Is your Lifestyle Blinding?

Article written by Daniel Healy.

Friday 27th of February is Sunnies for Sight Day where the focus is on good eye care. One of the ways to do this is to wear sun glasses when your eyes are exposed to the sun. But have you considered the impact of your lifestyle on your eye sight? Is there a link?

The term ‘lifestyle’ encompasses the many things we do on a daily basis. Dietary intake and physical activity levels are two of the main lifestyle influential factors. “But will what I eat each day really play a role in whether my eye sight dims over the years?” you may ask. Well let’s clarify one thing from the get go. The carbohydrates and fat in a meat pie or burger are not broken down in your body to tiny little blinds folds that over a period of time eventually rob you of your sight. If it were that simple and obvious people just wouldn’t eat them, unless really hungry and the football game they were watching was really boring. But there are certain choices we make on daily basis that take us closer to either a consequence as devastating as losing our sight or as rewarding as leading a long prosperous life.

Okay, let’s take a step back and work out exactly how I’ve gone from eating a meat pie or burger to losing your sight. I mean obviously a meat pie here or there isn’t a risk factor for eventual blindness! Rather its long term habits that can affect our health. Constant unhealthy eating (not just meat pies) and inactivity are the biggest contributors to obesity. Excess weight is the single most significant cause of type 2 diabetes.⁵ Further uncontrolled diabetes is the most common cause of blindness in people under the age of 60.^2,4 It should be noted that blindness is just one of several complications of this disease.³

Let’s look at few more facts. Around 60% of the adult population is currently over weight.⁵ Being overweight increases your chance of developing diabetes 7 fold!⁵ And being in the obese weight category makes you a staggering 20 – 40 times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than someone within the healthy weight range.⁵

But what are your chances of developing type 2 diabetes and still avoiding blindness? Well, not that great. For people younger than 30 years that develop diabetes, the prevalence of developing symptoms of blindness is as high as 25% during the first 5 years after diagnosis, increasing to 50% after 15 years since diagnosis. For people developing diabetes when aged 30 years or more, 20% may develop symptoms of blindness rising to 60% after 15 year.⁵ And if it’s not your eye sight that’s affected, there are a number of other diabetes complications that you may encounter such as heart disease and sensory (feeling) nerve damage but more about this in a future article.⁴

Take home message: Stick with the celery ditch the doughnuts. Good fats not bad fats. Fresh not processed. Move 30 minutes a day.

Some practical tips that may help reduce your risk:

Lose weight and aim to be within the healthy weight range⁴
Follow a healthy eating plan⁴:
- Eat small regular meals throughout the day³
- Choose low GI carbohydrates
- Reduce saturated fat intake and include a small amount of healthy mono and poly unsaturated fats³
- Eat plenty of fruits and vegetableso Increase dietary fibre intake³
- Reduce intake of junk, take away or highly processed foods³
Have regular health checks at the doctors⁴
Be aware of any changes on your body
Be more physically active⁴
Don’t smoke or drink heavily.^{3, 5}

Although there’s no 100% guarantee that you won’t develop blindness in later life from other causes, why not try and reduce your risk by leading a healthy lifestyle.

References

Australian Government – Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2004. Overweight and obesity [Online]. Available at http://www.aihw.gov.au/riskfactors/overweight.cfm [Accessed 25th February 2009].
Barr, E. et al, 2005. The Australian diabetes, obesity and lifestyle study: tracking the accelerating epidemic, its causes and outcomes. International Diabetes Institute, Melbourne [Accessed 25th February 2009].
Deakin University – Better Health Channel, January 2008. Diabetes and healthy eating [Online]. Available at http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Diabetes_and_healthy_eating?open [Accessed 27th February 2009].
Diabetes Australia, 2006. Staying well with diabetes [Online]. Available at http://www.diabetesaustralia.com.au/PageFiles/1419/STAYING_WELL.pdf [Accessed 26th February 2009].
Harvard School of Public Health, 2009. The Nutritional Source – Simple Steps to Preventing Diabetes [Online]. Available at http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/more/diabetes-full-story/index.html [Accessed 25th February 2009].

Last updated 17 June 2009