Your Liver and Your Vision

The liver is an important body organ that plays a pivotal part in your vision health. The liver serves several important functions in your body that may directly or indirectly affect your vision health:

Carbohydrate metabolism

The liver turns glucose (blood sugar) into glycogen (energy) for storage in your liver. 

Your glycogen controls the amount of glucose released into your bloodstream, thereby maintaining your blood sugar level. A healthy blood sugar level prevents the development of diabetes, which often impairs vision.

In addition, a healthy liver regulates your food carbohydrate metabolism, which plays an important role in weight control—another contributing factor to diabetes.

Fat metabolism

The liver is a fat-burning organ: it not only burns fat but also pumps excess fat our of your body system. Your liver controls your body weight. Too much fat in the abdominal area may impair your fat metabolism, turning your liver into a “fatty liver,” which then becomes a fat-storing organ. A “fatty liver” is an obstacle to any attempt at weight loss, which begins at the liver.

If you are obese, you have a much higher risk of losing your eyesight, according to the Royal Institute for the Blind. For example, too much body fat is one of the causes of diabetes; too much fat may cause oxidative damage to the eye in the form of macular degeneration.

Dietary cholesterol and toxin removal

A healthy liver detoxifies your body by filtering out excess waste products and toxins in your body through the bile into the gut. For example, it deactivates alcohol, hormonesand medicinal drugs for better assimilation. Alcohol and certain pharmaceutical drugs have been implicated in vision loss.

Always eat a high-fiber diet to facilitate elimination in order to prevent these toxic waste products from re-circulating back to your liver. Chronic constipation may damage your liver, and thus your eyes.

Storage for nutrients

The liver stores glycogen, vitamins A and D, the B complex vitamins, iron and copper, which are important nutrients for healthy eyes.

Apart from the brain, the liver is the most important body organ that affects your vision. A healthy liver holds the key to healthy vision.

Your Golden Years and Santa Claus explains why it is important to prevent your vision loss for happy and successful aging in the golden years. Learn to think like Santa Claus in order to overcome memory loss and other mental problems as you continue to age, as well as to change your perspectives of health, money, and spiritual issues encountered in your golden years.

Stephen Lau

Copyright © Stephen Lau

Don't Over-Stress Yourself

CONTROL AND OVER-DOING

Controlling external events is futility because control is but an illusion based on expected results projected by the thinking mind into the future. Concentration on controlling makes it difficult to concentrate on doing the right things to make you live longer.

The TAO, which is the wisdom of Lao Tzu, the ancient sage from China, looks upon the world as something to be accepted, and that involves invoking the profound but paradoxical wisdom of “action through inaction”—which is action based on acceptance of nature or the natural turn of events in life.

“Whenever we try to control,

we separate ourselves from our true nature.

Man proposes; the Creator disposes.

Life is sacred: it flows exactly as it should.

Trusting in the Creator, we return to our breathing,

natural and spontaneous, without conscious control.

In the same manner:

sometimes we have more,

sometimes we have less;

sometimes we exert ourselves,

sometimes we pull back;

sometimes we succeed,

sometimes we fail.

Trusting in the Creator, we see the comings and goings of things,

but without straining and striving to control them.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chapter 29)

According to the TAO, everything in life must follow a natural cycle, whether we like it or not, and that we must be patient because nothing is within our control, especially our destinies.

”That which shrinks
must first expand.
That which fails,
must first be strong.
That which is cast down
must first be raised.
Before receiving, there must be giving.
This is called perception of the nature of things.
Soft and weak overcome hard and strong.”
(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chapter 36)

Spontaneity is the essence of the natural cycle. What goes up must eventually come down; life begets death; day is followed by night—just like the cycle of the four seasons.

"Allowing things to come and go,

following their natural laws,

we gain everything.

Straining and striving,

we lose everything."

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chapter 48)

Intuition of spontaneity is an understanding of the impermanence of all things: nothing lasts no matter how we strive to keep the impermanent permanent, and everything remains only with that very present moment.

"Strong winds come and go.

So do torrential rains.

Even heaven and earth cannot make them last forever."

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te  Ching, chapter 23)

The bottom line: do what needs to be done, but without over-doing, which causes stress in everyday life and living.

THE TAO OF LIVING LONGER

THE COMPLETE TAO TE CHING IN PLAIN ENGLISH

Stephen Lau                             

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Aging and Vision

Change in vision is an obvious sign of aging. Decades of slow and subtle changes in vision have resulted in gradual loss of vision.

Hardening of the lens is the most obvious sign of vision deterioration. You begin to experience difficulty in seeing clearly objects within 2 feet. This usually occurs when one is over 40 years old. As you continue to age, the lens stiffens, making the eye hard to focus on objects that are too close. You may ignore the problem; however, ultimately, wearing reading glasses is inevitable to overcome presbyopia, which is stiffening of the lens. Eye exercise is important to delay the condition or to prevent it from worsening. If you exercise your body, you should also exercise your eyes to give them flexibility, which is the solution to hardening of the lens. If conditions continue to get worse, you might even have to take off your reading glasses when you read.

Another major change in vision due to aging is the inability to see in dim light. Vision is possible only when light passes through the lens to the retina at the back of the eye. Through years of wear and tear, your lens becomes denser and less sensitive. This insensitivity reduces the amount of light getting to the retina. To illustrate, on average, a 60-year-old person needs 3 times more light to read than a young adult. This explains why you may react more slowly to changes in light. In addition, if you have developed cataract, which is a cloudy condition of the eye, you may have increasing sensitivity to glare when driving at night.

Perception of colors is also another change as you continue to age. The explanation is that your lens tends to become yellowish somewhat. You may have problem reading black letters against a blue background or, reading blue letters.

Other vision-related problems include floaters, which are tiny solidified fluids within the eye, and dry eyes due to decline in tear-production cells.

Vision changes are inevitable as aging continues. To alleviate vision problems, eat a healthy diet that supplies nutrients to the eyes. For example, you can use diet to overcome macular degeneration. Albert Einstein once said: "There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle." Believe in a miracle cure, even for macular degeneration. In addition, do simple eye exercises that can be performed any time throughout the day. Of course, don’t spend too much time in front of the computer. Stress also plays a pivotal role in damaging the eyes. In short, you need a holistic approach to vision health. Finally, don’t wear your eyeglasses or contact lens all the time: they precondition your vision; your eyes should have flexibility in close as well as faraway vision.  

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau