Has anyone else been able to put off the use of reading glasses in middle age by changing (or in my case, supplementing) their diet?

This seems almost too good to be true! After only 3 days of a twice daily (two normal size glasses a day seem to work better than a single jumbo serving QD, which I kind of like because it fits in with the Chinese medicine way of looking at nutrition and medicine: slow, small, gradual is preferred to sudden and overwhelming...) carrot/ginger/celery/beet fresh made juice, I could read the fine print again--without extra light or squinting. Could it be some weird sort of placebo effect?

I had originally decided to start juicing as a way to rein in my pre-hypertension. I had read that cucumber and celery juice (among other things) have natural diuretic effects and might help. While I am still looking for a diet-based way to get my BP down below 140/90, I will accept this serendipitous finding for my eyes for now. 

I realize this kind of flies in the face of the whole, well, whole food movement, and I am not sure Paul Pitchford (or heck even Jane Brody) would approve. But since there is no way I am going to eat six carrots, three or four celery stalks, a whole red beet and two fingers of ginger root each day, I figure juicing is better than nothing at all, no?

Now I want to grow my own wheat grass, explore different kinds of seaweed and algae. The fun never stops.

Michael Barr is a board certified acupuncturist and herbalist and can be reached at Manhattan Acupuncture Associates, with offices at Columbus Circle and Flatiron. His expertise and interests include sports acupuncture, pain syndromes, liver health, immunological support, low energy, mood disorders, anxiety, insomnia, GI complaints, and herbal and acupuncture approaches to getting off/putting off prescription medications of unsatisfactory or unclear benefit, and in helping to manage the side-effects of other necessary and life-saving biomedical interventions. He has also been busy exploring the application of Chinese herbal therapies, and specific acupuncture protocols, for all aspects of sexual health and anti-senescence.