By Dr. Bruce West
“The most obvious drugs to harm kidneys and eyes are blood pressure and chemotherapy drugs. Yet we are constantly surprised when prescription drugs that seem totally unrelated to kidney and eye function impair vision or even cause blindness.”
Health Alert, Vol. 23, No.10
If you are losing your vision with glaucoma or macular degeneration, you must look to your prescription drugs as the cause. Since so many drugs affect kidneys, and since kidneys and eyes are intrinsically related, many medical treatments and prescription drugs can damage your eyesight. And if your eyesight is being lost to kidney damage from drugs, you will never regain it again unless you address the underlying cause.
The kidneys affect the eyes because they partially serve to keep the fluids and fluid pressure in your eyes in balance. Blood pressure drugs and the now discredited kidney surgeries using stents can interfere with fluid balance, and thus potentially harm or destroy vision. And these are just some primary examples as there are hundreds of prescription drugs that are toxic to your kidneys.
If you are taking prescription drugs and the pressure in your eyes is rising (glaucoma), be sure to get a drug book and see if your prescriptions can damage the kidneys. If they can, you need to get to your doctor to wean off these drugs. And whether drugs or something else is causing glaucoma, be sure to use the proper nutrition to help normalize eye pressure. In this case urea can help your body and your eyes release fluid and maintain a proper fluid balance. This means decreasing pressure in your eyes.
Some people actually accomplish this by drinking small amounts of their own urine, which is high in urea. But an easier way is to use a urea supplement made from minded earth. In this case the product is A-C Carbamide. Our tests show that for 7 to 8 out of every 10 people, A-C Carbamide (3-12 capsules) combined with Iplex (3 capsules) daily helps bring eye pressure back to normal.
A-C Carbamide contains the needed urea. And Iplex is a multivitamin for your eyes. It contains the whole, raw, organic vitamin A, C, E, G, and bioflavonoid complexes, as well as eye extract and raw bone. It is made from buckwheat, raw bone, carrot, extract, liver, yeast, wheat germ, alfalfa, kidney extract, allantoin, mushrooms, and more. With or without glaucoma or macular degeneration, it is supreme nutrition for your eyes.
So if your eye pressure is rising, check your prescription drugs, tell your doctor, and start nutrition in the form of A-C Carbamide and Iplex before starting on new prescription drugs. Drugs and prescription eye drops for glaucoma have their own sets of problems, including side effects that can affect everything from your eyelids to your heart. Try the nutrition protocol first for 4 to 6 months, and then have your pressure rechecked.
The longer you have been on kidney-damaging drugs, and the worse your kidney damage, the longer it will take to lower your eye pressure. If your pressure has improved on retesting, you’ve accomplished something that not one in 1,000 eye specialists knows about-the eye pressure-kidney connection.
AGE-Related Macular Degeneration (ARMD)
“Age-related” kind of says it all. This is a slow eye degeneration disease for which there is no medical cure. It can easily rob you of your vision. We used to think that this was a disease primarily caused by a deficiency of bioflavonoids and phytonutrients-particularly those from deeply colored fruits and vegetables. We have since found out that this is true, but the deficient nutrients are the ones primarily found in cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, kale, chard, turnips, and brussels sprouts.
However, the idea of eating a bucketful of these vegetables, all raw, every day, is not appetizing. So instead, we use the raw vegetables, grown organically and concentrated in their whole, live form into a powder. Like A-C Carbamide and Iplex, this powder, Cruciferous Complete by Standard Process, ensures that you get the phytonutrients specific to your degenerating eyes. These phytonutrients include Indole-3-carbino (I3C), sulfurophane, and a long list of others. When you combine 3-6 Cruciferous Complete capsules with the nutrition in 3-6 Iplex capsules daily, you are getting an entire tapestry of nutrients for your eyes, especially if you have ARMD.
In 1999 we did a study of this protocol with 20 ARMD patients. Remember that ARMD is an incurable, blinding medical condition. I provided the nutrients, and I asked everyone to complete a questionnaire. Eighteen people completed my questionnaire. After 6 months, 16 people had vision that remained stable-an unusual finding with ARMD as most people’s eyes deteriorate. Seven of the 16 people actually had fewer problems, and two reported better vision-an unheard of finding with this disease. The two that did not remain completely stable reported a slight worsening in one eye. With vision, especially ARMD, these results were a major success.
If your vision is deteriorating, especially with glaucoma or ARMD, remember that nutritional deficiencies, prescription drugs, surgeries, and kidney damage all take their toll. Check your prescription drugs and treat the underlying cause of vision problems. Use the nutrition outlined here, allow 6 months, and have your eyes rechecked. If your eyes stabilize or improve, you will probably need a maintenance dose of this nutrition for life. This is a small price to pay because for most people, you only get one chance with your eyes.
For any of the Standard Process products mentioned in this article please contact Lynn Morales ND