When you live with a chronic disease, you’re never blind to it. By its very nature, chronic illness as akin to a wolf on the prowl, stalking you even when you don’t feel it strike you, but when it does – ouch! Type-2 diabetes in the Rio Grande Valley isn’t comparable to wolves, but rather to a horde of mosquitoes that envelopes your vision. If that horde of mosquito bites you, then not only are aware of that pain, the swarm and everything that comes with that can surround you, practically blinding you. Unfortunately, while a mosquito bite or horde usually won’t lead to a loss of eyesight, type-2 diabetes often can. Diabetes and eye issues are both a symptom of an overall type-2 affliction, as well as the primary cause of other illnesses.
Miracle Medical doesn’t want you to be blind to your affliction, nor do we want you to suffer losses of eyesight without appropriate products. We offer our customers a breadth of chronic disease management supplies that help your diabetes and eyes from developing further problems.
As an extension of our services, we wanted to provide you an overview of four illnesses that occur when diabetes negatively affects your vision as well as guidance on what the best coping practices are for each.
1. Diabetic Retinopathy
The first illness on our list is rare, afflicting less than 200,000 individuals annually. While many more suffer from type-2 diabetes flat out, that doesn’t mean that you should disregard the harm of developing this disease by any means. Diabetic retinopathy is the most common vision problem that arises from individuals with type-2 diabetes.
Imagine your eye as a house with a working plumbing system. When you have type-2 diabetes, it’s like if the water that was coursing through your house’s pipes became ineffective. The houses pipes become swollen and start leaking water through the walls or stop working entirely, and the combination of water damage and pressure begins to damage your house. This metaphorical occurrence is essentially what happens to the blood vessels in your eye as a result of increased blood sugar due to diabetes.
How To Treat It:
- Diet for Diabetes
- Appropriate Medication
- Laser Eye Surgery
2. DME – Diabetic Macular Edema
This illness is one that arises as a direct result of diabetic retinopathy, and as such lumped together when someone is searching for a diagnosis. If we can follow up on our previous metaphor of diabetic retinopathy being like a house with damaged pipes than DME could be considered the most critical pipe bursting, which floods the entire house outright.
How To Treat It:
- Corticosteroids
- Appropriate Medication such as prescription eye drops
- Laser Eye Surgery
- Prescription Anti- VEGF Medication, specifically Lucentis
3. (NVI) Neovascularization of the Iris
Neovascularization of the Iris (NVI) is an illness that also goes by as rubeosis iridis. This diabetes-related eye problem can be akin to the pipes in your house not just swelling, or leaking but also growing over the windows and entrance ways of your home.
NVI is when tiny blood vessels grow over your iris’s anterior until it becomes blinding.
How To Treat It:
- Panretinal Photocoagulation
- Prescription Steroid Medication such as triamcinolone
4. Glaucoma
Glaucoma is a general eye condition, one that has a strong link with diabetic people. However, the extent of the relationship overall is still open to debate. When someone has Glaucoma, their eye or eyes have lots of built-up pressure inside of it. Eventually, this pressure can become severe enough that your brain’s source of image information, the optic nerve, is damaged.
Concerning diabetes, there’s a specific type of Glaucoma that it has a strong tie to, called neovascular glaucoma. Neovascular glaucoma is a secondary type of glaucoma, where the angle of an eye gets shut by sudden, small blood vessels. The earlier metaphor for NVI being like the pipes in your house closing you out from the outside world is pretty applicable here.G
How To Treat It:
- Appropriate Medication such as prescription eye drops
- Eye Surgery, specifically Trabeculoplasty
The Takeaway
We ask you not to be blind about the potential for diabetes to negatively affect your eyesight. Our showcase illnesses diabetes and eyes barely scratch the tip of the iceberg, so we encourage you to delve into the resources that we linked to in the article for further information. Better yet, consult with your physician about any current or potential health issues.
No matter what action you take to maintain wellness, know that we will always be a helping hand with our medical supplies and relevant web content.