The Importance of Good Nutrition -- The Key Nutritional Principles You Need to Know to Be Healthy

One of the main purposes of this website is to emphasize the key role the importance of good nutrition plays in your health and well-being, and to identify the key nutritional principles to better health.

The first and most important nutritional principle is to maintain your general and ocular health by eating a healthy diet!

• Mom was right about the importance of good nutrition! 9 to 13 servings of fruit and veggies are needed every day according to the FDA, American Heart Association & American Cancer Society. When I tell my patients this they look at me with wide eyes and say, "But no one can eat that many!" Nevertheless, that's how we used to eat before the days of canned, packaged and frozen dinners.



Eat a variety of colors in your fruits and veggies
• Oxidative stress involving free radicals and reactive oxygen species (ROS) are by-products of our normal metabolism and are responsible for much of human disease and premature aging. It takes high levels of antioxidants to neutralize them.
• Plants have developed extremely high levels of antioxidants to protect them from the effects of sunlight. We benefit from these antioxidants when we eat plants. In fact, plant food is the only source of almost all the antioxidants in our bodies. There is a historical synergy between humans and plants. Without plant food we would cease to exist.
• Colored fruits and vegetables with dark-green leafy vegetables, all rich in carotenoids, are the key to health. Fresh is better. Organic and fresh is best. You can't wash the pesticides off of thin-skinned fruits and veggies like peaches, peppers, apples and others.
• The Standard American Diet (SAD) has too few fruits and veggies with too many processed carbohydrates and is killing us (and we are generously exporting it to other countries).
• The more processed food is (does it come in a box?) the worse it is for your health. Unprocessed foods tend to be much higher in fiber and natural nutrients.
• If you knew what they feed cows in feedlots you'd probably stop eating meat. Buy only range-fed (organic) meat. That includes chicken and turkey and their eggs.
• Hormones and other chemicals fed to cows accumulate in milk and cheese due to the fat content, so only buy organic.
• Fish oils are very important for your health, but don't eat farmed fish. Even the FDA warns pregnant women and children to strictly limit its intake. Oh, and that "Atlantic Salmon" you see advertised is a fancy phrase for "farmed fish". Sardines are a terrific, low-cost alternative to salmon. Fish oil capsules should say they come from wild, cold-water fish like salmon or you're probably getting oil from farmed fish. Carlson's Fish Oil was found in independent testing to be the purest.

Get your fish oil every day.



• Drink filtered water to get rid of the chlorine and other contaminants. That doesn't mean bottled water, which may have its own contaminants like bisphenol A (BPA) leaching out of the plastic. (This is another reason you should absolutely avoid microwaving plastic).

"Just Say No" to plastic bottles.



• Finally, get enough of the "Sunshine Vitamin", vitamin D-3. Expose as much skin as you are comfortable doing, or as is legal, before 10:00am or after 4:00pm in the summer. Your skin is a giant vitamin D factory and will produce more in ten minutes than you can supplement.

Other key factors in the nutritional principles and the importance of good nutrition is the stuff you should exclude from your diet.

• Sugar. This nothing more than concentrated energy, like throwing gasoline on a fire. It stresses your pancreas and turns to fat unless you're extremely active.



• Sodas, even the "low-calorie" ones, are terrible for your health. That nice fizz comes from phosphoric acid that leaches calcium out of your teeth and your bones. You'll have a tough time with osteoporosis if you continue to drink sodas.
• Artificial sweeteners, also referred to as "excitotoxins".
• Excessive vegetable oils, especially corn oil and safflower oil. These are omega-6 oils and in excess will interfere with your body's utilization of omega-3 oils.

Obesity is a national epidemic (see the Causes of Diabetes). The importance of good nutrition becomes even more urgent considering that, at present rates, by the year 2020, 100% of Americans will be overweight.

Being overweight makes both macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy worse, as well as a number of systemic diseases.

If you don't work out often you need to eat less.

Exercise will help control your weight, but has benefits of its own when it comes to improving your cardiovascular system.

Muscle burns lots of calories, even when you're asleep. Fat burns almost none. Therefore, your exercise should use light weights to at least maintain your lean muscle mass. It helps you lose weight and prevents osteoporosis.

Switching to a diet high in fruits and veggies also makes weight control easier, especially if you cut back on goodies.

This is where the importance of good nutrition is the most evident, in displaying the key role good nutrition plays in preventing and reducing potential health problems!

Most people don't develop a particular disease. Nevertheless, risk factors increase with poor diet.

EVERYONE needs prevention.

Good diet, don't smoke, exercise and proper rest.

Only those with a particular disease need treatment.

Here are some examples of the importance of good nutrition for some eye diseases:

Example: Retinal vascular occlusion with elevated homocysteine

• Studies show this patient needs extra folic acid, B-12, B-6 and maybe trimethylglycine.
• He/She still needs to follow prevention guidelines. Prevention now even more important to maintain strong immune system to repair damaged tissues.

• Studies show this patient needs additional zinc, lutein, meso-zeaxanthin, DHA and possibly acetyl-l-carnitine.
• Prevention guidelines are still critical.

If you don't have the disease and aren't at risk, don't waste your money on treatment. Stick with the Prevention Attitude.

From the information outlined above, the importance of good nutrition and the key role it plays in your improved health and in enjoying a better lifestyle, should be quite clear... Take care of your health!

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