Prevention/Treatment of cataracts and other common eye problems

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[Posted at cancercure ]

 

Prevention/Treatment of cataracts and other common eye problems  

Posted by: " VGammill " vgammill   Fri Mar 2, 2007

10:14 pm ((PST))

 

A good starting place is to check out the Wikipedia overview at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataract

 

Some causes of are iatrogenic (drug,

misadventure). In other words: " An apple a day keeps the doctor away --

if it is well aimed. "

 

For age-related degeneration consider

antioxidants and statins. Both of these can be good choices if you have

cancer. N-Acetyl carnosine is effective at reversing 100% of ordinary

senile cataracts and 80% of a more serious cataract condition. It is

smart to add about a 15% MSM.

 

To prevent cataracts caused by trauma, wear UV-blocking polycarbonate

glasses and practice bobbing and weaving.

 

For early-stage cataracts associated with a non-congenital systemic

illness, aggressively treat the underlying condition.

 

If a congenital progressive problem, rectify (if possible) the defining

defective biochemical pathways.

 

To prevent both cataracts and macular

degeneration, a great starting place is too eat lots of spinach

(lutein), use fish oils (DHA) and avoid vegetable oils. Aminoguanidine

helps prevent glaucoma.

<http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/cgi-bin/

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,1799772,00.html>

 

Drugs firm blocks cheap blindness cure

 

Company will only seek licence for medicine that costs 100 times more

Sarah Boseley, health editor

 

Saturday June 17, 2006

Guardian

 

A major drug company is blocking access to a medicine that is cheaply

and effectively saving thousands of people from going blind because it

wants to launch a more expensive product on the market.

 

Ophthalmologists around the world, on their own initiative, are

injecting tiny quantities of a colon cancer drug called Avastin into the

eyes of patients with wet macular degeneration, a common condition of

older age that can lead to severely impaired eyesight and blindness.

They report remarkable success at very low cost because one phial can be

split and used for dozens of patients.

But Genentech, the company that invented Avastin, does not want it used

in this way. Instead it is applying to license a fragment of Avastin,

called Lucentis, which is packaged in the tiny

quantities suitable for eyes at a higher cost. Speculation in the US

suggests it could cost £1,000 per dose instead of less than £10. The

company says Lucentis is specifically designed for eyes, with

modifications over Avastin, and has been through 10 years of testing to

prove it is safe.

Unless Avastin is approved in the UK by the National Institute for

Clinical Excellence (Nice) it will not be universally available within

the NHS. But because Genentech declines to apply for a licence for this

use of Avastin, Nice cannot consider it. In spite of the growing drugs

bill of the NHS, it will appraise, and probably approve, Lucentis next

year.

Although Nice's role is to look at

cost-effectiveness, it says it cannot appraise a drug and pass it for

use in the NHS unless the drug is referred to it by the Department of

Health. The department says its hands are tied.

" The drug company hasn't applied for it to be licensed for this use. It

wouldn't be referred to Nice until they have made the first move, " said

a Department of Health spokeswoman. " They need to step up and get a

licence. If they are not getting it licensed, why aren't they? "

New drugs for the condition are badly needed: those we have now only

slow the progression to blindness. With Avastin, many patients get their

sight back with just one or two injections.

Avastin was first used on human eyes by Philip Rosenfeld, an

ophthalmologist in the US, who was aware of animal studies carried out

by Genentech that showed potential in eye conditions. This unlicensed

use of Avastin has spread across continents entirely by word of mouth

from one doctor to another. It has now been injected into 7,000 eyes,

with considerable success.

<http://www.bpei.med.miami.edu/site/find/find_results_doc.asp?doc_id=32 & name=all\

& location= & special=>Professor

Rosenfeld has published his results and a website

has been launched in the US to collate the experiences of doctors from

around the world. But although the evidence is good, regulators require

randomised controlled trials before they grant licences, which generally

only the drug companies can afford to carry out.

