Help Your Eyes Through Vigorous Exercise!

The benefits of exercise are innumerable – but here's a new one. Vigorous exercise seems to reduce the risk of both cataracts and age-related macular degeneration (AMD). This is according to a study done at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and published in Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science.

The investigator collected data from the National Runners' Health Study; there were roughly 29,000 men and 12,00 women who had been registered runners for more than 7 years. They were all non-diabetic, non-vegetarian, and non-smokers. Of these enrollees, 733 men reported being diagnosed with cataract; there were too few women reporting cataract to track meaningfully. There were also 152 cases of AMD in both sexes, combined.

Analysis showed that men who ran more than 5.7 miles a day had a 35% lower risk of cataract than those running less than 1.4 miles a day. And the “very fit” runners – those who took part in 10-kilometer races – had half the risk of cataracts as the least-fit men.

The AMD part of the study showed that those who ran more than 2.4 miles a day were between 42% and 54% less likely to develop AMD than those running below 1.2 miles a day. As the investigator Paul Williams says, “These findings are compelling because of the large size of the study, and the fact that we are looking sat something that is fairly well defined: vigorous exercise, as opposed to more moderate exercise.” It certainly looks as if we need to ramp up our concept of “adequate exercise” to prevent ills. No more “30 minutes a day 5 days a week” . . .