Food eaten by millions can cause 'blindness'

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When it comes to the importance of nutrition for health, everyone immediately think about the cardiovascular system. However, the whole body suffers from harmful food, including vision. Bristol ophthalmologists have found that consuming certain foods on a regular basis could put you at risk of blindness.

Sight is an important ability that we don't fully appreciate until it begins to deteriorate. A crazy case story published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine shows that to avoid blindness, you need to give up one type of food.

Unlike common body aches, symptoms of eye problems are rare. Because of this, vision loss is difficult to notice until it is too late. According to one case report, vision can be impaired by eating fast food regularly.

According to the case report, a teenager went blind after eating fast food for years.

Ophthalmologists in Bristol monitored a young man whose condition deteriorated to the point of irreversible blindness. This event prompted them to warn about the dangers of such food.

Researchers from the Bristol Eye Hospital, Bristol, UK, reported on a 14-year-old patient who initially visited a family therapist complaining of fatigue. the person was characterized as “picky in his choice of food”, his body mass index was normal, and he did not take any medications.

The teenager said that since elementary school, he had been eating only French fries, chips, white bread, and meat products.

Although the body mass index was normal, and the young man did not take any medications, tests showed a lack of vitamins: low levels of vitamin B12 and macrocytic anemia, a disorder in which red blood cells increase in size.

The medical report states that the patient was given injections of vitamin B12, prescribed nutritional supplements and given nutritional advice, but he did not receive treatment followed.

A year later, the teenager returned to the hospital due to partial hearing loss and impaired vision, but the doctors could not find the cause of the disturbances.

By the age of 17, “the patient's vision gradually deteriorated to the point of blindness,” according to the report.

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The young man admitted that he avoided products of a certain texture and ate the same fast food for more than ten years.

In the further study of the patient's diet, doctors discovered a deficiency of vitamins D and B12, a decrease in bone mineral density, low level of copper and selenium, high level of zinc.

“The patient's vision was irreversibly impaired by the time the diagnosis was made.”

The report warns that doctors who find unexplained vision loss in patients should consider nutrition as a possible cause of the condition.

“The link between fast food and cardiovascular risks, obesity and cancer is well known, but poor nutrition can also irreversibly undermine the health of the nervous system, including vision,” the report says.

In developed countries, such an event is rare. With early diagnosis, the pathology is potentially reversible, but in the absence of treatment, the patient is at risk of permanent blindness”.

“Our vision significantly affects the quality of life, education, employment, social contacts and psychological health, – says the lead author of the study Dr. Denize Atan. – This case emphasizes the importance of diet for the health of the whole body and vision in particular and points to the fact that the number of calories consumed and the body mass index are not reliable indicators of normal nutrition.”

This discovery is particularly disturbing against the background a study published last year.

The work carried out by the ready meal delivery company HelloFresh showed that the British eat fast food the most in Europe.

The company surveyed more than 15 thousand adults in nine European countries to determine their attitudes towards fast food.

As it turned out, many Europeans eat fast food three times a month, while Britons are twice as likely – up to six times a month on average.