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Eating a wide variety of fruit and vegetables, including dark green leaves, is good for your general health and may support good eye health. Eating healthily will help you to maintain a healthy weight, which helps keep your blood pressure under control. High blood pressure increases your risk of stroke, which happens when a blood vessel in your brain bleeds or becomes blocked. It can affect your vision if it is in the part of the brain that you use to see with, causing blind spots in your vision. High blood pressure also increases the likelihood of a blood vessel in your eye bleeding or becoming blocked which may seriously affect your vision and in some cases lead to total sight loss in one eye.

Having high cholesterol also increases your risk of stroke. Make sure you eat a healthy balanced diet that is low in fatty food, take regular exercise and, if you smoke, give up. If you’re aged 40 to 74, you can get your cholesterol checked as part of an NHS Health Check.

Dietary supplements

There are lots of dietary supplements on the market which claim to be beneficial for eye health. There is no good evidence that the general population should be taking these supplements, but they may be helpful for some people who have existing AMD. Your optometrist will be able to advise you.