Posted April 15, 2016: by Bill Sardi
“What’s up doc?” – Bugs Bunny with a carrot in his mouth
Move over Bugs Bunny. Your beta carotene-rich carrots which converts to vitamin A in the liver to eventually form rhodopsin, the visual chemical of sight at the back of the eyes, is about to get bumped to second place by a cup of java.
So far, cataract surgeons, as effective as they are at restoring sight these days with lens implants (even multi-focal intraocular lenses) with 95+% success, have been able to deny eye drops for cataracts are effective at delaying or totally preventing cataracts.
One way to do that is never put anti-cataract eye drops to the test. In a world turned upside down, of all things, a Russian eye surgeon, not an American inventor, has developed an anti-cataract eye drop that has been in use for a number of years now but you may never hear about it from your ophthalmologist. In the back of every American’s mind there likely a bit of suspicion about any medical advancement coming out of Russia, but that just explains the stranglehold American medicine has over preventive medicine. The “not invented here” syndrome is also in play.
As long as insurance or Medicare doesn’t pay for anti-cataract eye drops and there is no requirement to disclose to patients contemplating surgical removal of their cloudy cataracts in a treatment consent form that there is a proven option to surgery, the volume of cataract surgery will continue to rise as the population lives longer and longer.
Medicare pays over $3 billion a year for cataract surgery and it is money well spent because it keeps senior Americans active, able to drive at night and prevents a lot of accidents and life-threatening hip fractures. With eye drop anesthesia and office microsurgery, cataract operations are less arduous than going to the dentist. Gone are the days of those awful thick cataract glasses that magnified central vision but obscured side vision and as objects moved across the visual field they would appear to suddenly jump out at you.
American ophthalmologists are in general denial over the effectiveness of anti-cataract eye drops. Few patients ask their eye doctors about anti-cataract eye drops and it’s best to just ignore the topic unless patients bring it up.
Oddly, cataract sufferers appear to be more open to trying them on their pet dogs before they instill them in their own eyes.
During a visit to a friend’s home their aged dog was placed on my lap and I was invited to examine his eyes. The focusing lenses of his eyes were clear. I was then shown a photograph of that same dog taken months prior with obvious grey-looking cloudy cataracts in both eyes. The cataracts had vanished with instillation of an anti-cataract eye drop that Russian eye doctor now markets at Amazon.com.
Go to Amazon.com and you may develop a different opinion about these anti-cataract eye drops than you your eye doctor offers when you inquire about them. Here are a few abridged testimonials swiped from Amazon:
I originally made a purchase of these drops to see if it might help my dog who was dx’d with juvenile cataracts in one eye at less than a year old. OK, so being the animal lover I am, and since this product is tested safe for humans and dogs, I decided I’d put it in my eyes before putting it in my dog’s eyes…. Sometime during the first week of use, I noticed … the colors of nature seemed to be a little brighter, I could more easily see definition in the treetops, and I had a slight improvement in my night vision. …The animal eye specialist I take my dog to says she is not familiar with Can-C drops but doesn’t think any kind of drops will help, but she seems more than happy to perform surgery at some point for me to the tune of $4,000 per eye (WHAT?!?!?!) At any rate, my dog has had three checkups, every 6 months from the time of dx, and there has been no progression of the cataract in his one eye, nor has their been improvement…. My elderly father (5 stars) – In 2009, he had cataract surgery in one eye. Last year, his doc commented he thought it was about time to do the other eye. I asked my father if he wanted to try what I was using for the dog and gave him a bottle… The bottom line is, my father had such a dramatic improvement that his doc said he would never consider doing surgery on him at this point.
I had cataract surgery in my right eye seven years ago and had planned to do my left eye a year later. But, having read about N-acetyl carnosine, I decided to try it first. Here I am, seven years later and my cataract has not progressed at all, according to my ophthalmologist, and it is much lighter in color. It used to be dark yellow in strong sunlight and is now almost as white as my right eye. The cataract is still there, but I don’t feel the need to remove it, as my sight is fine.
I asked the doctor about my cataracts. He was taken back, and said, “I didn’t see any cataracts.” He reopened and reviewed my file. He confirmed that previously I had had cataracts (in fact I had seen him the year before) He confirmed that I didn’t have cataracts at this time.
I’ve only tried this for two days but I swear I can see better already! I really want this to work because I have and artificial eye and if cataract surgery went wrong I would be blind! So I looked for alternatives ways and this is one that showed up so I had to try it.
Had multiple vets telling me there’s nothing to do about my dog’s cataracts, that it’s all part of the aging process, and to not worry about it essentially because why do dogs need their eyes when they have such efficient noses. Ridiculous! I decided to go with this product and it works great. No longer is my dog bumping into things and he notices the difference so much that this 96 pound bad boy allows me to give him the drops now twice a day.
(For all those Amazon reviewers that bemoaned these eye drops sting their eyes when they instill them, all they had to do is store them in the fridge to prevent that. Subjects with dry eyes often experience unbearable stinging when instilling eye drops. Best to address the dry eye problem by taking one of the GLA oils orally — evening primrose, black currant seed or borage oil — so the oil glands in your eyelids secrete a coating that inhibits evaporation of your team film. By the way, all the company that makes these eye drops can legally claim in their labeling is that they soothe dry eyes, they can’t say they prevent cataracts!)
The customer reviews for these eye drops aren’t all glowing; 46% give them a 5-star rating, 21% a low 1-2-star rating. But it is amazing they work at all because the crystalline lens of the eye becomes rock hard over time and yellows and no medicine can penetrate to its center.
