Smoking and Eye Health

If you smoke, there are many things that this habit is doing to your eyesight. You may need an eye exam to check for some of these smoking-related eye health problems. Contact our optometrist in Bakersfield at Innovative Eye Care to schedule an eye exam and learn more about the negative effects that smoking can have on your vision.

Vision and Smoking

The negative effects that smoking has on eyesight are well known. Several eye conditions can be caused by smoking or made worse by smoking. These conditions include cataracts, macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, and glaucoma. Smoking affects each system of the body and vision is no different. It can also cause less-serious vision problems such as dry eye as well as worsening wrinkles around the eyes.

Smoking is known to cause the development of diabetes and that causes vision problems with diabetic-related retinopathy. It triples a smoker's risk of developing macular degeneration as well as tripling the risk of developing cataracts. It can also make existing vision problems accelerate. For people who have a family history of eye disease or already have vision problems, smoking is strongly discouraged. Some of the eye conditions that are related to smoking, such as Uveitis, are severe enough that they can eventually lead to blindness.

Quitting Smoking

Though many believe that you have to quit smoking for a long time to see the positive health results, the results can begin right away. Quitting smoking immediately reduces your chance of developing health issues that are related to smoking, including vision problems. It can also slow the progression of eye diseases that are already beginning to develop.

Contact Our Eye Doctor in Bakersfield, CA

Yearly eye exams are quite important especially if you smoke. Call our optometrist at Innovative Eye Care in Bakersfield today at 661-213-3310 to schedule an appointment with Dr. Wilhelmsen.