A cataract is a cloudy area in the lens of the eyes that develops with aging and slowly over time causes symptoms such as blurry vision, halos around lights, trouble looking at bright lights and difficulty seeing at night. This in turn leads to difficulty driving and reading and may increase the risk of falling.
If you look at the literature it is stated that cataracts are usually due to aging, but can also be caused by trauma, radiation exposure and the use of corticosteroid medications. Smoking, drinking alcohol, diabetes and too much exposure to sunlight can also cause cataracts.
This is why it is recommended to wear sunglasses when out in the sun, avoid smoking and drinking and keep a healthy diet filled with organic fruits, vegetables, grains, proteins, high quality milk and good fats and oils.
But let’s go back for a minute and talk about the fact that most cataracts are caused from the aging process. So what exactly does that mean?
Luckily the research is going deeper and deeper into what actually happens when a cataract forms and what they have found at a cellular level is exactly what we have been talking about in Ayurveda for thousands of years.
As we usually say for every disease, there are different reasons for the cataracts and the underlying reasons will definitely be different for each person, depending on their diet and lifestyle over the previous decades. And the underlying causes are numerous in each person.
The first problem that has been discovered through the research is that the proteins in the lens have denatured and degraded from toxins which over time prevents the lens from healing itself as alterations in the genes occur. The types of toxins they are noting in the research are environmental toxins, radiation, UV light and oxidized proteins.
So as we always say in Ayurveda, toxins are at the root of most problems — and especially in the lens the free radicals that are formed from these toxins decrease the ability of the lens to remove toxins, which causes the lens to become more opaque and less clear as these toxic proteins hang around.
This is why it is good to eat a healthy diet, filled with foods which have high levels of antioxidants, to prevent the lens from clouding over. In the lens of people with cataracts you will see oxidized proteins deposited in the lens. Oxidized proteins come from two basic sources: they were either poor quality protein to begin with, like the heavy red meats or deli meat such as hot dogs, corned beef, ham and pepperoni, or the protein sources could have been healthy, but if they are left over, they break down, or denature, as it is called, or we could also say they oxidize. In all these cases the toxins that form gunk up the channels and get stuck in the lens.
But here’s another thing to consider: if your liver has been corrupted by too many pharmaceuticals, and is hot and angry, it can take even good food and good proteins and oxidize them immediately, which means it turns them into toxins, which we call ama visha. This is why nearly all my patients are taking herbs to clean and regenerate the liver cells and cool it down, so it intelligently processes the food coming in, turning it into highly absorbable nutrients and not poison, or ama visha.
The word ama means partially digested food that is now stuck in your intestines and visha means poison. So this basically means that if your liver isn’t working correctly you will form poison from your food. This is why the ancient doctors said that whatever the health problem, start out by fixing digestion, so the person doesn’t form toxins and free radicals from their food, which, depending on where these toxins travel will wreak havoc in the body. In this case if they travel to the eyes, they can deposit into the lens clouding it up and causing cataracts.
And just as a side note here, the great majority of the patients I see, including children, have a very hot angry liver in this modern age where we have surrounded ourselves with so many environmental toxins, toxins in the highly processed foods we eat and the over abundance of pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals we take.
Lots of research on cataracts was published in the last few decades in which the authors describe how disruption in the circulation of the lens causes calcium to accumulate, which then builds up in the lens, causing cataracts.
I was quite excited reading these articles because as the authors delved deeper and deeper into the underlying causes of the cataracts and what happens at a cellular level I was amazed at how they described exactly what the ancient doctors of India had cognized thousands of years ago, before the advent of microscopes and other diagnostic equipment.
Here is what they are discovering: The lens of the eyes don’t have a blood supply so it is basically relying on channels to circulate around the eyes, keeping calcium, sodium and toxins out of the lens and instead allowing magnesium, potassium and other nutrients into the lens. This last sentence blew my mind because in Ayurveda we always talk about the health of the physical channels. The eyes have numerous micro channels which are constantly brining in nutrients and taking away toxins.
