Coffee Keeps Aging Eyes Healthy, Say Researchers
Monday, 05 May 2014 12:26 PM
A coffee a day could help keep eye diseases at bay.
That’s according to a joint study out of
South Korea and the US, which concluded that powerful antioxidants found
in coffee can play a role in preventing age-related eye diseases and
the degeneration of eyesight.
For their research, scientists looked at
the impact of chlorogenic acid or CLA, a strong antioxidant that has
been shown to prevent retinal degeneration in mice.
To conduct their experiment, mice were
treated with nitric oxide, which creates oxidative stress and free
radicals and leads to retinal degeneration.
Those that were pretreated with CLA developed no sign of retinal damage.
The retina is a thin tissue located on the
back wall of the eye that receives and organizes visual information,
researchers explain.
It’s also one of the most metabolically
active tissues and requires high levels of oxygen. Without it, the
tissue is particularly vulnerable to oxidative stress and prone to the
production of free radicals, which leads to tissue damage and loss of
sight.
However, it’s not yet known whether or not drinking coffee delivers CLA directly to the retina, researchers stress.
Future studies could lead to the development of a special brew customized for retinal support, or CLA delivery via eye drops.
The study, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, is the latest to vaunt the nutritional merits of coffee.
Another large scale, US-led study published recently in the journal European Association for the Study of Diabetes found
that people who drank three or more cups of coffee a day had the lowest
risk of type 2 diabetes -- 37 percent lower than those who consumed one
cup or less per day.
Scientists looked at the coffee consumption patterns of 95,000 women and 28,000 men.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please leave a comment-- or suggestions, particularly of topics and places you'd like to see covered