Cataracts Alternative Medicine

Cataracts are one of the major eye health problems troubling most of the people. In fact cataract is one of the leading causes of loss of sight in most of the people; four million people have been reported to have some degree of vision impairment due to cataracts. This information is reflected in the queries from various media.

Cataracts are mostly degenerative vision impairment, which is to say that if people live long enough, most of them will experience some degree of cloudiness in their vision. Cataracts can also be caused by other disease, particularly diabetes, a congenital defect, trauma to the eye, or exposure to German measles during fetal development. A cataract simply refers to the haziness or clouding of the lens of the eye. The lens is transparent, flexible, and crucial to normal vision, and is located behind the pupil and the iris. The lens is attached to eye muscles on all sides; it flattens or becomes rounded, enabling the eye to focus on objects near or far. Certain external or internal factors cause the lens to become less transparent over time. While cataracts begin to get developed, people might notice a slight cloudiness, which makes them want to use a brighter light for reading, or they might have difficulty driving at night because of the glare of oncoming headlights.

People with cataract might find that bright sunlight adversely affects their vision. Cataracts in the lens may develop unevenly, that is, one eye might be afflicted while the other is fine, or both may cloud but the degree of cloudiness may differ from one eye to the other. Cataracts normally develop very quickly or often can be very slowly over a period of years. In the case of a severe cataract problem, the pupil of the eye becomes white, but early cases show no change in the eye visible on inspection without instruments. If cataracts have developed to the point of the lens where they severely impair the vision, surgery is the only course. Some people are scared by the prospect of eye surgery, and this is understandable. But to be severely impaired or blinded because of fear of what is actually simple surgery is a tragedy.

The eye surgery takes about a half-hour and is done under a local anesthetic. People can be operated on in the morning and be home that same day. There are some alternative medicines or natural remedies have been reported of reversing cataracts, but normally people take a conservative route on this. If the cataracts have compromised the vision to the point where people cannot carry on a normal life, they should arrange for surgery; natural treatments will probably not help. However if the cataracts are in the very beginning stages or if people know that cataracts run in their family and they want to prevent them, natural remedies may both improve their current condition and prevent any further development. As people get older many of their body parts tend to wear out. This seems typical and to be expected, and to some degree it is. But when people investigate the body on a microbiological level, they sometimes discover that when we understand what makes things wear out, they can prevent their degeneration.

• Felicia Byrnes
• 14/01/2009, 12:59 PM
• 0 Comments