If you have rock-hard cataracts and have been putting off eye surgery, it may be time to get a lens implant. You wouldn’t drive around in an old car with a pitted windshield you couldn’t see out of would you? Well, that is what you are doing when you put off having your cloudy cataract removed. You won’t believe the world you are missing.
(However, I must warn, an unexpected downside after lens implant surgery is a lot of folks are suddenly confronted with the sudden onset of facial wrinkles they mistakenly think the medicines the eye doctor used must have caused. Uh, they just haven’t been able to see them for a long time. And it is not uncommon for patients with newly installed lens implants to realize all the dust that has accumulated in their home that they never saw before, and oh, those gaudy neckties or unmatched socks they were wearing!)
If you are unconvinced by testimonials, and you are male, and a retired engineer or PhD, you might want to read some of the convincing science Moscow-based Dr. Mark Babizhayev has published about anti-cataract eye drops. Here is a link to 50 published reports by Dr. Babizhayev:
National Library of Medicine PUBMED
Now to reveal that new cataract cure available at Starbuck’s coffee houses.
First, a bit of background information: cataracts are the number one cause of vision loss in the world. Millions suffer from them, many at an earlier age than experienced in America due to poor nutrition. The higher incidence of cataracts in equatorial countries is from sunlight exposure. More than 28,000 cataracts are diagnosed daily around the world. Cataract blindness, a correctable condition, is responsible for half of the 50 million cases of blindness in the world. A 10-year delay in the onset of cataracts would reduce the prevalence of disabling cataracts by an estimated 45%. [Interdisciplinary Toxicology 2010]
People are living longer on planet earth. When the global population reached 7 billion in 2012, 562 million were aged 65 and over. In 2015, 3 years later, the older population rose by 55 million. A sobering report published in 2015 said: the next 10 years will witness an increase of about 236 million people aged 65 and older throughout the world. Thereafter, from 2025 to 2050, the older population is projected to almost double to 1.6 billion globally, whereas the total population will grow by just 34 percent over the same period. [US Census Bureau 2015]
It has been said, if you live long enough you will get cataracts. The crystalline lens of the human eye loses about 1% of its transparency every year until by age 60 only about 35% of light pass through to the retina. Cataracts are universally a part of advancing age.
As pools of health insurance funds dissipate, waiting lists for cataract surgery are anticipated to grow. Rationing will prevail. Why there aren’t even enough eye surgeons to remove all the cloudy cataracts in the world.
There are researchers who have dedicated their whole lives to the understanding of how cataracts develop and how to prevent them. Some time ago researchers in Germany wrote:
But most regrettable is the fact that many clinicians have never been really interested in basic research of the lens, in cataract pathogenesis and epidemiology of risk factors or in testing the efficacy of cataract-preventing medication. Their main goal was cataract surgery. On the basis of the success of the cataract surgery at the present time clinicians have even developed the opinion that lens and cataract research is no longer necessary to overcome cataract blindness. But as we all know this refers only to highly industrialized countries. [Developmental Ophthalmology 2002]
Bona fide anti-cataract eye drops date back almost three decades but have been ignored. [Journal Ocular Pharmacology 1987]
The world is not likely to be able to afford even the most economical anti-cataract eye drop. Now what?
Enter Dr. Shambu Varma of the Maryland School of Medicine. Dr. Varma, a noted researcher there, recently wrote a peer-reviewed report in the journal Clinical Ophthalmology.
Surprisingly, there is a growing body of science that points to caffeine as a universal antidote to all forms of cataracts, sugar (diabetic) cataracts, sunshine cataracts, or age-related cataracts. [Pubmed.gov]
Dr. Sharma began to investigate further. With recognition that coffee is the primary source of caffeine in the diet (tea leaves have caffeine but the quantity of the leaves used to brew tea is small). Dr. Sharma found profoundly higher incidence of cataracts in tea-drinking countries (India, China, etc.) compared to coffee-drinking countries. Take a look at some of the evidence:
Caffeine consumption Cataract incidence
Milligrams per day
Nigeria 0 50.0%
Mali 0 50.0%
Ghana 0 62.5%
Kenya 2.70 55.0%
Paraguay 5.47 40.0%
Turkey 10.95 28.5%*
South Africa 11.0 55.0%
Brazil 26.0 40.0%
Hungary 84.93 24.0%
Lithuania 112.0 24.0%
France 148.0 5.0%
Italy 162.0 5.0%
Canada 178.0 5.0%
Norway 200.0 5.0%
USA 226.0 7.6%
Denmark 271.0 5.0%
Finland 328.0 5.0%
*Turns out people in Turkey drink the most caffeine-rich tea in the world and actually consume 376 mg/day, which explains their relatively low incidence of cataracts.
Dr. Varma writes: “the cataract-lowering effect becomes highly visible as the caffeine consumption levels reach near 50 milligrams and then nearly complete at 100 mg/day. In the US an 8-ounce cup of ordinary coffee provides 95-200 mg caffeine.” [Clinical Ophthalmology 2016]
There’s more. Caffeine is now posed as an anti-aging agent. [Longevity & Healthspan 2012] Coffee’s exceptional antioxidants caffeic and chlorogenic acid may be responsible for this longevity effect. [Journal Japanese History Pharmacy 2002]
Bathing the crystalline lens in caffeine improves its clarity (see the effect for yourself by clicking on the link). [Molecular Vision 2010] — ©2016 Bill Sardi, Knowledge of Health, Inc.
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