Age Related Eye Disease (ARED) is a very real condition that as the name suggests results from normal aging. Sometimes this aging process is grossly accelerated and the illness can be very severe, but most commonly it's incremental and just accepted as part of life. Remember how as a kid, an adult would always ask, “How can you read in that light”? As we get older we are more likely to report that we just don’t drive so well at night anymore. These are the typical ARED symptoms that we all over 30 can expect to experience.
The basic problem of ARED relates to eye pigments concentrations diminishing with aging. The solution is replenishing the lost pigments (thereby restoring normal eye function) via nutritional supplementation. We’re not talking carrots here but a mixture of pigments such as Lutein, vitamins (A, E, C) and minerals selenium, zinc and copper are required to restore or enhance low light vision. There is no question that low light vision can be substantially enhanced with nutrition. Scores of medical studies have come to this same conclusion.
Major corporations have realized the potential here with our aging population. As a result there are dozens of commercial products available. The problem is that many are incomplete, others contain non-sense additives, and still others contain toxic quantities of certain minerals. The complete products are also quite expensive, running near $1.50 per day. None of the products currently available also contain any nutrition designed to enhance any other traits we desire. They are a strictly solo purpose supplement, which means you must purchase many different products to achieve your goals. However, taking multiple supplements may present a risk of toxicity from taking too much of the same compound present in many different supplements.
Diminished hearing can be combated with selenium, folate, B complex and anti-oxidants. There are products that contain these substances on the market and they work. We are not referring to the deaf hearing again, but to a restoration of hearing to a more youthful acuity. Again the issues of cost and overall utility must be considered. However, ringing in the ears and decreased hearing have been successfully treated with dietary supplements.
For us flatlanders, a trip to altitude to hunt caribou, sheep, goats etc is often accompanied by altitude sickness. Ginkgo has been shown in several studies to be quite effective in preventing altitude sickness. Also the use of Ginkgo products in the area of cognitive function and concentration is practically mainstream these days. We can admit to a missed trophy (more than one actually) due to poor concentration, how about you?
Human odor can be effectively diminished with a number of products readily available. Soaps and detergents have come a long way in the past decade as have charcoal containing clothing. The most problematic area remains breath odor. Clothing solutions to breath odor are less than ideal and not well suited to warm weather hunting. Minty freshness isn’t a natural deep woods smell and doe in heat gum isn’t an appealing option (trust me it has been considered).
