Prevention/Treatment of cataracts and other common eye problems

[Guest guest]

A good starting place is to check out the Wikipedia overview at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataract

Some causes of are iatrogenic (drug,

misadventure). In other words: " An apple a day

keeps the doctor away -- if it is well aimed. "

For age-related degeneration consider

antioxidants and statins. Both of these can be

good choices if you have cancer. N-Acetyl carnosine is effective

at reversing 100% of ordinary senile cataracts

and 80% of a more serious cataract condition. It

is smart to add about a 15% MSM.

To prevent cataracts caused by trauma, wear

UV-blocking polycarbonate glasses and practice bobbing and weaving.

For early-stage cataracts associated with a

non-congenital systemic illness, aggressively treat the underlying condition.

If a congenital progressive problem, rectify (if

possible) the defining defective biochemical pathways.

To prevent both cataracts and macular

degeneration, a great starting place is too eat

lots of spinach (lutein), use fish oils (DHA) and

avoid vegetable oils. Aminoguanidine helps prevent glaucoma.

<http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/cgi-bin/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,1799772,00.html>Drugs

firm blocks cheap blindness cure

Company will only seek licence for medicine that costs 100 times more

Boseley, health editor

Saturday June 17, 2006

Guardian

A major drug company is blocking access to a

medicine that is cheaply and effectively saving

thousands of people from going blind because it

wants to launch a more expensive product on the market.

Ophthalmologists around the world, on their own

initiative, are injecting tiny quantities of a

colon cancer drug called Avastin into the eyes of

patients with wet macular degeneration, a common

condition of older age that can lead to severely

impaired eyesight and blindness. They report

remarkable success at very low cost because one

phial can be split and used for dozens of patients.

But Genentech, the company that invented Avastin,

does not want it used in this way. Instead it is

applying to license a fragment of Avastin, called

Lucentis, which is packaged in the tiny

quantities suitable for eyes at a higher cost.

Speculation in the US suggests it could cost

£1,000 per dose instead of less than £10. The

company says Lucentis is specifically designed

for eyes, with modifications over Avastin, and

has been through 10 years of testing to prove it is safe.

Unless Avastin is approved in the UK by the

National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice)

it will not be universally available within the

NHS. But because Genentech declines to apply for

a licence for this use of Avastin, Nice cannot

consider it. In spite of the growing drugs bill

of the NHS, it will appraise, and probably approve, Lucentis next year.

Although Nice's role is to look at

cost-effectiveness, it says it cannot appraise a

drug and pass it for use in the NHS unless the

drug is referred to it by the Department of

Health. The department says its hands are tied.

" The drug company hasn't applied for it to be

licensed for this use. It wouldn't be referred to

Nice until they have made the first move, " said a

Department of Health spokeswoman. " They need to

step up and get a licence. If they are not

getting it licensed, why aren't they? "

New drugs for the condition are badly needed:

those we have now only slow the progression to

blindness. With Avastin, many patients get their

sight back with just one or two injections.

Avastin was first used on human eyes by Philip

Rosenfeld, an ophthalmologist in the US, who was

aware of animal studies carried out by Genentech

that showed potential in eye conditions. This

unlicensed use of Avastin has spread across

continents entirely by word of mouth from one

doctor to another. It has now been injected into

7,000 eyes, with considerable success.

<http://www.bpei.med.miami.edu/site/find/find_results_doc.asp?doc_id=32 & name=all\

& location= & special=>Professor

Rosenfeld has published his results and a website

has been launched in the US to collate the

experiences of doctors from around the world. But

although the evidence is good, regulators require

randomised controlled trials before they grant

licences, which generally only the drug companies can afford to carry out.

Prof Rosenfeld said the real issue was drug

company profits. " This truly is a wonder drug, "

he said. " This shows both how good they [the drug

companies] are and on the flip side, how greedy

they are. " He would like to see governments fund

clinical trials of drugs such as Avastin in the public interest.

