People with diabetes may suffer from a number of eye issues known as diabetic eye disease. These diseases include glaucoma, cataracts, diabetic macular edema, and diabetic retinopathy.
Diabetes can harm your eyes over time, which could result in blurry vision or even blindness. However, by managing your diabetes, you can take steps to prevent diabetic eye disease from occurring or to stop it from growing worse.
How does diabetes affect my eyes?
When your blood glucose, commonly known as blood sugar, is too high, it can cause diabetes and harm your eyes.
You are unlikely to suffer vision loss as a result of high blood sugar in the short term. When they are altering their diabetic care regimen or medications, people can have temporary blurred vision for a few days or weeks. High blood sugar levels might affect fluid balance or swell the tissues in your eyes that help in focusing, impairing your vision. This kind of blurry vision is transient and fades away when your blood sugar levels return to normal.
The tiny blood vessels in the back of your eyes may become damaged if your blood glucose levels continue to be high over time. When blood sugar levels are over normal but not high enough to be diagnosed as developing diabetes, prediabetes is when this damage can start to occur. Swelling may result from damaged blood vessels that leak fluid. It’s also possible for labeled, frail blood vessels to form. These blood vessels have the potential to leak into the center of your eye, leave scars, or create an eye with dangerously high pressure.
Diabetic retinopathy
The inner lining of each eye’s retina is visible there. To allow you to view the environment around you, the retina converts light into signals that your brain can understand. Diabetic retinopathy is a condition that is brought on by damaged blood vessels that injure the retina.
Blood vessels may weaken, expand, or leak into the retina in early diabetic retinopathy. No proliferative diabetic retinopathy is the name of this stage.
As the condition worsens, certain blood vessels on the retina’s surface block off, this stimulates the growth or proliferation of new blood vessels. Proliferative diabetic retinopathy is the name given to this phase. There may be major visual issues as a result of these aberrant growing blood vessels.
What are the symptoms of diabetic eye disease?
The early stages of diabetic eye disease frequently show no symptoms. When damage begins to develop inside your eyes, especially with diabetic retinopathy, you might not experience any pain or changes in your vision.
When symptoms do materialize, they may include the following:
- blurry or wavy vision
- eyesight that fluctuates regularly, sometimes day to day
- Dull areas or reduced eyesight
- Limited color vision
- Dark flecks or strings (also called floaters)
- light flashes
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