Benefits of Green Tea for Eye Disorders

Green Tea & Antioxidants for Aging, and Eye Disorders


An old Chinese proverb says, "It's better to be deprived of food for three days than to be deprived of green tea for one." Although it is an exaggeration to describe the healing powers of green tea as "miraculous", there is no doubt that green tea can have profound benefits in maintaining weight loss , supporting recovery from cardiovascular disease, and even for the management of conditions as diverse as allergies and endometriosis . Not many people realize, however, that green tea is also helpful in slowing down the progression of age-related eye disorders.

Eye disorders are a common complication of aging. Most of the eye problems experienced in later life occur in the "equator" of the eye. There is a very simple reason that eye problems occur here.
 
The cells in the center of the eye have to grow faster because they have to cover more tissue. These cells are highly susceptible to damage from antioxidant deficiencies and exposure to ultraviolet light from sunlight. By the age of sixty, and sometimes earlier, free radical damage can accumulate so that the proteins in the lens of the eye begin to coagulate. Over time, these proteins unite in a pattern that looks like a star. These stars may fuse to form a cataract that interferes with the eye.

Take any and every antioxidant vitamin

The remedy for free radical damage is not necessarily to take any antioxidant vitamin. One of the rarely appreciated facts about aging eye care is that excessive consumption of vitamin D supplements actually causes cataracts to grow faster.
 
One of the co factors of vitamin C is vitamin E. Vitamin C and E recharge each other and recharge together the antioxidant glutathione in the lens of the eye. If you take vitamin E without taking vitamin C, you protect yourself against the development of cataracts that make it difficult to drive at night (cortical cataracts), but not against cataracts that cause myopia (nuclear cataracts). 

Taking only these two vitamins together reduces the risk of suffering any cataract by about 70 percent.