Cebu City - Off to the cardiologist. Off the pediatrician. Off to the dentist. What about the optometrist or the ophthalmologist? Vision health is just as important as any other kind of health that we know. Based on the 2018 Philippine National Blindness Survey and Disease Study, vision impairment and blindness rank among the major concerns in the country with current prevalence rate of 1.98 percent. The current prevalence rate represents 1.11 million Filipinos with cataract, 400,000 with uncorrected error of refraction, almost 300,000 with glaucoma and 200,000 with maculopathy. Cataract still remains to be the single most significant cause of remediable visual impairment or blindness.
It is very important that we take care of our eyesight. Vision is an essential part of our everyday life. It is through our eyes that the majority of us use to learn, communicate, and interact with the word. Keeping our vision healthy helps keep ourselves and others around safe. By protecting our eyes, we reduce the odds of blindness and vision loss while also staying on top of any developing eye diseases such as cataracts, glaucoma, and age-related macular degeneration.
The antioxidant lutein is an incredibly powerful antioxidant that reduces the risk of chronic eye disease. Researchers have noted that diets rich in lutein reduce the risk of developing age-related macular degeneration by 57%. We need an average of 6-20 mg of lutein to prevent degenerative eye diseases and the best source of lutein is dark, green, leafy vegetables such as kamonggay, kangkong, and alugbati or spinach. Other good sources of lutein include yellow or orange color foods and common foods such as carrots, orange/yellow peppers, avocado, cantaloupe, pasta, corn, fish, salmon and eggs esp egg yolk.
At every stage of our life, we are always reminded to eat our vegetables and fruit. They truly are nature’s superfoods. Obey Kumainment No 3 – Kaon og utanon ug prutas matag adlaw. We should take care of our eyes the same way we take care of our hearts, lungs, or bones. We might not feel it now but as we grow older, our 60, 70, or 80 year old selves will thank younger us for the care that we do today. // ND II Mary Carmeli C. Garrovillo, RND
