HOUSTON – Although diabetes is often preventable, it is one of the most common diseases in the world. It’s important to know that diabetes can affect your eyes and even cause blindness.

Dr. from Houston Oculofacial Plastic Surgery. Mirwat Sami helps us sound the alarm and offers ways to save a diabetic patient’s eyesight.

“Sometimes they say the eyes are the windows to the soul, because they really are. There are a lot of diagnoses we can make just by looking into the eyes. Since it’s Diabetic Retinopathy Awareness Month, it’s important to shed light on this condition. Sometimes a diagnosis is made for someone with diabetic retinopathy, where diabetes affects many different organs in their system.” We show what we can,” says Dr. Sami.

The eyes need to be dilated during the exam to get a complete picture of what is happening behind the eye.

“We look at the retina. When someone has diabetes, some abnormal new vessels develop. Swelling occurs, and all of this happens because of poor glycemic control, high levels of glucose in your blood, and this kind of insight, this kind of inflammatory and neurovascular condition.” These growing new vessels can cause some damage, bleeding inside the eyes, vision loss, permanent damage, retinal detachment. Many of these are indicators of similar damage. It occurs in all the vital organs we need, as well as other organs such as the heart and kidneys,” says Dr. Sami.

Diabetic Retinopathy (Photo: BSIP/UIG Via Getty Images)

Uncontrolled blood sugar, the amount of sugar in the blood, is responsible for complications.

“Diabetes is when the body becomes resistant or unable to produce enough insulin, and insulin is a hormone we need to control the level of glucose that our body and systems are exposed to. When we develop diabetes, this glucose level rises and causes diabetes. All of this damage affects all of these organ systems over time.” It can have a cumulative effect,” explains Dr. Sami.

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Symptoms of diabetic retinopathy range from blurred vision to vision loss.

“People will also have dry eye and infections, because remember, when glucose levels go up, your immune system goes down. So people are a little bit more prone to skin infections, facial infections, eyelid infections, sinus infections, and that’s why I see a lot of this in my practice, I treat people.” and I’m just trying to understand why they’re getting all these infections and their immune systems are basically unable to control it,” says Doctor Sami.

He explains that 90 percent of permanent eye damage can be prevented with early diagnosis and intervention.

Some ways to prevent complications of diabetes include:

• Work to always have a healthy glucose level
• maintaining a healthy weight
• exercise regularly (ideally 30 minutes a day)
• make healthy food choices: this means less processed food
• manage your blood pressure and cholesterol levels
• avoid smoking.

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