Excellent article that talks about some of the best options to care for your eyes.
Jon talks about natural alternatives to cataract surgery that might work for some – definitely worth trying. Whole food Vitamin C (not just the isolate – or ascorbic acid, which is NOT vitamin C), along with several other nutrients found in whole foods can benefit your overall eye health and help to prevent cataracts.
Cataracts affect about 24 million people in the US and are very common in older people. By age 80, more than half of all Americans either have a cataract or have had cataract surgery.1 Worldwide, cataracts are the leading cause of blindness,2 accounting for about 48% of all cases–with about 18 million people blind in both eyes as a result.3
Essentially, there are:
- Multiple triggers for cataracts
- Two primary pathways
- But when all is said and done, only one cause.
Cataracts occur when there is a buildup of protein in the lens that makes it cloudy. The lens itself is primarily made up of water and proteins. The proteins in the lens are arranged in a perfect physiochemical balance, ensuring that the lens is perfectly transparent. Once a cataract starts, however, it progresses as new lens cells form on the outside of the lens, compacting all the older cells into the center of the lens resulting in the cataract getting progressively denser and more opaque. These are known as nuclear cataracts. (Two variations are cortical cataracts, which are wedge-shaped and form around the edges of the nucleus, and posterior capsular cataracts, which form faster than the other two types and affect the back of the lens.) In any case, that’s the sole cause of all cataracts: damage to the proteins in the cells of the lens. But as I mentioned earlier, there are multiple triggers that can spark the initial seed, without which there is no cataract to progress. These triggers include:
- Age-related cataracts. These are the most common type of cataract and develop as a result of aging, as the name suggests–or perhaps more accurately, as a result of a continual assault on the cells of the eyes until the cumulative damage over the years ultimately triggers the seed of a cataract to form.
- Genetic factors may play a role in age-related cataracts as cataracts tend to run in families.4
- Congenital cataracts in which babies are sometimes born with cataracts as a result of an infection, injury, or poor development before they were born. Or they may develop during childhood.
- Secondary cataracts. These develop as a result of other medical conditions, like diabetes or glaucoma or exposure to toxic substances or certain drugs (such as corticosteroids and diuretics). Other factors that can increase a person’s risk of developing cataracts include:
- Cigarette smoke.
- Air pollution.
- Heavy alcohol consumption.
- Exposure to radiation when a person undergoes radiation treatment for cancer has been shown to trigger cataracts.
- Ultraviolet radiation from excessive exposure to unfiltered sunlight.
- Traumatic cataracts develop after an injury to the eye, but it can take several years for this to happen.
But that leaves a gap in our understanding of cataracts. We have identified the actual cause of cataracts (damage to protein) and have listed a number of triggers, but what we haven’t done is actually connect the dots and explain the pathways that the triggers use to damage protein and thus form the seed of a cataract. Or to put it another way, what do aging, trauma, diabetes, and drinking alcohol share in common that can ultimately lead to cataracts. And the answer is that they all head down one of two pathways: free radical damage and/or glycation.
