We’ve all been told, “Eat your carrots — they’re really great for your eyes!” However is there any reality to this?
Dr. Aaron Smith, an eye specialist, clears up current realities.
The Story Behind Carrots and Vision
The possibility that carrots help vision returns to The Second Great War. The English utilized new radar
innovation to recognize foe planes around evening time however needed to stay quiet about it. In this way,
they spread a story that their pilots were eating heaps of carrots to see better in obscurity.
This story stuck, many individuals actually trust it today.
What Do Carrots Truly Do?
Carrots contain beta-carotene, which the body changes over into vitamin A.
This nutrient is pivotal for eye wellbeing, and it assists you with seeing better in low light — yet provided that you’re now falling short on vitamin A.
Eating additional carrots will not supernaturally further develop your night vision on the off chance
that your body as of now has sufficient vitamin A.
Significant Note for Smokers
Dr. Smith likewise cautions that for smokers, an excess of vitamin A may build the gamble of cellular breakdown in the lungs.
Thus, it’s best not to get out of hand assuming that you smoke or have smoked before.
Delectable Carrot Juice Recipe
Here is a fast carrot juice recipe that is heavenly and extraordinary for your general wellbeing. Indeed, even children will adore it!
You’ll Need:
- 5 pounds of natural carrots
- 2 apples
Step by step instructions to Make It:
- Wash, strip, and squeeze the carrots and apples.
- Drink the juice new, and in the event that you like, save the extra mash to use in baking biscuits or different tidbits!
While carrots are sound, they are certainly not an enchanted fix for visual perception.
Normal eye check-ups are as yet the most ideal way to keep your vision sharp.
Searching for additional tips on food sources that are great for your eyes? Remain tuned for our next post!
) so if you’re anybody like me you’ve probably heard since you were a kid to eat your carrots and that
carrots were good for the eyes right but is this true like scientifically is this true so i recently dug into the research to answer
are carrots good for the eyes and can carrots make you see better and what i found out actually surprised me so blink your eyes a few times
and let’s take a look hey what’s up dr allen here from the doctor eyehealth
show and in this channel we help people learn about the eyes vision and finding the best vision products and recently
i put out a video all about healthy foods for the eyes and foods that can help improve vision
and i talked a lot about vitamin a and carrots and sweet potatoes and other foods that have
a lot of vitamin a and i hate to admit it but digging into the research about this
i wasn’t 100 accurate in that video but digging into the research i found out a lot of cool stuff
that i wanted to share with you such as the fact that a lot of us may think that carrots are good
for the eyes because of world war ii propaganda so it turns out this whole belief that carrots
are good for the eyes started because in world war ii germans were attacking the British mainly at
night time with giant bomber planes with all that was going on at the time really two things were
going on first food was really expensive to import to Britain at that time so they encouraged their
population to grow more food naturally and carrots are really easy to grow and then the second big
thing is the fact that the British air force had invented a new type of radar which allowed
for the planes that they were flying to detect other planes at night time because otherwise they
) just had to kind of go by line of sight which is really difficult to see at night so they invented
the radar and they were able to shoot down more planes and to confuse the germans and not let
them know that they had this new technology they put out propaganda to their own people knowing
that german spies would pick up that propaganda and then believe it to be true and so the British
government basically told everybody that eating their carrots improved their night vision and
that is why they were able to shoot down german warplanes and there’s some really cool propaganda
posters from that time that show how this was all going on but then ultimately parents and teachers
told their kids this and their kids grew up just thinking hey carrots are good for the eyes and
now everybody just kind of takes it as fact but the question still remains do we have scientific
evidence to show that eating carrots are good for the eyes and can they improve your vision first
the whole concept of carrots being good for the eyes falls on vitamin a funny enough carrots don’t
actually have vitamin a carrots have beta-carotene which your body can convert into vitamin a
and this is important to know and we’ll get into it in just a moment now vitamin a does play a huge
role in the physiology of the eye to help you see better mainly for helping you see better at night
time and that’s because the rods within the retina which give you again that low light vision has a
high amount of vitamin a in there that’s attached to a protein called opsin to form what’s called
a rhodopsin and there’s just a huge amount of rhodopsin in your eye and that is the reason why
you can see well in low light in fact when people are vitamin a deficient one of the number one
symptoms they have is nighttime blindness called nyctolopia and thankfully the treatment for people
who have nyctolopia and vitamin a deficiency is pretty simple we just give them more vitamin a
now what i’ve been doing the last few weeks is digging into the research trying to find
any specific study that showed a direct linkage to how much vitamin a somebody has
and their visual perception their acuity their nighttime vision ability and i hate to admit it