Rising drug bills are a big problem on both sides

of the Atlantic. In the UK, said Wong,

chairman of the scientific committee of the Royal

College of Ophthalmologists, doctors are fighting

battles to persuade primary care trusts to pay

for drugs to stop their patients going blind

while they wait for Nice to decide on Lucentis

and another expensive drug called Macugen. That

decision is not expected before the end of next year.

About 20,000 people are diagnosed with

age-related macular degeneration in the UK each

year. " From the patient's point of view, if they

have an eye condition that deteriorates very

quickly, there is no question of waiting, " said

Professor Wong. " We're talking about days and

weeks, rather than months. The question is should

we do nothing and say there is no randomised

controlled trial to prove Avastin is of value? "

He called for primary care trusts to agree to pay

for the planned phasing-in of new drugs for the condition.

Last night Genentech said its main concern over

the use of Avastin to treat eye conditions was

patient safety. " While there are some small,

single-centre, uncontrolled studies of Avastin

being performed, safety data on patients who are

treated with Avastin off-label is not being

collected in a standard or organised fashion, "

said a spokeswoman for the company.

Pharmaceutical firms say they need to launch

drugs at high prices because of the hundreds of

millions of pounds spent on developing them.

Critics point out that the company's calculations

also include the marketing budget.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

AND FROM MY FILES:

An article in Journal of the American Medical

Association (JAMA) November 2, 1994, sings the

praises of spinach. People who ate Popeye's

favorite daily suffered only one-tenth as much

age-related macular degeneration (AMD) as those

who seldom ate spinach. And for patients with the

condition, eating spinach prevented worsening.

Research has now confirmed that three to four

portions of spinach weekly can reverse at least

early AMD. " Dr. Richer, chief of the optometry

section at the Dept. of Veterans Affairs in North

Chicago, recently tested 14 patients who were

showing the first signs of AMD. After just 12

weeks of eating three to four portions of spinach

a week, those in the study showed 60% to 80%

improvement in their AMD tests. Among the eight

who had either a hole or a distortion in their

vision, for seven the problem either improved or disappeared completely. "

The macula is a light-sensitive part of the

central retinal area near the optic nerve; it

provides sharp central visual acuity. AMD is the

leading cause of blindness among American,

Canadian and English elderly, and it afflicts

nearly 40 percent of the more than 10 million

Americans with diabetes. AMD is a cousin of

coronary heart disease, and shares with it a

common ancestor: atherosclerosis. Free radicals

promote and speed macular degeneration as well as

aging, heart disease, arthritis, and Alzheimer's disease, among others.

The benefits result largely from spinach's

thousands of carotenoids, which are

phytonutrients (plant nutrients) related to and

including carotenes. " High concentrations of

lutein and zeaxanthin, both of them carotenoids,

are found in [and so, presumably, required by]

the retina of the eye, explaining why consuming

them in diet protects against macular

degeneration. " New research finds that eggs may

be an especially good source of lutein and

zeaxanthin because substances in the yolk make it

easier for the body to absorb these compounds. It

is already known that eating eggs does not

elevate risk of heart attack; in fact, published

research found that those who ate more eggs had

fewer heart attacks. So such findings strengthen

our recommendation to eat whole, natural foods including all the eggs we want.

Besides AMD, many of these fight cancers and

other afflictions; and they do it better than

beta-carotene, the only carotenoid found in most

vitamin supplements. Other dark-green leafy

vegetables such as kale, collards, and Brussels

sprouts offer much the same multiple nutrients/-vitamin/mineral benefits.

Two anecdotes reveal the extent of the eye-specialist problem.

A few years ago a bridge-playing friend of ours

went to his eye doctor with early macular

degeneration. The doctor never mentioned kale,

chard, spinach or green tea. And now our friend

can no longer hunt deer, play bridge, repair

things, read or engage in other much loved activities.

A neighbor's mother had very advanced AMD; her

eye doctor was using lasers on her and more, yet

the condition was worsening. My friend noticed a

huge bottle of

<http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2003/06/04/aspirin_the_bitter_pill_that_k\

ills.htm>aspirin

in her mother's house and suggested she stop

taking it. After that, her eye condition stabilized. Why?

