Currently in the United States about one in ten people have been diagnosed with diabetes. As bad as that number is, it is projected to climb even higher. It is estimated that by 2050 one in five people will have diabetes.
So what does diabetes have to do with your eyes and vision?
If your blood sugars are unstable, the focus of your eyes will be unstable as well. The amount of farsightedness or nearsightedness that you show will change from one day to the next. If your blood sugars are out of control, your glasses won’t work very well for you. The better you control your blood sugars the more stable your focus becomes.
Diabetes can also accelerate cataract formation and can put you at higher risk for glaucoma or macular degeneration.
The biggest eye-health concern with diabetes is the health of the retina. Those who have been diabetic for a long time or whose blood sugars are high and/or unstable, the greater your risk becomes that you will develop diabetic retinopathy. Conversely, the better you control your blood sugars and the more stable they are, the lower your risk is of developing diabetic retinopathy. What is diabetic retinopathy?
The above picture shows advanced diabetic retinopathy. The orange part is the retina that covers the back of the inside of the eye. You can also see the blood vessels bleeding. The white areas occur because of long term blood vessel leakage.
If there are leaky blood vessels in your eyes, then there are leaking blood vessels in other parts of your body as well. As you might guess, blood that is outside of the blood vessels is not a good thing. The more bleeding we see, the more concerned we get about a person’s vision and good eye health. Untreated diabetic retinopathy leads to blindness. The bottom line is this. If you have diabetes you need to control your blood sugars and you need to have an examination for diabetic retinopathy at least once a year. Even if you are confident you don’t have retinopathy you need to make sure your retinas are healthy. Early stage retinopathy has no symptoms.
At Jensen Eye Care, we have acquired amazing technology that allows us to pick up early diabetic changes. It is called the Retinal Health Assessment (RHA). Call us today at 307-265-7008 to get scheduled for a diabetic exam.
