A medical study from the University of Bristol’s medical journal has shown how having a healthy diet is connected to our visual health. The case examined involves a teenage boy losing his sight after maintaining a diet of junk food for years. The boy’s unhealthy diet is attributed to his extremely ‘picky’ or fussy eating habits.
(Teenager Nearly Dies After Drinking Milk Tea Everyday)
The patient first consulted a doctor for feelings of weakness and tiredness at the age of 14. However, as he displayed no outward signs of malnutrition and displayed a normal BMI and weight they ultimately concluded he was suffering from low vitamin B12 levels and anemia. As treatment, they offered vitamin B12 injections and dietary advice.
He returned a year later with the starting signs of hearing and vision loss. Doctors were unable to find a cause until he reached the age of 17 and had totally lost his sight. He was then diagnosed as having vitamin B12 deficiency, low copper and selenium levels, a high zinc level, and markedly reduced vitamin D level and bone mineral density. It was at this point that the patient’s non-nutritious diet was brought up.
They realized that the patient had been consuming a regular diet limited to fries, potato chips, white bread, and slices of processed ham and sausage ever since he was in elementary school. This junk food diet and subsequently inadequate intake of nutritional vitamins and minerals was then linked to the onset of his nutritional optic neuropathy.
This dysfunction of the optic nerve has the possibility of becoming more prevalent than ever with the increasingly unhealthy eating habits of people today. Aside from eating too much junk, the researches also warn against vegan diets which are not properly supplemented with vitamin B12.
What do you think about this?
