Fountain of Youth or the Most Expensive Urine in Town?

"The traditional thinking is that as age increases, visual sensitivity decreases. But what we are saying is, maybe that's not inevitable," said D. Max Snodderly, Ph.D., head of the laboratory at The Schepens Eye Research Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School. "Improved nutrition could help to retard the loss of visual sensitivity with age. Perhaps the gradual loss of vision in many older people is not an inevitable consequence of the aging process. " Dr. Snodderly, with co-authors Billy Hammond and Billy R. Wooten, reported their findings in Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science (Feb. 1998, Vol. 39, No. 2).

Increasing macular pigment density may slow, or possibly even reverse, the progression of age-related macular degeneration.
Consumption of fruits and vegetables containing two carotenoid pigments may be linked to a reduced risk for age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss in people over the age of 55. According to research, lutein and zeaxanthin comprise a component of the central region of the retina and may play a role in some aspects of visual acuity. Increasing the concentration of these pigments in the eye may prevent the devastating vision loss caused by age-related macular degeneration.

For those who got the real vitamin, the daily dose was 1 milligram, more than double the recommended daily allowance for folic acid. All participants consumed even more folic acid than the researchers had in mind because the Food and Drug Administration began requiring enriched grains to be fortified with folic acid in 1998, several years after the study began.