Nutrition is an important component for good performance. That’s why you often hear about these intense diets that top athletes follow to stay fit and healthy. However, nutrition is also a highly personal exploration, and each athlete’s regimen is expertly tailored to their needs. That said, new research has shown that most everyone, including top athletes, can benefit from brightly colored fruits and vegetables, and they may even help improve performance.

How Colorful Foods Impact Visual Performance

It’s no secret that nutrition impacts performance. Protein helps build muscle; amino acids help muscles recover from exercise; vitamins and minerals help boost bodily functions. Your eyes are impacted by nutrition, too, but few understand the relationship between how our eyes perform (visual performance) and the food we eat.

Brightly colored fruits and vegetables, specifically yellow and orange vegetables, and leafy greens contain two crucial antioxidants called zeaxanthin (zee-uh-zan-thin) and lutein (loo-teen). These antioxidants work together to support many aspects of eye and brain function. In the most recent article, researchers reviewed their ability to influence visual range.

What Is Visual Range?

Visual range is a term used to describe how well a person can see clearly over distance. For athletes, it’s a crucial function for performance. The University of Georgia investigated the possibility of improving visual range of athletes by supplementing their diets with colorful fruits and vegetables.

Why Visual Range Is Impacted

According to lead author Jack Harth, a doctoral candidate in UGA’s College of Public Health,

“The reason why objects get harder to see and appear fuzzier the farther they are from our eyes is thanks in part to the effects of blue light.

From a center fielder’s perspective, if that ball’s coming up in the air, it will be seen against a background of bright blue sky, or against a gray background if it’s a cloudy day. Either way, the target is obscured by atmospheric interference coming into that path of the light.”

The Impact of Zeaxanthin and Lutein

Many athletes use eye black or yellow-tinted or blue-blocker sunglasses to try and reduce the effects of scattering blue light. However, getting more zeaxanthin and lutein in the diet increases the eye’s natural ability to handle blue light.

How?

Together, zeaxanthin and lutein make up a natural, yellow pigment in the back of the eye called macular pigment. The more zeaxanthin and lutein, the denser the macular pigment and the better the blue light absorption. In Harth’s words, “When a person absorbs lutein and zeaxanthin, the compounds collect as yellow pigments in the retina and act as a filter to prevent blue light from entering the eye.”

Visual Improvements With Zeaxanthin and Lutein

Increased levels of zeaxanthin and lutein in the body have been linked to a number of measures of eye health and functional vision tests, including:

• Glare disability and discomfort
• Chromatic contrast
• Visual-motor reaction time
• Problem-solving
• Memory

“All of these tasks are particularly important for athletes,” emphasized Billy R. Hammond, a professor of psychology in the Behavior and Brain Sciences Program at UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.

How Can Athletes Use This Information?

Harth feels that this paper helps to modernize the clinical links between macular pigment and functional vision, and begs the question, what can these powerful nutrients do for optimizing athletic performance?

Dr. Hammond tested dietary supplements with high-dose zeaxanthin and lutein with young, healthy adults and had them undergo visual function testing. The results showed applicable improvements in contrast, glare and light sensitivity, neural processing speeds, and reaction time. The performance supplements that led to these results were EyePromise® Zeaxanthin, Vizual Edge™ Chewable, and Vizual Edge™ Pro.

Learn more about EyePromise’s performance supplements.

When it comes to performance, athletes are always looking for an edge. Colorful fruits and vegetables could be the latest in performance “secrets,” but supplementation can be a way to ensure you’re getting the amounts you need to make a difference. Try EyePromise performance supplements today!