What Can Make You Blind?

Over 20 million older Americans suffer from cataracts, another 20 million from age-related macular degeneration, up to 10 million from diabetic retinopathy, and 3 million from glaucoma. Complete or near-complete age-related blindness affects up to 7 million people. Pretty frightening, isn't it?

This topic is very personal to me because of my earlier history with diabetes and profound fear of losing my vision, a kind of death sentence for a medical writer and researcher.

Fortunately, despite spending 10 to 12 hours in front of a computer almost every day since 1982, my eye health is still intact, though I now require much stronger eyeglasses with progressive lenses.

It is worth mentioning that I've been wearing eyeglasses to correct severe astigmatism and farsightedness (hyperopia) since I was three years old.

Interestingly, when I was growing up, only three or four children out of 28 in my class wore eyeglasses, or less than 14%. By contrast, a CDC QuickStats report found that in 2016, 29.1% of boys and 36.2% of girls ages 6 to 17 wore eyeglasses or contact lenses. I have read numerous articles indicating that too little time outdoors and exposure to natural light are among the main contributors to childhood myopia.

Around forty-five, at the peak of my late-stage diabetes, my vision worsened sharply due to presbyopia, the age-related loss of near focusing ability. It happens because the eye’s lens gradually stiffens and becomes less flexible, so close objects look blurry, although it has been well managed with progressive lenses.

So I am not talking about perfect eyesight. Despite all that and over 45 years of non-stop computer work, I haven't developed glaucoma, cataracts, or age-related macular degeneration. My mother had both glaucoma and cataracts. I don't know about my father's history with eye disease because my parents were divorced when I was six.

Just like everyone else, including ophthalmologists (medical doctors focused on eye disease) and optometrists (healthcare professionals who examine eyes and prescribe corrective lenses), I assumed that vision simply deteriorates with age and that glaucoma, cataracts, and macular degeneration are a "normal" ritual of aging gracefully. 

When nowadays someone reaches past seventy with decent eyesight, it's considered a matter of luck, good genes, or the absence of a few obvious risk factors such as smoking or diabetes. If someone does lose vision, the standard explanation is equally straightforward: age, heredity, poor lifestyle, and the usual vague references to “oxidative stress.”

My experience doesn't fit that template. My wife and I are both in our early seventies. Tatyana still sees near 20/20 with minor correction for a small astigmatism. I have my own history of serious metabolic trouble, including severe diabetes. We both smoked in the past. Neither one of us has developed glaucoma or age-related macular degeneration. Tatyana already had a mild cataract in her right eye before we switched to the functional nutrition protocol in the early 2000s, and, unfortunately, it is getting worse 25 years later. I am still cataract-free in both eyes. 

We both consumed beer and wine well into our sixties. Both come from families where glaucoma and cataracts were present in our parents. In other words, the "good genes" explanations don't work very well for us either.

I believe the protection of our eyesight came from the long-term combination of the following four factors: 

• Because of my work on longevity and disease prevention, neither one of us has a single chronic disease typical for our age group. 

• We don't take a single prescription drug, including statins for high cholesterol that have been implicated in "visual disturbances." I also believe that the outcomes of statin trials significantly understated eyesight loss because it was considered "normal" among older adults; hence, any non-obvious signs of it during the trials were missed or ignored.

• A moderate, balanced diet that has provided us with vascular, metabolic, and anti-inflammatory protection by excluding overprocessed foods high in sugar, fiber, vegetable fats, and additives.

• Thirty years of taking professional-grade supplements that have covered the nutrient deficiencies inherent in a moderate balanced diet without sweet fruits, high-fiber vegetables, and fortified foods, such as milk, juices, morning cereals, and bread.

That approach totally contradicts the current thinking in ophthalmology and optometry because they are built around measuring eyesight loss and diagnosing pathologies instead of explaining why some people preserve their eyesight for the rest of their lives.

Top conditions behind eyesight loss

For these and other reasons, few Americans follow the approach I've been recommending since the early 2000s in my books and articles. The outcome of this ignorance speaks for itself: 

• Presbyopia affects up to 90% of older Americans, or up to 110 million in absolute numbers. I am more interested in why it doesn't affect the remaining 10%, but that's another story. Other than aging itself, other factors that make presbyopia appear earlier than usual are farsightedness, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, multiple sclerosis, and certain medications, such as antihistamines, antidepressants, and diuretics.

