MH FEATURE
Doctor My Eyes
Stop ignoring your orbs and start giving them the protection they're crying out for
By Erin Hobday
Lucky for you, a lot has changed in eye care over the past 82 years. For one thing, iridectomies have fallen out of favor. But even though lasers have replaced leeches, more than 100,000 people still suffer vision loss or go blind every year.
So what gives? "I think we tend to view chronic conditions like cancer and heart disease as more important because they can kill us," says Gerald McGwin, PhD, a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Alabama school of medicine. "Nobody dies from cataracts or glaucoma—they're something you die with. Yet, if you talk about maintaining quality of life, these are the types of conditions more people should be more concerned about."
In other words, we each have a big blind spot that could beget a real one if we're not careful. So buy some eye insurance, like the easy-to-implement kind that follows, and no matter how gray you get, you'll always look sharp.
CATARACTS
Picture a car windshield that's just begun to fog up. Now imagine trying to peer through that windshield while slightly drunk. (We said imagine.) This is what it's like to look at life through cataracts. Simply put, having a cataract means that the lens of your eye has become clouded. And while slight clouding is part of the normal wear and tear that comes with age, in the case of a cataract, the haze is so severe that your vision becomes blurry and you begin to see double. When the condition's left untreated, the windshield completely fogs up, and you go blind.
Drop and give us 10. Pounds, not pushups. A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reveals that men with high waist-to-hip ratios and body-mass indexes (BMI) are at a greater risk of developing cataracts than are slimmer guys. "Being overweight and having high visceral fat may cause cataracts because [the weight problems] lead to glucose intolerance and insulin resistance," says Debra Schaumberg, ScD, OD, the lead study author. Specifically, sky-high blood-sugar levels can strain and damage the delicate mitochondria in your lenses, making them more prone to develop cataracts.
Wear a welder's mask. Or a more stylish sunglass equivalent. Leaving your eyes unguarded allows UV radiation from the sun to damage key crystalline proteins that filter and project light onto the retinas. Eventually, these proteins take such a beating that they turn opaque, forming a cataract. "Wearing eye protection slows the rate of cataract development by 10 years or more," says Elliott H. Myrowitz, OD, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins Refractive Surgery Center. What's adequate eye protection? Glasses that either block "100 percent of all UV light" or offer "UV absorption up to 400 nanometers." (A pair that blocks "99 percent of all UV light" is okay, but why not spring for the extra 1 percent?) Wear sunglasses without this level of UV screening and you'll do more harm than good, since the tinting will cause your pupils to dilate and allow in more damaging UV radiation.
Sip a cabernet. Red wine and beer both contain flavonoids and polyphenols that offer antioxidant protection from the free radicals that can cause cataracts. In a University of Western Ontario study, researchers served people different amounts of red wine, beer, and stout, then measured their antioxidant blood levels. Their finding: Consuming one drink daily may reduce the risk of cataracts by 50 percent, regardless of the libation. "Even though red wine contains a lot more flavonoids, it didn't produce any more antioxidants in the blood than did the stout or beer," says John Trevithick, PhD, the study author. But while you can pick your poison, you shouldn't overdo it; the study showed that having three or more drinks daily was related to an increase of up to 40 percent in the risk of cataracts. When your body metabolizes alcohol, it produces free radicals, which is why drinking too much booze undoes the antioxidant benefit.
» Health archive
Men's Health Philippines - August 2006 Issue
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Consuming one drink daily may reduce the risk of cataracts by 50 percent, regardless of the libation.
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