Smoking affects the health of large numbers of people and nearly 8 million deaths each year are related to smoking in the world. The harm of smoking is obvious and widely known and it can have direct and negative effects on the eyes and vision. The news of the World Health Organization (WHO) claims that the risk of specific eye diseases and permanent vision loss will be raised due to smoking. To make the public realize the dangers of smoking more comprehensively, the WHO therefore designated May 31st as World No Tobacco Day.
How Does Smoking Affect Your Eyes?
Smoking can hurt specific organs in people’s body and result in severe diseases. According to relevant research, there are more than 7,000 harmful ingredients in tobacco, which makes smoking reduces average life expectancy by about 10 years. Those toxic substances in tobacco will bear the brunt of the damage to human lungs and cause diseases related to the respiratory system. Furthermore, tumors, cancers, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases can all be induced by smoking.
The adverse influences of smoking on the eyes can happen directly and indirectly. For instance, smoking can restrict insulin secretion and keep blood sugar high for a long time, thereby increasing the risk of diabetes, which continuously, can lead to vision loss due to diabetic retinopathy. On the other hand, smoking can disrupt blood flow in the eye tissue, resulting in ischemia in the eye, visual impairment and vision loss, as well as a poor response to treatment, all of which have a significant impact on quality of life. Or smoking can make the lens cloudy and cause oxidative harm that can lead to cataracts directly.
How on earth does smoking affect the eyes? As you might know that the anatomy of human eyeballs is actually complicated. They consist of multiple parts such as lens, iris, cornea, pupil, retina, and so on. And each of these areas is likely to be influenced by tobacco. For example, the cataracts caused by smoking are because the lens of the eyes is clouded, which should normally be clear. In line with some studies, people who smoke have 2 or 3 times of probability of having cataracts than those who don’t smoke.
In addition to affecting the lens and leading to cataracts, smoking can also hurt the retina and cause retinal detachment, which will result in vision loss or sometimes blindness. Retinal detachment is actually not a common eye disorder in individuals, however, smoking can also increase the risk of its prevalence. In the meantime, the macular is part of the eye that can be influenced by smoking as well, making it 4 times more likely to cause macular degeneration.
What are the Symptoms of Eye Diseases Related to Smoking?
Smoking cigarettes hurts a lot of organs in the human body, and it therefore always accelerates aging and increases the risk of a lot of diseases. As it’s mentioned above, diabetic retinopathy, cataracts, and macular degeneration are the serious eye diseases that can be induced by smoking and they happen to be the leading reason of vision loss in the world. And the symptoms of these eye diseases include: