This week my daughter came home from school on Thursday with vision screening results. I didn’t even know they were being tested but I was interested in the results all the same. The paper says she tested at 20/32 in each eye. Immediately I started to get antsy that this was bad news. Beyond the fact that I just want my baby to have the best vision with which to see this gorgeous world we live in… I was a child who wore glasses and I don’t want that for my kids.
I didn’t get teased or called “four eyes” or anything but wearing them was a pain in the butt! They got dirty, they got scratched, they got lost, and they gave me headaches. By the time I reached my teen years and got obsessed interested in boys I talked my mom into letting me switch to contacts. Glasses were so not sexy IMO. Well, I had a really active social life, and at 16 I graduated highschool and started college AND working full time. I didn’t sleep much and I wore my contacts all the time. After a couple years the whites of my eyes turned completely red with blood vessels that grew in there in a desperate attempt to reach oxygen that was being blocked by the contacts. My optometrist told me he could no longer prescribe contacts for me and that if I cared about my eyes I would never, ever wear any again.
I went back to glasses until I was 24ish if I recall correctly, and hated every minute of it. Then I got Lasik and it was the single best thing I ever spent money on. It has been amazing to live for the past 8 years with perfect vision. THAT is what I want for my kids but of course I would prefer they not have to go through a risky surgery to get it.
In doing a bit of research on what the vision scales mean, 20/32 is actually classified as near normal but to me it means there has likely been some vision deterioration and she, as well as my other kids, may need to adopt some serious “vision specific” healthy habits in order to contradict the bad vision genes they got from me.
The core of any natural vision improvement program would have to be a healthy, natural diet obviously. I have actually started writing out a core diet mission plan of sorts so we can be reminded of our goals.
Our core diet mission plan:
* A plant based diet… high raw
* Heavy on leafy greens like spinach, kale, collards and chard
* Fruit and especially “berries”… raspberries, cranberries, blackberries, blueberries, goji berries
* Nuts and Seeds
* Superfoods (goji berries, chlorella, chia seeds, maca)
* Herbs
Supplements Plan:
* Elderberry Syrup daily (homemade or Sambucol)
* Greens powders (like Amazing Grass)
* Algae
I think keeping a mission plan is good because as you learn and grow things change. 2 years ago my mission plan would have been something like “an omnivore’s diet, high on veggies, fruit, raw dairy, beans and legumes, whole grains, and fish (cooked and raw)”. There would have been no emphasis on leafy greens and there would have been a whole lot more animal products, grains, and pastas than there are now.
So… now that I have my core diet I see something important to vision that I need to add:
* Colored veggies with lots of phytonutrients like orange carrots, yellow squash, and red cabbage
So we need to more colored veggies, uncooked, in juices… to the mix. We do green smoothies but I think we need to start having a daily glass of carrot/apple juice from our juicer. We could juice beets and add them to smoothies.
We have also been forgetting the algae oils lately so I think we will start using chlorella tablets in conjunction. It’s green algae and it’s a superfood. They taste good and you just chew them like nuts. But the DHA in the oils is essential for healthy eyes so we need to be more vigilant about this.
We also need to concentrate on the “dark” berries… blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, etc. The bioflavonoids are good for your eyes.
So what do you think? What are your tips for improving or reversing eye vision issues?
Update: Stacy (below) linked to an awesome article that points out that SLS in shampoo might be large culprit in eye degeneration among modern kids. EXCELLENT point! We already avoid SLS but the reminder never hurts! Yet another reason I love shampoo bars instead of bottled shampoo.
