Published February 9, 2011

How to stop eye damage caused by a poor diet

You probably already know that a poor diet can make you sick. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough eye doctors telling their patients that a poor diet is contributing to their eye disease. But we now know that a high-sugar diet contributes to eye disease. Unfortunately, too many people struggle to change their diet. But a new study suggests that the right supplements can reduce your risk of eye disease without significant changes in your diet.

The massive epidemic of diabetes in Western cultures is causing another epidemic. This one is the eye disease macular degeneration. The reason? The same diet that leads to diabetes also causes an excess of a normal molecule in your body. And this excess greatly fans inflammation.

The molecule is the white blood cell cytokine interleukin-g (IL6). Cytokines are extraordinarily powerful chemicals. Some of them promote inflammation.

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Published February 4, 2011

Improve your vision by up to 30% in just two months

You probably already know that certain plant flavonoids can protect your eyes. I’ve told you in the past about bilberry, grape seed extract, and other flavonoids. Now there’s a way to increase the protection – and improve your vision.

In 46 diabetic patients with mild to moderate eye disease, Pycnogenol dramatically helped. Pycnogenol is a water extract from the bark of the French maritime pine. The participants took it for three months. Compared to a placebo group, the Pycnogenol reduced retinal edema and improved retinal thickness.

Better still, Pycnogenol increased retinal blood flow in the central retinal artery (measured by Laser Doppler) significantly. The increase went from 34 to 44 cm/s. That’s a big jump. On the Snellen visual acuity chart, 18 of the 24 patients had significant improvement. And they saw the benefits after only two months. Because of how it works, this extract ought to help protect your eyes from glaucoma as well.

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Published February 3, 2011

Does testosterone replacement increase
your heart-attack risk?

For years, I’ve told my patients and my readers that they probably need bio-identical testosterone therapy. Then one of our Reno hospitals put out a newsletter with this headline: “The higher the level of testosterone, the more likely you are to have a heart attack.” You can imagine the trouble this caused.

The man who brought it to me said, “Hey Doc, what’s going on? You put me on testosterone, and now I learn about this.” Of course, I knew something was wrong.

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