Resveratrol – A cure for blindness!
Resveratrol – A cure for blindness!
Even if nothing else was discovered about resveratrol, the substance would still be one of the most amazing ones because, based on what we know, there are so many different beneficial effects that it is able to bring about. And here, we are not talking about weight loss and anti-aging. We are talking about something much more important – its ability to prevent a number of unrelated diseases that we are all prone to.
One of those is blindness, which, unfortunately, can affect us for a number of reasons. For example, blindness can occur due to macualar degeneration that is very common during the process of aging. Although not everyone goes blind, there is a great number of people who start having problems with their vision.
Diabetes can cause vision loss and it turns out that 20 percent of those suffering from this disease lose their sight due to what is called diabetic retinopathy. However, the most alarming fact is that about 50 000 prematurely born babies are affected by retinopathy each year.
In all of these cases, the retina of the eye gets damaged, which ultimately leads to partial or total blindness. Finding out what causes damage to the retina means that there is a pretty good chance for solving the problem. And as scientists say, what affects the retina is usually abnormal vessel growth in the eye.
Since resveratrol has an effect on the blood flow, scientists think that there are reasons to believe that this compound is a possible answer although there was no evidence which would support their theory. Soon they started experimenting on mice and discovered that not only did resveratrol
manage to control the growth of blood vessels, but the abnormal ones seemed to have disappeared.
As with any other discovery, the question that remains to be answered is whether or not people will benefit from this. More studies need to be conducted, preferably on humans. What makes everything easier is that, after a couple of years of research, there are still no known side effects of resveratrol.
Preventing blindness is thus one more thing on the list that resveratrol is able to do.
