Sharp Vision - 60 Tabs

eye health

The eye is a very important sensory organ, which is shown by the fact that a large area of our brain is committed to taking in and understanding visual information. Up to 70% of all of the sensory receptors in the body are in the eyes. Problems with the eyes become more common as we age.

How can we support eye health, throughout our lifetime, so that our vision remains clear and focused?

The eye is a small sphere with a diameter of about 1 inch. Only one sixth of the eye is visible, the rest is protected in the orbital socket. There are many accessory structures of the eye including the eyebrows, eyelids, conjunctiva, lacrimal apparatus and eye muscles. Only a small part of the eye is dedicated to photoreception. This area is on the posterior wall on the inside the eyeball and is called the retina. It contains rods, for dim light and peripheral vision, and cones, for bright light and colour vision. The lens is situated at the front of the eyeball and its job is to focus light on the retina. Glasses are used to help focus light through the lens when the accommodation of the lens is inadequate or overcompensating. As we age, the muscles that move the lens decrease functioning making the use of glasses or contacts more common among older individuals.

There two main causes of degenerative eye conditions:
-Free radical damage
-Decreased blood flow to the eye

Free radicals are unstable molecules that in their bid to become more stable must bump into healthy cells and cause damage. This can cause cell death, alterations in genetic material and autoimmune reactions to damaged cells. Food, water and ultraviolet radiation from the sun are the major contributors of free radicals that build up in the eye.

The eyes reflect the overall health of the body. The vessels on the back of the eyeball are very small and fragile. Changes in them are often the first sign of cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension and atherosclerosis. These conditions lead to decreased blood flow to the retina. Lack of oxygen and an accumulation of waste products eventually compromises vision.

Poor diet, environmental toxins, medications and stress all decrease the body's ability to neutralize free radicals and maintain healthy vessels. This can result in eye degeneration, occurring in the following conditions:

Macular Degeneration
The best time to start taking care of your eyes is before a problem even starts. While the progressive loss of vision from the degeneration of the macula does not usually appear until after age forty, the damage to the eye actually begins long before. It begins slowly as damage to individual cells, which after time affects tissues on a larger scale, ultimately resulting in the advanced vision impairment characteristic of this disorder.

The earlier you begin intervening against this damage with antioxidants, the better.

Macular degeneration is the leading cause of visual loss in North America. It is caused by free radical damage to the macula, the area of the retina responsible for central vision. Blurring in the centre of the visual field eventually makes detail work and reading impossible. The periphery of the visual field remains unaltered. Thus a kind of reverse tunnel vision results.

Macular degeneration is caused by free radical damage and tends to occur as we age; hence it is often called "age-related macular degeneration" or AMD. Free radicals are unstable molecules that in their bid to become more stable must bump into healthy cells and cause damage. Unhealthy food, poor quality water, toxins, and ultraviolet radiation from the sun are the major contributors of free radicals that build up in the eye. Other contributors to macular degeneration are hypertension and arteriosclerosis, both of which can restrict blood flow to the macula.