We always stress the importance of fish oil for the heart and the digestive tract, but you probably haven’t heard that people who eat the most fish have the fewest eye problems.
The impact of fish oil on vision was a topic at this week's meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. They reviewed evidense that showed that fish oil consumption extended to two very serious eye problems.
The first of these problems helped by fish oil is age-related macular degeneration. Macular degeneration is the disruption of the center of the retina where the fine nerve complex at the back of the eye essential for all fine visual tasks rests. Macular degereration is the leading cause of age-related blindness.
Fish oil protects the eyes from age-related macular degeneration because of a component of fish oil called docosahexaenoic acid also known as DHA. DHA is one of the omega-3 fatty acids linked to other health benefits. DHA helps vision by building up in the eye near light-sensing nerve cells.
“National Eye Institute researcher John Paul SanGiovanni, ScD, and colleagues analyzed dietary data from 4,513 60- to 80-year-old participants in the Age-Related Eye Disease Study. Those who ate fish more than twice a week were half as likely to get macular degeneration as those who ate no fish at all. More than one weekly portion of broiled/baked fish or tuna lowered the risk by a third.
"The risk for [age-related macular degeneration] was significantly decreased for the highest versus the lowest quintiles of total [omega-3 fatty acids] intake," SanGiovanni and colleagues write in their abstract.”
In another study, fish oil was found to protect the eyes from dry eye syndrome. Dry eye syndrome is a condition in which a person's eyes don't make enough tears. Dry eyes can lead to scarring of the cornea and vision loss.
A study of 32,470 female health professionals found that women whose diets had the most omega-3 fatty acids were far less likely to have dry eye syndrome.
Women who ate two to four servings of tuna a week had an 18% lower risk of dry eye syndrome than those who ate less tuna. Eating five or six four-ounce servings of tuna every week lowered this risk by 66%.
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