While older adults are at higher risk for eye diseases, getting older does not have to mean losing your vision. UAB Callahan Eye is committed to the personal care and preservation of eye health for our patients as they go through the physical changes that come with aging. Healthy vision is key to maintaining your independence as you age, allowing for important daily tasks such as driving and reading.

We’ve long known diet influences our overall health, but did you know your diet can have a significant effect on your eye health? Maria Grant, M.D., and Christine A. Curcio, Ph.D., from the UAB Heersink School of Medicine Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences teamed up with researchers at the University of Utah, the University of Pennsylvania, the National Eye Institute, U. C. Irvine, Radboud University in the Netherlands, Thomas Jefferson University, Tufts University, Columbia University, and the Macula Consultants of New York for a comprehensive look at the science behind diet and eye health. “Inside out: Relations between the microbiome, nutrition, and eye health,” published in the journal Experimental Eye Research, details the link between diet and gut health and the prognosis of age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

AMD is a complex eye disease that can degrade your central vision. It happens when aging causes damage to the macula, the part of the retina that controls sharp, straight-ahead vision. AMD is a leading cause of vision loss for older adults. AMD doesn’t cause complete blindness but losing your central vision can make it harder to see faces, read, drive, or do close-up work like cooking or fixing things around the house, making maintaining your independence a struggle. Current therapies target late stages of the diseases, so early detection and lifestyle accommodations are key to prevention.

Though age is the main risk factor for developing AMD, other factors include lifestyle, nutrition, and genetics. AMD has many molecular commonalities with cardiovascular disease. Both diseases involve fatty lesions in blood vessels. A twist is that the eye makes its own fats, using what it takes up from diet and from the cells involved in vision. It's possible a combination of good diet, smoking cessation, and drugs like statins may help AMD in the way it helped drive down disability due to heart disease.

The authors explored the interactions between diet, age, and the gut microbiome, the trillions of bacteria that keep everyone’s digestion health. The retinas of laboratory mice could be protected from aging changes with a low glycemic index diet. In humans, studies have shown that dark fish and colorful fruits and vegetables help retina health as we age. Some evidence suggests that the microbiome affects the development of AMD. Although research is continuing, a good diet is already recognized as important for reducing vision loss due to AMD.

Grant, M.B., Berstein, P. S., Boesze-Battaglia, K., Chew, E., Curcio, C. A., Kenney, M.C., Klaver, C., Philp, N. J., Rowan, S., Sparrow, J., Spaide, R. F., Taylor, A., 2022. Inside out: Relations between the microbiome, nutrition, and eye health. Exp Eye Res, 109216. PMID 36041509 doi: 10.1016/j.exer.2022.109216.