How To Prevent Cataracts Naturally: The Simple Habits That Help Ward off Blurry Vision
Top eye doctors share their best secrets to protect your sight as you age
Key Takeaways
- Simple daily habits like wearing sunglasses and walking can help slow cataract progression
- Eating antioxidant-rich foods may reduce cataract risk and protect your eye health long-term
- Multivitamins and stress reduction may support cataract prevention as you age
Wondering how to prevent cataracts and help keep your sight sharp for years to come? Good news: It’s easier than you may think. But first it helps to understand what causes cataracts to develop in the first place. Cataracts affect about 40 percent of women by age 70 and 71 percent of women by age 80, according to the National Institutes of Health. Common cataract symptoms include blurry vision, trouble seeing at night and seeing a “halo” around lights.
With age, the clear lens of your eye can turn cloudy and brown, affecting your vision. While experts don’t yet fully understand why this happens, research suggests that wear and tear causes the fibers of the lens to become damaged, explains Diane Hilal-Campo, MD, an ophthalmologist in Oakland, NJ. Other factors like sun exposure, uncontrolled diabetes and smoking and increase your risk of cataracts in the long term.
While it’s not always possible to stop cataracts from ever forming, “steps can be taken to slow cataract progression,” assures James Dello Russo, MD, an optometrist at NJ Eye Center in Bergenfield, NJ. Best of all, many of the most effective cataract prevention strategies are surprisingly simple!
Woman's World Answers
How to prevent cataracts: 7 smart tips
These simple tips help reduce your risk and slow the progression of cataracts that do form.
Wear sunglasses
Make like a famous actor going incognito and don a hat and sunglasses whenever you leave the house (even when it’s cloudy). This simple habit can protect your eyes from up to 95 percent of the sun’s damaging UV rays, according to a review in PLoS One. Dr. Hilal-Campo recommends looking for sunglasses that are labeled UV 400, which block 100 percent of UVA and UVB rays.
Also smart: Upgrade your regular glasses. Exposure to the sun’s UV rays triggers a process called glycation that can harm the lens of your eye, explains ophthalmologist Rudrani Banik, MD. In addition to wearing UV-blocking sunglasses, “clear prescription lenses [on your regular glasses] can have a UV-blocking coating that protects the eye even without tint,” Dr. Banik says.
Snack on bell peppers
Eating 185 mg of vitamin C daily could cut your risk of cataracts in half, suggests one International Ophthalmology study. “Vitamin C is an antioxidant, which can help fight oxidative damage in the eye,” Dr. Hilal-Campo says.
Half a cup of sliced red bell peppers will give you 95 mg of C (that’s more than an orange!). Try pairing them with hummus for an afternoon snack. Other great sources of vitamin C include citrus fruit, strawberries, broccoli and kiwifruit. Want a fun way to help bump up your levels of vitamin C? Consider Welch’s Fusions Citrus Surge fruit snacks, which contain 25 percent of your RDA of vitamin C per serving.
As for vitamin C tablets or pills, supplementing with C alone doesn’t seem to be an effective way to prevent cataracts. “Vitamin C from food might be easier to get into the structure of the eye,” Dr. Hilal-Campo adds.
Savor a salad
Enjoying a daily salad is Dr. Hilal-Campo’s go-to move for keeping her eyes healthy and cataract-free for as long as possible, since it helps her load up on antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables. People who eat at least six-and-a-half servings of vegetables daily have an 18 percent lower risk of developing cataracts compared to those who only get two daily servings, according to a study in the journal Eye. Plus salad staples like kale and spinach contain lutein and zeaxanthin, two nutrients that help protect your vision.
Tip: Top your salad with berries for an extra boost. Berries are packed with antioxidants that “help neutralize free radicals and have been shown to protect lens proteins from oxidative damage,” Dr. Banik adds. She says regularly eating antioxidant-rich foods like berries is one of the best things women can do to help prevent cataracts.
Go for a walk
Age-proof your eyes with a walk in the park? Yes! Regularly engaging in moderate exercise like walking can reduce your cataract risk by 10 percent, reveals International Journal of Ophthalmology findings. Being active turns on genes that slow aging of the blood vessels and tissues in your eyes, making it an easy way to help prevent cataracts naturally.
Take a multivitamin
While single-ingredient supplements (like the vitamin C supplements mentioned above) don’t seem to help with cataract prevention, taking a daily multivitamin and mineral supplement can make a difference. In fact, it might reduce your cataract risk up to 66 percent, according to a review in Nutrients. The benefit might come from the combination of eye-boosting nutrients including vitamins A, C and E, says Dr. Hilal-Campo, who recommends Centrum multivitamin/multimineral supplements to her patients. One to try: Centrum Silver Women 50+ Complete Multivitamin.
Tip: Make sure your multivitamin contains selenium, too. Experts reporting in Frontiers in Nutrition found that taking selenium supplements through the menopause transition may help prevent the development of age-related cataracts by lowering oxidative stress.
Dig into bean dip
A nine-year study in the journal Eye found that people who regularly ate two of the dip’s main ingredients, beans and tomatoes, significantly lowered their risk of developing cataracts. Eating five or more servings per week of these antioxidant-rich foods, which prevent oxidative damage to the lens, worked even better than the oft-recommended leafy greens to help reduce the risk of vision loss.
Pop a piece of gum
Sounds strange, but chewing a minty stick of gum may help prevent cataracts naturally. The stress hormone cortisol drives up your blood sugar, which can worsen oxidative stress and damage your eye lenses, Dr. Hilal-Campo explains. But popping a piece of gum when you’re tense can lower levels of cortisol and ease feelings of stress and anxiety, according to a Psychology & Behavior study.
The bottom line on how to prevent cataracts
While there’s no foolproof way to guarantee you’ll never develop cataracts, making smart diet and lifestyle tweaks can help dramatically reduce your risk of vision trouble both now and in the future.
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