Home Remedies and Herbs for Macular Degeneration

Macular degeneration is an age-related condition of the eye.¹ It’s the leading cause of vision loss in elderly patients in the United States and affects approximately 10 million Americans.¹ Macular degeneration affects a part of the retina called the macula, which sits in the back of the eye and is responsible for clear vision.² Two types of macular degeneration exist: wet and dry macular degeneration.² All cases of macular degeneration start as the dry type, but they can worsen into the wet type.³ Because of this, dry macular degeneration is more common, though less severe, affecting 85 percent of people with the disease.¹

What Causes Macular Degeneration?

Macular degeneration causes are typically related to aging. Your macula is a part of your eye’s retina that’s made up of specialized cells called rods and cones.¹ These cells are light-sensitive and important for central vision.¹ Blood vessels sit beneath your macula, and a tissue structure called the retinal pigment epithelium transports nutrients between the macula and blood vessels.¹ It’s when the retinal pigment epithelium thins due to aging that macular degeneration symptoms begin to occur.¹ This is because your body can’t transfer nutrients as effectively, which causes waste build-up in the eye and damages these important light-sensitive cells.¹ In wet macular degeneration, blood vessels rupture, causing retinal cells to die, which can result in blind spots and loss of vision.² Macular degeneration can start in one eye and worsen over time.⁴

Risk factors include:⁵

• Age (Older individuals are more at risk)
• Family history of the disease
• Ethnicity (Caucasians are more likely to develop macular degeneration)
• Smoking
• High blood pressure
• High cholesterol

In addition to these risk factors, women are more likely than men to develop the condition.⁶ It rarely occurs in people younger than 55 and is most common in populations over the age of 75.6

Macular Degeneration Symptoms

Macular degeneration symptoms vary depending on the type you have. Dry macular degeneration, which is what all cases start out as, occurs gradually and usually comes without pain. Symptoms may include:⁴

• Visual distortions
• Trouble reading
• Difficulty recognizing faces
• Trouble adapting to low light
• Decreased intensity of color
• Reduced central vision in either eye

With wet macular degeneration, symptoms appear suddenly and worsen quickly, although overall symptoms are very similar to the dry kind.³ Since macular degeneration only affects central vision and not peripheral vision, it’s extremely rare for it to result in total blindness.³ Macular degeneration can’t be treated, but there are a variety of macular degeneration herbal remedies that can slow your loss of vision if the condition is caught early on.⁶

References

1. http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/condition/macular-degeneration
2. http://umm.edu/health/medical/reports/images/macular-degeneration
3. http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/wet-macular-degeneration/home/ovc-20164274
4. https://www.cdc.gov/features/healthyvisionmonth/index.html
5. http://umm.edu/health/medical/ency/articles/macular-degeneration-agerelated