(a) A letter in New England Journal of Medicine

in 1988 reported that aspirin can cause AMD. JD

Kingham, MD, wrote, " Since 1983 at our clinic,

many elderly patients who present with decreased

central vision and macular hemorrhage [the most

severe form of AMD] have a history of recent

ingestion of aspirin and other drugs known to

affect platelet function or the coagulation process. "

( And patients with blocked arteries to the

brain (a dangerous stroke situation) have three

times as many strokes from ruptured arteries if

they are taking an aspirin a day.

Dr. Kingham's discovery and that reported in

Medical Tribune have not been confirmed. But a

massive computer literature search by Kirk

Hamilton, PA, publisher of Clinical Pearls News,

Sacramento, CA, found no refutation. So there is

at least a caution flag on long-term aspirin.

Fortunately, aspirin's anti-clotting benefits in

lowering risk of heart attack and stroke can be

obtained without side effects in at least two

ways. (a) White willow bark, which the Greek

physician Dioscorides used in the first century

AD. People with a headache long chewed white

willow bark. Bayer Co. derived aspirin itself

from the bark, modifying the molecule to make it

patentable. This modification is the source of

excess bleeding, digestive upsets, worsened gut

permeability and 3,000 U.S. deaths a year from

aspirin poisoning, as well as the risk of ultimate blindness.

V. , MD, a leading

alternative/integrative practitioner in Kent, WA

has found that two 400-milligram capsules of the

powdered bark provide about the same amount of

salicin, the active ingredient, as a baby

aspirin. Four such capsules thin the blood as

effectively as an adult aspirin. (See Part 2.)

( Another alternative: three glasses daily of

purple grape juice can reduce platelet

aggregation as much as a daily aspirin. " Blood

platelets floating in a juice solution clotted

about 30% less than platelets not in the juice,

and released three times more chemicals that

widen blood vessels and inhibit clots. " And

unlike aspirin, the flavonoids in purple grape

juice remain effective when adrenaline levels

rise. In another test, purple grape juice lowered

susceptibility of LDL-cholesterol to oxidation.

Also, a published clinical test showed melatonin

lowers eyeball pressure in glaucoma patients. The

insomnia age group - for whom its use is safe and

appropriate at 1 to 5 milligrams before bedtime

-- is the same as the glaucoma age group.

Macular degeneration and diet. (1) In rats,

excitotoxins rapidly damage the macula, offering

a new slant on burgeoning AMD. They wreak many

other ill effects on people consuming processed

foods. Monosodium glutamate (MSG),

<http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2003/09/26/dropping_like_flies_poisoned_by\

_aspartame.htm>aspartame

(Nutra-Sweet®) and nearly all processed foods

contain dangerous quantities of glutamate,

aspartate, cysteine and related compounds. These

excitotoxic drugs, added to foods, discharge

nerve cells in the mouth to augment the sensation

of flavor. Addictive Aspartame breaks down into

carcinogenic, eye-destroying formaldehyde and deadly methyl alcohol.

The public long ago began to be aware of some of

the risks of MSG; and so, to hide the deadly

character of their products, food processing

companies adopted a laundry list of

innocent-sounding labels. Avoid all diet foods,

diet drinks, and such products as Accent,

autolyzed yeast, HVP, hydrolyzed or texturized

vegetable protein -- especially bad because they

contain three excitotoxins -- hydrolyzed plant

protein, Kombu extract, Chinese seasoning,

gourmet powder, RL50, broth, bouillon, caseinate,

flavoring and natural flavoring. (It doesn't have

to be labeled when it's in ice cream.) Any of

these are even more dangerous when heated.

" Natural " ? MSG is found in, e.g., tomatoes and

mushrooms -- but at about 1,000th of the

concentration used in food processing.

Incredibly, Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

rules permit processed foods to contain large

amounts of MSG but be labeled " no MSG added. "

(2) Eating one ounce of Olestra

(Olean®)-containing chips daily for two weeks

lowered vision-protective carotene levels by 50 percent.

