Habit or Midlife?
Find Out Why Your Eyes Are Going Dark
When it comes to our health, sometimes we accept the unacceptable because that’s what “everyone says.” You expect that you are going to gain weight, be tired, and mostly blind as you age because that’s what you’ve seen or been told. But just because “everyone says” something doesn’t mean that is what’s true, or even what’s possible. Your menopause story is unique to you and that includes your health, weight, energy, and vision.
We seem to take it for granted that our vision will slowly worsen over time, but the truth is healthy vision is more dependent on habit than age. Some common vision damaging habits are stress, sugar, computer work, and sunglasses. By midlife, these habits have caused severe strain on our eyes. No wonder we are so dependent on our readers!
Not to worry though because the damage is reversible. We simply have to replace the bad habits with good ones. In this article, we will explore the common bad vision habits, their effect on your eyes, and some way you can reduce their effect on your vision health.
Are you a Hulk or Buddha?
Once our body is stuck in fight-or-flight mode all bets are off. All of the body’s systems are no longer functioning for health, they are functioning for survival. You don’t need 20/20 vision to run away from a charging elephant. You just need to be able to see the obstacles in your path.
When we are in what I call the Hulk part of the nervous system, we are in a hypermetabolic state. That means your blood pressure’s up, your respiratory rate is up, and all the blood flows to your hands and feet so you can run fast and be strong. Extreme stress causes our pupils to dilate to let in more light. Our adrenaline spikes which can cause our eyes to blur. We are more sensitive to light and can even get “tunnel vision” where our peripheral vision is nonexistent.
We can be thrown into stressful situations when we are driving in a blizzard, facing down our boss, arguing with our spouse… but we can also have stress build up in our lives to the point where it affects our vision every single day.
The best way to deal with stress on a regular basis is to practice deep belly breathing. Switching your body from fight-or-flight to relaxation mode is no easy task but when you take those deep belly breaths, you stimulate the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve helps you switch back into the parasympathetic state, which I call the Buddha part of the nervous system. The Buddha state is the rest-and-digest part of your nervous system. It’s like that feeling you get after you have a massage or an orgasm. So if you notice your vision blurring, take stock of how you’re feeling and try a few deep belly breaths to calm your mind and body.
See in All Colors
Our eyes were formed to process a full spectrum of light. The sun puts out a rainbow of rays from red to purple, and that is what our eyes are accustomed to seeing. These days our habit of sitting for long hours in front of a computer screen is putting enormous strain on the part of our eye that processes green and blue light.
The macula around the fovea is where we see best. The fovea lutea, as it is called, is covered with plant pigments called lutein and zeaxanthin. These plant pigments absorb up to 60 percent of the blue light from the sun. If you don’t eat enough foods with lutein and zeaxanthin, such as spinach and kale, that natural protection will deplete over time and that’s when macular degeneration can start.
We have two types of cells in the retina, cones, and rods. Cone cells need light to function and sunlight stimulates cone cells. Even wearing sunglasses can affect the way our eyes process different kinds of light. Sunglasses prevent our pupils from dilating naturally and make us progressively more sensitive to light.
Both computer work and sunglasses make us more light-sensitive.
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FROM THE PODCAST LIGHT SENSITIVITY CM: There’s a connection between light sensitivity and so-called refractive errors and refractive errors such as nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism. So you want to reduce your light sensitivity. And that’s why I teach something called sunning. We do it with closed eyes initially and then we move forward with eyes open and blinking, but I don’t wear sunglasses anymore. For 12 years. I couldn’t drive at night before (because) the traffic lights, the headlights of cars, really caused me trouble. And my pupil’s reaction was so slow. So when you always want to wear sunglasses, you don’t train your pupils to react quickly. Like the pupils are built-in sunglasses, right. And I do make an exception if you have a certain eye disease or if your pupils don’t constrict, or if you take any drugs that prevent your pupils from constricting, then obviously you do want to wear sunglasses a hundred percent. I mean, I don’t want to, like blanket say that you should never wear sunglasses, but generally speaking, um, sunglasses make you more and more light-sensitive.
The Hormonal Link
People accept farsightedness or nearsightedness as an inevitable part of aging but studies show that farsightedness appears earlier in people with melatonin, insulin, growth hormone, and testosterone deficiencies. An excess of thyroid hormones, glucagon, and progesterone can even make farsightedness worse.
Symptoms such as dry eyes, unexplained weight gain, insomnia, restlessness, irritability, brain fog, dizziness, and light sensitivity could all indicate a hormone imbalance that could be affecting your vision.
Dry Eyes: Dry eyes are a huge issue for women in menopause. The cells that lubricate the eyes have sex hormone receptors and if you have a deficiency of these hormones you will probably experience dry eyes.
Unexplained Weight Gain: Sudden or inexplicable weight gain could indicate a problem with your thyroid. People with high levels of T4 are at an increased risk of having age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and other changes to the retina (1). The thyroid is also involved in the regulation of the eye’s cones.
Insomnia, Restlessness, or Difficulty Staying Asleep: All of these are symptoms of a melatonin deficiency. Over time, a melatonin deficiency will cause premature degeneration of the lens.
Irritability, Brain Fog, Dizziness: Low levels of insulin in the body can leave us tired, irritable, shaky, and hungry. Insulin deficiency over time can lead to a flatter cornea, thinner lens, and a shorter/smaller eye. Low levels of glucagon can cause stiffness in cornea, lens, and nearby eye tissues.
Light Sensitivity: If you have refractive errors such as nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism, you have most likely experienced light sensitivity.
The solution? Hormone balancing therapy?
Sweet, Sweet, Inflammation
Sugar causes inflammation in every part of the body, and your eyes are no exception. The eyes are one of our most sensitive organs and high blood sugar levels can cause swelling in the lens of the eye.
Every cell in your body is affected by sugar. Sugar attaches to your cells and inflames them. Inflammation causes problems no matter what part of the body. You don’t have to be diagnosed with diabetes to be having these problems. If you eat any sugar on a regular basis, more than an episodic or rare basis, your cells are being bathed in sugar and that sugar is damaging your cells.
Too much sugar in the lens structure will destroy it and cause lens cloudiness. The blood vessels in our eyes can be blocked just as easily as the vessels in our heart and the rest of the body. When the cells are blocked, the body automatically tries to create new vessels. But those new blood vessels are weak and if they break then you might get bleeding in the eye.
Cutting out sugar can seem impossible but with persistence, any habit can be changed.
Conclusion
Our thoughts and emotions have a huge impact on our physical state. So I encourage you to change your thinking as you go on this vision healing journey. Instead of thinking, “I’m blind as a bat, and it’s only going to get worse as I get older,” try giving your eyes some credit. Make your affirmations realistic. If you can still drive without glasses, give gratitude to your eyes by saying “I can see everything I need to see.” Or whenever you are struck by the beauty in a place, thank your eyes for your ability to see that beauty.
