Now as an Optometrist, one of the common questions that I get asked all the time
is what should I be eating to keep my eyes healthy. There's good science to suggest that
the nutrition that we take in plays an important part in keeping
our eyes healthy but it's particularly important to keep the macular nice
and healthy because this is responsible for the detailed vision that we rely on
day to day and this really only give you six nutritional tips designed to help
you keep your eyes as healthy as possible for as long as possible
Hi I'm Martin Oguzie and this is Martin's eye tips, thank you for joining me if
If you're new here please consider subscribing to the channel, we're all
about helping you see better see more comfortably and be less anxious about
your eyes and we bring you eye care tips, how-to videos and product reviews
designed to help you do that. Today's video is gonna be all about nutrition so
let's get started with six key points that you need to take into account when
you start to eat for your eyes. So the first point is to make sure that you've
got enough of the macula carotenoids in your diet so there are three macula
carotenoids which are also referred to sometimes as the macular pigment and
they are lutein, zeaxanthin and meso-zeaxanthin. Now much of the time you'll
hear people referring to lutein and zeaxanthin and getting these in your
diet and that's mainly because those two are not produced by the eye and we have
to get 100% from our diet whereas it appears that meso-zeaxanthin can be
made in the eye are usually made from converting lutein to meso-zeaxanthin
Now a key benefit of having these macular carotenoids in
your diet is that they help to bolster and to increase the density of the
pigmentation that you have in the macular region of the back of the eye
and this healthy level of macular pigment density, as we refer to it
appears to be important in protecting you from age-related wear and tear and
conditions like macular degeneration. So what types of food should you be eating
to get plenty of lutein and zeaxanthin on a day-to-day basis? So as a general
guide it's predominantly plants that you can get lutein and zeaxanthin from and
the more yellow orange in color that they are the better really.
So lutein is found particularly in yellow peppers, mango, bilberries and green leafy
vegetables such as kale, spinach, chard and broccoli. Zeaxanthin on the other
hand, can be found in orange sweet potatoes, broccoli, corn, lettuce (and
that's not including the iceberg lettuce), spinach, tangerines, orange and also for
non-vegetarians you can also consider egg yolk. So my second point is to
consume plenty of antioxidant vitamins and the key antioxidant vitamins to
consider are vitamin C and vitamin E and many people are aware of the health
benefits of antioxidants but not many people know that vitamins such as
vitamin C and vitamin E are a key antioxidant and have antioxidative
properties as well. So what do antioxidants do? Well antioxidants have the
benefit of being able to neutralize potentially harmful reactions called
oxidative reactions throughout the whole body and this brings stability to their
region and prevents a potentially harmful damage that can happen to cells
and DNA which can lead to a condition such as cancers, inflammation
etc... So they do have a general health benefits but, in the eye vitamin C and
vitamin E and particularly are recommended for the benefit that they
can bring particularly also in combination with other nutritional
elements as well. So what foods should you be consuming to get plenty of
vitamin C and vitamin E? Foods rich in vitamin C included; guava, sweet red
peppers, tomato juice, orange juice, sweet green peppers,
strawberries, papaya, tomatoes and lemon. Vitamin E rich foods include wheat germ
oil, sunflower seeds, hazelnuts and hazelnut oil, sunflower oil, avocados and
sweet red peppers. And my third point is to make sure you've got another key
vitamin in your diet; vitamin A and most people won't be aware of vitamin A by
its other name which is retinol. Retinol is an important vitamin for the health
of the eye because it's used in the retina area
where enzymes break retinol down and convert it to retinal. And then retinal
is essential for the visual cycle in the eye. Visual cycle is basically the
process where your eye it converts the light energy that comes into the eye and
converts into chemical energy and then turns that into electrical energy, which is
sent down to your brain for you to be able to see. And then in the visual cycle
the chemical reaction that's just occurred has to refresh itself so
that it can repeat that cycle over and over again
so without the presence of a retinol (vitamin A) that process can't happen. So vitamin A
