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Lutein, night blindness
I was eating 1/4 cup of cooked oatmeal every morning for almost 3 years recently. I also ate yellow kiwi occasionally, one red radish per day, 4 - 6 dried cranberries per day, strawberries in season, some whole grain barley and probably other things with lutein. Sometime during the summer of 2025 I started seeing black spots in my vision when I got up in the night to go to the bathroom. I have red light bulbs in my night lights. The spots would go away when I turned on the light in the morning. I don't know when it all started but it eventually got much worse with the spots getting bigger and blacker. So I quit eating all of the oatmeal and other things. It took about 2 weeks but all the spots went away and my vision is much better.
I have also noticed that I don't have to wait for my eyes to adjust when coming inside from the sunny outdoors now.
I have been eating what I considered a low vitamin A diet for almost 6 years. I didn't eat all those red things at first. I mostly ate beef, chicken breast, rice, white potatoes, black and pinto beans. I started eating the oatmeal after I was sick and had no appetite. It seemed like the only thing I was interested in eating. I guess it just took about 3 years to catch up with my eyes. I wish I had paid more attention to posts like this:
and this one titled: Dont eat lentils !!! Lutein / zeaxanthin is worse !
I do worry about lutein/zeaxanthin but I don't think I'm having any particular issue with it so far. (Although, like I have said I have occasionally seen my night vision get worse or better over time). We eat a lot of corn, I try to choose white but sometimes its the yellow because husband loves corn in all of its forms. And now just recently we have been eating a breakfast of oats and one egg each. look at the blurb below, gotten from googling. I'd bet I'm getting a lot of this...
One thing that I noticed with a particular diabetic loved-one was that oatmeal spiked his blood sugar badly. I think this would only happen if you are having diabetes and not if you are healthy (in type 2 your cells have stopped listening properly to insulin so the sugar stays in the blood instead of being put to work). Could the vision problem be from high blood sugar? I think that having an egg each sort of rounds out what could be a very carby breakfast. It feels smoother (less roller coaster) through the morning to me.
Now, shouldn't the fiber in oats or beans (or corn, for that matter) be taking away all the baddies? 😉
- A medium ear of yellow corn contains approximately 900 micrograms (µg) of lutein and zeaxanthin. A large ear can contain over 1,000 µg.
- A 1/4 cup serving of dry oats (which yields about 1 cup cooked) contains around 36 micrograms (µg) of lutein and zeaxanthin.
I have just seen online that poor night vision IS a symptom of type 2, as is *slow ability to respond to light changes*. I DO think I have that slow ability to respond to light changes. For sure.
Of course we are stuck in an infinite loop here because we here suspect that vA causes diabetes, so maybe not a shock that it would come along with its problems like poor night vision. Does the poor vision come along because of the vitamin A, or because of the high blood sugar damage? or both?
However, I do have this family data point that--despite oats being what I think is a good food--I know an oat breakfast spiked my my diabetic loved one.
I went to the eye doctor last week for a yearly exam. The doctor said at my age most people start to show signs of problems but I don't. I do need reading glasses but without glasses my eyesight for distance is 20/25.
I won't ever eat oatmeal regularly again and will try to eat any lutein containing foods rarely.
@lil-chick I would avoid all yellow corn if I were you. It may seem that the oatmeal doesn't have much lutein in comparison and neither do the kiwi, radish, cranberries but in my case it added up. I am amazed that it only took 10 days to get rid of the black spots by quitting consumption of them.
As for blood sugar problems, oatmeal was only part of my breakfast. I eat rice now instead. I have never understood how someone can eat just oatmeal or just cereal for breakfast. It only makes sense that they would have blood sugar problems.
@eio
When I look back at the most “ unhealthy” periods of my life, I was eating oats for breakfast daily.
This summer, I grew white zucchini squash. I shredded the squash and mixed it with oat flour and an egg, then fried it in a little oil.
I call them Squash fritters. It took 3 times of eating them before both my loving man and I were having bad toxic Va symptoms.
I have heard on Dr.GS , saying that savory oats are fine but when you add sugar to the oats or grind them, it changes them, making the lutein and zeaxanthin more active ..
We are all different. Still, I wonder why I *haven't* had issues like this, because I am eating lutein daily. When things start to get confusing, I said I was going to start quoting @Joe2 (what *was* that, I've forgotten now) about the duration paradox something something. LOL. Is my butter mopping this up? I put a small pat of butter and a small amount of maple syrup on my oats which are rolled and boiled.
So, (I'm sure this has been answered before by the Karen Hurd-ers, but worth reviewing) what are the soluble-fiber foods with the least lutein/zea?
This website has a bunch of info on lutein. http://www.saras-autism-diet.freeservers.com/Exile/III-5.html
Sara lost all her autism symptoms on a low lutein diet, grain, nuts and beans were not calculated back then for lutein so she still was able to eat oats. Oats may just be very irritating to some people. I personally don't feel well on them, but beans digest great.
They believe beta carotene is also reactive to many people with autism. When I was pregnant with my first child I consumed a bunch of a green smoothies with spinach, one of the highest sources of lutein. He has asperger's. But maybe it's not lutein as eggs are a high source and it doesn't seem like consuming eggs results in autism or autism would have been a thing for most of history! Maybe it really is the plant pigments that the immune system is reacting to. And then eggs would then have to be eliminated too.
Maybe it wasn't the oatmeal that was the problem. I eat beans just fine. I stopped eating the oatmeal, one red radish per day, strawberries and yellow kiwi at the same time. Maybe it was the combination or the radish or just the build up over time. I am just glad the black spots went away and I don't seem to have any problems.
The plant toxins may have been the problem. I ate an egg with breakfast for 55 years before starting to eat a low vitamin A diet.
Hi, just for reference, I looked up the amount of lutein in various foods. Let me know if you're seeing different numbers.
- 1c cooked oats: 421.2mcg lutein + zeaxanthin
- 100g dry Lentils: up to 1600mcg lutein
- 1c sliced kiwi: 219.6mcg lutein + zeaxanthin
- 1c boiled broccoli: 1684.8mcg lutein + zeaxanthin
Sources:
- https://tools.myfooddata.com/nutrition-facts/169967/wt6/1
- https://www.nutritionvalue.org/Lentils%2C_raw_nutritional_value.html
- https://consensus.app/search/what-is-the-carotenoid-content-of-lentils-includin/W7eJGpaORSCNV75uNxW4Og/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=clipboard
Note: some websites don't have carotenoid values for lentils, so I did an AI-enhanced search of the research literature using the Consensus app.