Would anybody mind if I posted some references from medical journals to back up what i said earlier?
Unfortunately, PubMed.gov 's coverage is spotty before the mid to late 1990s- basically thats when the effort to put papers online really began in earnest.. So it would be missing a lot of the earlier stuff.
The problem with a lot of people's way of looking at medicine is that they don't or arent willing to spend the time to really explore a subject deeply and instead they attempt to generalize but in the wrong way. They may have some opinion and then they try to verify that pinion instead of building up a body of data points over time. In my case I stated investigating this stuff when I was a teenager - long before I had a university library to read papers in. So ive been following it for 40 years..
many people miss a lot. the fact is, the eye is perhaps the organ in the body that has the most parts, and many of them can be impacted by various conditions and exposures and changes related to aging.. But, a lot of things can be helpful. the oxidative stress theory of aging is just one of many models we use to try to understand aging but its still one of the most frequently used, no one is "right" to the exclusion of others..
Does this all make sense to people?
Since the eues are both made up of physical structures as well as CNS related structures/functionality.. (both the eyes and nasal structures stand sort of on the threshold of the brain) that makes their interaction very important and complicated..
To glean information, read up on neurodegeneration/neuroprotection of various kinds, vascular issues, formation of advanced glycation end products, various diseases that impact eyes like diabetes and glaucoma, immune system issues and issues relating to immunosenescence, heavy metal exposures (lead) and strategies to try to ameliorate the effects of same in various ways (glutathione, chelation..- Other issues with eyes are related to the lens, the clarity of the lens. another big area is light exposure (especially blue light) and UV exposure.. (NAC is better for the second than the first) There really are several dozen well known substances that can protect the eyes but a good strategy is more complex than a simple more is better approach, for example, many antioxidants have an effective range and in very large amounts they swing towards being pro-oxidant.. Some well known eye nutrients can actually be toxic in large doses as well.. With all that said, it really pays to do some reading and learn the basics about how these various systems in the body can be protected.. very basic stuff. It is real and the science is extensive and goes back many decades. A lot of people are in denial but they usually are people who have not spent any quality time investigating the issues - often they have a pre-decided point of view and they get angry when confronted with the fact that they might be wrong. .