 You have to keep your eyes healthy all of your life. It would be foolish to ignore seeing the eye doctor. What is the deal with this strange blind spots? Today we are talking about signs that you may have diabetic eye disease. Hi. I am Dr. Ahmet Ergen. I'm anocrinologist in Florida and for most of you, I am your YouTube or Facebook diabetes doctor. We will talk about the signs, but remember that many people don't know whether they have eye disease because of diabetes and there are often no signs or symptoms or they think that the provision is just part of getting older. You have to keep your eyes healthy all of your life by getting them checked and treated as soon as possible. A lot of time, blindness and vision loss can be prevented and seeing your eye doctor before being symptomatic is your best bet and a smart move. For example, my wife's father lost his eye to glaucoma because he hated doctors. Oh well, just because you hate doctors doesn't mean you should ignore your health. My wife who is only in her early 30s right now was also diagnosed with glaucoma. Isn't that surprising? Well, after she went to the eye doctor for something totally unrelated, she was diagnosed with glaucoma. Now, if you have diabetes, it would be foolish to ignore seeing the eye doctor. Regardless, I will tell you all the signs to look out for to prevent the further delay. Even for people with no eye disease, getting a baseline eye disease or at least screening at age 40 is typically recommended for people who don't even show any signs or any risk factors for diabetic eye disease. Let's start with the first sign, which is seeing spots or floaters. The majority of the floaters are tiny. They are pretty much specks of collagen. They are made up of the vitreous gel-like substance in the rear of your eye. The protein fibers that make up the vitreous shrink, it shrinks down to a small shreds that clump together as you're older. Now, the floaters are the shadows they cast on your retina. Floaters are common and they can occur at any age, although they are most common between the ages of 50 and 75. If you are nearsighted or have undergone cataract surgery, for example, you're more prone to having them. See your eye doctor right away if the floaters are new or have changed abruptly. Or if you suddenly started seeing flashes, especially if you have diabetes. Now, before moving to the next sign, guys, if you are enjoying this video so far or learning something, please hit that like button and say something in the comment section tell us your experience and how we can improve these videos. Also, remember to follow us on Facebook where we provide a lot of short and sweet to the point videos that some of you like actually. So, TikTok and Facebook is your next address to meet me. The next sign is blurred vision. Diabetic eye disease is caused by damage to your tiny tiny blood vessels in the retina. And vision loss can occur as a result of these damaged poor blood vessels. When the fluid leaks into the macula, which is the core vision producing region of your retina. The macula, despite its small size, is the portion of the retina that allows to see colors and defined details. The fluid causes the macula to swell, causing vision to become blurry. We call this macular edema. And it is very common in diabetics. Specific eye disorders are also associated with greater symptoms in addition to just blurry vision. Irritation, for example, may suggest conjunctivitis, eye discharge, which can indicate infection, headaches, nausea, which are frequent with migraine, speech difficulty or one side of the weakness, which can accompany stroke or TIA, which is transient ischemic attack. Also remember, when you start insulin or other strong diabetes treatments, it can sometimes make your vision blurry while your blood sugar is rapidly dropping due to the changes in the thickness caused by that rapid glucose changes, which affects your lens thickness in your eyes. Having a dark or empty spot in the center of your vision. Not good. Let's talk about that. Retinal tearing, retinal detachment, internal eye bleeding, and age-related macular degeneration can all cause dark spots in your vision. As a result, early detection and treatment is critical. But hey, in reality, every person has a normal blind spot around the size of a pinhead. The optic nerve travels through the retina at this point right around there, but there are no photoreceptors to receive the light because the eye lacks light detecting cells. It is unable to convey the signals to the brain. That is where your optic nerve is placed right on your retina. This type of blind spot is harmless and everybody has it. We are not even aware of it because our brains are so good at filling in the gaps and delivering the visual information we require. A scotoma, on the other hand, is visible and can disrupt your daily routines, making things such as driving or reading difficult. So what is the deal with these strange blind spots? We call this scotoma, right? A scotoma can occur as a result of a variety of situations, some of which are rather serious. For example, detachment of retina, types of diabetic retinopathy, molecular degeneration. These are the conditions that affect the eyes that can happen with diabetes frequently. Glaucoma, which is way more common in diabetics compared to non-diabetics, or blood pressure that is too high, which is not uncommon in diabetics either, or transient ischemic attack or stroke, which is more likely to happen to diabetics as well, can all lead to that. Now, temporary scotomas can be also caused by less serious health issues, such as hormone fluctuations, like in the time of the menstruation, etc. Stress, migraines, or even insufficient blood flow to the brain temporarily if you passed out or something like that. Now, difficulty seeing well at night is another sign that you may have diabetic retinopathy. As a result of the damage to the blood vessels and the nerves in the diabetic retinopathy, people who have diabetes are more likely to have trouble seeing at night. It may take a while to see normal again after coming inside from a place where there's a lot of light for example, and we know that retinopathy is not a disease that can be cured, but if you control your blood sugar levels with lifestyle changes, medications or herbs will definitely help avoid getting it, at least loads progress guys. So, color changes is the next sign. The eye has nerve cells called cones that help the retina, which is a layer of tissue in the back of your eye that lets you see the colors. Three types of cones are able to pick up different wavelengths of each light, and each type reacts to either red, green or blue light. The cones send that information to the brain that helps us see different colors. It would be hard to see colors if one or more of these cones in your retina have been damaged, or if there aren't any cones in your retina at all. For example, macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy cause damage to the retina, which is where the cones are, which can make you color blind. In some cases, unfortunately, you may go blind. As a result, diabetes can make it hard to see blue, yellow or shades of blue and yellow. If you have diabetes, the best thing you can do for your health and for your eyes is to keep an eye on your blood sugar, prevent white fluctuations, keep your blood pressure under control, not just your blood sugar, cholesterol, and we call this ABC of diabetes, right? A1C blood pressure cholesterol. You should get help if you smoke, try to get it because the smoking is not going to help your arteries at all, and get checked once a year for your eyes. That concludes our video. I hope you learned something today, guys. 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