When your mother told you to eat your carrots, they were good for the eyes, she was right! Carrots contain lutein. It’s the yellow or orange pigment found in carrots, egg yolk and other vegetables. Lutein for eyes helps to prevent macular degeneration and cataracts. While the news that carrots are good for the eyes isn’t new, the reason why came from a study completed in 2001, AREDS, Age-Related Eye Disease Study.
lutein for eyes
The lutein, in addition to the other carotenoid zeaxanthin, help absorb blue light, one of the harmful spectrums of sun’s light, by forming a yellow pigment in the retina. According to the study published in the September 2007 issue of Archives of Ophthalmology, the ability of lutein and zeaxanthin to help filter the blue short-waved light from the causing damage makes lutein for the eyes one way you can help prevent macular degeneration.
A two-year study at the government’s Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Chicago completed in March, wanted to find whether lutein for eyes was all you needed to fight age related macular degeneration, ARMD. The study compared the effects of lutein taken alone or in combination with other carotenoids and antioxidants on subject that suffered from atrophic, or dry, macular degeneration.
The study divided the subjects into three groups. The first group took placebos. The second group took only lutein for eyes. The study administered a multi-vitamin with a higher level of lutein called Flora-GLO and additional minerals and antioxidants. While both the lutein only and vitamin with lutein group improved in their CSF, contrast sensitivity function, the vitamin enriched with lutein group demonstrated a higher level of improvement.
The study showed lutein for eyes is important. Even though the lutein only group improved their vision 36 percent and the lutein with vitamins improved 43 percent, the placebo group used as a baseline actually decreased in visual acuity.
There is even more to the benefits of lutein for eyes, lutein helps prevent clogging arteries. Besides benefitting the eyes, this is important for heart health too. The University of Southern California conducted a study and found that those that had high levels of lutein in their blood had less plaque in the carotid arteries, the arties in the neck. People with the lowest concentration of lutein in their blood at the start of the testing had increasing worse clogging of the arteries.
Lutein is in many fruits and vegetables. It’s easy to recognize the some vegetables and fruit containing lutein, because of their yellow or orange color, it is in dark, leafy vegetables like bok choy, kale or collard greens. Eating a diet of Asian stir-fry vegetables can supply you with adequate amounts of lutein.
The yellow coloring in the yolk of an egg also comes from lutein. In fact, a study shows that simply consuming one egg per day if you’re an older adult increases the levels of lutein in the blood without increasing the amount of fat in the blood or cholesterol concentration. By increasing the amount of yellow and orange vegetables, green leafy vegetables and the addition of one egg a day, you’ll get enough lutein for eyes to be healthy and reduce the risk of heart disease in addition to that.
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