Macular Degeneration - The Link with Processed Foods
From: Dr. Jai Maharaj (usenet_at_mantra.com)
Date: 11/19/04
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Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 20:59:13 GMT
Macular Degeneration - The Link with Processed Foods
Forwarded message from fidyl@yahoo.com
[ Subject: Macular Degeneration - The Link with Processed Foods
[ From: fidyl@yahoo.com
[ Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004
Macular Degeneration - The Link with Processed Foods
What Doctors Don't Tell You,
http://healthy.net/scr/column.asp?id=614
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) refers to the slow
deterioration of the cells in the macula, a tiny yellowish area near
the center of the retina, which contains light-sensitive cells that
send visual signals to the brain. Sharp, clear, 'straight ahead' or
central vision - used mostly for reading, writing, driving and
identifying faces - is processed by the macula. In the most severe
forms of AMD, straight lines become crooked and wavy, distinct shapes
are blurry and there is a fog in the center of your vision. Your
peripheral vision, however, is not affected.
Of all the illnesses of the ageing eye - including glaucoma and
cataracts - AMD is the only one that is sharply on the rise.
Worldwide, some 30 million people have the condition - a figure that
is expected to treble over the next 25 years (Bull World Health Org,
1995; 73: 115-21) - and six million Americans have vision loss
because of AMD, with another 13-15 million suffering from early signs
of it.
Given this new epidemic, new treatments for AMD are always being
explored, including retinal cell transplants, drugs that will prevent
or slow the progress of the disease, laser treatment, radiation
therapy, gene therapy and even a computer chip implanted in the
retina that may help simulate vision.
But what medicine has seldom explored is the role of diet in the
development of this epidemic or, indeed, its parallels with heart
disease.
New evidence places the blame squarely at the door of processed food,
particularly processed fats.
Recently, a group of researchers from Harvard Medical School and the
Harvard School of Public Health set out to determine whether diet had
any affect on the development of AMD. They selected 261 participants,
aged 60 or older, with early or intermediate AMD and visual acuity of
20/200 in at least one eye. Over the next four and a half years, the
researchers studied the participants' dietary intake and compared it
with the progression of their disease. Specifically, they looked at
the amount and type of fat the patients were consuming in their daily
diets (Arch Ophthalmol, 2003; 121: 1728-37).
What they found was quite extraordinary. Those consuming high-fat
diets were three times as likely to progress to advanced forms of AMD
compared with those whose intake of fat was lowest.
But the risks relating to the kinds of fats consumed confounded the
usual expectations. Although intake of any animal fat was associated
with a doubling of risk of the disease, higher levels of animal-fat
intake did not increase the risk any further. In other words, you
increase your risk of developing AMD by eating meat, but your risk
doesn't increase with the quantity.
The real risk for AMD was associated with vegetable-fat intake, which
nearly quadrupled the risk of the disease progressing. These fats
included the monounsaturated, polyunsaturated and trans unsaturated
fats. And in this case, quantity did matter.
The researchers also noted a doubling of risk with intake of
processed foods, which are usually laden with these types of
processed vegetable fats.
Other kinds of fats proved protective. Fish and nuts, both rich in
omega-3 fatty acids, slowed progression of the disease - so long as
your intake of the usual omega-6 fatty acids was also low.
Other clues suggest that processed foods lie at the heart of AMD.
This is a disease of the industrialized world. Living in the
developed countries is a significant risk factor for AMD. While the
condition is the leading cause of blindness among the American,
Canadian and English elderly, it is rare in the developing countries
where, nevertheless, there is a high incidence of blindness from
other eye diseases such as glaucoma and cataracts. These countries do
not consume a highly processed diet.
AMD is also a cousin of coronary heart disease, and shares with it
several common ancestors, such as atherosclerosis (Am J Epidemiol,
1995; 142: 404-9), hypertension (Arch Ophthalmol, 2000, 118: 351-8)
and high cholesterol. AMD also afflicts nearly 40 per cent of those
with diabetes (J Longev, 1998; 4: 24-6).
Many other risk factors for heart problems are also risk factors for
AMD.
These include smoking (especially in women), age (3.8 per cent of
Americans have either intermediate or advanced AMD by the time they
reach age 50-59 and, by the time they are 70-79, this proportion will
have increased to 14.4 per cent) and gender (women appear to be at a
slightly greater risk than men).
