Blurry vision can be a sign of diabetic eye disease

Blurry vision can also be a sign of high blood sugar or diabetic eye disease that, if left untreated, can lead to vision loss or blindness. When Sally noticed that her vision was blurred, she went to her general practitioner expecting he'd send her to the eye doctor to be fitted for glasses. After all, her siblings all wore glasses; naturally, she would too. Because Sally was overweight, her physician asked her whether she'd ever endured her blood sugar levels checked.

She had, but that was sometime ago when she'd had gestational diabetes during her pregnancy. Her doctor did a blood sugar check in his office, and Sally's blood sugar was 435! Per month of diet, exercise, and diabetes medication brought Sally's blood sugar levels back in check and her vision normal again. Blurry vision is one of the most common the signs of high blood sugar.

Blurred eyesight can also be a symptom of the diabetic eye disease, a complication of diabetes. Because high sugars can weaken the little arteries behind the eye, diabetes puts you at greater risk for eye diseases that may cause vision loss and blindness. The most common of these are glaucoma, fluid pressure inside the eye that leads to optic nerve damage and vision loss; cataracts, clouding of the eye's lens; and diabetic retinopathy, damage to the arteries that supply oxygen towards the retina.

What you need to learn about glaucoma

Glaucoma is really a condition caused by a reduced level of oxygen reaching the eye, which forces the eye to create new blood vessels. These new arteries could cause scarring and block normal drainage from the eye, which then causes pressure to develop in the eye.

The Nurses' Health Study, a twenty-year study of 76,312 women, found that women with type 2 diabetes have approximately a 70 percent increased risk for the most common form of glaucoma, called primary open-angle glaucoma. Neovascular glaucoma, a more rare glaucoma, has also been directly associated with diabetes.

Depending on the kind of glaucoma, treatment may include medication, prescription eye drops, or surgery to reduce pressure in the eye and stop further harm to the optic nerve. Glaucoma affects people with both type 1 and type 2 diabetes.

Your risk increases, however, the longer you have had diabetes, which might put people with type 1 diabetes since childhood at greater risk. Glaucoma generally has no early symptoms, so get screened annually. Medicare provides coverage for glaucoma screenings.

What you should know about cataracts

Cataracts are painless and therefore are distinguished with a cloudy lens in the eye that could cause vision problems. Signs and symptoms of a cataract include impaired distance vision, blurring of vision, decreased night vision, sensitivity to glare and bright light, a frequent need for a new eyeglasses prescription, seeing halos around lights, needing brighter lights to read by, and double vision. In men and women without diabetes, cataracts are almost exclusively a problem in those over the age of sixty and result from the normal stress of aging.

However, the high blood sugar levels of diabetes accelerates the development of cataracts, and many individuals with diabetes get them in their thirties or forties; diabetes raises the danger for cataracts by about 40 %. I had been fifty when my ophthalmologist told me I had the first manifestation of a slow-growing cataract.

Recommended treatment for any cataract is minor surgery whereby a little incision is made to the eye to get rid of the cloudy lens and an artificial lens is implanted. An annual eye exam is the best method to detect the start of a cataract, and keeping blood sugars as close to normal as possible is the greatest prevention. Just like glaucoma, people who have diabetes are at risk for cataracts, and also the risk is greater when you have had diabetes longer.

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