• Cataracts affect about 17.2% of adults aged 40 and older, roughly 20.5 million people. Interestingly, 32.2% of adults age 45 and older with diagnosed diabetes reported cataracts. So there is a direct connection here between high blood sugar, hyperinsulinemia, and cataracts.

• Age-related macular degeneration (AMD), an eye disease that affects central vision primarily in people over 50, affects up to 20 million Americans. Age, genetic variants, smoking, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and nutritional deficiencies are associated with this condition.

• Diabetic retinopathy, an eye disease caused by damage to the retinal blood vessels, affects up to 10 million Americans, and up to 2 million of them have a vision-threatening form of diabetic retinopathy (VTDR). Interestingly, no one will tell its victims that diabetes treatment with medications focused on stimulating insulin secretion or insulin injections themselves may be more at fault here than diabetes itself.

• Glaucoma damages the eye's optic nerve and causes vision loss up to complete blindness. It affects up to 3 million Americans, and it's the second leading cause of blindness worldwide. The common risk factors for glaucoma include high eye pressure, older age, family history, African, Hispanic, or Asian ancestry, thin corneas, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, extreme nearsightedness or farsightedness, and long-term corticosteroid use.

What can we learn from the primary causes of eyesight loss?

Reading the above bullets, we can pick up several commonalities behind most age-related eyesight loss:

• Aging is the obvious factor, but most likely indirect, because aging coincides with all other conditions listed below, and they usually bloom past middle age. 

• Malnutrition and undernutrition are other age-related contributions. They result from pregnancies, weight loss dieting, gastrointestinal disorders, alcoholism, eating disorders, and reduced ability to digest and assimilate nutrients.

• Diabetes and unstable blood sugar show up again and again. That isn't surprising because high blood sugar, hyperinsulinemia, and the vascular damage behind diabetes can injure almost every structure in the eye. 

• Vascular and cardiovascular problems are another recurring theme. High blood pressure, heart disease, and poor circulation keep appearing because the eyes depend heavily on tiny blood vessels and steady metabolic support.

• Smoking is one of the clearest accelerators of eyesight decline. It causes vascular damage and chronic inflammation, which ages the eyes faster.

• Chronic inflammation sits in the background of nearly all these disorders because it is a systemic condition, meaning that inflammation in one organ can produce inflammatory reactions that boomerang to other organs, and the eyes are among the most vulnerable because of how delicate their tissues and blood vessels are.

• Genetics matters, but not in a simple no-way-out way, because we inherit not only our parents' genes, but also their diets, lifestyles, and bad habits. It still takes the confluence of bad metabolic, vascular, structural, and inflammatory causes for eye disease to fully develop.

• Medications are an underappreciated factor. Certain drugs can worsen focusing problems, raise eye pressure, dry out tissues, or contribute to broader neurologic and metabolic decline that eventually affects your vision. As I already mentioned, diabetes medication is a particular peril because it stimulates the secretion of insulin and all the related damage.

• Structural weaknesses in the eyes matter as well. They include thin corneas, abnormal lens function, premature retinal aging, optic nerve damage, and severe farsightedness or nearsightedness. All of these conditions can exacerbate eyesight loss.

To summarize, most serious eyesight decline isn't caused by one isolated defect or cause but usually reflects decades of cumulative metabolic, vascular, inflammatory, structural, and nutritional damage. The eyes are among the first organs to be affected because of their delicate physiology.

Recommendations

Based on the analysis of primary causes I outlined above, I can make the following recommendations:

Normalize Blood Sugar

Keep blood sugar stable and avoid the long-term metabolic, vascular, and neurological damage caused by chronic hyperglycemia and hyperinsulinemia. I know only one way to accomplish this goal, and it is the moderate, balanced diet described in my books and on this site.

If you don't want to risk blindness, study and follow the GutSense.org website and Fiber Menace. This information saved my life and preserved my eyesight, and it will do the same for you, especially if you begin earlier and in better shape than I was in the late 1990s.

Protect Blood Vessels and Circulation

Protect your vascular system because the eyes depend on tiny blood vessels, steady circulation, and reliable oxygen and nutrient delivery. When circulation begins to deteriorate, the eyes are often among the first organs to feel the consequences because their tissues are so delicate and metabolically demanding. 

