What You Must Know About Diabetes and Blurry Vision

Diabetes leads to blurry vision. In many cases, it’s a problem that can be solved by managing your blood sugar or using eye drops. In other times, it’s a sign that your diabetes has become severe.

Diabetes And Your Eyes

Having blurry vision means it’s harder to tell the details of what you’re seeing. Many cases can happen because of diabetes, and because your glucose level is not in a normal range. It’s either too high or it’s too low.

Your vision blurs because of the fluid leaking into your eye lenses. This makes your lens swell and change its shape. These kinds of changes make it hard for you to focus and things can start to look fuzzy.

You can also get blurry vision when you begin your insulin treatment. This is because of shifting fluids, but it often resolves on its own after a few weeks. A lot of people’s vision stabilizes as their blood sugar does.

What Is Diabetic Retinopathy?

In the long term, blurry vision can lead to diabetic retinopathy, a retinal disorder that is caused by diabetes.

It has four stages. Stage 1 is mild nonproliferative, stage 2 is moderate nonproliferative, stage 3 is severe nonproliferative, and stage 4 is proliferative diabetic retinopathy.

Many people don’t exhibit diabetic retinopathy symptoms until it’s progressed to stage 4. You can tell because they report blurry vision, eye floaters, difficulty seeing when it’s night time, loss of vision, distorted vision, and color changes in your vision.

When You Get Cataracts

When you develop cataracts, it also might lead to blurry vision. People with diabetes develop cataracts when they’re young. Cataracts cause your eye lenses to be cloudy.

The other symptoms are faded colors, clouded vision, double vision, sensitivity to light, glare lights, and vision that doesn’t get fixed with new glasses.

Hyperglycemia

This happens when glucose starts building up in the blood and the body doesn’t have enough insulin to process it.

Other hyperglycemia symptoms are headache, fatigue, frequent thirst, and increased urination.

Managing your glucose to curb hyperglycemia is important because over time it can lead to problems with your vision and can even cause irreversible blindness.

Glaucoma

When you get blurry vision, you might also have glaucoma, wherein pressure in your eye is damaging your optic nerve. The National Eye Institute says your risk of glaucoma is doubled when you have diabetes.

Glaucoma symptoms are loss of peripheral vision, halos around lights, reddening of your eyes, ocular eye pain, and nausea.

Macular Edema

The macula is the center of your retina, and it’s the eye part that gives you your sharp central vision.

Macular edema happens when your macula swells because of leaking fluid. Other symptoms are wavy vision and color changes.

Diabetic macular edema is from diabetic retinopathy. It often affects both of your eyes. Research says that 7.7 million Americans have diabetic retinopathy. The US currently holds around 328 million people.

Taking Care Of Your Eyes

Having diabetes means you have an increased risk for eye problems. It’s crucial to manage your blood sugar, and follow up on your medications, have regular checkups, and have eye exams. You’ll need a comprehensive eye exam. Tell your doctor about your symptoms and the medications you’re taking.

Summary

Blurry vision can be just a small problem with a quick solution like eye drops, prescription glasses, or blood glucose management.

But it can be more than what your diabetes is causing, which is why it’s important to talk to your doctor. In most cases, early intervention will prevent the problem from getting worse.