Recent medical journals have found that a kid surviving simply on a very picky diet comprising of Pringles, French fries, and white bread went blind. The scientists at Bristol University were on his case after him being warned against eating an unbalanced diet.
The kid who refused to be named told the practitioners that he had solely survived on French fries, processed ham, and white bread while avoiding food that had a distinct texture to them. According to the Annals of Internal Medicine, he had complained about lethargy when he was 14.
While he had an average BMI and no problems in stature, doctors found anemia and abysmally low levels of Vitamin B12. They started putting him on a chart of Vitamin injections and gave him advice on dietary items.
One statement from Bristol University mentioned that by 17, he had almost lost his sight, due to extremely low levels of vitamin B12, selenium, and copper, lower bone density and extremely high levels of zinc.
The Bristol Eye Hospital and the Bristol Medical School came to the conclusion that the kid had nutritional optic neuropathy, a conditional dysfunction of the nerve in the optics. In third world countries, this occurs because people have irregular or dysfunctioning bowel movements. It could also be the result of medicine that reacts badly with your nutrient absorption.
Denize Atan, the lead author of the paper, an ophthalmologist at the Bristol Eye Hospital and Bristol Medical School, mentions how important eyesight is to the proper functioning of human life. It not only manages our interpersonal relationships with people but also facilitates living. Also, the particular case also sheds light on people who trust BMI completely to the point that any change makes them bring about a change in their diet. Your BMI isn’t necessarily correlative of your physical health, or your diet.
Doctors have warned people that such a problem might be on the rise if people kept eating junk food without focusing on healthy eating. Vegans too need to bring about something to supplement their Vitamin B12. Also, it would be in the best interests of all if doctors regularly checked the diet of their patients to make it easier to diagnose problems in the future.
Yet, there have been critics of the entire case. Tom Sanders of King’s College mentions how the case simply relies on the patient’s ability to remember his diet without focusing on the external factors that could have affected it too. He agrees that optic neuropathy can be caused due to the deficiency of B12, but with the consumption of sausages and ham, which are the primary sources of B12, the kid was finely supplementing it.
Gary Frost of the Imperial College was astounded that someone could have such a diet that it resulted in the deficiency of important macronutrients. He agrees that while it was pretty rare, it did show the importance a balanced diet had on healthy living and proper functioning of the body. In fact, it’s important that parents and other guardians are alert about fussy eating problems so that it can be curtailed before it becomes too dangerous.