damages done to these blood vessels can hamper your vision. While there can be a number of health issues like diabetes, kidney disease, etc., that can affect your eyes, your diet to some extent also plays an important role. Here are seven reasons to visit an ophthalmologist today.
Here are some of the foods that you should eat less or in moderation for the sake of your eyes
Salad dressings: Eating salads for your eyes is a good practise, but drowning them in salad dressings is a bad idea. Most of these salad dressings are processed and high in trans fats. Adding dollops of it to your salads is going to rob the nutrients off the humble green vegetables packed with vitamin C that is good for eyes. These in turn would make the blood vessels constricted, making your eyes fatigued due to lack of oxygen and nutrients. Here are four ways to keep your eyes healthy as you age.
White coloured foods: Most of the white coloured foods like rice, maida, sugar are high in carbohydrates and in glycemic index. They break down into simple sugar or glucose and are absorbed by your body quite fast. But if there is an excess of glucose in your blood it can cause damage to your blood vessels and lead to fatty deposits and plaque in them. The same happens to the blood vessels in the eyes, leading to tissue damage and bad vision. Here are nine interesting things that your eyes reveal about your health.
Processed foods: Your favourite doughnuts, pastries, chips and pizzas are not just raising your blood sugar level and damaging your heart, but your eyes too. They are high in fat which gets deposited under your skin and the blood vessels of your eyes too. Over a period of time, this makes the blood vessels in your eyes to deteriorate and lead to vision problem. Here are 10 horrible things junk food does to your body.
High sugar foods: You already know how diabetes affects your eyes and why it is necessary for you to keep your blood glucose level in check. Even if you don t have diabetes, eating foods that are high in sugar and carbs can lead to a spike in your blood sugar levels and that could be a reason for blurred vision or difficulty in reading. And if this happens often, then remember your eyes and your body both are at stake.
High sodium diets: While not enough studies are there to support the claim that excess salt in the blood can harm your eyes, but some experts feel that high levels of sodium in your diet can affect your lens and lead to cataract later in life. Also, excess salt intake can lead to spike in blood pressure and lead to narrowing of the arteries in the eyes, like it does to the heart.
However, if you are wondering what are the foods that you should eat, Dr. Divyagnan Sarvaiya, Specialist in Lasik, Refractive surgery and Cataract surgery from Eye Associates Mumbai (TEAM), lists out some important foods:
1. Spinach: The leafy green vegetable contains lutein and zeaxanthin, two important nutrients that help to prevent cell damage. Spinach may also delay of cataract development as well as age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the most common cause of blindness among the elderly, followed by cataracts.
2. Berries: These are high in vitamin C, which may reduce the risk of cataracts and macular degeneration. All types of berries are a rich source of antioxidants.
3. Sweet potatoes and yams: Bright orange coloured fruits and vegetables get their colour from beta carotene, a precursor of vitamin A which helps in good functioning of the retina. It is not uncommon in our country to come across children with Vitamin A deficiency. Vitamin A deficiency can lead to dryness Xerosis of the eyes and night blindness.
4. Fatty Fish: The omega-3 fatty acids that are found in oily fish, such as salmon, sardines, tuna and mackerel are good for eye retina. It provides structural support to the cell membranes that protect retinal function, visual development and possibly protecting against dry eye. Foods rich in Omega 3 fatty acids slow down macular degeneration. Fish is a good source of omega 3 for non-vegetarians and flax seeds for vegetarian.
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References
1. Carpentier S, Knaus M, Suh M. Associations between lutein, zeaxanthin, and age-related macular degeneration: an overview. Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr. 2009 Apr;49(4):313-26. doi: 10.1080/10408390802066979. Review. PubMed PMID: 19234943.
2. Negi, A., & Vernon, S. A. (2003). An overview of the eye in diabetes. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 96(6), 266-272.