Prof Rosenfeld said the real issue was drug company profits. " This truly

is a wonder drug, " he said. " This shows both how good they [the drug

companies] are and on the flip side, how greedy they are. " He would like

to see governments fund clinical trials of drugs such as Avastin in the

public interest.

Rising drug bills are a big problem on both sides of the Atlantic. In

the UK, said David Wong, chairman of the scientific committee of the

Royal College of Ophthalmologists, doctors are fighting battles to

persuade primary care trusts to pay for drugs to stop their patients

going blind while they wait for Nice to decide on Lucentis and another

expensive drug called Macugen. That decision is not expected before the

end of next year.

About 20,000 people are diagnosed with

age-related macular degeneration in the UK each year. " From the

patient's point of view, if they have an eye condition that deteriorates

very quickly, there is no question of waiting, " said Professor Wong.

" We're talking about days and weeks, rather than months. The question is

should we do nothing and say there is no randomised controlled trial to

prove Avastin is of value? " He called for primary care trusts to agree

to pay for the planned phasing-in of new drugs for the condition.

Last night Genentech said its main concern over the use of Avastin to

treat eye conditions was patient safety. " While there are some small,

single-centre, uncontrolled studies of Avastin being performed, safety

data on patients who are treated with Avastin off-label is not being

collected in a standard or organised fashion, " said a spokeswoman for

the company.

Pharmaceutical firms say they need to launch drugs at high prices

because of the hundreds of millions of pounds spent on developing them.

Critics point out that the company's calculations also include the

marketing budget.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

 

AND FROM MY FILES:

An article in Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)

November 2, 1994, sings the praises of spinach. People who ate Popeye's

favorite daily suffered only one-tenth as much age-related macular

degeneration (AMD) as those who seldom ate spinach. And for patients

with the condition, eating spinach prevented worsening.

Research has now confirmed that three to four portions of spinach weekly

can reverse at least early AMD. " Dr. Richer, chief of the optometry

section at the Dept. of Veterans Affairs in North Chicago, recently

tested 14 patients who were showing the first signs of AMD. After just

12 weeks of eating three to four portions of spinach a week, those in

the study showed 60% to 80% improvement in their AMD tests. Among the

eight who had either a hole or a distortion in their vision, for seven

the problem either improved or disappeared completely. "

The macula is a light-sensitive part of the central retinal area near

the optic nerve; it provides sharp central visual acuity. AMD is the

leading cause of blindness among American, Canadian and English elderly,

and it afflicts nearly 40 percent of the more than 10 million Americans

with diabetes. AMD is a cousin of coronary heart disease, and shares

with it a common ancestor: atherosclerosis. Free radicals promote and

speed macular degeneration as well as aging, heart disease, arthritis,

and Alzheimer's disease, among others.

The benefits result largely from spinach's thousands of carotenoids,

which are

phytonutrients (plant nutrients) related to and including carotenes.

" High concentrations of lutein and zeaxanthin, both of them carotenoids,

are found in [and so, presumably, required by] the retina of the eye,

explaining why consuming them in diet protects against macular

degeneration. " New research finds that eggs may be an especially good

source of lutein and zeaxanthin because substances in the yolk make it

easier for the body to absorb these compounds. It is already known that

eating eggs does not elevate risk of heart attack; in fact, published

research found that those who ate more eggs had fewer heart attacks. So

such findings strengthen our recommendation to eat whole, natural foods

including all the eggs we want.

Besides AMD, many of these fight cancers and other afflictions; and they

do it better than beta-carotene, the only carotenoid found in most

vitamin supplements. Other dark-green leafy vegetables such as kale,

collards, and Brussels sprouts offer much the same multiple

nutrients/-vitamin/mineral benefits.

Two anecdotes reveal the extent of the eye-specialist problem.

A few years ago a bridge-playing friend of ours went to his eye doctor

with early macular degeneration. The doctor never mentioned kale, chard,

spinach or green tea. And now our friend can no longer hunt deer, play

bridge, repair things, read or engage in other much loved activities.

