The Link Between Eye Health and Diabetes: What Patients Should Know

When you receive a diabetes diagnosis — and more than 40 million Americans have — the first thing to understand is that this chronic disease can affect you from head to toe.

Since November is National Diabetes Month, our team of multi-speciality providers at LaSante Health Center thought it would be a good idea to touch on some of the potentially serious side effects of diabetes, starting with eye health. 

Diabetes is a leading driver of vision loss in the United States, which is why we offer specialized diabetic eye care at our practice.

Here, we look at some of the ways in which diabetes can rob you of your vision and how we can help.

Diabetes and diabetic retinopathy

We’re going to start with one of the more serious eye diseases associated with diabetes — diabetic retinopathy, which affects nearly 10 million Americans. When you have diabetes, your body isn’t able to properly control the levels of glucose in your blood.

When these levels are high, the excess blood sugar can damage the tiny blood vessels in your retina and gradually lead to vision loss if left unchecked.

There are two stages of diabetic retinopathy:

1. Nonproliferative diabetic retinopathy — blood vessels leak, causing your retina and macula to swell, which can result in vision loss
2. Proliferative diabetic retinopathy — the retinopathy advances and your retina tries to respond with new blood vessels, but these vessels are fragile and can bleed, causing further vision loss

In the early stages of diabetic retinopathy, there’s much that we can do to slow and even reverse the damage, namely by better managing your glucose levels. 

If your retinopathy is more advanced, we can prescribe medications to control the swelling. In severe cases, we may recommend surgery to remove the fluid and reduce the swelling.

Diabetes and cataracts

People who have diabetes are 2-5 times more likely to develop cataracts thanks to high levels of blood sugar that damage the lenses in their eyes.

Here again, glucose control is incredibly important in reducing your risks for cataracts, but the longer you have diabetes, the more vulnerable you are to vision health issues like cataracts.

Diabetes and glaucoma

Glaucoma is a condition in which swelling in your eye damages your optic nerve, which is irreversible. Unfortunately, people with diabetes are twice as likely to develop glaucoma than people who don’t have diabetes.

Protecting your eye health when you have diabetes

The eye health conditions we outlined above share one thing in common: They can be difficult to detect in the early stages. This is problematic because the best way to preserve your eyesight is to intervene early if eye disease is developing.

This is why we strongly recommend that patients with diabetes see us regularly for eye exams so we can check for early signs of these eye diseases. And if we find something, we can act quickly to halt and even reverse the problem so you can see long into the future.

For expert diabetic eye care, please call our Brooklyn, New York, clinic or use our online booking tool to set up an appointment. You can also visit our clinic during our hours of operation.

Our team proudly serves the Flatbush and East Flatbush, Crown Heights, Park Slope, Little Haiti, Little Caribbean, and Prospect Lefferts Gardens communities.