How To Avoid Age-Related Macular Degeneration

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Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• The risk factors for age-related macular degeneration are as follows:

  • Being over the age of 55 (moderate risk)

  • Being over the age of 65 (high risk)

  • Having a genetic predisposition

  • Having high cholesterol

  • Having cardiovascular disease

  • Smoking

• We can thus reduce our risk by looking after our cardiovascular health, and of course not smoking.

• We can also further reduce our risk, by a well-studied, disease-specific, supplement regime, of:

  • 500 mg vitamin C

  • 180 mg vitamin E

  • 80 mg zinc

  • 10 mg lutein

  • 2 mg copper

• See today’s main feature for more about this!

• Walking is one of the best activities we can do for the health, and/but for many of us it’s important to take care of ourselves and our joints while doing so.

  • Fulton offer cork-based insoles that shape themselves to the arch of your feet, giving you perfect customized support

    • Also 15% off if you use our code “NEWSLETTER15”, and a 90-day satisfaction-guaranteed trial!

Read on to learn about these things and more…

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How To Trim That Waistline (Step By Step)

Our waistline is a much more important indicator of metabolic health than our BMI. So, what if we’d like to shrink it a little?

Jeremy has advice:

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👀 MAIN FEATURE

Avoiding Age-Related Macular Degeneration

Eye problems can strike at any age, but as we get older, it becomes a lot more likely. In particular, age-related macular degeneration is, as the name suggests, an age-bound disease.

Is there no escaping it, then?

The risk factors for age-related macular degeneration are as follows:

• Being over the age of 55 (can’t do much about this one)

• Being over the age of 65 (risk climbs sharply now)

• Having a genetic predisposition (can’t do much about this one)

• Having high cholesterol (this one we can tackle)

• Having cardiovascular disease (this one we can tackle)

• Smoking (so, just don’t)

Genes predispose; they don’t predetermine. Or to put it another way: genes load the gun, but lifestyle pulls the trigger.

Preventative interventions against age-related macular degeneration

Prevention is better than a cure in general, and this especially goes for things like age-related macular degeneration, because the most common form of it has no known cure.

So first, look after your heart (because your heart feeds your eyes).

See also: The Mediterranean Diet

Next, eat to feed your eyes specifically. There’s a lot of research to show that lutein helps avoid age-related diseases in the eyes and the rest of the brain, too:

See also: Brain Food? The Eyes Have It

Do supplements help?

They can! There was a multiple-part landmark study by the National Eye Institute, a formula was developed that reduced the 5-year risk of intermediate disease progressing to late disease by 25–30%. It also reduced the risk of vision loss by 19%.

You can read about both parts of the study here:

Age-Related Eye Disease Studies (AREDS/AREDS2): major findings

As you can see, an improvement was made between the initial study and the second one, by replacing beta-carotene with lutein and zeaxanthin.

The AREDS2 formula contains:

• 500 mg vitamin C

• 180 mg vitamin E

• 80 mg zinc

• 10 mg lutein

• 2 mg copper

You can learn more about these supplements, and where to get them, here on the NEI's corner of the official NIH website:

AREDS 2 Supplements for Age-Related Macular Degeneration

Take care of yourself!

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Fulton: A Better Way To Walk

Here at 10almonds, we’ve talked a lot about the health benefits of walking. It’s no surprise, then, that we also believe it’s important to take good care of your feet!

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The trick is their cork base, which not only absorbs shock but also molds to your unique arch to provide custom support. And as a bonus:

• A deep heel cup to provide maximum stability and prevent injury

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• Fulton offers a 90-day comfort guarantee, so your order is risk-free.

Click Here To Check Out Fulton’s Custom-Support, Planet-Friendly Insoles!

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More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

The Worry Trick: How Your Brain Tricks You into Expecting the Worst and What You Can Do About It – by Dr. David Carbonell

Worry is a time-sink that rarely does us any good, and often does us harm. Many books have been written on how to fight anxiety... That's not what this book's about.

Dr. David Carbonell, in contrast, encourages the reader to stop trying to avoid/resist anxiety, and instead, lean into it in a way that detoothes it.

He offers various ways of doing this, from scheduling time to worry, to substituting "what if…" with "let's pretend...", and guides the reader through exercises to bring about a sort of worry-desensitization.

The style throughout is very much pop-psychology and is very readable.

If the book has a weak point, it's that it tends to focus on worrying less about unlikely outcomes, rather than tackling worry that occurs relating to outcomes that are likely, or even known in advance. However, some of the techniques will work for such also! That's when Dr. Carbonell draws from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

Bottom line: if you would like to lose less time and energy to worrying, then this is a fine book for you.

Click here to check out The Worry Trick, and repurpose your energy reserves!

Wishing you a happy healthy day,

The 10almonds Team