Ghosts and goblins may be scary, but macular degeneration is the leading cause of legal blindness here in
the United States for people over 55…and that scares me. I don’t have the space to go into great detail here,
but hopefully I can shed a little light on this frightening eye disease.
Macular Degeneration is when the center part of the retina becomes damaged. The retina is the back
portion of the eye that behaves much like the film inside of a camera. Everything that we see is focused by
our eye onto the retina. If our retina doesn't work well, then our eye will not see well. The center portion
of the retina is called the macula, and if the macula becomes damaged, then the center part of vision
will become blurry and distorted. In mild cases of macular degeneration a person may not even know
they've got it. But in more severe cases, macular degeneration can cause legal blindness. It almost never
causes someone to go completely blind where they see nothing, but it can damage the eye enough to make
someone legally blind.
Despite what you may have heard…there is no cure for macular degeneration. So what do we do about
it? That depends on the type, and there are two main types: wet and dry. The wet form tends to be worse,
though both can cause blindness. There have been significant advancements recently in the care of wet
macular degeneration. There are now medicines that can treat the leaky blood vessels that cause wet
macular degeneration. Usually this requires of series of doses, but this is far better than the older method
of using laser to stop the leaking. The laser worked more like Round-Up (maybe a bad analogy). The laser
killed the leaky vessels, but also everything around it…like Round-Up kills weeds, but it also kills the grass
around them. The new medicines are more like Weed and Feed…they cause the leaky blood vessels to
shrivel up and go away without damaging the surrounding tissue. So the weeds die, but the grass remains.
The dry form of macular degeneration is usually a slow, progressive deterioration of the retina. But studies
have shown that certain vitamin supplements can significantly delay the progression of the disease. The
dry form itself can cause severe vision loss, and the dry form can turn into the wet form, but nutrition can
help.
The most important thing for you to do is to have a regular thorough eye exam. The early signs of macular
degeneration can often be detected before you would know about it, and your eye doctor can guide you
on what supplements or treatments can help you. Technology is always changing, and everyday we are
understanding more and more about this eye disease.
Add Comment