Cataracts
Should You Be Taking Vitamin Supplements?
Vitamins were among the most exciting discoveries of the early 20th century. Since then, however, doctors have been expressing a lot of skepticism about the value of taking vitamin supplements. Last y…
Sneaky Delayed Drug Side Effects Fool MDs and Pa…
If your doctor recommends a new drug to treat high blood pressure, diabetes, hypothyroidism or elevated LDL cholesterol, you should be informed about the most common or worrisome side effects. Actuall…
Statins and Cataracts: Why Did It Take So Long t…
Lovastatin was the first of the new-generation statin-type cholesterol-lowering drugs on the market. It was approved by the FDA for sale in 1987. Even before the drug was approved, however, studies in…
Can Cataract Surgery Help Delay Dementia?
Millions of people go in for cataract surgery every year in the US. That is, however, a small proportion of the people who have clouded lenses in their eyes. Beside improving vision, cataract removal …
Show 1272: How Your Eyes Reveal Your Health
You may have heard that the eyes are the window to the soul. That could be difficult to prove, but scientists have now shown that the eyes offer significant clues to your overall health. Most exciting…
Show 1154: How to Take Good Care of Your Eyesigh…
A national survey just a few years ago showed that Americans fear losing their vision more than they fear losing a limb, their hearing, their ability to speak or even their memory (Scott et al, JAMA O…
A Completely New and Unexpected Statin Side Effe…
Statin drugs are widely used to lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease. The last time we checked, atorvastatin was the most widely prescribed drug in the United States (114 million bot…
Are Statin Side Effects Fake Medical News?
Doctors dislike drug side effects. After all, physicians prescribe medications to help people, not to hurt them. And yet every medicine has the potential to cause adverse reactions. This leaves physic…
Cataract Surgery to See Better Might Help You Li…
Cataract surgery is linked to longer life in older women. That's the finding from the Women's Health Initiative. Taking Care of Cataracts: This part of the WHI, a long-term prospective trial, tracked …
Can Crestor AKA Rosuvastatin Cause Cataracts?
Statins like atorvastatin, rosuvastatin and simvastatin are prescribed in huge quantities. We estimate that over 34 million Americans are taking such cholesterol-lowering drugs every day. Many health …
Allergy Sprays and Cataracts?
Not that long ago, corticosteroid nasal sprays were available only by prescription. Doctors had to monitor a patient's progress and make sure there were no complications from cortisone-like medication…
Multivitamins Shave Risk of Developing Cataracts
Middle-aged male doctors who took a daily multivitamin were less likely to develop cataracts as they grew older, according to the Physicians' Health Study II. In this large study, more than 5700 men t…
Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs Raise Risk of Catarac…
Statin-type cholesterol-lowering drugs are widely prescribed to reduce the risk for heart disease. That's partly because the current guidelines suggest that every man over 64 and every woman over 70 s…
Cataract Surgery and Statins
Scientists have been debating the connection between statin-type cholesterol-lowering drugs and the risk of cataracts for more than two decades. Early in the development of these medications there was…
Vision Problems More Prevalent
Americans don't see as well as they used to. That's the conclusion from a survey of thousands of adults. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey collected data on more than 9,000 people b…
Prostate Drug Complicates Cataract Surgery
Q. I need cataract surgery and have been told I must stop taking Flomax pills two weeks beforehand. I need an alternative drug to help me urinate. Otherwise I might explode or end up in the emergency …
Reducing Risk for Cataracts
Common medications may increase the risk for cataracts. Investigators at the University of Wisconsin studied records from more than 2000 patients over a span of 15 years. People who took drugs that ca…
Inhaled Asthma Medicine and Risk of Cataracts
Q. I have been using inhaled beclomethasone and Beconase spray for asthma and allergies for three years. Recently an optometrist warned me that he sees cases of cataracts quite often in people using s…