Diabetes and The Eye

It is another beautiful day today and we are happy to come your way once again with another educative session where we share, learn and discuss ways that we can keep our eyes healthy and how to take care of certain conditions. We believe that knowledge is power and that it helps patients to be more compliant with their treatment regime. Hence, this exercise.

Before we move on to today's topic which is "diabetes and the eye", we do hope you our dear readers are doing amazing and having a wonderful time here on the blockchain. We also do appreciate your love and support over the years and we do hope that you will continue to be with us and help us grow together.

Diabetes is considered a pandemic now in our modern society because it is gradually taking over the health of the general populace across the globe, especially in the western world. Diabetes has lots of health complications for the entire system and tends to damage our organs, cells, and tissue.

Naturally, our systems have been made such that we have less glucose in our systems at every point in time, when it becomes more than the system can hold and we are not able to convert it to a more storable form then this problem arises. One of the organs that diabetes tends to have lots of effects on is the eye which is what we are here to learn today.

Diabetes tends to cause damage to the eye and its structure thus affecting its integrity and our ability to see well and enjoy quality vision and life as we know it. It is always known that early diagnosis saves which is why if you have been diagnosed with diabetes we would advise that you visit your optometrist as soon as possible.

What diabetes does concerning the eye is cause the concentration of the media within the eye to increase, this causes the lens to become opaque due to the eye's inability to convert them as they ought to? This results in lots of sorbitol in the eye which accelerates the progression of cataracts and their formation.

The glucose which finds itself in the small blood vessels in the area of the retina and choroid also causes blockages causing the vessels to swell and rupture, this is followed by bleeding into the eyes. When the bleeding is substantial it has a detrimental effect on vision, also in an attempt for the eye to continue to perfuse the block areas new vessels are formed which are normally weak and ain't able to function well.

Parts of the retina cells die off as a result of lack of perfusion and vision or visual areas are lost as a result. The more the glucose level stays up systemically, the worse the symptoms get and the worse our vision gets. Cataracts as a result of diabetes accelerate quickly resulting in cloudy vision. The diabetes condition also makes it a bit more complicated for cataract surgery to be performed which makes things worse.

That said, there is a whole lot that can be done when your optometrist or ophthalmologist knows of your condition early. Drugs to help protect the integrity of the retina and slow down the damage, glasses to help with your vision when your glucose level is stabilized, and therapies and laser treatments for bleeding start.

We would once again talk about the significance of early diagnosis. Sometimes you may not even know however if you practice regular checkups you would have the chance of getting diagnosed early when your optometrist sees you. This process is known as an opportunistic diagnosis.

We do hope that you learned a thing or two from what we had to share with you today. Many thanks to you for spending your precious to reading, we wish you the best, stay safe, and have a wonderful time.