Dietary Nitrate in Vegetables May Protect Against Glaucoma
Eat your veggies
Individuals who ate a diet higher in nitrate and green leafy vegetables had a lower risk for primary open-angle glaucoma. (POAG). POAG is the most common type of glaucoma.
It happens when the eye’s drainage canals become clogged over time.
The inner eye pressure (also called intraocular pressure or IOP) rises because the correct amount of fluid can’t drain out of the eye.
The protective effect was particularly noticeable for POAG with early paracentral visual field (VF) loss at diagnosis.
With open-angle glaucoma, the entrances to the drainage canals are clear and should be working correctly. The clogging problem occurs further inside the drainage canals, similar to a clogged pipe below the drain in a sink.
Jae H. Kang, ScD, from Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and colleagues published the results of their analysis of data from the Nurses’ Health Study online January 14 in JAMA Ophthalmology. They investigated the relationship between dietary nitrate intake (primarily from green leafy vegetables) and POAG.
Nitrates are naturally found in green leafy vegetables, as well as other vegetables, such as beets and carrots. Dietary nitrate is an exogenous source of nitric oxide (NO).
The take home message is :Eat your veggies!
You can read the rest of the article here on Medscape.
