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A powerful study performed twenty-years ago challenged the dominant cataract paradigm, hinting at the curative potential of simple nutritional interventions
Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness, considered impossible to cure except through surgery once vision loss sets in. However, a striking 2005 animal trial not to be forgotten found a wheatgrass derivative reversed lens protein opacity by 35% in just one month - challenging notions any age-related disease is truly "incurable" or "irreversible" - a fundamental premise of my book REGENERATE and my Masterclass by the same name.
The fascinating results were published in Biogerentology alongside more evidence vegetables hold elixir-like healing and longevity promoting properties: The lens opacity of aging beagles were reversed by 25-40% in just one month.
The same wheat sprout extract previously regenerated withered, inactive thymuses in aged mice to full blossoming size and function in 21 days - essentially inducing biological age reversal. The equivalent human leap would see an inactive 60-year-old thymus transformed to robust 20-year-old levels, implications staggering for immunity and overall health.
The researchers attributed wheat sprouts' anti-cataract effects to bioactive peptide complexes, antioxidant molecules and "highly energetic phosphoric radicals" concentrated during germination.
Peptidic mixtures in immature wheat shoots help restore youthful gene expression in senescent cells, potentially reactivating crystallin protein production in the eye.[1] Short sequences also exhibit antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and tissue-protective effects.[2]
Abundant vitamin C in wheatgrass prevents lens glutathione loss and crystallin breakdown implicated in at least 75% of cataracts.[3] Vitamin E, chlorophyll and flavonoids additionally counter oxidative damage driving opacity.[4] Other research shows that the vitamin C abundantly found in fruits and veggies prevents 75% of cataracts in rodent studies.[5] Its absence causes impaired collagen scaffolding and lens disintegration in what should be a resilient, transparent tissue.[6] Logically it follows that vitamin C may halt and reverse this vitamin deficiency-driven decay.
Additionally, wheatgrass contains unique phosphorylated flavonoids which generate reactive phosphoryl radicals upon metabolism and therefore may donate energizing electrons to old dysfunctional proteins.[7] This recharging of sluggish molecular batteries could reawaken cells' innate repair capacities against allegedly "irreparable" insults like cross-linked crystallin aggregates.
In essence, the young grass extract's nutrient complexity synergizes to help turn back the aging clock at multiple phases of senescence-associated protein/DNA derangement. Where individual defects accumulate beyond resilience thresholds, health declines. By comprehensively reversing such root-cause processes, the sprout extract achieved systemic rejuvenation reflected in the lens renewal.
This animal trial warrants expanded human research given profound implications for a paradigm shift - from disease "management" after degeneration overtakes, towards multi-modal prevention and regeneration reaching far more than diseases of the eye. For if a wheat grass juice could rapidly reverse what's considered "incurable" lens aging, we may yet achieve hitherto unrealized cures for diseases long deemed untreatable through lifestyle and nutrition instead of just surgery and medications at their end-stage.
Learn more about cataracts here.
Learn more about the health benefits of wheatgrass here.
References
1. https://www.mdpi.com/1420-
2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.
3. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.
4. https://www.
5. Taylor A, Jacques PF, Chylack LT Jr, Hankinson SE, Khu PM, Rogers G, Friend J, Tung W, Wolfe JK, Padhye N, Willett WC. Long-term intake of vitamins and carotenoids and odds of early age-related cortical and posterior subcapsular lens opacities. Am J Clin Nutr. 2002 Apr;75(4):540-9. doi: 10.1093/ajcn/75.4.540. PMID: 11916745.
6. Tveden-Nyborg P, Lykkesfeldt J. Does vitamin C deficiency promote fatty liver disease development? Nutrients. 2014 Dec 29;6(12):5619-38. doi: 10.3390/nu6125619. PMID: 25544505; PMCID: PMC4277239.
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