Issues with your eyes can be frustrating at best and debilitating at worst. And while there are some well-known illnesses and health conditions that can affect your eyes, eye symptoms can be tied to other health conditions too, some of which you’d never think to consider when faced with watery eyes or blurry vision.
“Nothing in your body is in a box,” said Deborah Herrmann, M.D., an ophthalmologist in Radnor, PA. “Your eyes are connected to your central nervous system and everything else. Something that’s affecting your body can be affecting your eyes as well.”
Meet the experts: Deborah Herrmann, M.D., an ophthalmologist in Radnor, PA; Danielle Orr, O.D., an assistant clinical professor at The Ohio State University College of Optometry; Aakriti Garg Shukla, M.D., an ophthalmologist at Columbia University’s Edward S. Harkness Eye Institute.
Here, eye health experts share the most common conditions that can cause eye changes, along with other more surprising ones that you need to be aware of.
Health conditions that can cause eye changes
Glaucoma
If you’re seeing blind spots and halos (bright circles around lights), you may have glaucoma, an eye condition that damages your optic nerve, per the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO). In many cases of glaucoma, fluid builds up in the front of your eye, increasing pressure and eventually damaging your optic nerve. Since your optic nerve is responsible for carrying messages from your retinas to your brain, this can make it harder to see.
Those blind spots can happen anywhere—along the outside of your vision or closer to the center, explained Danielle Orr, O.D., an assistant clinical professor at The Ohio State University College of Optometry. “Depending on the nature of the missing area of vision, part of a sentence may disappear while reading, or an object to the side may not be visible when looking straight ahead,” she said. Over time, you can develop more of these spots and eventually become blind, per the AAO. You might also experience symptoms like blurry vision, eye or forehead pain, headaches, or eye redness.
Cataracts
A cataract clouds the lens of your eye, which is responsible for focusing light to help you see clearly, per the AAO. This lens should be clear. But when you have cataracts, it becomes cloudy—making your vision blurry, hazy, or even less colorful. “As we age, the lens’s cells grow and die, leading to buildup of debris and clouding of the lens,” said Aakriti Garg Shukla, M.D., an ophthalmologist at Columbia University’s Edward S. Harkness Eye Institute. “This causes distortion of the way the light enters the eyes.”
Cataracts can cause a range of symptoms, per the Mayo Clinic. Maybe you struggle to see at night, feel more sensitive to glare, or need brighter lights to read or do other activities. Colors may fade, and you might even notice everything looks yellower than usual. Dr. Orr noted that this “combination of increased glare and decreased contrast” can make some everyday activities, like night driving, especially difficult.
Macular degeneration
Macular degeneration is a common cause of vision loss in older adults (especially people over 50), and it makes it hard to see things in the center of your vision, per the Cleveland Clinic. “Macular degeneration occurs when the eye cannot get rid of byproducts formed by the photoreceptors in the retina,” Dr. Orr said. “The byproducts form deposits, called drusen, that disrupt the smooth layers of the retina and can lead to distorted vision.”
Your retina is responsible for clearly focusing light and seeing fine details, Dr. Shukla said. So macular degeneration can distort objects or faces and make straight lines look wavy. Since macular degeneration affects your central vision, your peripheral vision may be perfectly fine—it’s what’s in front of you that’s the problem, per the Cleveland Clinic.
High cholesterol
In some cases, high cholesterol can impact your vision—making it harder to see from time to time, per the Cleveland Clinic. “Someone with high cholesterol can have transient vision loss that comes and goes, like a curtain or shade coming and going over their eye,” explained Dr. Herrmann.
Why? Cholesterol is a type of fat your body needs. But when you have too much of it, it can build up in your bloodstream and block your blood vessels. When the blood vessels to your retinas get blocked (called Hollenhorst plaques), it can impact your vision. You might also notice cholesterol deposits in and around your eyes—like gray rings around your corneas (arcus senilis) or yellow bumps on your eyelids (xanthelasma).
Thyroid problems
If your eyes look like they’re bulging out of their sockets, you may want to get your thyroid checked. Your thyroid is a butterfly-shaped organ in your neck, and it controls hormones that regulate your growth and metabolism. When your thyroid isn’t functioning properly, it can cause swollen eye muscles and congested eye sockets that make your eyes bulge out and look bigger than usual, said Dr. Herrmann. It can also cause double vision.
Graves’ disease, an autoimmune condition that affects your thyroid, can also cause your eyelids to retract, making your eyes look bigger than usual, per the AAO. If your eyelids retract so much that you can’t close them, you may also develop dry eyes.
Diabetes
Regular eye exams are a good idea for anyone, but they’re a must if you have diabetes or are at high risk for the condition. “Diabetes can make the macula—the part of the retina that controls your central vision—swell or retain fluid,” said Dr. Herrmann. This can cause vision loss, she added. And in severe cases, it may lead to blindness, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
People with diabetes are also twice as likely to get glaucoma, per the Glaucoma Research Foundation. And they’re at higher risk of developing cataracts, per the American Diabetes Association (ADA). Be on the lookout for symptoms like blurry vision, blind spots, distortions, or faded colors, all of which the CDC says can indicate a diabetes-related vision problem.
Retinal migraines
Temporary blind spots, shimmering or flickering lights, seeing a zigzag pattern, and floating lines can all be signs of a retinal migraine—especially if you experience them in just one eye, per the Cleveland Clinic. “[The blind spots] only last for a certain number of minutes, and you may or may not have pain,” said Dr. Herrmann.
Also called an ocular migraine, a retinal migraine isn’t quite the same as a regular migraine. With a retinal migraine, you’ll see weird visual symptoms in one eye, and you might experience a headache at the same time or shortly thereafter. With a regular migraine, you’ll experience visual symptoms (aura) in both eyes and they tend to last longer.
Autoimmune conditions
Eye problems are linked to a number of autoimmune conditions, including myasthenia gravis, lupus, and multiple sclerosis. If your eyelids are drooping or you’re seeing double, you may have myasthenia gravis—a condition that causes muscle weakness that makes it hard to open your eyes all the way, per the Mayo Clinic. Meanwhile, lupus can lead to uveitis—eye inflammation that can cause vision loss or blurriness, eye pain and redness, or sensitivity to light, per the Mayo Clinic.
Eyesight changes can also be a clue that you should get screened for multiple sclerosis. “If you develop decreasing vision in one eye over the course of a few days or weeks and you have pain in or around one eye—especially when you move it—it could be your first presenting sign of MS,” said Dr. Herrmann. Your vision may wane, colors may fade, you may see double, or your eyes may start moving uncontrollably, per the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
Stroke
Sudden loss of sight is startling—and rightfully so. It could be a sign that you’re about to have a stroke, or that you’ve already had one. Often, vision loss from a stroke happens in just one eye. But it can also happen in part of each eye, or it can present as blind spots in both eyes, per the American Stroke Association (ASA).
Strokes can cause a range of other symptoms, like double vision, uncontrolled eye movements, and trouble understanding what you’re seeing. If the communication between your eyes and brain is disrupted, you may not be able to perceive things in your field of view—which can lead to trouble with balance, coordination, and depth perception, per the ASA. Strokes can also make it difficult to control your eye movements, making it harder to close your eyelids and causing dry eyes as a result.
Read the full article here
