TRANSCRIPT FOR BEH PODCAST EPISODE 24
WHEN DO YOU NEED LARGER LUTEIN DOSES?
Dr. Miller: We recommend 40 to 80 mg of Lutein. So when should you take 80 instead of 40? One of the reasons I didn’t do it, is that the answer is a little complex with a couple of parts, but I’ll make it brief and succinct here. The basic protocol, the reason we start everybody out on the same protocol, is that for many people that’s enough. They get all the benefits they need. Their eyes and their vision start to improve. There’s a woman Morganne was talking to yesterday, whose been in the program for not too long, close to a year now taking just the basic protocol. She just got her Driver’s License back. She was really excited, and we’re trying to get her to come on the call, maybe just as a guest speaker, since she usually is working, and can’t be on the call.
So why add more if the basic protocol is all you need? The answer is that you don’t need any more. That’s true of dosing too. A 40 mg dose is kind of the minimum we recommend and that number comes from a huge body of work that was done with lutein. Looking at the benefits of lutein in people with eye disease, all of the studies that showed benefit had people taking a minimum of 40 mg of daily high quality lutein, meaning the Floraglo lutein.
If you’re not taking a product with Floraglo lutein in it, then you may need 80 mg of a cheaper lutein. But we might change things if you’re doing the 40 mg of lutein, and you’ve been doing that for a couple of months, and you’re still having trouble with vision at night, glare is still a problem, or you’re having trouble adapting to normal room light when you come in from bright sun. Some of these things would tell me that you may not be getting enough lutein., Then we would go to 60 or 80 mg, because you actually have symptoms of not having enough lutein despite taking the basic dose.
In general, if you keep having symptoms, we tell you to take more. That’s where it becomes personalized. Once you’re into the program for a few months and we’re talking, that’s where you would tell me “I’m still having these problems” or “I’m not seeing the results I wanted”. Then we would say let’s try larger doses of what you already have before adding anything else.