Talk about health

If you are a regular reader of my occasional rants you will not be surprised at what follows here.

While watching the news yesterday I happened on a story about a retired city councillor who had recently been diagnosed with AMD or age related macular degeneration. Now, this is a condition that is becoming much more common in the elderly, and involves changes to the eye where the central vision is affected at first. It is not reversible and if left untreated it leads eventually to blindness.

Having been diagosed, this lady was informed that there were two drugs currently available to slow down or stop AMD's progress. Their cost was £2,000 and £10,000 per year (approx $4,000 and $20,000). She told the viewing public that fortunately in her case she could afford to pay for treatment, but she was unhappy that the drugs were not yet available without charge through the UK's crumbling National Health Service.

Her message was to the effect that these drugs should be made available right away so as to save the sight of the many older people who are the victims of AMD.

"So what?", you might say. Well, as far as it went, the item was accurate. But, what got me was the complete absense of any qualifying mention of the benefits of dietary and supplemental carotenoids. These are well-known to prevent AMD in the first place and slow its progress in the second place.

Simply by adjusting your diet to include more vegetables such as corn, squash, broccoli, and peas, and adding an egg a day could make all the difference. You could prevent or postpone AMD for years and by judicious choice of diets you may be able to slow down or stop AMD progressing any further.

The thing is that such changes in diet would cost relatively little to the patient and nothing at all to the health services. Just by being aware of which foods contain the magic carotenoids with strange names such as lutein and zeaxanthin could make all the difference to your life.

It annoys me that the drug industry appear to have a strangle hold on the media such that journalists seem unable or unwilling to put things in perspective. All they want to show is that modern very costly drugs are the be-all-and-end-all of treatment, when they clearly are not, and point out the deficiencies in the health services of the UK.

AMD is an avoidable condition with the simple expedient of a healthy diet. So don't be panicked into thinking there is no hope unless you have lots of disposable income to buy the drugs. Just find out which food have the necessary carotenoids and eat them as part of your new and healthy diet. or get a carotenoid-containing supplement and follow the dosage instructions.

One final point, my site hase a useful booklet on Basic Food Groups that gives all the details and notes the corotenoid content of each food described. Just log on to http://www.healthexplored.co.uk to find out more. There's a free newsletter and a growing list of articles to refer to. And you can buy the booklets as well if you want to know more.

Wishing you the very best of health.