High blood pressure, atherosclerosis, heart disease, smoking, diabetes, chronic inflammation, and physical inactivity all undermine the vascular system and, over time, reduce the eyes' margin of safety. The damage may take years to become obvious, but once it does, it is often difficult or impossible to reverse.

The practical solution isn't complicated, but it does require consistency. Eat in a way that protects blood vessels, avoid smoking, stay physically active, and don't ignore the early signs of metabolic and cardiovascular decline. 

In my view, this comes back to the same moderate, balanced diet described in my books and on this site, because it helps reduce the metabolic and inflammatory burden that slowly damages blood vessels throughout the body, including those in the eyes. Protect your circulation, and you give your eyesight a much better chance to last.

Smoking

Don't smoke tobacco or vapes because it accelerates vascular injury, chronic inflammation, and tissue aging in the eyes. It constricts blood vessels, impairs oxygen delivery, and gradually damages some of the body's most delicate tissues. 

The eyes are especially vulnerable because they depend on tiny blood vessels, stable circulation, and constant metabolic support. Smoking undermines all three. It is strongly associated with macular degeneration, cataracts, poorer vascular health, and faster overall degeneration of eye tissues.

This is one of the few recommendations in this field that is as direct as it sounds. The less you smoke, the better. The sooner you stop, the better. There is no safe version of this habit for your eyes, just as there is no safe version for your blood vessels, lungs, or heart. If preserving your vision matters to you, smoking has to go. It is one of the fastest ways to age your eyes before their time.

Chronic Inflammation

Treat chronic inflammation as a systemic problem rather than an isolated symptom because inflammatory damage in one part of the body rarely stays there. It tends to spread throughout the body by reducing circulation, worsening metabolic control, and interfering with normal tissue repair. 

The eyes are especially vulnerable to this kind of ongoing internal wear because their tissues are delicate, highly vascular, and metabolically demanding. When chronic inflammation enters the eye tissues, it creates the environment in which retinal damage, vascular injury, lens degeneration, and optic nerve decline are more likely to develop.

The practical lesson here is that you should not treat inflammation as a local condition and suppress it with medications that can accelerate eyesight loss even more, as in the case with corticosteroids. 

In my view, this comes back again to the same moderate, balanced diet described in my books and on this site, because it helps eliminate the causes of inflammation in the first place. Lower the inflammatory load on the body, and you reduce the risk of premature eyesight loss.

Undernutrition and Malnutrition

Pay more attention to getting essential nutrients after middle age because aging, digestive decline, dieting, gastrointestinal problems, and past pregnancies reduce and deplete nutritional reserves. 

Undernutrition and malnutrition become very prominent by middle age through low energy, premature aging of the skin, hair, nails, bones, and teeth, and various cardiovascular, neurological, and musculoskeletal disorders. You cannot retain good eyesight when the rest of the body is a mess.

This is one of the least appreciated realities of aging. People assume that if they eat less and avoid obvious junk, they are doing enough. As you age, the margin for nutritional error becomes smaller and smaller because digestion and absorption become less efficient, food intake becomes narrower, and years of dieting, digestive trouble, and earlier physical stress leave behind deficits that are easy to miss and impossible to correct with food alone.

The practical implication is simple. A moderate diet may help control weight and blood sugar, but it doesn't supply enough vitamins, minerals, microelements, and other essential nutrients over time. This is even more true if you have poor digestion or a long history of dietary restriction. In my view, that is one of the main reasons why a balanced diet and professional-grade supplementation become critical with age.

Medication Side Effects

Review your medications critically because some drugs can worsen focus, dry out eye tissues, raise eye pressure, or add to broader neurologic and metabolic decline. This subject deserves much more attention than it gets because medication side effects are one of the most overlooked contributors to age-related eyesight problems. 

By middle age and later, many people are taking several prescription and over-the-counter drugs at the same time. This is known as polypharmacy. Each drug may look harmless on its own, but their cumulative impact can be substantial. One medication may dry out the eyes, another may interfere with focus, another may affect circulation or nerve function, and another may alter blood sugar or blood pressure. Put them together, and the burden on the eyes becomes significant.

The problem is these side effects are commonly missed. Blurry vision, dry eyes, focusing problems, glare, dizziness, fatigue, and slower visual adaptation are often dismissed as a normal part of aging when they may be caused or worsened by medications. 

The same is true of broader neurologic and metabolic decline that eventually affects vision indirectly. In other words, what looks like unavoidable aging is often, at least in part, drug-induced deterioration hiding in plain sight.

