Feed your natural sunglasses: nature's "shields" protect your eyes and skin from sun--especially if you have lighter eyes/sun problems

Overview: Most people don't get anywhere enough of nature's eye and skin shields. You can boost them by eating certain pigmented fruits and vegetables. An easy 1-2 punch is to eat certain spinach and a spirulina supplement every day.

Nature's eye and skin shields

Within the Vitamin A family, nature has a set of vitamins called xanthophylls that act as "shields" protecting skin and eyes. Two of them, colorful lutein and zeaxanthin, are found in high amounts within the human eye in the retina, lens, and macula (see diagram above), where they function as "sunglasses" that absorb excess light and reduce glare to prevent damage. If you don't get enough lutein and zeaxanthin, you risk macular degeneration and other eye issues, especially if you have lighter eyes which naturally have lower pigment.

Lutein, zeaxanthin, and their xanthophyll cousins are all around us at the salad bar and the fruit stand but most people don't get anywhere near enough of them. You probably know them well, they give color to the skins of fruits and vegetables. Lutein is what makes , zeaxanthin makes corn yellow .

Zeaxanthin tends to be harder to get in the typical American diet but both lutein and zeaxanthin are very important - don't rely and combined "lutein and zeaxanthin levels" stats
Zeaxanthin gets less press than lutein and is found 10X less than lutein in the American diet, but zeaxanthin actually makes up most of the pigment in the macula (see diagram). Lutein, on the other hand, makes up more of the pigment in the retina. So it is important to get plenty of both. However, many food stats show a simple "lutein and zeaxanthin content" number which doesn't tell you how much of each one the food contains--it could be mostly lutein.

So it is worth going out of your way to make a point of boosting zeaxanthin levels, which usually boosts lutein levels as well since they are found together often in the same foods.

Research is revealing benefits of a third xanthophyll: cryptoxanthinCryptoxanthin is a third xanthophyll that has been receiving more and more press especially for reducing arthritis and also anti-cancer benefits. I project that in the future, research will uncover more of the benefits of cryptoxanthin, but until then it is worth getting in into to your diet now.

What to eat?You could dramatically boost your levels of these super shields easily by eating just a couple foods each day that are high in each, most of which are found at the salad bar or fruit stand. A simple quick solution to immediately boost levels of all three of these xanthophylls you could just eat spinach and a spirulina supplement every day. Both spinach and spirulina are superfoods and have many additional benefits as well.
You can do a little Googling to find a multitude of food sources high in each, but here are some examples:

Zeaxanthin high sources - orange bell peppers are the "king" of zeaxanthin vegetables, spirulina is a great source and also a superfood supplement, corn, egg yolks

Lutein high sources - kale, spinach, collard greens, romaine lettuce
*Note: kale is so high in lutein you might want to eat just a couple leaves

Cryptoxanthin high sources - spirulina, butternut squash, red pepper, paprika, tangerines, mandarin oranges, papaya

A supergroup: the xanthophyllsThe three nutrients lutein, zeaxanthin, and cryptoxanthin described above are part of a very beneficial family of vitamins called xanthophylls. The other two are also very healthy:

-Astaxanthin - makes salmon pink and is a super antioxidant

-Canthaxanthin - used in tanning pills