Macular Degeneration and Omega 3

This is a disease of the older generation. One that I had not heard of before my father started showing signs of it. Taking ample amounts of omega 3 may prevent it.

It is a progressive disease that affects your center vision. Centre vision is required to be able to read and drive. The people suffering from this disease need to give up driving, and need a special magnifying glass, which lights up in order to read.

The disease can affect one or both the eyes. It is one of the main cause of blindness in the people who are over the age of 60.

People who are aware of this disease, shudder with fright as they approach 60 years of age. As I am searching for help for my father, I am also aware that the disease is hereditary. You need to look for ways to prevent this disease catching up with you in the later stages of life.

Taking omega 3 supplements in the early ages could help to prevent this disease in the old age.

The macula tissue is present in the middle of the retina. The retina is sensitive to light. The retina?s job is to change light or pictures into electrical impulses and send them onto the brain.

Macular degeneration are of two types.

The first one is known as wet macular degeneration. It is caused by the abnormal growth of the blood vessels behind the retina. The blood vessels are very delicate and can possibly let blood or fluids leak out. This makes the macula to rise out of the normal spot at the back of the eye. When this happens, the damage to the macula is rapid.

The blindness that sets in rapidly, is known as as Advanced Macular Degeneration.

You can watch for early symptoms of AMD by using a chart. This chart has intersecting lines on it. It sort of looks like graph paper. There is a dot in the middle of each intersecting line. If these lines appear wavy as you test them with each eye, covering each eye one by one, then you need to see your eye specialist right away.

The second type is dry AMD. The dry type starts when the light sensitive tissues in the macula slowly break down. Your central vision slowly becomes blurred. As the dry AMD worsens, a blurry spot appears in the central vision. With the passage of time condition gets worse, you could loose your sight in the affected eye.

Drusen is the earliest symptom of AMD. Drusen can be diagnosed by the eye doctor in a routine eye examination when they dilate your pupils. They are yellow spots found under the retina. It is normally found in people over 60 years of age. If there is an increase in the number of these yellow spots or their size, it's a sign of them possibly developing either type of the AMD ending in loosing sight.

Apart from age, the other risk factors for developing AMD are:

Smoking
Obesity
Race
Family history and gender.

Changes in your lifestyle that could make a difference are:

Eating a good diet of green leafy vegetables and fish
Keeping your blood pressure under control
Maintaining a healthy weight
Regular Exercise. And definitely don't smoke.

Another change in lifestyle, you could adopt could be to add more Omega 3 to your diet. As mentioned above, include fish in your diet. Not everyone enjoys eating fish. There are a variety of ways to get Omega 3 and a good way to know you are getting enough is to take supplements.

My father is almost blind now. I hope that the disease does not progress any further. We have put him on Omega 3 supplements hoping it will stall the disease. Only time will tell. As for others, try to prevent it before it happens to you.

Source: http://health.ezinemark.com/macular-degeneration-and-omega-3-7d30fad7e734.html

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