When a UVA researcher set out to justify his sedentary lifestyle, he discovered that rising from the couch offered some eye-opening benefits: Even moderate exercise may slow or prevent vision loss. In a study using lab mice, Bradley Gelfand, an assistant professor at UVA’s Center for Advanced Vision Science, found that exercising reduced the harmful overgrowth of blood vessels in the eyes – known to cause macular degeneration and other vision problems – by as much as 45%. Because the findings do not rely on self-reporting by study participants, Gelfand says, “This [study] offers hard evidence ...