Eye Care: 3 Different Fruits That Help Protect Your Eyes

You rely on your eyes for many daily functions, but do you care for them as you should? Yes, visiting your optometrist is a great step towards eye health. But there are other things you can do, like adding the following 3 eye-friendly fruits to your diet.

1. Bilberry: Your Eye-Berry

Bilberries resemble blueberries and mostly grow in Europe. The fruit is not widely known in the Americas, but you can probably find them in your local health food store. You can also try to get extracts, jams, or drinks that have some bilberry content.

The reason you want bilberries in your diet is because of their high antioxidant content. The antioxidant in bilberries is anthocyanins, which seems to be very helpful for the eyes. This antioxidant should help remove free-radicals from your eyes that damage cells and have been linked to several eye-related ailments, like retinal damage.

2. Banana: The Healing Peel

Bananas are not really exotic fruits, and you probably have eaten your fair share of them. But, you may be throwing away the most important part of the banana. Most creatures that eat bananas also eat the peel, except for human beings.

Researchers have found that the banana peel contains a high lutein content. Lutein is an active ingredient and antioxidant that helps eliminate the free-radicals created by UV light exposure. This will help protect your eyes UV damage. This does not mean you should stop wearing UV-protective sunglasses. UV-exposure is still linked to cellular damage. The lutein is just meant to help fend off the UV-exposure that you might be exposed to from time to time.

3. Buddha's Hand: Eye-Enhancing Citrus

Buddha's Hand is a strange fruit that looks like a small bunch of yellow-like carrots. You can find this fruit in your local health food store, or you can purchase extracts. The fruit is part of the citrus family and is extremely high in vitamin C. Vitamin C is not the first thing you connect to eye health, but vitamin C can protect you from macular degeneration and cataracts.

Vitamin C is essential for the building of collagen in your body. Collagen is the main component in your cornea. Vitamin C also helps fortify blood vessels, even the small capillaries in your eyes.

Remember that these fruits are only meant to help keep your eyes healthy and are not meant to cure eye-related ailments; so be sure to keep up with your eye specialist, and he or she will help monitor the reaction your eyes have with these fruits. Contact a company such as http://www.aspeneyewear.com to learn more.