What is diabetic retinopathy (DR)?
Diabetes retinopathy is a severe eyesight complication that affects your vision and is a common cause of vision loss. Diabetic retinopathy may lead to vision-threatening damage to the retina, eventually leading to blindness.
How can you tell if diabetes is affecting your eyes?
Your eyes may seem fine, and often, there are no warning signs of diabetic eye disease or vision loss when damage first develops. A fully dilated eye health exam helps your doctor find and treat eye problems early—often before much vision loss can occur.
What are the symptoms of DR?
You suffer from blurred vision and problems seeing far off early on. The signs could be the appearance of dark spots or dark strings floating images (come and go) in your eye. You lack an ideal smooth vision and might share a fluctuating vision.
Can lowering blood sugar improve vision?
It helps. That doesn’t 100% guarantee you the damages already made will cure completely. However, there are medicines available to help with the problem. Your eye doctor and primary care physician will assist you.
Can vision loss due to DR be reversed?
While it is not entirely reversible, some clarity in your eyesight may come back through treatment. However, your eye doctor can help you from worsening.
How long does it take for diabetes to damage the eyes?
3-5 years. There are conflicting reports about this. Some say; 3-15 years.
What are the best treatments for DR?
Medicines called anti-VEGF drugs can slow down or reverse diabetic retinopathy. Other medications, called corticosteroids, can also help—laser treatment. To reduce swelling in your retina, eye doctors can use lasers to shrink the blood vessels and stop leaking.
Eylea, an eye drop, and a prescription drug, is available free of cost to Medicare patients. It seems to have minimal side effects.
Does Lutein help DR?
Lutein may protect against diabetic retinopathy due to its ability to absorb oxidizing blue light with its antioxidant properties and location within the retina.
Lutein is a carotenoid with reported anti-inflammatory properties. Much evidence shows that lutein as a supplement is available in the open market, and demand is increasing. It has several beneficial effects, primarily on eye health. In particular, lutein is known to improve or even prevent age-related macular disease, which is the leading cause of blindness and vision impairment.
