Protect Your Vision with Personalized Care

Diabetes is a systemic disease that affects how your body produces or uses insulin. Insulin is essential for processing blood sugar into energy. Without insulin, sugar remains in your blood and can damage your organs, blood vessels, and nerves.

Your eyes are especially sensitive to high blood sugar levels. If your blood sugar levels remain too high for too long, you can develop eye complications that range from blurry vision to blindness. An annual eye exam with your optometrist is a crucial tool for preventing this from happening.

With regular eye check-ups and a close relationship with your dedicated healthcare team, many patients only experience minor eye disorders related to their diabetes. At Lemon Grove Optometry, we use advanced diagnostic technology that gives us a comprehensive view of your eye health, allowing us to diagnose diabetic eye diseases earlier and more accurately.

Book your diabetic eye exam today!

How Diabetes Affects Your Eyes

Eye damage caused by diabetes makes you more susceptible to developing an eye disease, specifically diabetic retinopathy, diabetic macular edema, cataracts, and glaucoma.

Diabetic Retinopathy

At the back of your eye is a layer of photoreceptor cells called the retina. The retina’s responsibility is to absorb light and convert it to neural signals to send to the brain to process as images. Diabetic retinopathy is an eye disease that affects the vessels that supply blood to the retina.

This disease occurs when blood sugar blocks your retinal blood vessels, causing them to weaken, bulge, or break. As the disease advances, your eye may grow new, abnormal blood vessels to make up for the broken ones, but these easily break, leak blood and fluid, and cause scarring.

Diabetic Macular Edema (DME)

Diabetic macular edema is a common complication of diabetic retinopathy.

The macula is the center-most part of the retina and is responsible for sharp, central vision. Leaking blood and fluid into the macula can cause it to swell, leading to blurred vision and partial vision loss.

Glaucoma

Glaucoma is a group of eye diseases that cause progressive damage to the optic nerve. Since the optic nerve is responsible for relaying visual information from the retina to the brain, damage can cause permanent vision loss.

Patients with diabetes are twice as likely to develop glaucoma.

Cataracts

Cataracts are the clouding of the eye’s natural lens. They’re relatively common in older adults, but patients with diabetes are 5 times more likely to develop cataracts and at a younger age. Cataracts are one of the significant causes of vision loss in patients with diabetes.

Detecting, Diagnosing, & Treating Diabetic Eye Disease

Early diagnosis and careful monitoring are essential for preventing vision loss from diabetes. With our industry-leading, advanced technology at Lemon Grove Optometry, we can detect and diagnose various eye diseases earlier and more accurately.

We offer dilated eye exams with advanced technology to our patients with diabetes. Most patients with diabetes require annual exams, but if you have an eye disease, you may need to visit us more often so we can monitor your condition.

Regular eye exams with your optometrist give them the best chance of noticing even the smallest changes in your eye health. Many eye diseases advance with no early symptoms, with some symptoms only appearing during advanced stages of the disease. If you notice any of the following issues, please call us immediately:

Blurry vision
Wavy vision
Frequently changes in your vision (even from day to day)
Vision loss
Poor color vision
Floaters
Flashes of light

When you have diabetes, it’s important to have a healthcare team you can trust. We at Lemon Grove Optometry are devoted to being an integral part of that team. Trust us with your eye care, and please book your diabetic eye exam today.

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