They said that cataracts can develop when the gaps between the channels lose their normal function, that their function gets “severely depressed.” Again! We talk about the gaps found in between all the body’s tissues and cells and have recognized that there are lots of intelligent functions occurring in these gaps. The authors state that the circulation around the lens is driven by the activities in these gaps and channels, transporting and exchanging nutrients and toxins.
And here is another important piece of information they discovered, which again, we have been talking about for years and years. That when the channels get clogged or aren’t working correctly calcium enters the cells faster than it can exit which can cause…you guessed it…calcium depositing into the lens causing cloudy vision and cataract formation.
But this is another amazing thing they found! They said that the lenses in people with cataracts contain calcium deposits or crystals. And listen to this: they further state that the lens may contain denatured proteins and very high uncontrollable levels of calcium in the lens of people with cataracts. But not just any calcium! My teacher Vaidya Rama Kant Mishra always talked about unintelligent vs. intelligent calcium.
It is best if the calcium used in making calcium supplements were alive, taken directly from the earth, such as coral, pearls, and shells, as opposed to synthetically made calcium, which is what most of the calcium supplements on the market are made of. So that is one problem causing calcification.
The ancient doctors also recognized that the calcium molecule was a very large molecule that could not be transferred through these tiny micro channels in and out of the cells. So they described how to take the intelligent sources of calcium from shells, coral and pearls and repeatedly burn it into an ash, several times. Each time they incinerate it the molecules become smaller and smaller until, after a few months of repeated incinerations, it becomes a very tiny nano particle, capable of moving in and out of the cells with its highly intelligent prana dictating where it needs to go. Prana is that vibration from the sun and the moon that the herbs or in this case the coral, pearls and shells absorb as they grow outside, and when we ingest them into our bodies, they have an intelligent effect.
The amazing thing to me was that the research shows that the amount of calcium inside the lens increases as calcium oxalate crystals deposit, and they specifically mention “insoluble” calcium, which is what we call unintelligent calcium, or synthetically made calcium from supplements made in a lab, devoid of the intelligent life energy or prana which the coral, pearls and shells absorb when they are outside under the healing rays of the sun and the moon.
So as usual, we can read the modern research which proves so many of the points we explain to our patients who won’t believe anything unless it’s been researched. Some people are reluctant to use Ayurveda because they feel it is an ancient system that is no longer relevant. But it is studies like these and many others that continually turn up and prove our point. And don’t forget ama visha, the toxin formed from improper digestion, and gar visha, toxins from outside of our bodies, like air pollution, skin care products, pharmaceuticals and pesticides can crystallize over time and start to deposit in various places. If they deposit in the joints you may experience severe arthritic pain, but if they deposit in the lens these micro-crystals can form cataracts.
We are so fortunate to be able to offer to our patients remedies which break up these calcifications and toxic micro-crystals, remedies to bind them and take them out of the body and teas to flush them into the urine. We teach our patients what a healthy diet is and how to properly prepare the food so that the channels don’t clog in the first place. We teach them about the highest quality raw A2 milk, goat’s milk and the correct way to take them so they don’t clog the channels providing the body with highly absorbable and nourishing calcium and other nutrients in the exact ratios nature intended. And of course, we take them through the cleansing process to remove accumulated debris from the delicate channels which allows for proper movement in and out of the body’s vast network of physical channels.
And of course, Vaidya Mishra, genius that he was, even developed remedies to clean what he called the burners in the gaps which, like the burners on our cooktops, could get gunked up and not work correctly, resulting in inefficient activity in these important gaps found throughout the body.
And, as always, we only use the highest quality and most intelligent calcium supplements which Ayurveda has always been prescribing for their patients for thousands of years, based on different types of coral, pearls and shells, incinerated for over 3 months until they become nanoparticles, or tiny particles which easily move in and out of the small channels of the eyes.
So keep reading the research, but at the same time avail yourself to the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda which is currently growing at a tremendous rate throughout the world, even in countries who have their own indigenous health care systems. The knowledge of Ayurveda is relevant and important for all mankind in whatever age we are living in.
Thank you,