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Age-related.
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.Macular Degeneration |
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easy stuff and if you just concentrate you’ll do fine. And while you’re at it, sit up straighter. And wipe that smile off your face, too.
....OK, here goes. The retina is the light-sensitive lining in the back of the eye that transmits the images you are looking at to the brain, and it’s loaded with photo-sensitive cells, those cells that respond to light and images. The macula is the centre of the retina, and the macula is thus the area of sharpest focus of vision because it has the greatest number of photosensitive cells.
....In macular degeneration the photosensitive cells in the macula deteriorate or die, leading to a loss of central vision, which can adversely affect one’s life in multiple ways, such as losing the ability to read, to recognize faces, and to distinguish colours and finer details in anything one is looking at.
....See, that wasn’t so hard, was it.
....There is just a bit more, however, because here comes that biochem stuff. Oxidation is that vital process in which oxygen gets to your tissues and allows the cells to live. Some breakdown products of oxidation, however, can be harmful to tissues and they have to be eliminated quickly. Hence, of course, the wide |
....Despite my general aversion to statistics and numbers (except of course, for all those sports statistics that every man seems to have an encyclopedic knowledge of, while, women, god bless em, only seem to remember unimportant stuff, like anniversary dates and birthdays), one rough statistic that has long intrigued me is this: for the last several years, I’ve averaged getting two e-mails or letters a week about that condition known as age-related macular degeneration (AMD), correspondence that is generally disturbing to me because so many of the elderly people afflicted with AMD seem to be in quite a bit of distress over their condition.
....So the reason for this column is to alert younger people (yes, that’s you) about AMD, which most of you probably haven’t even heard of, so that you might do whatever you can to prevent yourself from becoming steadily blinder as you get older.
....AMD is the leading cause of age-related vision loss in North America, a condition that’s only going to increase sharply in prevalence as we baby boomers burst into old age and develop all those health problems |
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that in our arrogant youth, we believed happened only to “old” people, like our parents. Funny, though, how things eventually seem to work out because most of us baby boomers are now as old as our parents were when we first noticed that they were “old”, and my friends and I are now developing all those problems we previously had believed would never happen to us. You think God is laughing quietly? I sure think so.
....Anyway, back to AMD. And forgive me, but you’re going to have to endure a bit of anatomy and biochemistry to understand this. Don’t worry, though, Professor Art assures .you that it’s |
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