Smoking can damage your eyesight.
Smoking can cause dry eyes, conjunctivitis, aggravate existing diseases and even lead to blindness.
Smoking is directly linked to two leading causes of blindness: cataracts and macular degeneration. Many studies have shown that smoking is a cause or contributing factor to several other eye diseases.
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| Smoking can cause many chronic diseases. Illustration photo |
Some common diseases caused by tobacco include cataracts, macular degeneration, dry eyes, optic neuropathy, conjunctivitis, chronic blepharitis, worsening of diabetic retinopathy, and existing uveitis.
Accordingly, smoking reduces the oxygen concentration in the lens, which then turns into cataracts. The highly toxic heavy metal cadmium also accumulates in the composition of the eye's nucleus. Clinically, the risk of cataracts in smokers is twice as high as in non-smokers and three times higher in heavy smokers.
Smokers are 2-4 times more likely to develop macular degeneration than non-smokers. Toxic elements in cigarettes damage the blood-retinal barrier, reducing blood flow to the retina, contributing to wet macular degeneration. This is one of the two leading causes of blindness in people over 60, after cataracts.
In addition, cigarette smoke with its hot, dry nature and many stimulants also causes chronic conjunctivitis and blepharitis. Tears evaporate a lot due to hot smoke, causing evaporative dry eyes.
All patients with uveitis, Graves' disease with ocular manifestations are aggravated, have increased recurrence frequency, and are at risk of becoming chronic if they continue smoking due to reduced blood supply to nerve tissues. Smoking also aggravates the diabetic retinopathy that is inherent to its owner, causing optic neuropathy.
Patients with diabetes, uveitis, Basedow's disease... if they cannot give up smoking, the treatment will be considered "a failure".
Pregnant mothers who smoke put their future children at five times greater risk of bacterial meningitis, which can lead to blindness.
Quitting smoking helps you reduce the risk of eye disease or keep the disease stable, avoiding worsening or complications. People who quit smoking after one year have a rate of macular degeneration of only nearly 7%, and after 5 years, this rate is 5%. With cataracts, if you quit smoking for 25 years, the risk of developing the disease will be reduced by 20% compared to people who still smoke.