Improve your eye health by eating grapes, a new research suggests.
A study by the University of Miami, Bascom Palmer Eye Institute shows that diet rich in grapes protects and maintains the retina from deterioration.
According to the researchers, retina is made up of photoreceptors, cells that respond to light. There are two types of photoreceptors; rods and cones. They said that at least 5 million people in the U.S. are affected by retinal degenerative diseases that can result into blindness. This happens due to photoreceptor cell dies in aging.
For the study, the researchers conducted experiment on mice that were divided into two groups. They were either given a grape-supplemented diet that was equal to three servings of grapes per day for humans or one of two control diets.
The study findings reveal that the mice that had diet rich in grapes had considerably better retinal function that those on the control diet. Researchers said that the results showed mice who consumed grape supplemented diet had better triple rod and cone photoreceptor responses compared with animals in the control group.
Furthermore, the researchers found that experimental mice had thicker retinas with lower levels of inflammatory proteins and higher amounts of protective proteins, compared to mice in the control group.
"The grape-enriched diet provided substantial protection of retinal function which is very exciting," lead author Dr Abigail Hackam said in a press release. "And it appears that grapes may work in multiple ways to promote eye health from signaling changes at the cellular level to directly countering oxidative stress."
The findings were presented at the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology conference in Orlando, Florida recently.
