thought this was interesting...

-Shelly


You Won't Believe What Hurts Eyesight

By Cathryn Conroy, CompuServe News Editor
Bread. All that delicious bread you love to eat--crusty white bread, chewy bagels, warm dinner rolls--along with other refined starches may be a cause of short-sightedness, especially in children. This is the theory reported by New Scientist (and it's just that now--a theory): Diets high in refined starches increase insulin levels, which affects the development of the eyeball--making it abnormally long. That causes short-sightedness, according to a team of researchers led by Loren Cordain, an evolutionary biologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, and Jennie Brand Miller, a nutrition scientist at the University of Sydney.

Myopia now affects a whopping 30 percent of people of European descent, and the dramatic increase in cases over the past two centuries has stumped scientists. THIS may be the reason. "The rate of starch digestion is faster with modern processed breads and cereals," Miller told New Scientist. As we digest the starch rapidly, the pancreas pumps out more insulin. High insulin is known to lead to a fall in levels of insulin-like binding protein-3, the team points out. That in turn could disturb what New Scientist calls "the delicate choreography" that normally coordinates eyeball lengthening and lens growth. And if the eyeball grows too long, the lens can no longer flatten itself enough to focus a sharp image on the retina, according to Miller and Cordain. Other scientists say the theory is surprising, but admit it's plausible. More research will be done