If you are experiencing eyesight loss, review your medications, especially if you are taking several drugs at once. Look at the cumulative effect, not just each drug in isolation. Ask whether a medication is still necessary, whether the dose is too high, whether two drugs are doing overlapping damage, and whether a side effect is being mistaken for age. 

As I already mentioned earlier, and it's worth repeating, this matters even more in diabetes treatment because some drugs stimulate insulin secretion and may exacerbate the metabolic problems already affecting your eyes.

Eyesight Correction

Correct major refractive problems, such as myopia, farsightedness, and astigmatism, because these conditions exacerbate eye strain, and eye tissues are less able to tolerate metabolic and vascular stress. 

Poor focus is not always a harmless inconvenience. When vision is chronically fuzzy, the eyes are forced to work harder. That extra strain becomes more significant with age, especially when the eyes are already dealing with circulation problems, blood sugar instability, inflammation, or structural weakness. 

Severe refractive problems can also make it harder to notice when a more serious condition is beginning because blurred or distorted vision becomes your normal baseline.

Keep your eyeglasses prescription current. Clear vision reduces unnecessary strain and makes it easier to detect meaningful changes when they occur. It also improves safety, reading comfort, depth perception, and day-to-day functioning, all of which become more important with age.

Heredity and Genetics

Take family history seriously, but do not treat it as fate because inherited risk usually still needs the right metabolic, vascular, inflammatory, and structural environment to turn into blindness. 

• In many instances, what appears to be genetics has less to do with genes than with families passing down the same bad diet, habits, exposures, and health problems from one generation to the next. The pattern may look hereditary when it is really environmental, behavioral, or both. That is why family history should make you more attentive, not more fatalistic.

• If several people in your family developed glaucoma, cataracts, macular degeneration, diabetes, or vascular disease, take that history as a warning sign and act earlier. 

• Improve the factors you can control instead of assuming the outcome is inescapable. Look at the family pattern as a whole, not just at one diagnosis in isolation. 

• Ask what habits, diets, medications, and chronic conditions were common in that family line. 

• If you do suspect a real genetic factor, take the appropriate tests and find out where you stand. 

But do not hide behind genetics when the more likely explanation is years of shared damage.

Alcohol consumption

Regular drinking accelerates many of the above processes behind premature eyesight decline because it contributes to hyperinsulinemia, chronic inflammation, oxidative stress, vascular damage, digestive disorders, liver stress, and impaired digestion and assimilation of essential nutrients. 

This matters because the eyes rely on steady circulation, healthy nerves, intact blood vessels, good metabolic control, and adequate nutrient delivery. Alcohol interferes with all of these. It also contributes to neurologic decline, which adds one more layer of stress to visual function. The damage may build slowly, but it is cumulative, and the eyes are among the organs least able to tolerate it.

The less alcohol you consume, the better your odds of preserving your eyesight over time. If you already have diabetes, vascular problems, digestive problems, chronic inflammation, or signs of undernutrition, alcohol becomes even more destructive. 

In my view, this comes back again to the same moderate, balanced diet described in my books and on this site, because it works best when it is not undermined by a substance that disrupts metabolism, digestion, circulation, and nutrient status at the same time. Alcohol is another burden you should remove or reduce as much as possible.

Start Prevention Early

When it comes to eye health, think in decades, not in short-term fixes, because serious eyesight decline usually reflects cumulative damage rather than one sudden cause, and in most cases it is irreversible. 

Eyesight usually does not fall apart overnight. In most people, the damage builds slowly through years of blood sugar instability, vascular decline, smoking, chronic inflammation, nutritional deficits, medication side effects, and structural stress inside the eyes themselves.

By the time the problem becomes obvious, much of the damage has already been done. That is why waiting for symptoms is a poor strategy. Prevention has to begin long before the eyes start failing.

Treat eyesight prevention as part of preserving the whole body because the same habits that damage circulation, metabolism, inflammation, and nutrition also damage vision. There is no separate set of rules for the eyes. If you protect your blood vessels, control blood sugar, reduce inflammation, avoid smoking, maintain nutrient intake, and limit unnecessary medications, you protect your eyes at the same time. 

In my view, this is the only sensible way to think about the eyesight problem. Vision is not preserved with gimmicks or short-term fixes. It is only preserved by reducing, or, even better, eliminating cumulative eyesight damage year after year.

