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Diabetes and Eye Health

Vitamins C, vitamin E and minerals such as selenium and zinc are also important for eye health. Here is where you can find them:. Supplements made from these nutrients are not recommended for preventing eye disease.

Diabetic Retinopathy

Diabetes is the single leading cause of blindness in Canada. If your blood sugar is not well controlled, you may have a higher risk of: Diabetes can affect many parts of your body including your blood vessels and your eyes. Some eye diseases, such as retinopathy, are caused by a change in the tiny blood vessels that feed the retina of the eye. High blood sugar in diabetes can also cause the lens of the eye to swell, which changes your ability to see. There are no specific foods or nutrients that decrease the risk of developing glaucoma, cataracts or retinopathy. To help prevent these diseases or stop them from getting worse, people with diabetes should manage their blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol levels.


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Stable blood sugar levels results in fewer eye problems. Work with your diabetes care team to create an eating plan that works for you. Read more about how to manage diabetes. A balanced diet rich in fruits and vegetables can help keep your eyes healthy. For decades, PDR has been treated with scatter laser surgery, sometimes called panretinal laser surgery or panretinal photocoagulation.

Treatment involves making 1, to 2, tiny laser burns in areas of the retina away from the macula.

What nutrients can help keep my eyes healthy?

These laser burns are intended to cause abnormal blood vessels to shrink. Although treatment can be completed in one session, two or more sessions are sometimes required. While it can preserve central vision, scatter laser surgery may cause some loss of side peripheral , color, and night vision. Scatter laser surgery works best before new, fragile blood vessels have started to bleed.

Eating for Better Vision and Healthy Eyes - Diabetes Self-Management

A vitrectomy is the surgical removal of the vitreous gel in the center of the eye. The procedure is used to treat severe bleeding into the vitreous, and is performed under local or general anesthesia. Ports temporary water-tight openings are placed in the eye to allow the surgeon to insert and remove instruments, such as a tiny light or a small vacuum called a vitrector.

A clear salt solution is gently pumped into the eye through one of the ports to maintain eye pressure during surgery and to replace the removed vitreous. The same instruments used during vitrectomy also may be used to remove scar tissue or to repair a detached retina. Vitrectomy may be performed as an outpatient procedure or as an inpatient procedure, usually requiring a single overnight stay in the hospital. After treatment, the eye may be covered with a patch for days to weeks and may be red and sore.

I have diabetes. Do I have a higher risk of developing eye diseases?

Drops may be applied to the eye to reduce inflammation and the risk of infection. If both eyes require vitrectomy, the second eye usually will be treated after the first eye has recovered.

Eye health

An eye care professional can help locate and make referrals to low vision and rehabilitation services and suggest devices that may help make the most of remaining vision. Many community organizations and agencies offer information about low vision counseling, training, and other special services for people with visual impairment. A nearby school of medicine or optometry also may provide low vision and rehabilitation services. The NEI is conducting and supporting research that seeks better ways to detect, treat, and prevent vision loss in people with diabetes.

This research is being conducted in labs and clinical centers across the country. The network formed in and comprises more than physicians practicing at more than clinical sites across the country. Many of the sites are private practice eye clinics, enabling the network to quickly bring innovative treatments from research into community practice. NEI-funded scientists are also seeking ways to detect diabetic retinopathy at earlier stages. For example, researchers are harnessing a technology called adaptive optics AO to improve imaging techniques such as OCT.

AO was developed by astronomers seeking to improve the resolution of their telescopes by filtering out distortions in the atmosphere. Skip to main content. These letters and number may be different depending on where you live in the UK, so speak to your healthcare team if you're not sure. Background retinopathy sometimes called background changes — this is stage one.

Non-proliferative retinopathy — stage two.

You might hear this called R2. Proliferative retinopathy — stage three. You might hear this called R3. You might hear this called M0 if there's no maculopathy found in your eyes, or M1 if fluid is starting to build-up in your eye and is affecting your sight. Proliferative retinopathy and maculopathy are more advanced.


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Diabetes makes you 1.