Diabetes and Macular Degeneration
As with most conditions in the body, we have a fundamental two-fold belief in taking care of it. The first is that if you give your body what it needs in nutrients, it will do a wonderful job of staying healthy. The second is to remove the toxins (especially from heavy metals) found in our modern society which cause many of the ailments that afflict us.
You probably already know that a poor diet can make you unhealthy and susceptible to sicknesses. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough eye doctors telling their patients that a poor diet can contribute to eye weakness and disease. Now we know that a high-sugar diet contributes to eye disease.
Unfortunately, too many people struggle to change their diet but are not having huge success. In addition, the massive epidemic of diabetes in Western cultures is causing another epidemic besides diabetes. This is the eye disease, macular degeneration. The reason is that the same diet that leads to diabetes also causes an excess of a normal molecule in your body. And this excess greatly fans inflammation.
(A Little Detail for Those Interested)
The molecule is the white blood cell cytokine interleukin-g (IL6). Cytokines are extraordinarily powerful chemicals. Some of them promote inflammation. Others prevent it. IL6 causes the inflammation that contributes to rheumatoid arthritis. If you have rheumatoid arthritis (or know someone who does) you know how inflamed such joints can get. But IL6 contributes to eye disease as well. Here’s how it works:
Angiotensin 2 is a hormone. When your glucose levels are high, this hormone accumulates in your eyes. Angiotensin 2 promotes inflammation, which is necessary for healing. But in the eye, angiotensin 2 can mix with IL6 to produce inflammation. And this inflammation can cause serious damage to your eyes.
With IL6, angiotensin 2 causes your white blood cells to stick to the inner lining cells (endothelial) of your retinal capillaries. This slows blood flow and creates more inflammation. But it also produces vascular growth factors that cause leakage and thickening of the vascular lining.
Retinal cells gradually starve for oxygen and nutrients. Your body then makes new blood vessels to save them, but these new vessels are weak. They can leak or break, which causes further visual loss.
Scientists proved this in a recent study. They injected angiotensin 2 into the eyes of mice lacking IL6. The damage was minimal. But when they gave the animals IL6, the damage progressed. So the conclusion was that IL6 contributes to diabetic retinal disease.
Help from Supplements
The good news is you can control IL6 and help your eyesight without drugs. A new study suggests that the right supplements can reduce your risk of eye disease without significant changes in your diet.1 Of course, the best way is to eat whole living colorful veggies, fruit, and spices (such as curry). But when it comes to your eyes, hold nothing back. We strongly recommend taking supplements along with a healthful diet. (We have included these nutrients in our Ultimate Foundation multivitamin as maintenance standard ingredients.)
One of the best things to do is to eat or take plenty of phytochemicals. These plant chemicals lower IL6 activity and reduce the inflammation it causes. The best bioflavonoid to do this with is epicatechin (EC) – related to EGCG that many have heard about. It naturally reduces production of IL6 and other major inflammatory interleukins. One of the better sources is green tea – which happens to be rich in EC and is included in our Ultimate Foundation.
Other flavonoids help too. These include the “C” bioflavonoids, curcumin, and quercetin – keys to lower inflammation in your eyes and elsewhere. We also include veggie and fruit extracts that are the equivalent of 3 helpings for those times when it is difficult to do so.
And, of course, we also include lycopene and lutein (which many sell separately) in our Ultimate Foundation. All this is not so much to promote our multivitamin (though we really think it is the ultimate), as to point out why we include so many nutrients in it.
1. The flavanol (−)-epicatechin prevents stroke damage through the Nrf2/HO1 pathway. Zahoor A Shah, Rung-chi Li, Abdullah S Ahmad, Thomas W Kensler, Masayuki Yamamoto, Shyam Biswal and Sylvain Doré. Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism 30, 1951-1961 (December 2010) | doi:10.1038/jcbfm.2010.53.