Category: The Medical Stuff

Posted in The Medical Stuff

Vitamin A and Carotenoids

Posted on by One Vision
Clipboard with a list of Vitamin A rich food to avoid
Carotenoids are the pigments that give vegetables and other plant products, their bright lovely colours.
Before your body can benefit from them nutritionally, it must convert them into retinoids. This process may be difficult for some people to do, including us with Macular dystrophy.
Because our eyes cannot process this and Vitamin A properly, it affects the light receptors, causing damage to the retina, leaving the macular full of Lupofusin, clogging up, making the waste hard to get rid of.
So light sensitivity happens, floaters from the rubbish floating around in there, and damage to the macular, causing the blurry spot that makes our central vision fade.
So supplements, like any extra vitamins you may take, or the food you eat have to be low in Vitamin A and Carotenoids. Which is impossible but my specialist just said as long as I’m not going mad ingesting carrots by the ton, it will help by keeping the damage to a slower pace.

The foods highest in vitamin A are:-

⚫ Carrots

⚫ Broccoli

⚫ Cantaloupe Melons

⚫ Grapefruit

⚫ Red Peppers

⚫ Pistachios

⚫ Liver

⚫ Dried Apricots

⚫ Oily Fish

⚫ Sweet potatoes

⚫ Mangoes

⚫ Tomato Juice

Posted in The Medical Stuff

Gene genie – Genetic macular conditions

Posted on by One Vision
2 women facing front holding pages. Lefthand Blonde woman has the words healthy eyes, carrier or Macular Dystrophy with a question mark. Righthand brown haired woman has a red cross with Macular Dystrophy text
Stargardt/Macular dystrophy is caused by faults in a gene known as ABCA4.

This gene provides the instructions for making an important protein that usually removes toxic by-products out of the light-sensing cells in the retina, at the back of the eye.. But when this protein is missing or faulty, these substances build up and form a fatty waste product called lipofuscin, in and around the macula that started to affect my central vision.

When faults in the ABCA4 gene or others are the cause of the condition, I will have inherited one faulty copy of the gene from each parent. My parents will have typically each carried one copy of the faulty gene but they did not have the disease themselves.

My sister seems to be ok thank goodness. She is 2 years younger. I asked my eye specialist on Thursday about her and if she isn\’t presenting problems now then hopefully looks like she got both the good eye genes from our parents. There are 3 possible outcomes. 2 healthy genes, 1 of each and 2 unhealthy genes. The latter is what I now know I received from my parents. One faulty gene from each.

Although having faults in ABCA4 is the most common cause of Macular dystrophy/Stargardts, a minority of people have faults in other genes.

Posted in How I'm Adapting, The Medical Stuff

Eccentric Viewing

Posted on by One Vision
Living well with low vision

An interesting article on eccentric viewing. My eyes have been naturally helping me for a couple of years now.

Quite fascinating how your body will adapt on it’s own. Although you can learn this before you need to. Although my eyes started to organically negotiate this by themselves which is amazing really! the only way I can describe it is that your eyes move around slightly.
Usually looking beyond and a little bit above what you are needing to see using your peripheral vision. ..this was the start for me, knowing that my eyes had taken it upon themselves to help me out. The first time I though, right, this is happening now.
Please click on the link below for more information ☺