A neighbor's mother had very advanced AMD; her eye doctor was using

lasers on her and more, yet the condition was worsening. My friend

noticed a huge bottle of

<http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2003/06/04/aspirin_the_bitter_pill_that_k\

ills.htm>aspirin

in her mother's house and suggested she stop

taking it. After that, her eye condition stabilized. Why?

(a) A letter in New England Journal of Medicine in 1988 reported that

aspirin can cause AMD. JD Kingham, MD, wrote, " Since 1983 at our clinic,

many elderly patients who present with decreased central vision and

macular hemorrhage [the most severe form of AMD] have a history of

recent ingestion of aspirin and other drugs known to affect platelet

function or the coagulation process. "

(b) And patients with blocked arteries to the brain (a dangerous stroke

situation) have three times as many strokes from ruptured arteries if

they are taking an aspirin a day.

Dr. Kingham's discovery and that reported in Medical Tribune have not

been confirmed. But a massive computer literature search by Kirk

Hamilton, PA, publisher of Clinical Pearls News, Sacramento, CA, found

no refutation. So there is at least a caution flag on long-term aspirin.

Fortunately, aspirin's anti-clotting benefits in lowering risk of heart

attack and stroke can be obtained without side effects in at least two

ways. (a) White willow bark, which the Greek physician Dioscorides used

in the first century AD. People with a headache long chewed white willow

bark. Bayer Co. derived aspirin itself from the bark, modifying the

molecule to make it patentable. This modification is the source of

excess bleeding, digestive upsets, worsened gut permeability and 3,000

U.S. deaths a year from aspirin poisoning, as well as the risk of

ultimate blindness.

Jonathan V. Wright, MD, a leading

alternative/integrative practitioner in Kent, WA has found that two

400-milligram capsules of the powdered bark provide about the same

amount of salicin, the active ingredient, as a baby aspirin. Four such

capsules thin the blood as effectively as an adult aspirin. (See Part

2.)

(b) Another alternative: three glasses daily of purple grape juice can

reduce platelet

aggregation as much as a daily aspirin. " Blood platelets floating in a

juice solution clotted about 30% less than platelets not in the juice,

and released three times more chemicals that widen blood vessels and

inhibit clots. " And unlike aspirin, the flavonoids in purple grape juice

remain effective when adrenaline levels rise. In another test, purple

grape juice lowered susceptibility of LDL-cholesterol to oxidation.

Also, a published clinical test showed melatonin lowers eyeball pressure

in glaucoma patients. The insomnia age group - for whom its use is safe

and appropriate at 1 to 5 milligrams before bedtime -- is the same as

the glaucoma age group.

Macular degeneration and diet. (1) In rats, excitotoxins rapidly damage

the macula, offering a new slant on burgeoning AMD. They wreak many

other ill effects on people consuming processed foods. Monosodium

glutamate (MSG),

<http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2003/09/26/dropping_like_flies_poisoned_by\

_aspartame.htm>aspartame

(Nutra-Sweet®) and nearly all processed foods

contain dangerous quantities of glutamate, aspartate, cysteine and

related compounds. These excitotoxic drugs, added to foods, discharge

nerve cells in the mouth to augment the sensation of flavor. Addictive

Aspartame breaks down into carcinogenic, eye-destroying formaldehyde and

deadly methyl alcohol.

The public long ago began to be aware of some of the risks of MSG; and

so, to hide the deadly character of their products, food processing

companies adopted a laundry list of

innocent-sounding labels. Avoid all diet foods, diet drinks, and such

products as Accent, autolyzed yeast, HVP, hydrolyzed or texturized

vegetable protein -- especially bad because they contain three

excitotoxins -- hydrolyzed plant protein, Kombu extract, Chinese

seasoning, gourmet powder, RL50, broth, bouillon, caseinate, flavoring

and natural flavoring. (It doesn't have to be labeled when it's in ice

cream.) Any of these are even more dangerous when heated.

