Do you take care of your diabetes or could you go blind?

One of the major complications of diabetes, specifically but not solely type one diabetes, is blindness. More than 12,000 people in the USA alone lose the sight every year due to diabetes related issues and what’s terrifying is that most don’t notice the degradation of their eyesight until it’s too late to do anything about it. Uncontrolled diabetes is one of the largest causes of blindness in the world today and more often than not it’s experienced by those who don’t even realise they have diabetes.

Uncontrolled diabetes, which is the term used when a diabetic doesn’t take the steps necessary to control their blood-sugar levels, causes incredibly high levels of blood-sugar as the body fails to properly filter the blood. In type one diabetics this is because the body’s own immune system kills off the insulin creating cells in the pancreas and in type two diabetics it’s because their body has become resistant to insulin. In both cases insulin isn’t doing what is should, which is converting that blood-sugar into energy used by all the cells in the body.

Persistently high levels of blood-sugar cause micro-vascular damage, which mean they cause damage to the very smallest blood vessels in the body. The eyes are delicate organs and as such they’ve got a high density of these tiny vessels which makes them immensely susceptible to damage from uncontrolled diabetes. Because the damage is so gradual and unobtrusive a diabetic may only notice their vision isn’t what it used to be after the damage is done and as such they shouldn’t wait for symptoms to occur before taking actions.

It’s imperative that you take responsibility for your condition as, at the end of the day not doing so can have catastrophic consequences and lead, eventually, to death.