The eye specialists could perhaps be excused for

not knowing about how full spectrum light helps

the eyes, and for not knowing that MSG- and

aspartame-polluted foods and Olean promote

macular degeneration. But both of them probably

subscribe to JAMA and New England Journal of

Medicine, and so they had no excuse for keeping

quiet about kale, spinach and aspirin except

their own financial self-interest. They were

wrong to deprive their patients of that healing

news and should be held responsible. Class-action lawyers might look into this.

Ophthalmologists may complain that telling

patients these truths could put them out of

business. But after cars replaced buggies,

buggy-whip makers couldn't force people to buy

buggy whips. They learned new trades, and so can those eye specialists.

Part II. A. Dr. V. 's treatment.

Dr. said to take selenium, taurine,

vitamin E and zinc. And put DMSO (dimethyl

sulfoxide, a solvent obtainable at health food

stores and paint stores) on any part of the skin.

The DMSO, which itself offers powerful healing

features, is a necessary part of the procedure:

it strongly increases absorption of these

nutrients. Some patients of his recovered from

macular degeneration using this therapy and have

stayed clear of it for as long as four years. The

method works better in some cases than others.

The quantities, written on a prescription form:

Zinc, preferably picolinate, 30 mg x 2 = 60

mg/day;* zinc is best absorbed when taken half an

hour before breakfast; in a few, this timing may

cause nausea. The eye contains more zinc than any other part of the body.

Vitamin E, 800 mg/day

Selenium, 500 micrograms/day

Taurine: 620 mg x 2 twice a day = 2+ grams/day.

The label instructions say not to use this amino

acid when taking aspirin or any product

containing aspirin; take between meals or before a meal.

* Taking zinc supplement of this magnitude, you

should have a red-blood-cell copper blood test

($40, not paid by insurance) every two months;

and 500 mcg of selenium daily cannot continue for a long time.

Full-spectrum light is also effective against

seasonal depression ( " SAD " ). Nonseasonal

depression benefits too, but not as much. It has

other major health benefits including reduction

of tooth decay. It has also greatly improved

behavior of previously UV-deprived children. For

full-spectrum light fixtures, consult

www.ottbiolight.com. Cheaper equipment is inferior.

Vitamin D and calcium. Arthur A. Knapp, MD, used

50,000 units of vitamin D and one gram of calcium

on intermittent days. These helped against eye

conditions including myopia, keratoconus,

cataract, optic nerve atrophy and retinitis pigmentosa.

A related problem affects people with asthma.

Inhaled steroids, intended to block or reduce

inflammation, were long claimed not to circulate

throughout the body. Yet for many older patients

they promote glaucoma, the leading cause of

blindness in the population. The risk appeared to

be elevated by 44 percent compared to matched

patients not using inhaled steroids. Lea Davies

of town University Medical Center in

Washington, DC, adds that inhaled steroids may

cause about one-third of the 3,000 glaucoma cases

developing each year among Americans over 65.

Inhaled steroids reduce bone density in the

spines of women with asthma. The greater the

cumulative dose of inhaled steroids, the greater

the reduction in bone mineral density of the spine in women.

" The drugs commonly used in the treatment of

allergic conditions, including asthma, have many

potentially harmful and dangerous side effects.

These antihistamines, steroid hormones, or

xanthine derivatives have side effects that may

be merely annoying to a child but in many

instances are dangerous. For example, steroid

treatment of asthmatic children has been

demonstrated to retard lung maturation and

physical growth and to cause a higher incidence

of cataracts in children receiving long-term steroid therapy. "

At 05:28 PM 3/2/2007, you wrote:

>In a message dated 3/2/07 8:09:48 PM Eastern Standard Time,

><mailto:vgammill%40adelphia.net>vgammill@... writes:

>

> > preventive medicine does prevent lens degeneration from most causes

>

>Hi ,

>

>Would you mind elaborating for the good of all?

>

>Best,

>