How Diabetes Can Damage Your Eyes and Impair Your Vision

Diabetes can affect your entire body, from your feet all the way up to your eyes. Learn how its complications can impact your vision — plus what you can do to avoid or slow them — in this guide.

If you’ve been diagnosed with diabetes, you know it means implementing changes in your life. You adjust your diet and check your feet more regularly, for example.

Your adjustments shouldn’t stop there, though. Your blood sugar challenges can have far-reaching implications. If you have diabetes, it’s important to see an eye health specialist like our team at Edwin Y. Endo, OD & Associates in Aiea, Hawaii, at least once a year. That way, we can monitor you for eye diseases like diabetic retinopathy.

In fact, to give you a better idea of how diabetes can impact your eyes, let’s take a closer look.

Your blood sugar and your eyes

When you have too much sugar in your blood, it can impact your eyes, causing everything from blurred vision to pressure build-up in your eye, which contributes to glaucoma.

Maintaining healthy blood sugar levels goes a long way toward avoiding these vision-reducing issues. Work closely with your doctor and follow their recommendations as far as medication and lifestyle modifications.

We can also help. As experts in good health and nutritional counseling with a focus on protecting your vision, our team can support you in making good food choices. In fact, we can help you develop a flavorful, satisfying diet full of the nutrients your eyes need to function at their best.

Understanding diabetic retinopathy

Here at Edwin Y. Endo, OD & Associates, we can also perform regular eye exams to watch for a condition called diabetic retinopathy.

This condition develops when the high levels of blood sugar damage the tiny blood vessels in your retina. Your retina is the part of your eye that receives light and turns it into images in your brain. In other words, this tissue makes your vision possible.

High blood sugar can damage any of your blood vessels, but when it harms the vessels in your retina, you develop blurry vision and dark floating spots.

Diabetic retinopathy doesn’t cause those symptoms right away, though. By the time you notice vision changes, this condition has already progressed in your eye.

Fortunately, we can catch diabetic retinopathy early with a comprehensive dilated eye exam. By performing this exam at least once a year, we can address this serious eye problem as quickly as possible. This helps you take steps to protect your ability to see clearly.

If you have diabetes, regular eye exams and nutrition counseling can go a long way to protect your eyesight. To schedule your exam, call our office or book your visit online today.