Dear Friends,
Are you taking lutein to help with eye health and vision support?
If not, you should try to make it part of your daily routine because we don’t get enough lutein from diet alone.
Lutein is a crucial component of the protective pigment in the macula, located in the back of the eye. This pigment plays a vital role in filtering out harmful blue light from sources like the sun, digital screens, and indoor lighting.
Blue light is different from other rays in the light spectrum because it can penetrate deep into the eye, which can cause damage to the macula and retina over time.
In case you don’t know, the macula plays a key role in promoting central vision, color sharpness, and fine detail perception.
The protective macula pigment also contains zeaxanthin and meso-zeaxanthin in addition to lutein – and together these three powerful antioxidants help protect your vision from the oxidative stress caused by blue light.
One question we sometimes get is: “Should I take 10mg or 20mg of lutein daily?”
While dietary research suggests we need about 8mg of lutein daily for healthy vision, the average American only consumes about 2mg from their diet. To bridge this gap, lutein supplements are often recommended.
When it comes to dosage, our TrueVision supplement contains 10mg of lutein – which should be adequate for most people, especially for long-term use.
It’s important to note that lutein is a fat-soluble carotenoid, and like other fat-soluble nutrients, it can accumulate in the body. This contrasts with water-soluble nutrients (like vitamin C), where your body excretes what it doesn’t need.
So, we have to be careful about not overdoing it and not taking too much lutein – which is why we don’t recommend taking more than 20mg of lutein daily.
Is there an advantage to taking 20mg over 10mg?
It may help boost your level of macula pigment protection a little faster in the short term, but research with the Lutemax 2020 ingredient in TrueVision indicates that after 12 weeks, you end up in about the same place.
To give you some perspective, taking 100% more lutein (20mg vs. 10mg) for 12 weeks only resulted in a 10% difference in macula pigment, which is measured by something called MPOD (macula pigment optical density).
Also notable, this study involved healthy young adults, and it’s possible with older adults the results might be a little different.
However, in speaking to some professionals in this area, they said this trend is not uncommon – sometimes after 3 months, the 20mg dose looks better, but typically after 6 months, people end up in a similar range.
So, what’s the best way to proceed?
First, make sure your supplement doesn’t contain only lutein, but both zeaxanthin and meso-zeaxanthin too. I’d specifically recommend looking for Lutemax 2020.
Meso-zeaxanthin is hard to get from food and not always included in supplements.
Your body can convert lutein to meso-zeaxanthin, but many individuals cannot make this conversion efficiently (if at all).
We think generally 1 capsule of TrueVision (with 10mg of lutein) daily is good for most people and for long-term use.
If you want to jumpstart your protection and take 2 capsules daily for the first few months, that’s an option too. After that, you can switch to one capsule a day, or if you prefer, continue taking 2 daily if you feel strongly about it, or have other reasons to get more of these nutrients.
As always, we recommend making your health professionals aware of the supplements you’re taking.
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Yours for Good Health,
Carl Pradelli
