If you want to maintain your eyesight throughout your existence, it’s vital to ensure that you’re in good health overall. Alongside avoiding direct sunlight and accidental injuries, good nutrition, regular exercise, and examinations can help prevent many ocular health issues.
Regular visits to the eye doctor have numerous benefits beyond the maintenance of healthy eyes: an exam of the eye’s lens, retina, and optic nerve may reveal chronic diseases that can affect the whole body, including high blood pressure and diabetes, usually, before any other symptoms occur. Eye exams are one of the few exams that eye specialists can inspect the body without exams for blood, invasive imaging, or surgery.
Medical Conditions and Eye Health
A significant number of patients suffer from many eye conditions. A few of these issues can be caused by medical conditions that do not have anything to do with the eyes in the first. Consider a few diverse medical ailments and how they affect eyesight and overall health.
1. Diabetes
According to eye doctors in Bloomington, Indiana, diabetic retinopathy is an ailment that can develop in people who have had diabetes for longer than a time and who have been untreated. The condition, caused by high blood sugar, causes the eye’s blood vessels to go into the retina. This can lead to significant visual loss or possibly blindness in severe circumstances. Also, cataracts and glaucoma are two eye conditions more likely to occur in people with diabetes.
2. Hypertension
High blood pressure of a person can cause massive damage to blood vessels in the same way a high blood sugar level could. Due to the thickening of retinal blood vessels caused by hypertension, less blood can be delivered to the retina.
Fluid collection under the retina, damage to the optic nerve, and macular edema could result from a lack of blood circulation to the eyes. Hypertensive retinopathy is the medical term used for this type of problem.
3. Multiple Sclerosis
The immune system targets the myelin sheath, which protects the optic nerve and facilitates the rapid and accurate transfer of visual signals from the optic nerve to the brain. Inflammation of the optic nerve and rapid loss of vision arises from the interruption in signaling. Optic neuritis is the term medically used to describe this condition.
The signs of this disorder can include difficulty moving your eyes without pain, blurred or swollen vision, loss of color vision, a hole in the middle of your vision, headache, and in extreme instances, blindness.
If you’re searching for an optometrist in Bloomington, IN, you can do a quick search or ask for recommendations for facilities in the area.
4. Autoimmune Conditions
Eyes are susceptible to an array of autoimmune disorders. The immune system can attack its tissues, which is seen in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). The signs of autoimmune disease are often seen initially with symptoms that affect the eyes.
Initially, a patient’s eyes may be red, itchy, or dry. Eye pain may be felt or sensitivity to light, changes in vision quality, or even loss of sight if the illness is not detected or treated.
5. Thyroid Disease
In cases of hyperactive thyroid like Graves disease, antibodies also target the cells in the eye area since their receptors are similar to thyroid cells. Graves disease can affect the eyes and creates orbitopathy and ophthalmopathy.
As discussed above, the signs of these disorders include eye itching or blurred vision, eyes that are swollen, redness and inflammation of the eyelids, and proptosis. The optic nerve can be compressed, and the inability to completely close the eye, corneal ulcers, and, in extreme situations, blindness may result from the condition.
