5 Essential Steps to Protect Your Eyes from Diabetes

Diabetes is a collection of diseases that affect how your body processes sugars derived from food into usable energy for the body’s cells. Normally, your pancreas secretes the hormone insulin, which travels into the bloodstream and ferries sugar (glucose) into the cells to be metabolized into energy.

However, if you don’t have enough insulin, or if it isn’t working properly, you’re left with too much sugar in your bloodstream, and it can damage tissues and organs, including your eyes.

At Retina Specialists, our expert team of board-certified ophthalmologists offers diabetic eye exams for our patients with diabetes to ensure that your eyes remain as healthy as possible with the disease. To that end, in this month’s blog, we’d like to share five essential steps to help you protect your eyes from the effects of diabetes.

What are the types of diabetes?

Diabetes can be divided into four types:

1. Type 1

Type 1 diabetes, sometimes called juvenile diabetes or insulin-dependent diabetes, occurs when the pancreas’ beta cells don’t produce enough — or any — insulin. As a result, sugar can’t enter the cells, and it remains at high levels in the bloodstream. People with Type 1 diabetes have to take insulin shots every day to process the sugar.

2. Type 2

Type 2 diabetes is the most preventable form of the disease, because it’s often brought on by unhealthy lifestyle habits, such as being overweight or obese, eating a diet high in sugars and fats, and not exercising enough or at all.

In this form, the pancreas produces insulin, but the body’s cells become resistant to its effects, so the sugar remains in the bloodstream. This form is usually managed by lifestyle changes and/or medication.

3. Gestational

This form only occurs in pregnant women, and it may be the result of fetal hormones secreted by the placenta interfering with insulin’s function. It can be managed by lifestyle modifications and/or medicine, and it usually resolves following delivery.

4. Prediabetes

Prediabetes is the stage before you’re diagnosed with diabetes, when your blood sugar levels are elevated, but they’re not high enough to be considered diabetes. Most people who are prediabetic can lower their numbers through lifestyle changes and/or medications, so they never develop the disease.

How does diabetes affect the eyes?

Having diabetes can lead to a number of eye complications. The most common of these is diabetic retinopathy. This occurs when high blood sugar, possibly compounded by high blood pressure, prevents the blood vessels in the light-sensing retina in the back of the eye from getting the oxygen and nutrients they need. 

In response, the eye may trigger the growth of fragile new blood vessels, which can easily rupture and leak into the vitreous gel surrounding the retina, and lead to vision loss. 

Another problem that may occur is retinal vein occlusion, where the blood vessels supplying the retina develop clots that block blood flow.

A third problem is diabetic macular edema. Fluid leaking from the fragile blood vessels may reach high levels in the central part of the retina, called the macula, the part that registers your clear central vision, causing the tissue to swell and leading to blurred vision.

Diabetes may also contribute to the development of two other eye conditions — cataracts and glaucoma.

5 essential steps to protect your eyes from diabetes

The most important thing you can do to prevent diabetic eye disease, or to keep it from getting worse, is to get your blood sugar levels under control; that is, you need to 1) manage your A1c level, a measure of sugar in your blood.

Also important are managing your 2) blood pressure and 3) cholesterol levels, as both can impact eye health. You should also 4) quit smoking, or don’t get started, as smoking dehydrates tissues and impairs blood flow.

In addition, you need to have 5) a comprehensive, dilated, diabetic eye exam at least once a year, or more often if you have severe disease. Your ophthalmologist can pick up on the signs of disease early, meaning the condition is easier to treat and treat successfully.

If you have diabetes and haven’t had an eye exam in a while, it’s time to come into Retina Specialists. Call us at any of our five Texas offices — in Dallas, DeSoto, Plano, Mesquite, and Waxahachie — to schedule a consultation with one of our specialists.