Free Radicals The Underling Cause Of Cataracts

Free radicals are a major factor that can damage proteins in such a way as to cause protein misfolding and health problems. These destructive entities are implicated, in fact, in countless human diseases and disorders. One of them is cataracts, an age-related disease that sends about 1.5 million Americans to the operating theater every year. Cataract surgery is the most common operation there is. The reason is that it's quick, easy, painless, and almost always successful. But, like most surgeries, it should always be the last resort. The first resort, of course, is prevention. Another nutrient, N-acetylcarnosine, plays a special role in eye health because it's a good delivery vehicle (in the form of eye drops) for its parent compound, carnosine, which does not enter the eye as readily as does the N-acetyl derivative. Carnosine is a dipeptide (two joined amino acids) that is found naturally in the body (as is N-acetylcarnosine). Much research in Russia, where carnosine was discovered in 1900, indicates that it's helpful in both the prevention and treatment of cataracts, providing tangible improvements in visual acuity and glare sensitivity. Other research, primarily in England, has shown that carnosine helps protect an important class of lens proteins called a-crystallins. These are structural proteins that are responsible for the transparency of our lenses. Carnosine protects them by inhibiting a pernicious cellular process called glycation, in which sugars (primarily glucose) react with various proteins, causing the latter to become chemically cross-linked. This produces large molecular aggregates called AGEs, advanced glycation end products, which foul the cellular machinery of life in myriad ways and contribute to a variety of chronic degenerative diseases of aging including cataracts.