Diabetes is a disease that mostly affects blood vessels and in its extreme forms can lead to serious heart disease, stroke and kidney damage. It is obvious that these life-threatening diabetic vascular diseases deserve priority attention, but at the top of the list critical for diabetics is the risk of serious eye diseases and vision loss.

Vision is one of our most critical and, in this “need for speed” information age, over 70% of our sensory information passes through our eyes. According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, diabetics are 25 times more likely to lose vision than those who are not diabetic. With diabetes already the leading cause of blindness in the USA, it is not surprising that eye care professionals are devastating foresee an increase in the loss of vision that the epidemic of diabetes is growing alarmingly.

Newly diagnosed diabetics have often nothing more than minor vision changes that regulate when blood sugar levels improve with treatment. From the outset it is easy to believe everything is fine. After a few years, however, still high blood sugar can gradually damage the blood vessels in the back of the eye in the retina. This causes a problem called diabetic retinopathy and the more you have diabetes the more likely you are to have retinopathy. The risk increases again when it is poor glycemic control. More than 70% of diabetics develop some changes to their eyes in 15 years of diagnosis.

The retinopathy is classified as non-proliferation or proliferative. Non-proliferation retinopathy is the benign form, the retina where small blood vessels break and leak. It May be some slight swelling the retina, but it rarely requires treatment unless it causes blurred central vision or straight lines appear distorted. Proliferative retinopathy is the less frequent but more serious when new blood vessels grow abnormally in the retina. If these vessels scar or purge they can potentially lead to serious vision loss, including blindness. Launch of laser treatment can seal leaking vessels and slow the progression of diabetic retinopathy, but can not reverse the loss of existing vision.

For the moment there is no “magic pill” to eliminate the risk of eye damage diabetics, but you can do two important things to help prevent more serious complications. Poor blood sugar is a leading cause of severe diabetic retinopathy. The critical first step is making sure to stabilize and control your blood sugar with a healthy diet and regular exercise. The second step is to make sure you have a diabetic an eye examination. An experienced professional eye care can pick up subtle changes diabetic eye long before you notice a change in vision and, more importantly, sufficient time to do some good.

Eye insurance plans differ from health insurance. They cover eye-related care specifically, and help to cover the costs of eye exams, glasses, and contacts. The discounts on vision services that eye insurance covers come from two kinds of insurance plan: vision benefits, and vision discount.

The benefits package is more akin to standard insurance whereby you are covered for vision services up to a certain value, above which you must pay the excess. As such you may be required to make small payments when receiving vision services, but the bulk of the cost will usually be covered by the insurance provider.

Vision discount plans differ from the standard form of insurance. Rather than covering your costs up to a certain value, the discount plan is a service that grants you discounts on a range of services specified by the plan provider. You will be paying for the treatment entirely yourself, but these treatments will be available to you at a reduced rate. In choosing a discount plan you will find that the plan providers offer a list of all those vision services who have agreed to take part in the discount scheme. On top of this there are often specific services included in the plan. As such it is important to read through the discount plan thoroughly to ensure you make a choice appropriate to your needs.

There are a number of benefits to taking on an eye insurance plan, whether it be vision benefits or vision discount. If you have vision problems you can save a lot of money by taking out a plan. Glasses can cost hundreds of dollars by themselves, and contact lens prescriptions are also very expensive. Add on to this eye tests and you’re starting to look at some serious money. Insurance plans can cut your costs by up to fifty percent making them well worth considering. Whilst individual plans are available, it is also possible to obtain family plans. This can be especially useful when children are young as during the years in which they are rapidly growing they are likely to go through many pairs of glasses.