Understanding the Link Between Diabetes and Eye Disease

Diabetes is a severe, lifelong disease that affects every body system. Many take the news that they have the disease in stride and often make significant changes to manage the condition. They change their lifestyles, change their diets, and even stick to regular management through medication.

However, some people forget to check their eye health, not knowing that diabetes can also affect their eye health.
 

What Is the Link Between Diabetes and Eye Disease?

Diabetes impacts the body's ability to respond to insulin and changes how your body turns food into energy. Diabetes can either cause your body to produce insufficient insulin or fail to use it as it should. This imbalance of this critical hormone leads to high blood sugar levels that lead to all the complications common to diabetes.
 

High blood sugar levels usually damage different structures in your body, including your eyes. The eyes are often the first body part to present symptoms of damage. When the blood vessels at the back of the eye are impacted, they can cause retinopathy or diabetic macular edema. 

What Diseases Does Diabetes Cause?

Diabetic Retinopathy

This condition results from damage to the blood vessels at the back of the retina that start to leak fluids and blood into the vitreous humor. This can lead to blurry vision after a long time without management or treatment. High blood sugar could also block the retina's blood supply, resulting in diminished vision.
 

Retinopathy is a fairly common condition, the leading cause of reversible blindness in the United States. Experts have found that this condition affects over 40% of all diabetic patients, and a significant number found out they had diabetes through a retinopathy diagnosis.
 

Cataracts

Cataracts are the clouding of the eye's natural lenses that usually leads to blurry vision. People are expected to develop the condition as they age, which is a common cause of vision loss. However, diabetes predisposes you to develop cataracts and impacts people with diabetes 50% more often than usual.

This is because high blood sugar can cause rapid buildup in the lenses that cause cataracts. When cataracts become severe, the only treatment option available is cataract surgery to replace your lens with an artificial one.
 

Glaucoma

Glaucoma refers to several eye conditions that cause an increase in intraocular pressure that damages the optic nerve. Glaucoma is a symptomless condition. It usually does not show symptoms until it is much more advanced. Diabetes can cause neurovascular glaucoma or block fluid flow out of the eye, leading to increased intraocular pressure.
 

What Can You Do to Delay or Prevent Eye Disease?

You can take steps to improve your health and keep your sugar levels significantly low to limit the damage it can cause. 
 

• Get regular dilated eye tests

• Manage your blood sugar at a target level

• Manage your cholesterol and blood pressure at the correct levels

• Become active

• Quit smoking
   

For more on understanding the link between diabetes and eye disease, visit Blackstone Eye Center at our office in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Call (610) 708-5575 to book an appointment today.