World Diabetes Day – Diabetes and Your Eyes

  “World Diabetes Day” was introduced in 1991 by the International Diabetes Federation and the World Health Organization with a goal in mind of creating awareness regarding startling statistics of rising Diabetes observed on global scale. This day is observed on November 14 of each year. It has become an active campaign under the International Diabetes Federation each year to address issues facing the global diabetes community. The campaign draws attention to issues of utmost importance due to diabetes in the world keeping them decisively under the spotlight of public, as Diabetes is now recognized as escalating health threat. Diabetes mellitus (DM), simply referred as diabetes, is a cluster of diseases upsetting the body metabolism resulting in the high blood sugar levels, producing the commonly observed symptoms like frequent urination, increased thirst, and increased hunger. A diabetic individual upholds a condition where the extent of blood glucose too prominent, known as hyperglycemia, which is basically due to efficiency of insulin working in body. The reasons can be body isn’t producing requisite insulin, or has non-working cells which are responding inefficiently to the insulin the pancreas produces. Resultant percussion is glucose building in the blood is too elevated, which eventually gets excreted out of body in urine without providing essential energy and growth requirements to the human metabolism. Now point to ponder about adverse effects of Diabetes on parts of bodies, especially eyes! It has been seen that untreated Diabetes can result in severe complications in future. The term which is used for damage to eyes is “diabetic retinopathy” where retinopathy conveys damage to retina. It is a systemic disease which affects major lot of diabetic patients suffering since 10 years or more. But research indicates that at least 90% of these new cases could be reduced if there was proper monitoring of diabetic eyes and their attentive treatment over these years. So it is more than understood that eye care is important for diabetic patients to ensure vision impassive from any deformities. They are prone to get complications from diabetes and leading reason of blindness in age 20 and above. There should be some precautions which should be used for eye-care – 1) Schedule regular appointments with your eye doctor so that any eye problem can be detected early and treated. 2) Maintain control of your blood glucose levels. 3) Blood pressure should be under control. 4) Get your blood cholesterol levels under control. 4) Adopt healthy habits like eating a healthy diet, avoid smoking and exercise regularly. If you have diabetes, you should be more careful about your eyes than normal person because after diabetes, follows blindness. And even if you don’t have diabetes, some care won’t hurt. So proper eye care is a must for a healthy vision lifelong. *The views expressed here are solely those of the author in his private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of Centre for Sight.