all right guys today we're going to talk about the four things that you can do to
decrease your risk of macular degeneration
if that interests you stick around
all right guys so we're going to talk today about the four things that you can
do to decrease your risk of macular degeneration
before we get started if you like what you see
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let me guess you have a family member who has macular degeneration
and you're worried that you may get it yourself you
did a 23andme or an ancestry.com dna test
and found out that you have one of the variants that may
put you at higher risk of macular degeneration it terrifies you
and you're wondering what you can do we're going to talk about that about the
four things that you can just do in your everyday life
to decrease your risk of macular degeneration
so macular degeneration can be really scary
and if you want to know what it truly is it won't be in this video and hopefully
i'll do another video on it but you can look up videos on youtube on
what is macular degeneration it's going to show you
the macula is the very center of the retina and when
macular degeneration occurs in mild cases there's some central distortion
faces get a little wavy it's a little funky but it can really
advance into loss of central vision
so that if you're sitting there watching me on this video
my whole face is garbled and then you just can't wherever you go to move
your eyes to that garbled spot will follow you you
won't be able to read it's it's really really devastating
so if you have macular degeneration in your family
if you are concerned that you may get it if you find out on
23andme or on ancestry that you have the genes for it and you want to
know what you can do that's what we're going to talk about today
so guys the four things that you can do to decrease your risk of macular
degeneration the first one's a freebie didn't even
include it in the first four but it's probably the most
important please don't smoke and please if you do smoke consider
stopping the worst cases of macular degeneration i have seen in
my practice in 27 years are smokers and i don't know what it is
but i believe that when you smoke you are literally turning that gene
on for macular degeneration and i have seen some awful awful cases
of macular degeneration in smokers so that's the first one
that's the first free one the first one is
make sure that when you're outside you have on a good pair of sunglasses
and i would prefer them to be like a maui jim and oakley a ray ban
something that is a known name you can always bring
them into my practice and you can always bring them into your optometrist
practice and have them tested and they will tell you how much uv light
is getting through them but it's the harmful uva uvb uvc
that does all the damage in the retina as well as
some of the um the higher frequency b um not the higher frequency b
the higher frequency blue light that can do some damage to the retina as well
so make sure you have a good pair of sunglasses
imagine i don't know how much this happens now but it used to happen a lot
maybe it happens on sites like amazon where things are
brought in from china a lot but imagine getting a pair of sunglasses
they're really dark and you put them on and you're like wow
these are really working well in the sun but they were never tested and even
though they may say they're uv protected if they're not your pupils behind the
sunglasses now are under lower light levels so they
open more and it's logarithmic the way
the light enters the eye so just a small increase in pupil size lets in a
tremendously amount a tremendous more light into the
eye and that can do a lot of damage if they
have no uv protection it could be worse wearing the sunglasses than not wearing
them so that's why i say make sure you have a
good brand most of them most of the good brand
names you have nothing to worry about so but that's why i think it's really
important that you know that that there are some out there that could do harm
more harm than not wearing them at all i also don't want to
forget as i'm talking about sunglasses how important it can be
just to wear a good brimmed hat out in direct sunlight
that is tremendous about with keeping the direct sunlight out of your eyes
if you have a pair of sunglasses on you think you're protected really well
but there's a lot of light that gets around it and a good brim hat
will help decrease that risk of more light coming into the eye
so that's number one number two this is the craziest thing
ever at least in optometry if you eat green leafy vegetables and
i'm talking kale spinach collard greens broccoli
avocados actually even have a lot a lot of
the pigments which are in the green leafy vegetables which is lutein and
zeaxanthin and those pigments and this is the crazy
part those pigments when we ingest the green leafy vegetables
the only place in the body that they are deposited
is in the retina and it's actually a bell-shaped curve around the macula
to protect us from the harmful light coming in the uv light coming in
so it's incredible protection it's simple if you have family members
who have macular degeneration and you're concerned
you should be eating green leafy vegetables every day
so it's a tough call when people don't um eat green leafy vegetables and
they're at higher risk i will usually point them to a product
like ocuvite or preservision life extension has a
really good macu guard
and i'm going to put all those in the links in the description down below
but that would help immensely i do believe
that as a nutritionist the benefits to eating the actual
green leafy vegetables far outweighs taking it from a pill
but if you don't want to eat any green leafy vegetables i would way more
rather have you take the supplement than to say nothing so
there's that so that's number two the sunglasses are number one
number two is eating as many green leafy vegetables
so number three is omega-3 fatty acids and you can either get them naturally by
eating fish which is really tough to get enough i
like to see people take two thousand milligrams a day
of which fifty percent is epa and deep dha you can find that on the label
but the omega-3 is an amazing neural protectant
and there have been studies that show there have been many studies that
show that the omega-3s will help protect you against macular
degeneration so that's number three the fourth
is actually something that is derived from red wine
and no i'm not going to tell you to go drink a bunch of red wine to protect
your retina will be causing all other problems but
there's something in the red wine called resveratrol
and resveratrol is a very potent antioxidant
and when you ingest it the studies are showing that it does
a lot to protect the macula from the harmful light coming in as
a antioxidant so all right guys so thanks for watching this i hope it
was helpful if you have any questions please put them in the comments below
again if you liked what i had to say please hit the like button consider
subscribing until i see you again be safe and take
care