How does smoking affect your vision?
Smoking takes 1,350,000 lives every year in India, including 41,000 from secondhand smoke intake. Worldwide, the numbers go as high as 7 million. Most people think that cigars, cigarettes, or smoking pipes only affect the lung and heart- but, that’s not all it damages. Smoking can even affect your brain, eyes, and cause several major diseases.
Here are a few health conditions that might be caused or exacerbated by smoking:
Age-Related Macular Degeneration
This eye disease can cause loss right in the center of the field of vision. You need central vision to read, drive, and even recognize faces. Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) usually begins in a dry form and accelerates into the wet form, where it can devolve into vision loss. AMD’s symptoms are -
- Trouble recognizing faces
- Straight lines look wavy
- An excess requirement of light to read
- A blurred spot right in your central vision
Studies show that if you smoke, you’re 3-4 times more likely to develop AMD compared to a non-smoker. Also, non-smokers double their chances of developing AMD if they are living with smokers.
Cataracts
Usually, cataracts onset as you age. The lens in your eyes gets clouded and the vision becomes blurry, hazy, sensitive to light, and less color-perceptive. If left unchecked, it can lead to severe vision loss. While you can counter its effects at the start with anti-glare sunglasses. At a point in time, you will need surgery to remove the cataract.
If you’re a smoker, you’re 2-3 times more likely to be affected by cataracts than a non-smoker.
Smoking will increase the free radicals which damage the proteins and lipids in your eyes. Eventually, they will cause deposits to form on the surface of the eye’s lens and develop cataracts. Worse, smoking even kills the antioxidants that may have helped to fight the free radicals.
Diabetic Retinopathy
You experience blurred vision, darkness in vision, difficulty in color perception, and floaters - these can all cause blindness. These are all a by-product of diabetes. In extreme cases, you will require laser treatment or surgery.
Smokers are almost 40 percent more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than nonsmokers.
Smoking can also affect the treatment of diabetes. How? High levels of nicotine can reduce the effects of insulin, which is necessary to maintain the levels of sugar.
Diabetic retinopathy will harm the blood vessels in your eyes, it’s better if you quit today for a better tomorrow.
Uveitis
Smoking can cause Uveitis, which in turn, affects the middle layer of your eyes called Uvea. This causes the eyeball to inflame, damage vital eye tissue, and lead to permanent vision loss.
There are almost 2-fold greater odds of onset of uveitis among smokers than non-smokers.
Dry Eye
If your eyes don’t have the tears to fight back harmful radicals floating in the air, they will lose the power it needs to protect themselves. Dry Eye is a condition where your eyes don’t make enough or the kind of tears they need.
Smoking can cause your eyes to feel scratchy, irritated, stinging, burning, or reddening. You’re twice as likely to be affected with dry eye syndrome if you’re a smoker.
Glaucoma
This breaks down cells in the nerve of your eyes which are vital to sending visual information to your brain. This is dangerous as you might not realize that you have glaucoma until the optic nerve is heavily damaged and you experience severe vision loss.
There have been numerous studies that prove smoking increases the risk of glaucoma.
Conclusion
Quitting cigarettes will go a long way in improving your health and eyesight. Not only that, you will be protecting people around you who won’t have to take in secondhand smoke any longer. You can get into a treatment program, get nicotine replacement therapy, take medication, or straight-out kick the smoking habit out of your life.
As a great man once said, “it is health that is real wealth, not pieces of gold or silver”. Get back to life, today!