Cut the risk of Cataract -

Smoking and Cataract

There is an important link between cataract and smoking that should be of interest to everyone. Separate studies of smoking and the incidence of cataract in men and women, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in August 1992, have shown that people who smoke 20 or ore cigarettes a day are about twice as likely to develop cataract as non smokers. The men concerned were 22,071 American doctors and the women were 50,828 American registered nurses.

The explanation of this has to be related to the lower concentrations of the antioxidant vitamins C and E in the blood of smokers. Lens damage in cataract is oxidative damage of the lens protein. Cigarette smoke is rich in free radials and other oxidative substances such as aldehydes. We know that free radicals from cigarette smoke can damage proteins. In view of all this it is hardly surprising that smokers are more prone to cataract than non-smokers.

Whatever you do, don't let this information persuade you that smoking can be made safer by taking antioxidant vitamins. All smokers are very good at latching on to any convenient rationalization to allow them to continue. This one would be particularly dangerous. In may professional experience I have seen far too many tragedies, far too many promising lives cut short, far too many promising lives cut short, far too many people turned into respiratory and cardiac cripples to be able to contemplate smoking with equanimity. We are now beginning to understand in much more detail how smoking damages the body and this understanding includes details of a great many processes that have nothing to do with free radicals.