Could eating a handful of pistachios daily help improve eye health?
A new study has uncovered vision-improving benefits from consuming pistachios daily.
- Adding pistachios to one’s diet improves eyesight, according to a new study.
- The study found that eating two ounces of pistachios daily for 12 days significantly improved the health of macular pigment optical density.
- Macular degeneration is the leading cause of vision loss for people over the age of 60.
- The key to pistachios’ vision benefit is the plant pigment lutein, which is unusually bioavailable in nuts.
Eating a handful of pistachio nuts each day can significantly improve eye health, according to a new study from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University.
Adding two ounces of unsalted, shelled, dry-roasted pistachio nuts each day for 12 weeks to participants’ usual diet improved their macular pigment optical density (MPOD).
The study was supported by the American Pistachio Growers and the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.
The macula is a small area in the center of the retina at the back of the eye. It is critically important for good vision in that it is
responsible for central vision, color vision, and capturing fine visual details. These include facial features and written text.
It is not uncommon for macular degeneration to occur as one ages. It is estimated Trusted Source that about 20 million U.S. adults have macular degeneration, which is a leading cause of vision loss and blindness.
