| A
recent study has found that some foods high in certain
antioxidants may help fight macular degeneration, the
leading cause of age-related blindness, which causes
vision to become cloudy over time.
To
keep things clear, be sure to get four types of nutrients
from four types of food—not supplements or vitamin
pills, which don’t have the same effect. These
nutrients are 114mg of vitamin C, which
two oranges contain; at least 13mg
of vitamin E, which you can get from
a handful of nuts; at least 3.6mg of
beta carotene, contained in a couple
of carrots; and at least 9.6mg of zinc,
provided by lean beef.
The
catch is, in order to benefit from these nutrients,
which build up in the body over time to help fight disease,
you have to include these foods in your diet (with a
wide variety of other foods, of course) over a lifetime—you
can’t just occasionally indulge. And you can’t
treat age-related macular degeneration with food after
the fact.
But
what a benefit: The researchers found that if you consume
these nutrients on a regular basis, by the time you’re
70 or 80 years old, you could cut your risk of blindness
due to age-related macular degeneration by 35 percent!
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