While vitamin and mineral supplements don’t take the place of a healthy diet, they do help in various ways. Calcium supplements help in maintaining healthy bones. Vitamins C and D help to support the immune system. What about vision? Are there supplements that can help maintain vision? Well, the results are mixed when it comes to supplements and vision.
Having enough of the following vitamins will help maintain eye health:
Vitamin A—this vitamin supports the health of photoreceptors, the cells in the retina that provide vision. It also maintains a healthy cornea, which is the clear surface of the eye.
Lutein and zeaxanthin—they are nutrients that slow the progression of age-related macular degeneration (AMD)
Vitamin D—in addition to helping the immune system, it also reduces the risk and severity of AMD and lowers the risk of glaucoma
What if you have or at risk of an eye disease, like macular degeneration? Taking an AREDS2 supplement can help. ARED2 stands for Age-Related Eye Disease Study 2. This was a clinical trial sponsored by the National Eye Institute (NIE) and the purpose was to learn about the risk factors of macular degeneration and cataracts, as well as to assess the effect of vitamins on the progression of these diseases. This kind of supplement is available without a prescription and it includes lutein and zeaxanthin, vitamins C and E, and the minerals zinc and copper. It will slow things down when the retinas are in the intermediate stage of the disease. A person with macular degeneration who takes ARED2 supplements, will have on average a 25 percent lower risk of the disease getting worse.
What else can be done to maintain eye health? At the risk of sounding like a parent, eating leafy green, orange or yellow vegetables can help. A study done at the University of Georgia demonstrated that these kinds of vegetables improves both eye and brain health, since they contain high levels of lutein and zeaxanthin.
This is especially important for athletes, since they need to keep their eyes both on where the ball is and where it is going. Object appear fuzzier the farther they are due to the effects of blue light. While most athletes do things like use eye black or wear blue blocker sunglasses, eating foods high in lutein and zeaxanthin can improve the eye’s ability to manage blue light exposure.
When a person eats vegetables with lutein and zeaxanthin, the compounds collect as yellow pigments in the retina and that acts as a filter to prevent blue light from entering the eye. This and other studies have shown that increasing the amount of lutein and zeaxanthin in a person’s diet decreases problems with glare, improves visual-motor reaction time and helps with problem solving and memory.
Before you start adding vegetables with lutein and zeaxanthin to your diet in the hopes of improving your game, know that the way everyone absorbs and utilizes lutein and zeaxanthin varies. So, it could take a while before an improvement is evident, if at all.
While the supplements can’t prevent eye diseases, some can help maintain a certain level of vision for those that have macular degeneration, some can reduce the risk of glaucoma and others may help improve with sport vision. So, when parents are urging their kids to eat their vegetables, they can tell the child that he or she should eat the veggies so that he or she will grow up to be big, strong and will see better.
Sources:
https://optometry.osu.edu/news/do-i-need-take-supplement-my-eye-health
https://www.nei.nih.gov/research/clinical-trials/age-related-eye-disease-studies-aredsareds2
https://news.uga.edu/colorful-foods-improve-athletes-vision