Why Prevention Pays

Eyesight loss is an expensive condition to treat because insurance coverage is often poor. Once vision begins to deteriorate, the costs add up fast: eye exams, specialist visits, imaging, procedures, surgery, prescription drops, injections, glasses, transportation, and time lost from work or normal daily functioning. 

Even when treatment is available, it is often partial, ongoing, and expensive. In many cases, it may slow decline but does not restore what was lost. And that is before mentioning an ever-present potential for negligence, malpractice, or inadvertent medical errors.

The financial side is only part of the problem. Loss of eyesight can also affect almost every part of your daily life. It can limit driving, reading, computer work, balance, mobility, and the ability to manage routine tasks without help. It may mean a direct loss of independence. 

If you still work for a living, it can also mean a reduced ability to earn a living. In older adults, it can mean earlier dependency, more injuries from falls, more isolation, and a much lower quality of life.

That is why I consider it complete idiocy to spend $5 to $10 on takeout coffee and smoothies daily, yet go cheap on quality supplements that cost around one dollar a day. If you are serious about protecting your health, spending modestly on eyesight prevention makes far more sense than getting skinned later on for fixing a rarely reversible damage.

What supplements are essential to prevent blindeness?

Nothing fancy:

1. Start with a high-quality multivitamin formula, such as our Coenzymated Once Daily Multi, because it contains all the essential vitamins, minerals, and microelements required for eye health, including zinc, vitamin A, beta-carotene, lutein, and zeaxanthin. The last two are plant carotenoids that concentrate in the macula and help filter blue light and support retinal protection. It costs less than $0.50 a day.

2. Add a high-quality vitamin C formula, such as our PureWay Vitamin C capsules, which cost less than $0.20 a day.

3. Take a vitamin E, such as our Natural Vitamin E formula, to protect yourself against age-related macular degeneration. The daily cost is $0.20.

4. I also recommend taking a vitamin D-3 formula because it plays a major role in structural metabolism, including cell growth, maintenance, and tissue remodeling throughout the body. Its value here is indirect but important. 

   Vitamin D also performs important protective roles in inflammation, cell growth, neuromuscular function, and glucose metabolism, which is why I view it as part of a broader strategy to preserve tissues, including the eyes. The cost per day is $0.12.

In addition, please note that all of the above supplements are critical for your overall health, and their eye-protective properties are only an added bonus. The above complete daily set of professional-grade supplements made in the USA costs just $1.02, which is a trivial expense compared with the financial and personal cost of declining health and vision.

Tatyana and I have been taking these supplements daily for the past 30 years and continue taking them now. Most of our contemporaries who snickered at us when we started this protocol are now either aged beyond recognition or dead. Some of them became blind.

In retrospect, I can only repeat an old proverb: he who laughs last laughs best.

Author's Note

This article is based on my personal experience, long observation, and independent study of nutrition, metabolism, and aging. It reflects the practical conclusions I came to after decades of dealing with my own health problems and watching how the same issues affected other people around me. 

I am not claiming that every case of eyesight decline has the same causes or follows the same course. I am saying that, in my view, much of what is now accepted as normal aging is neither normal nor inevitable but the result of cumulative damage that can often be reduced or delayed.

If you still have doubts about my findings and recommendations, compare this casual photo of my 71-year-old wife to women you know in the same age group. I took it on April 16, 2026, with her iPhone.

Tatyana has never been to a gym or cosmetologist. She uses only basic moisturizers. No plastic surgeries. Zero chronic conditions. Zero medications. Zero chronic pain. Zero signs of mental decline. She still works full-time and takes care of a large house and a high-maintenance husband.

Yesterday we stopped at a Ukrainian grocery store to pick up some staples. Tatyana used her senior discount card. As happens every time, the checkout clerks, usually young women in their twenties, asked to see her driver's license to confirm that she was really over 65. 

They were standing right in front of her and still did not believe it. Some expressed open shock and asked what she does to stay in that shape. She points to me. Then I show them my own driver's license, and that produces a second shock.

I mention these funny episodes because the reactions are spontaneous. These young women have no reason to flatter us or play along with a story. They see us at close range and assume we are much younger. 

It is one more small piece of evidence that our nutritional and supplemental regimen has had visible effects that confound even young people, for whom adults in our age group are usually invisible. 

Not a bad result for a dollar a day’s worth of prevention!

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