I strongly suspect that in the next few days I will be diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa, an apparently hereditary degenerative disease of the retina which in most cases eventually leads to blindness over a timescale which is seemingly widely variable and impossible to predict (the diagnosis is not quite confirmed, but the optician sounded like he knew what he was talking about and it seems to me the only thing left is to rule out some other highly unlikely possibilities - honestly what I have read about it since then seems to match my own experience a little too well to be much else - I have no family history but apparently 50% of such diagnoses happen without family history anyway). Obviously this situation is not ideal for a 25 year old male in otherwise fairly good health but such is life.
I am immediately going to start supplementing daily with:
15000 IU Vitamin A Palmitate
20mg Lutein
0.8mg Zeathanaxin
1000mg Omega 3 including 220mg DHA
There seems to be evidence that this will go some way towards delaying the progression of this condition as much as possible given current understanding of it, although again, exactly how much is difficult to predict. Knowing exactly the results I will get out of this are less important to me than knowing, given current available medical and scientific knowledge, I am doing as much as I reasonably can.
So my questions are ideally towards those with some kind of medical and scientific background, but please anyone feel free to respond if you feel you have something useful to add.
1) Besides the substances above, should I consider anything else?
2) Could the racetam nootropics have any effect on retinal degeneration?
I ask for 2 reasons (besides that I am probably going to take them sporadically anyway for nootropic benefits). Firstly, they are all widely considered to be neuroprotective, so I am wondering if this neuroprotection extends to retinal cells as well (are photoreceptor cells neurons?). People often report increased colour perception (an effect which various studies seem to confirm to be a measurable effect and not purely subjective), and Coluracetam specifically seems to potentially have some beneficial effects on retinal and optic nerve damage (although I have been unable to find any further information on this).
2) Have there been any studies done on the Russian drug Epithalamin ("Epitalon") in humans?
I ask this because the last study I could find that reported beneficial effects in rats with degenerative retinal diseases is from 2002, which doesn't seem to bode too well for this line of research. In any case this may be something of a moot question given that the only source I could locate is probably more expensive than I am willing to go for something that may be completely untested in humans and thus may have no real benefits at all.
I will add that I am obviously not expecting miracles. Thank you in advance for reading and for any responses.
