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COMMON DISEASES CAUSE FROM

POOR EYE HEALTH

Did you know your eyes reveal insight concerning your overall health?

In fact, your eyes provide early detection for many different diseases that can affect more than your vision.

Cataract

The lens on your eye is used for everything; reading, driving, to bird watching. With age, proteins inside your lens can clump together turning clear to cloudy. Certain behaviors can put you at risk for getting cataract.

  1. 1.Too much time in the sun without eye protection

  2. Smoking

  3. High blood sugar

  4. Using steroid medications

  5. Exposure to radiation

Over 20 million Americans over the age of 40 have cataracts in one or both eyes, and 6 million have had corrective surgery.

 

If you have any of the following symptoms, talk to your eye doctor.

Glaucoma

Glaucoma is an eye disease that damages your optic nerve. The optic nerve supplies visual information to your brain from your eyes. Glaucoma usually, not always, is the result of abnormally high pressure in your eyes.

Over time, increased pressure can erode your optic nerve tissue, leading to vision loss, even blindness. The most common type of glaucoma is primary open-angle glaucoma. It has no signs or symptoms except gradual vision loss. Get a yearly eye exam.

What causes the pressure in your eye to increase isn’t always known. However, doctors believe one or more of these factors plays a role:

  1. dilating eye drops

  2. Blocked or restricted drainage in your eye

  3. Medications, such as corticosteroids

  4. Poor or reduced blood flow to your optic nerve

  5. High or elevated blood pressure

Conjunctivitis

 

( Pink Eye )

Pink eye (conjunctivitis) is inflammation or infection of the transparent membrane (conjunctiva) that lines your eyelid and covers the white part of your eyeball. When small blood vessels in the conjunctiva become inflamed, they are more visible. This is what causes the whites of your eyes to appear reddish or pink hence Pink Eye.

You will usually have symptoms in both eyes if your conjunctivitis is caused by allergies. You may also have other allergic symptoms, such as a rash or runny nose. Symptoms will usually start in 1 eye if your conjunctivitis is caused by a virus or bacteria.

You may also have other symptoms of an infection, such as sore throat and fever. You may have any of the following:

  1. Redness in the whites of your eye

  2. Itching in or around your eye

  3. Feeling like there's something in your eye

  4. Watery or thick, sticky discharge

  5. Crusty eyelids when you wake up in the morning

Diabetic

 

Retinopathy

When left untreated, Diabetic retinopathy damages your retina. This is the lining at the back of your eye that transforms light into images.

If your blood glucose level ( blood sugar )is too high for too long,​ it's the most common cause of vision loss among people with diabetes and the leading cause of vision impairment and blindness among working-age adults. it blocks small vessels that keep the retina healthy.

Your eye will try to grow new blood vessels, but won’t develop well. They start to weaken and leak blood and fluid into your retina.

This can cause another condition doctors call muscular edema, which makes your vision blurry. As the condition worsens, more of your blood vessels become blocked. Scar tissue builds up because of all the new blood vessels your eye has grown. This extra pressure can cause your retina to detach. It can lead to glaucoma and blindness.

Macular

 

degeneration

Macular Degeneration is the leading cause of vision loss, affecting more than 10 million Americans – more than cataracts & glaucoma.

Macular degeneration, or age-related macular degeneration (AMD), is a leading cause of vision loss in Americans 60+. This is caused by the deterioration of the central portion of the retina, the inside back layer of the eye that records the images we see.

The retina’s central portion, known as the macula, is responsible for focusing central vision in the eye, and it controls our ability to read, drive a car, recognize faces or colors, and see objects in fine detail. ​One can compare the human eye to a camera.

When it is working properly, the macula collects highly detailed images at the center of the field of vision and sends them up the optic nerve to the brain, which interprets them as sight. When the cells of the macula deteriorate, images are not received correctly.

If the disease progresses, people experience wavy or blurry vision, if the condition worsen, central vision may be completely lost. People with very advanced macular degeneration are considered legally blind. Even so, because the rest of the retina is still working, they retain their peripheral vision, which is not as clear as central vision.

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