How does carrots help eyesight

In an ideal eye-healthy world, you wear UV-blocking shades and put them on your kids, get regular dilated eye exams , exercise, and try not to rub your eyes too much, and you nourish your eyes from the inside out. The AREDS studies focused on people with age-related macular degeneration AMD —a disease that takes away the detail and color at the center of vision, blocking out letters and faces. The studies concluded that patients with moderate and advanced AMD could benefit from antioxidant supplements.

The American Academy of Ophthalmology offers this rundown on specific foods that are good for your eyes. Your eyes rely on tiny arteries for oxygen and nutrients, just as your heart relies on much larger arteries. That means you get a two-for-one benefit when you eat a rainbow of fruits and vegetables as well as omega-3 fatty acid-rich foods like salmon, tuna, and sardines.

In addition to carrots sweet potatoes have even more beta-carotene and other vegetables, fruits, cold-water fish, vitamin and mineral-rich foods, including eggs, beans, nuts, lean red meats, and poultry, all contribute to better vision at all stages of life. While a lot of people may not realize it, good nutrition is incredibly important for overall eye health. So can carrots help you see better? The answer is yes and no. If you are deficient in vitamin A, you may experience night blindness, a condition which makes it difficult to adjust your vision to low levels of light.

In this instance, eating carrots could help reduce night blindness. Vitamin A deficiency is rare in the United States, but it is a common problem in the developing world. Deficiencies in vitamin A are the leading causes of blindness in the developing world.

Lack of vitamin A can also lead to:. Carrots contain lutein, an important antioxidant. Lutein-rich foods are known to increase the density of pigment in the macula, the yellow-shaped oval area in the center of the retina. As pigment density increases, the retina is protected more and the risk for macular degeneration decreases.

Corrective lenses and eye procedures would still be necessary even if every American ate a steady diet of carrots.