so, I have had dry Macular degeneration for the last 5 or 6 years now and this year my vision went “wonky” . After seeing my opthalmologist she told me the right eye is now wet and need injections in that eye. So far I have had 4 injections and opthalmologist told me it’s now improving. My vision is still wonky though, it did get better, but has gone back to being wonky again. I have been googling about how to look after my eyes and lots of clinic sites say that eating saturated fat from red meat and other saturated fats are not good for macular degeneration. Then I googled “is Keto good for Macular degeneration” and keto doctors recommend the diet for preventing and helping with Macular degeneration. I haven’t done Keto now for a while just because really no reason. I’ve also got glaucoma and I’m sure I will be blind in my old age the way my vision is going.
My husband was diagnosed with diabetes type 2 about 18 months ago and he cut his carbs down quite a lot and lost a lot of weight while I put the weight on eating the same food as him.
This isn’t really a post for advice really, but does anyone else have the same as me? I love the Keto WOE but I don’t think it’s doing me any good as I can’t lose weight and I want to lose about 10kgs which is what I’ve put on since I retired in 2019.
I know I should be more active, but when I go walking I have trouble with my ankle and knees. The ankle doesn’t seem to be fixable as each physio I’ve seen doesn’t seem to be able to know where the problem is. Righto, that’s it for now.
Macular degeneration
The high insulin level resulting from eating too much carbohydrate causes all kinds of damage, including raising eye pressure. Lowering insulin by restricting carbohydrate intake is the only way to allow the damage to heal.
I’ve never heard that eating too much fat causes macular degeneration, but fat gets blamed unjustly for a lot of things. I hope keto helps with macular degeneration, because it runs in my family. A keto diet has made such a great difference to my health in so many ways, that I have to trust it will help with my eyes, too.
@Jacaranda1 Pat - I’m sorry to hear of your vision struggles, which can be very disconcerting. I’m tracking with @PaulL’s reply above … as I can’t imagine how reducing inflammation (which is at the core of what stabilizing/lowering insulin spikes through carb restriction can achieve) would exacerbate macular degeneration. If anything, on the contrary.
TANGENTIAL INFO: I’ve managed to (s-l-o-w-l-y) reduce my need for corrective lenses from roughly -3.0 diopters with astigmatism, currently down to -0.75 with no correction needed for astigmatism, confirmed through Snellen eye charts. I did this over the course of about 2-3 years in 0.25 diopter increments while maintaining roughly 20/20 vision. This is not the forum for me to go into details, but much info can be gained from reading info at https://endmyopia.org/. The presentation and community there are a bit “wonky” too 
But the approach has actually worked for me (in my mid-60s).
While reducing the need for strong lenses (reversing myopia) is NOT going to reverse macular degeneration or glaucoma, better vision is certainly achievable through patience effort and a cooperative optometrist. This may be of general benefit to you and lift the spirits, too!
Best wishes! 
Hi Pat. In regards to gaining weight on Keto, it does happen for some. Depends somewhat on how much or how little you were eating before Keto. If you were eating at a deficit for too long, you may have slowed down your metabolic rate.
As for your Macular degeneration, I’d look at what CarnivoreDoctor on Youtube has to say. She is an eye doctor and has SO MANY stories of healing and vision repair on a Keto or Carnivore diet. If a lot of damage has already been done, you may not be able to repair all of it, but you can certainly prevent further damage.
Way back when I first started Keto I was diagnosed as having the beginnings of Macular degeneration, and it cleared up by my next visit a year later. Long term damage can’t always be repaired, but I would certainly try. I started by eating a lot of salmon and eggs as well as beef the first year. I believe that a high carb and low animal fat contributed to my vision issues. That and seed oils. Anyway, if you are interested in learning more check out CarnioreDoctor on YouTube. I think she is on Instagram and Facebook too.
Then your macros aren’t right for you, really that easy. It’s incredibly easy to over eat when you have a high fat intake, as it’s over twice as calorically dense as carbs and protein.
Some people with working hunger / satiety signals can sometimes get away with just eating intuitively, I’m absolutely NOT one of those, I know very few people in real life that are, so don’t feel bad there. Are you tracking what you eat?
I’m not a PT, but I was a trainer and I’ve had my share of ankle mobility problems myself. If you haven’t had surgery on them and they’re not screwed in place or anything, in most cases they’re always fixable, good news is, usually doesn’t take much.
When it comes to nutrition, never use somebody else as a template. People do that one all the time and it almost never works out. Different people, different metabolic rates, different insulin sensitivity etc.
On the eyes, if you’re the non mainstream I’ll try weird things type, look into the peptide bio-regulator Visoluten. I corrected my high eye pressure and the need for glasses for night driving with it, and my prescription was able to be lessened as my vision actually showed to improve on follow ups, broke the doc’s brain, said they’d never seen that!
