FAQs

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I find the best eye vitamins for me?
For macular degeneration supplements, there are three questions that will guide your eye vitamin choice:

1. Do you smoke now or have you smoked habitually within the past 20 years. If you are a non-smoker, you may take vitamins containing high doses of the Vitamin A precursor molecule, called beta-carotene. If you are a current or previous habitual smoker, you must avoid beta-carotene due to some studies that showed higher incidence of lung cancer in smokers when taking it.
2. Do you have wet macular degeneration in one eye, or is your macular degeneration progressive? Eye vitamins cannot reverse nor stabilize wet macular degeneration. However, if you have wet macular degeneration in only one eye, it is important to take high doses of vitamin supplements to provide the best nutritional support of the other eye which does not have wet macular degeneration. Look specifically for supplements that include Zinc, Lutein and Zeaxanthin.
3. Do you take Coumadin (warfarin) or other anticoagulants? If so, we recommend that you take VisiVite AREDS 2 E-Free Blue Formula to avoid possible increased bleeding tendency.

I have a family member with macular degeneration. Which vitamin should I take?
The human genome project and new research indicates that up to 75% of macular degeneration can be explained by various genetic vulnerabilities. Additionally, Omega-3 fatty acids have been shown to prevent the development of macular degeneration in healthy eyes. Therefore, we now recommend that people with high risk family histories combine macular degeneration vitamins with a high quality DHA Omega-3 essential fatty acid oil. 

What determines which vitamins you recommend?
We select manufacturers with quality reputations and internal testing that use U.S. based and naturally sourced whenever possible.

I take a multivitamin every day. Isn’t that good enough?
Beginning with the National Eye Institutes Age Related Eye Disease Study in 2001, which was the first research showing the benefit of nutritional supplements in the treatment of macular degeneration, three points were proven:

1. Only specific ingredients had benefit against eye disease.
2. Scientific research, rather than hundreds of opinions in the lay press, should dictate the optimal ingredients and dosages of eye vitamins.
3. Extremely high levels of these ingredients were necessary to have an effect against eye disease.

Inexpensive mass-marketed multivitamins contain many ingredients but have no proven benefit against the progression of macular degeneration or the treatment of dry eye syndrome.