Eye Care and Diabetes: 4 Things to Know

If you have diabetes, it’s crucial for you to take extra care of your eyes. Why? People with diabetes stand at an increased risk of a serious diabetes-related eye complication known as diabetic retinopathy.

Also, people with diabetes are at equal risks of other types of eye complications, including Cataracts, Glaucoma, and Macular Degeneration. However, with a proper diabetes management plan in place, you can significantly lower the risks of such eye health-related complications of the disease.

Here are some of the best practices for taking proper care of your eyes when you have diabetes:  

1) See an eye specialist every year: Most people aren’t aware that some of the serious eye complications, such as Diabetic Retinopathy and Macular Degeneration have little or no symptoms during the onset period. Therefore, they become almost impossible to detect.

However, an eye doctor can detect even the subtlest symptoms and confirm the onset of any eye disease. This is why it’s crucial, especially for diabetes patients to get a thorough eye checkup every year. For quality and affordable eye tests, visit Disha Eye Hospital. The multispecialty eye hospital has a team of some of the best retina specialists in Kolkata.  To book an appointment with best eye specialists in Kolkata, visit http://www.dishaeye.org/appointment.

2) Maintain your blood sugar, pressure, and cholesterol levels:  The better you maintain your blood sugar levels, the lower your chances are of worsening your diabetes. One of the key areas to focus on is your diabetes management plan. When doing this, take note of the activities and food items that spike up your blood sugar levels.

With time, you’ll surely get a fair assessment of the triggers and create a list of must-avoid activities and food items. Apart from your blood sugar levels, it’s equally important to monitor and maintain your blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

3) Maintain a healthy and balanced diet: Your diet plays a crucial role in either improving or worsening your diabetes. Being a diabetic, it’s important for you to eat fresh produces, wholesome food items as they are loaded with essential nutrients.

Make sure to include fresh, green vegetables, colourful fruits, farm-fresh dairy products, nuts, and lean fish and meat in your diet. One important factor to keep in mind is to avoid or lower junk food consumption. Junks food items are high in trans fat, added sugar, and synthetic flavourings. They do the worst for your diabetes by spiking up blood pressure. Your efforts to making your diet healthy can go to waste if you can’t resist your junk food cravings.

4) Regular exercise is important: One of the common causes of diabetes is being overweight/obese which is, in turn, linked to a lack of sufficient physical exercise. If you live in the city, you can’t help but lead a sedentary lifestyle. Taking cabs in every turn, elevator/escalator for every floor —  the convenience options that are available tend to make us lazy.

However, it’s always possible to make healthy choices. Even if you have a mundane routine of going to work every day, you can make healthy choices to get physically active. For example, taking the stairs instead of the elevators makes up for a good cardio exercise. There are many benefits of getting physical exercise, especially when you have diabetes.

Being physically active helps you maintain your body weight. Regular exercise lowers blood sugar, pressure, and cholesterol levels. Regular exercise also promotes blood circulation throughout the body, and in the eyes.