" Natural " ? MSG is found in, e.g., tomatoes and mushrooms -- but at about

1,000th of the concentration used in food processing.

Incredibly, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rules permit processed

foods to contain large amounts of MSG but be labeled " no MSG added. "

(2) Eating one ounce of Olestra

(Olean®)-containing chips daily for two weeks lowered

vision-protective carotene levels by 50 percent.

The eye specialists could perhaps be excused for not knowing about how

full spectrum light helps the eyes, and for not knowing that MSG- and

aspartame-polluted foods and Olean promote macular degeneration. But

both of them probably to JAMA and New England Journal of

Medicine, and so they had no excuse for keeping quiet about kale,

spinach and aspirin except their own financial self-interest. They were

wrong to deprive their patients of that healing news and should be held

responsible. Class-action lawyers might look into this. Ophthalmologists

may complain that telling patients these truths could put them out of

business. But after cars replaced buggies, buggy-whip makers couldn't

force people to buy buggy whips. They learned new trades, and so can

those eye specialists.

Part II. A. Dr. Jonathan V. Wright's treatment. Dr. Wright said to take

selenium, taurine, vitamin E and zinc. And put DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide,

a solvent obtainable at health food stores and paint stores) on any part

of the skin. The DMSO, which itself offers powerful healing features, is

a necessary part of the procedure: it strongly increases absorption of

these nutrients. Some patients of his recovered from macular

degeneration using this therapy and have stayed clear of it for as long

as four years. The method works better in some cases than others.

The quantities, written on a prescription form: Zinc, preferably

picolinate, 30 mg x 2 = 60 mg/day;* zinc is best absorbed when taken

half an hour before breakfast; in a few, this timing may cause nausea.

The eye contains more zinc than any other part of the body. Vitamin E,

800 mg/day

Selenium, 500 micrograms/day

Taurine: 620 mg x 2 twice a day = 2+ grams/day.

The label instructions say not to use this amino acid when taking

aspirin or any product

containing aspirin; take between meals or before a meal.

* Taking zinc supplement of this magnitude, you should have a

red-blood-cell copper blood test ($40, not paid by insurance) every two

months; and 500 mcg of selenium daily cannot continue for a long time.

Full-spectrum light is also effective against seasonal depression

( " SAD " ). Nonseasonal depression benefits too, but not as much. It has

other major health benefits including reduction of tooth decay. It has

also greatly improved behavior of previously UV-deprived children. For

full-spectrum light fixtures, consult

www.ottbiolight.com. Cheaper equipment is inferior.

Vitamin D and calcium. Arthur A. Knapp, MD, used 50,000 units of vitamin

D and one gram of calcium on intermittent days. These helped against eye

conditions including myopia, keratoconus, cataract, optic nerve atrophy

and retinitis pigmentosa.

A related problem affects people with asthma. Inhaled steroids, intended

to block or reduce inflammation, were long claimed not to circulate

throughout the body. Yet for many older patients they promote glaucoma,

the leading cause of blindness in the population. The risk appeared to

be elevated by 44 percent compared to matched patients not using inhaled

steroids. Lea Davies of Georgetown University Medical Center in

Washington, DC, adds that inhaled steroids may cause about one-third of

the 3,000 glaucoma cases developing each year among Americans over 65.

Inhaled steroids reduce bone density in the spines of women with asthma.

The greater the cumulative dose of inhaled steroids, the greater the

reduction in bone mineral density of the spine in women.

" The drugs commonly used in the treatment of allergic conditions,

including asthma, have many potentially harmful and dangerous side

effects. These antihistamines, steroid hormones, or xanthine derivatives

have side effects that may be merely annoying to a child but in many

instances are dangerous. For example, steroid treatment of asthmatic

children has been demonstrated to retard lung maturation and physical

growth and to cause a higher incidence of cataracts in children

receiving long-term steroid therapy. "