Your eyes provide an important clue to how long you will live

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Nearly 5,000 people took part in a study looking at the link between eye health and longevity.

Maintaining eye health throughout our lives is vital when it comes to preventing vision loss as much as possible as we age. However, many eye diseases are inevitable. And studies have shown that this can affect life expectancy.

One study found that older people with cataracts or age-related macular degeneration (AMD) may die earlier than people without eye diseases. It found that people with signs of these eye conditions were more likely to die from any cause than those with healthy eyes. And people with AMD were more likely to die from heart disease.

However, the team noted that these eye conditions could reflect other underlying health problems.

The researchers studied a group of 4,757 people aged 55 to 81 who were taking part in the Age-Related Eye Disease Study (AREDS). Over the next six and a half years, 534 of the participants died. Thus, people with AMD had a 41 percent higher risk of dying during the study than others who had virtually no symptoms of opaque deposits under the retina.

Those with more severe cases of AMD were associated with cardiovascular mortality.

And participants with impaired vision in one eye and those who had cataract surgery had an increased risk of death — 36 percent and 55 percent, respectively.

Progressive AMD was associated with cardiovascular mortality.