Take Good Care Of Your Eyes With Ocular Nutrition

Everyday we hear about what we should and should not eat to keep ourselves healthy and in shape, but too often we forget about taking care of our eyes. Don’t forget ocular nutrition is important too!

Your vision needs support as well. By the age of 30 your eyes and your vision has already began to slowly deteriorate. By the age of 45 your eyes cannot focus as well and that’s why so many people need bifocals, and by the age of 65 the muscles around the eye can no longer move so focusing becomes even more difficult.

There are many things that contribute to the deterioration of the eyes. Smoking, temperatures that are below freezing, fumes, wind, dirt and dust, and injury. Long hours at a computer screen have also been shown to have negative effects on the health of the eyes.

One of the best ways to slow down the aging process in the eyes and keep them healthy overall is to support them with ocular nutrition. There are certain foods that have been proven to improve eye health.

Eat your greens! Foods such as kale and spinach are high in carotenoids which reduce your risk of developing macular degeneration an eye disease associated with age. The older you get the more important it is to get high doses of green vegetables.

Green vegetables and corn both have been shown to also reduce the development of cataracts. That’s because they contain zeaxanthin and lutein as well as cartenoids. Foods high in these three nutrients include corn, green peas, kale, romaine lettuce, broccoli, spinach, zucchini and turnip greens.

Eating lots of greens means you are less likely to develop cataracts or adult macular degeneration. Inevitably we will all eventually develop these conditions but a good diet can extend the time frame from 5 to 15 years.

Antioxidants are important to keeping the eye lenses healthy. Oxidative stress can damage the blood supply to the eye causing cataracts or macular degeneration. So it’s important to eat fruits and vegetables that are high in antioxidants. Blueberries, bilberries, and apricots are among the highest antioxidants found in fruit.

Apricots are also high in carotene and lycopene that promote overall good vision. And blueberries have shown to reduce eye fatigue so if you work on the computer a lot or do tasks that result in eye fatigue be sure to eat plenty of blueberries.

15 mg of beta carotene, 400 IU of vitamin e, 80 mg of zinc, and Vitamin C taken on a daily basis has shown a 25% in blindness caused by macular degeneration. So it’s important to take a good multi vitamin daily.

During WWII Bilberries were used by British pilots to improve their night vision. Bilberries are a form of blueberries that grow wild on short bushes. Studies have shown that bilberries will infact increase your night vision.

Our eyes are one of our most important senses. Think about it for a minute. How would your life change if suddenly you lost your sight? It’s a pretty scary idea isn’t it? Yet we are all guilty of forgetting to ensure that our eyes are kept healthy by the foods we eat.

So why not start today and begin to take good care of your eyes with ocular nutrition. They will reward you with many more years of sight to enjoy the world around you!

Deon Melchior is the Editor and Publisher of Article Click. For more FREE articles for your ezine and websites visit ArticleClick.com. Article Click is a free content article directory. This means that as a publisher you may reprint the articles that are included in our site, as long as the article is unedited and the author box is included with it's live hyperlinks.