i really couldn’t find any studies on this at least nothing recent maybe there was something
published a long time ago back in the 1940s during world war ii but i just couldn’t find anything not
even in my optometry or ophthalmology textbooks i couldn’t find like a dose responding relationship
to vitamin a and eyesight but i did find out something really cool that might explain the
answer that we’re looking for and funnily enough this took me down a huge rabbit hole
about nutrition and digestion so the thing about vitamin a is that you can absorb
vitamin a through your diet in two main sources either through animal sources such as dairy fish
eggs or organ meats particularly liver that’s in fact where most vitamin a is stored in your
bodies in the liver or your body can take things like beta-carotene again which we get from carrots
and other vegetables into vitamin a and it makes that conversion in your intestines or you could
get vitamin a through a supplement in either of these two forms either the whole form of vitamin a
or through beta-carotene and then have it converted to vitamin a but the thing is is
that when you get vitamin a in its whole form from animal sources your body does a really poor job
of regulating that absorption you basically whatever you eat your body is going to absorb
and store it in your liver or start using it but it turns out that by eating too much vitamin a in
its whole form from animal sources or from taking too many supplements of vitamin a you can have
vitamin a toxicity which is an important thing for eye doctors to know about because it can cause
elevated levels of cerebral spinal fluid which ends up resulting in what’s called pseudotumor
cerebri where from an eye doctor’s perspective we’ll see on an examination somebody’s optic nerve
will appear very swollen and if you have a swollen optic nerve that could result in permanent vision
loss and even blindness for people if it goes unchecked so yeah it’s possible to basically
overdose on vitamin a in fact i’ve read in one source that polar bear liver again vitamin a
is mostly stored in the liver but polar bear liver has such high amounts of vitamin a that one single
serving for an adult would be twice the toxicity levels for your vitamin a but come on who wants
to eat a polar bear i mean those guys are cute and i think they’re endangered anyway but it turns out
the good thing about carrots is that again carrots don’t have vitamin a they have the beta-carotene
and your body has a really good way of regulating vitamin a absorption or conversion
of beta-carotene to vitamin a so it turns out that even if you eat tons and tons of carrots trying to
improve your eyesight your body will eventually just decide you know what you already have enough
vitamin a we’re just not going to convert that beta-carotene anymore over to vitamin a and so
yeah it’s really hard to overdose on vitamin a from eating carrots so now knowing this i think it
makes more sense that yeah if you eat more carrots your body’s not going to convert that to vitamin a
so no it doesn’t sound like eating more carrots will improve your eyesight because eventually your
body just stops converting it unless of course you are somebody who’s already vitamin a deficient and
suffering from nyctalopia in those cases your body does need vitamin a and that could help
improve your night vision but it is also important for us to recognize that there are many research
publications such as the landmark a red study on macular degeneration and several others showing
that beta-carotene as a supplement can help slow down the development of certain retinal diseases
so although it may not necessarily improve eyesight it can maybe at least slow down aging
and diseases of the eye but it is also important to mention that later on studies have found that
people who take supplements specifically of beta-carotene so not just eating carrots but
taking supplements of beta-carotene if they had formally been a smoker it dramatically increases
the risk of lung cancer and that’s why you usually don’t see beta carotene as a supplement anymore
instead you’ll see the whole form of vitamin a but again we need to be cautious because taking
too much vitamin a can have toxicity levels so after all this research and thinking about it
my final conclusions is that yes carrots are good for the eyes mainly as an antioxidant
and vitamin a as an essential nutrient for your eyes and for your retina in the back of the eye
but carrots are not going to improve your eyesight or vision even your nighttime vision unless you
are already deficient in vitamin a and thankfully in most developed countries people are not vitamin
a deficient because your body’s able to store vitamin a and then just by eating normally your
body just replenishes those stores usually the only people who have vitamin a deficiencies in
developed countries are usually people who have had like gastric bypass surgeries or have some
other sort of absorption problem in their bodies and as always if you’re somebody who thinks that
you know you maybe you’re vitamin a deficient then talk with your local eye doctor and family doctor
to see if you can get tested and see what they think but it turns out that vitamin a is not just
an essential nutrient for the retina and seeing better at nighttime but it also plays a role
in dry eye and your eyelid health that’s exactly why you’ll see vitamin a added to different eye
ointments and even dry eye supplements however the research about vitamin a in these products and
helping with dry eye is a bit mixed and debated by eye care professionals and to find out more
about vitamin a and its relationship to dry eye and the eyelids check out our future video here
all about that topic and if it’s something that might be good for you otherwise thanks so much for
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