Brilliant replies thank you all. I’ve now got some reading and watching to do.
I read today when looking up the causes of macular degeneration that smoking and eating too much fat can be a cause. Well i haven’t smoked for 35 years but I do like eating fat which is funny really as when I was younger I couldn’t eat fat. Then I had a rump steak and it looked so nice I tried it.
Thanks everyone
Regarding macular degeneration, I’m not a doctor, and haven’t worked in a biochemistry lab for 25 years (and never in this area), but I still read scientific papers for fun, particularly in metabolism and longevity. My wife has a “weak” retina with some issues cropping up so I went looking for things that can potentially help. One thing that popped up was that many age-related retina issues — including macular degeneration — seem to be coincident with a lack of glutathione in the center of the retina. Here’s one of many papers that suggest this is true. (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190507121429.htm). Related, I read one paper that showed rat macular degeneration improved with administering vitamin C (an antioxidant) which should be what glutathione normally does (I don’t have the paper right now but do have it somewhere). So my thought was to give my wife GlyNAC which is a “novel” formulation a research group at Baylor college of medicine has tried on mice, rats, and humans for its antioxidant and anti-inflammation properties (https://www.bcm.edu/news/glynac-supplementation-reverses-aging-hallmarks-in-aging-humans): it’s just the amino acid glycine, and separately the amino acid cystine but in a different form NAC. Together they are the two limiting precursors to making glutathione in the body (according researchers). The theory goes that as we age our glutathione levels decline, and this we see more disorders/diseases as we age in part from this lack of glutathione. The Baylor team showed improved glutathione levels in older adults using GlyNAC. Anyway, we are both taking it; they are VERY safe and well-studied , and possibly might help glutathione levels which might slow the macular degeneration progression. There’s also other potential benefits. We haven’t noticed any change, but I’ve been told the older you are (and less glutathione you have) the impact may become noticeable. I would say she hasn’t had further problems in six months (and we’re looking for a “negative confirmation” so impossible to conclusively tell — the old kids joke of “see, it prevents elephants from showing up”— but worth the risk/reward in my mind).
Sorry for the “not advice”, and I am not a doctor or expert of any kind, but just a thought.
Okay, I’m going to offer up this rabbit hole again … the endmyopia folks I cited above have suggestions (too complicated to address here, but 100% free and noninvasive) that promote reversing the axial elongation of the eyeball - axial elongation is a natural response to “over-prescribed” corrective lenses - which promotes detachment of the retina over time especially when extreme.
Reversing this not only improves/reverses myopia, but it achieves this by reducing the distance from the front to the back of the eye as your body naturally readjusts and thereby reduces pressure in the back of the eyeball where the retina is attached (a less oval-shaped eyeball is the result).
Yeah, it’s a complicated subject, compounded by a highly profitable prescription eyewear industry, and that website is quirky. But I’m among thousands of people who have had real world results by slowly, carefully following fairly easy-to-implement approaches to improving one’s vision.
:POP back up from the rabbit hole:
Thanks. I have watched some of carnivore doctor and she is very interesting. Thanks for the links and information. When I said I wasn’t asking for advice I didn’t mean it to sound stroppyish, I just meant I wanted to know if anyone else has the same as me. Advice is always welcome after all that’s why we post on here. Thanks everyone
You didn’t sound stroppy to me, so set your mind at rest.
However, on the Ketogenic Forums you’re going to get advice, whether you want it or not, lol! But if you don’t want to read it, we can’t stop you! 
Never having heard the word stroppy (no less stroppyish), I just learned a new adjective.
Given my demeanor, you’d think I’d have heard this term many times over the years. Apparently it’s been behind my back.
Glad I’ve got you all looking up the word “Stroppy”. Maybe it’s an English thing, we always used stroppy to describe someone who’s - well - stroppy.
stroppy
adjective
INFORMAL•BRITISH
- bad-tempered and argumentative.
“Patricia was getting stroppy”
I even made it to Google. That’s funny.
No worries, I took care of it for you.
Etymonline has this to say:
stroppy (adj.)
“rebellious,” by 1943, British nautical slang, perhaps a slang mangling of obstreperous. “Sea Passages: A Naval Anthology and Introduction to the Study of English” [1943, Geoffrey Callender] quotes from a letter:
Why Nobby should reckon that his raggie should blow the gaff, when there are crushers everywhere, leaves me guessing; but there it is. In the last dog he rounded on me and called me a white rat. I got stroppy and told him he was shooting a line: but all he said was, ‘Oh! choke your luff! I’m looking for another oppo you snivelling sand-catcher.’ So that looks like paying off.
to which Callender adds, “There is nothing in this letter which an active service rating could fail to understand.”
