“Women who have an overall healthy lifestyle — who eat lots of fruits and vegetables (and other healthful foods), exercise regularly and don’t smoke — may be at significantly reduced risk of developing age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a study published Monday in the Archives of Ophthalmology has found.

In fact, the combination of those healthy lifestyle behaviors lowered the relative risk of AMD among the women studied by 71 percent — much more than did any one of those behaviors by itself.

That’s a key take-home message of this study. “People want to isolate and find the magic bullet, the one thing that we should change,” said Julie Mares, the study’s lead author and a nutrition professor in the department of ophthalmology and visual sciences in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health, in a phone interview last week. “But I think we could be misunderstanding the importance of overall healthy lifestyles if we only look at each factor alone.”

Please read Susan Perry’s article in its entirety here!