Feeding Your Eyes II: Getting the Nutrients to Your Eyes

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Originally appeared in
EARTH STAR MAGAZINE December 2004/January 2005
By Rosemary Gaddum Gordon, D.B.O., M.A.

Last issue we discussed what foods to eat. This issue we’ll explore ways to get the food to the eyes.

The eye, like the rest of the body, is nourished by what is in the blood. The blood fills up with nutrients as it goes by the digestive system, and delivers those nutrients to the organs, muscles, bones and nerves. It then returns with the waste products and delivers them to the sorting and dumping stations. It’s a bit like our food trucking and waste management industries. Like them its effectiveness depends on clear highways and efficiency at all the places of transfer. The highways, of course, are the blood vessels, where the traffic flow may be slowed down by congestion within the vessels or restrictions from the outside. As we age, our food-delivery system tends to become less efficient. So, the older we are, the wiser we need to be about how and what we eat.

There was an interesting study done by Mayor Pharmaceutical Labs which showed that when a substance is given in a tablet form, only 10% of it gets into the blood stream. If it’s given in a capsule then 20% gets to the blood stream, from a gel cap 30%, from liquids 50%, from sublingual drops we get 95% and from an IV, obviously, we get 100%. When we consider this, it becomes clear that the form our food is in when we place it into our mouths has a huge impact on how much nourishment we get from it.

When we are sick, soups and liquids are both comforting and the easiest form of nourishment for our bodies to absorb. We feed babies mushy foods like squashed bananas and applesauce for the same reason. If your digestive system is not working well, or if you need lots of a particular nutrient, this is something to bear in mind. Juicing and cooking foods makes them more absorbable. We get more nourishment from a glass of fresh carrot juice than from munching a whole bag of carrots and on eating a slice of bread than from chewing on grains of wheat. It’s generally tastier too. Our digestive systems still need fiber and chewy foods to keep everything moving along. However, it has to work harder and longer in order to get the nutrients into an absorbable state.

Eating is an important event for the body. We must eat to live. When we attend to what we are eating, the tastes, the textures and how it feels going down, we also get more out of the food. When we are reading or watching TV our mind is elsewhere. If the object of our attention is stressful or exciting then our nervous system will become activated and our digestion may be shut down.

Once the nutrients are in the blood stream, they are delivered to your eyes where they are unloaded and used. Relax, enjoy nourishing food and your eyes will get the sustenance they need.

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