Info About Diabetes

One diabetes complication that far too many people suffer from is a change in eyesight. Think for a second; has your vision changed in recent months? Are objects blurry, or do you have problems focusing?

Now I’m not talking about the vision changes that most of us go through, where we need reading glasses as we get older. I’m talking about things that used to be clear now look fuzzy. Or possibly that you’ve used (for example) +1.25 reading glasses and now you notice you need a +2.5 to read comfortably.

Diabetes can very definitely affect eyesight, but why is that? Let’s find out.

Blood Glucose and Vision

In diabetes type 2 (and type 1as well), the excess sugar in your blood acts a bit like a corrosive in the body. It tends to irritate and eventually destroy nerves. This includes the nerves in your retinas.

But the extra glucose also irritates the blood vessels in your body — and yes, this includes the veins and arteries in your eyes. Small (tiny in fact) bulges appear in your blood vessels, and these can “weep” (leak) slightly. This diabetes complication ends up costing your your vision when too many of the blood vessels leak or even close up.

This condition is called diabetic retinopathy.

More advanced cases of diabetic retinopathy involve blood vessels growing into the eyeball where they shouldn’t. Scar tissue can form due to the abnormal vessel growth. The scar tissue can eventually cause the retina to detach from the back of the eye.

Symptoms of a Visual Diabetes Complication

Now the scary thing here is that most times in the very early stages of diabetic retinopathy there are no symptoms, or the symptoms are very slight.

This fact alone is a very compelling reason for you to get checked for diabetes, if you are at all concerned that you might have it.

OK, let’s say you are one of the lucky few who do have early symptoms — what are they? These are what the effects on your eyesight might be.

• Blurry vision.
• Bad night vision, or worsening of existing night vision problem.
• Spots or streaks in your vision.
• Darkening vision or filmy vision.

Like I said previously, if you are at all concerned that you might have diabetes, please schedule an appointment with your health care professional!

Other Resources

I know this diabetes complication is a hard topic to read and think about. We depend on our vision for so many things, and to be deprived of it is heart-rending.

But diabetes doesn’t have to cost your your vision! Keep your blood glucose under control and the corrosive effects of the sugar can be minimized.

Here are some other resources you might like — previous posts and outside material.

• Ideas for how to lower blood glucose.
• Diabetes and vision risks, courtesy of the Mayo Clinic.
• More about diabetic retinopathy, from WebMD.