Increasingly, the evidence points to a role for industrialized
food-processing in the onset of heart disease and diabetes. More and
more studies of heart patients are finding that they have elevated
levels of homocysteine, an amino acid derived from the normal
breakdown of proteins in the body. Raised levels of this amino acid
are an indication that something has gone awry (see Viewpoint, p 5).
Crucial to this process is the presence of adequate levels of certain
B vitamins. Other studies of heart patients have shown that they are
deficient in these vitamins, and that adequate B-vitamin
supplementation can reduce the incidence of heart attack and angina
(Res Commun Mol Path Pharm, 1995; 89: 208-20). Links have also been
made between the onset of diabetes and heart disease and deficiencies
of chromium.
Natural sugars and grains contain adequate concentrations of chromium
to support the metabolism of high-carbohydrate foods. However,
virtually all B vitamins and chromium are removed during the refining
process of most of the sugars and processed foods that now make up
the bulk of the typical Western diet. Diets high in processed
carbohydrates are nearly always deficient in chromium.
Another area that medicine has never explored is its own hand in the
development of the AMD epidemic. Many of the drugs routinely
prescribed for older people may well accelerate eye damage.
Doctors push aspirin because it thins the blood, thereby reducing the
risk of blood clots. But, apart from poor effectiveness and the risk
of gastrointestinal bleeding, new research suggests that long-term
aspirin use can accelerate macular degeneration and contribute to
retinal hemorrhage.
More than a decade ago, Dr J.D. Kingham wrote a letter to the
prestigious New England Journal of Medicine (1988; 318: 1126-7) in
which he noted that, in his clinic, many of the elderly patients who
came to him with decreased central vision and macular hemorrhages had
a history of recent ingestion of aspirin and other drugs known to
affect platelet function or the bloodclotting process.
NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) have been shown to
increase the risk of cataracts - a risk factor for the later
development of AMD - by as much as 44 per cent (Ophthalmology, 1998;
105: 1751-8). Many other common drugs, however, also contribute to a
slow and steady degeneration in the eye, and hasten the onset of
macular degeneration by making the eye more light-sensitive. These
include certain antibiotics, psychotherapeutic medications and NSAIDs
(Int J Toxicol, 2002; 21: 473-90).
Phenothiazine antipsychotics, antidopaminergics (for motion sickness)
and calcium antagonists have also been associated with AMD (Arch
Ophthalmol, 2001; 119: 354-9).
However, some of these adverse effects of drugs are temporary. People
taking sildenafil (Viagra), for example, often experience transient
visual changes, described as 'blue tint', which usually lasts for
four hours after taking the drug, according to the Viagra package
insert.
This greater affinity for blue light is linked to the way that
sildenafil affects the rods and cones in the retina, the cells that
process colour information. Aspirin also apparently interferes with
many of the nutrients that are specifically essential for eye health.
Taking aspirin can increase the turnover of vitamin C in the body,
leading to a possible deficiency (BMJ, 1975; I: 208). Similarly,
taking 3 g/day of aspirin has been shown to decrease blood levels of
zinc (Scand J Rheumatol, 1982; 11: 63-4). Aspirin also appeared to
increase the loss of zinc through the urine in this study, and this
effect was noted as early as three days after starting the aspirin
regimen.
Aspirin can also enhance the blood-thinning effects of vitamin E in
some individuals. In one double-blind study of smokers, those who
took aspirin plus 50 IU/day of vitamin E had a statistically
significant increase in bleeding gums compared with those who took
aspirin alone (Ann Med, 1998; 30: 542-6). This increased risk of
bleeding could have a theoretical impact on the eyes.
Physicians themselves are suffering from a kind of 'blindness' that
prevents them from seeing the obvious role of diet and drugs in the
development of AMD. The best a doctor might do for an AMD sufferer is
to put down his prescription pad and say: 'Don't take two aspirin.'
Article supplied by What Doctors Don't Tell You, a subscription
monthly newsletter and information resource on health and medicine.
Find out more by visiting the website http://www.wddty.com or
1866-WDDTYUS.
End of forwarded message from fidyl@yahoo.com
Jai Maharaj
http://www.mantra.com/jai
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"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not so send
peace, but a sword.
"For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the
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"And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
- Matthew 10:34-36.
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