Posted on 08/06/2025 8:43:52 PM PDT by ConservativeMind
The retina places a large energy demand on the body, in part due to the activity of photoreceptors.
These specialized cells are responsible for receiving light and transmitting visual information to the brain.
Photoreceptor death is the cause of vision loss in many retinal diseases, and there are no effective therapies that improve their survival.
In a paper, researchers studied the dependence of photoreceptors on glutamine. Their results indicate that maintaining the balance of amino acids in these cells is important for photoreceptor health.
The energy requirements of photoreceptors make them vulnerable to small changes in metabolism.
Glutamine feeds into several pathways, helping cells build other amino acids, including glutamate and aspartate, protein and DNA.
To confirm glutamine's role in vision, the researchers used mice that lacked the enzyme glutaminase, which breaks down glutamine into glutamate. They compared these mice to control mice by measuring the thickness of their retinas. Mice that lacked glutaminase had a rapid reduction in retinal thickness with loss of photoreceptor number and function.
Glutamine plays a role in several cellular processes. To understand why glutamine is important to photoreceptor survival, the team measured the levels of different molecules in control mice and those that lacked glutaminase.
When mice lacked the enzyme, they had lower levels of glutamate and aspartate. These amino acids, in turn, help the cells build proteins that are required for photoreceptor function.
The researchers also found that decreased amino acid levels activated the integrated stress response, which is known to trigger cell death if it remains active for too long. When they inhibited the stress response, the team found that the retinal thickness increased.
"We are now focused on understanding which pathways depend on glutamine and whether they can be targeted by drugs or supplements," Wubben said.
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
It appears to help keep the retina healthy in ways not previously known.
Ping for later.
And thanks for the post!
‘red cabbage seems to have the highest amount of glutamine, overall.”
Eat only meat and eggs just for a coupke of days with zero plants and your vision improves instantly, like with a switch. That’s how we can confirm what foods have the most glutamine, without doing a single analysis.
There is zero fiber in meat and eggs. Human bowels are long similar to herbivore animals. Not short like carnivore animals. Eating just meat and eggs will cause severe constipation, even blockage. Must eat veggies with meat.
if you have enough healthy fats, not much need for fiber to move things through. the body needs protein and fats to survive, it doesn’t need carbs, though I do agree the gut likes some fiber.
Studies consistently show associations of a high dietary fiber intake with decreased risk of metabolic dysfunction (obesity, and cardiovascular inflammation etc). The healthiest, longest lived people in the world tend to eat more vegetables. That’s an absolute fact. They eat foods that are nutrient rich, but calorie poor, like vegetables.
My mother lived to age 103. She never ate eggs. Only one meal onon Sunday our house had meat may be 4 oz each person. My grandfather lived in parents house. He never saw him eat any meat or eggs or fish. He was blind from cataracts but refused to have eye surgery. He lived to age 95. Both my mother and grand father never were sick that I can remember.
If we took all the supplements, other advice put out, we wouldn’t have room for food....and would probably suffer certain “supplemental” toxicities.
I’m finding that a drop of castor oil rubbed over the outside upper and lower eyelids before sleep deals with optical problems very nicely. Makes thicker eyelashes as a bonus.
It isn’t a starch or sugar like other carbs if that is the issue. High fiber (at least soluble) will keep you satiated + it is very keto friendly and doesn’t disturb ketosis since the body doesn’t break it down with normal enzymes.
‘Human bowels are long similar to herbivore animals. Not short like carnivore animals.”
We are made to believe we can be herbivores just because cooking and preprocessing plants save the day (eat beans or potatoes raw and you die quickly because of toxins and anti nutrients), that doesn’t mean plants are optimal for our health. We just use short term adaptation gimmicks to exploit plants to avoid stavation, that doesn’t make us biollogically herbivores. When cavemen made paintings, they don’t paint carrots, they paint mammouths because that’s all they had to eat during ice ages.
So what you said about us being herbivores is not even wrong, it’s crazy.
I seem to do much better with 3:1 ratio of vegetables to meat by weight. No bowel issues, no stamina issues. Still doing 33-35 minutes aerobic walk every day, no misses. At age 85 have zero medical expense.
I had one occurrence of kidney stone in my life at 49 yo. My MIL had severe complications due to a uncorrectly treated kidney stone and all went downhill from there until she passed away. Quite scary thing and I’m convinced it’s because of the oxalates in vegs.
I love vegs and fruits but with blood in the feces, bloating and the risk of kidney stone, not mentionning reviving my carbs addiction, no thanks.
At the end of the day, we have to discover what works best for our body. There are 8 Billion people in the world. One size fits all is never correct. Even within siblings there are differences.
A lot of people may come to an extreme elimination diet like carnivore to solve those issues but find a more sustainable solution is low FODMAP or paleo-like which only eliminates plant based foods that are actually difficult to digest (yogurt, wheat, grains, cruciferous veggies, sugar and sugar alcohol etc) and that actually gets to the root of what is causing the problem. Plus adding in gut supportive supplements (probiotics, digestive enzymes..).
‘There are 8 Billion people in the world. One size fits all is never correct”
My own 5 siblings had different allergies. 2 of sisters could not tolerate eating eggs. 3 other siblings had no egg allergy. That tells me every one has unique issues. You are free to believe what you want.
‘Plus adding in gut supportive supplements (probiotics, digestive enzymes.’
The probiorics concept itself never makes any sense to me: if probiotics help balance your guts flora, so why don’t those ‘good bacteria’ sustain themselves, why do you need to keep eating them? If they help in the balance, then when not ingesting them, you should be ‘imbalanced’ and hence sick, right? So why carnivores, and probably you, and more generally any humans before the theory of probiotics is invented, don’t see any such imbalance or sickness, why ‘probiotics deficiency’ has never ever existed? Real questions, never answered seriously. The truth is the ‘science’ behind this theory is atrociously bad if you cared to read the papers themselves and not only the lamestream media’s headlines.
So what’s left for you to defend the ‘side dish’ you want to add to carnivore? Nothing. That’s why calling carnivore an ‘extreme elimination diet’ is so wrong and misleading (even if I’m sure it’s not intentional from you). There is nothing ‘extreme’ in eating simple products with minimal ingredients compared to eating a whole list of things that come from all over the world, that’s transformed in ways that nobody knows, that don’t even exist 50 years ago, that make you sick and in need of life medication. And ‘elimination’ implies that carnivore may eliminate not only harmfull food but also necessary nutrients, which is false. With carnivore, you get all you need and remove everything harmfull (carbs, fibers, oxalates, anti nutrients).
I was talking about diet, not about health issues so I don’t see how some people being allergic to some food contradicts the fact that there is a proper and optimum diet for humans, like for ANY other animals? If you come up with 2 siblings that thrive on plant based diets compared to 3 on omnivore or carnivore diet, that may be to the point of the discussion but with allergy, no.
And why the allergies cases from your own family would be more relevant than if it’s from the general population? Emotionnally, sure. But logically and rationnaly, I don’t think so.
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