is essential and it's necessary for that process. Now vitamin A essentially exists
in two forms first of all we have vitamin A which is ready to be used by
our eyes and converted to retinol and this is usually found in animal sources
of vitamin A. Then the other type of vitamin A usually comes from your body
converting beta-carotene into vitamin A before it's able then to use it in the
retina. Foods that contain beta-carotene such as carrots can be converted to
vitamin A so they are also a source of vitamin A and can help in the visual
cycle, although it's more of a roundabout process than having
direct animal sources of vitamin A which your retina can use straight away. So
let's have a look at foods that are great sources of vitamin A. So foods that
contain animal sources of vitamin A include cheese, eggs, oily fish, fortified
low fat spreads, milk and yogurt and also liver. The main sources of beta-carotene
from plants are the yellow red and green leafy vegetables such as spinach, carrots,
sweet potato and red peppers. Yellow fruits such as mangoes, papaya and also
apricots. The fourth point is to make sure you're getting your omega-3. Now
many people have heard about the benefits of omega-3 and some of those
benefits extend also to the eye and in particular your soft membranes such as a
conjunctiva, but also it has benefits in helping with
things like dry eyes as well as in combination with other vitamins it may
benefit you in other ways such as having a protective mechanism against things
like macular degeneration as well. Here are the foods to consider in order to
include omega-3 in your diet. So for non-vegetarians the best sources include
salmon, mackerel, sardines and cod liver oil. For vegans and vegetarians
seeds tend to be best options and they include flaxseed and flax seed oils and
walnuts. For number 5, I'm recommending that you think about magnesium in your
diet. Now research indicates that many of us may be getting way less
magnesium than is recommended on a daily basis and this is significant
because magnesium has a wide range of benefits to our whole body and is
important for something like about 300 odd interactions in the human body. As
far as the eye's concerned magnesium can have an impact on muscles and muscle
relaxation, so if you're somebody for example who experiences quite a lot of
eyelid twitches in a condition that we call Myokymia or even
blepharospasm then this could be an indication that your magnesium levels
could be low. You can get your magnesium from supplementation if you
want to and by buying them over-the-counter or even from Amazon. I'd
recommend the magnesium citrate and I'll leave a link in the description if you
want to check that out but you can of course get that in your diet as well and
here are some of the foods that are rich in magnesium that you can also include.
So vegetables are rich in magnesium include spinach, potato with their skin
on, okra, bran cereals, wheat germ (toasted), beans and nuts are also great as well such as
black-eyed peas, soy nuts, cook beans, tofu, almonds, cashew nuts, flaxseeds and peanuts.
So a final point is less about the food itself but how we prepare it. So prepare
your food right and eat fresh as much as possible. So when it comes to the food
that we eat and how we prepare our food the reality is that
many of us are overcooking our food and also preparing our food way too much. So
it's important to consider how we cook our food because this has a real bearing
on whether we're getting the full nutritional value of the food that we
are expecting. You could spend a lifetime eating all this kind of
great food but because of how the food's been cooked you may not be getting
the benefit that you think you're getting so when it comes to your fruit
and veg then if you have to cook it then it's best to put the food in at the end
of the cycle rather than at the beginning and leaving them all the way
through. A good test is to just make sure that your food still maintains the
crispness of fresh food and the color hasn't deteriorated and gone out of the
food as much as possible. With fruit and veg the color is a good indication
of how much of the goodness is retained in it. One of the best ways
to cook fruit and veg if you have to cook it is to consider steaming it and
making sure that it goes in for the proper amount of time and doesn't stay
any longer than is necessary. Hopefully you found this video helpful. My question
for you today is "have you found it difficult in the past to eat healthy for
your eyes or eating healthy generally?" Let me know in the comment section below
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next video I, look forward to seeing you then. Take care!