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Dry eye

The Link Between Diabetes And Dry Eye (press release)

Wednesday, April 06, 2005
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
Tags: dry eye, health news, Natural News


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If you have diabetes there is about a 50-50 chance that you have dry eye. Dry eye is characterized by dryness, burning or sandy-gritty irritation in the eyes that gets worse as the day goes on. Dry eye in diabetes is a result of decreased corneal sensation or relative numbness of the surface of the eye. This relative numbness of the surface of the eye has also been associated with diabetic retinopathy. What is dry eye, what causes it and what can be done about it?

The tears on the surface of the eye are a salt solution. The surface of the eye needs these tears because the delicate living cells on the surface of the eye have no blood supply—it has a tear supply instead. So rather than getting important things like oxygen and electrolytes from the blood, it gets them from the watery layer of the tears. This watery layer is so important that it is covered by a layer of oil produced by the oil glands in the eyelid that protects it from evaporation.

The first thing that happens when an eye becomes dry is that the tears lose water and become too salty. Just like when you throw salt on a wound it causes stinging and burning, when your tears become too salty they cause stinging and burning of the eye surface. As the eyes become drier this becomes a sandy-gritty irritation of the eyes.

Dry eye is one of the most common conditions affecting the eyes. It affects approximately 14% of people over the age of forty, and the prevalence increases with age. This is because there are so many ways to get dry eye. Anything that decreases tear production or increases tear evaporation may cause dry eye.

Long-term hard contact lens wear, LASIK eye surgery, certain viral infections of the cornea, and diabetes all may cause decreased corneal sensation and, with it, the decrease in tear production that results in dry-eye irritation.

Many people choose to treat dry eyes with eye drops. It used to be that all artificial tears were pretty much the same. They were designed to cover up the dry spots that appear on the eye in advanced cases of dry eye. These drops were developed before it was realized that dry spots don’t cause dry eye but are a result of the tears becoming too salty. These drops would provide temporary relief of dry eye but the dry eye would never get better.

Recently it was discovered that just as the electrolytes in the blood are biologically active, the electrolytes in the tear film are biologically active as well. It turns out that if the content of an artificial tear does not precisely match this electrolyte balance, the drop can “starve” the surface of the electrolytes it needs and decrease the quantity of lubrication. So in effect, with these drops, patients take one step forward, but also one step back.

There is another way to accelerate dry eye relief, and possibly even obtain complete dry eye relief. In a study of nearly 33,000 female health professionals it was found that the more omega-3s they ate, the lower their risk for dry eye. This is actually the third study that has linked dry eye to a dietary deficiency of omega-3s. Omega-3s are “essential fatty acids” that are scarce in the American diet. They can be obtained from salmon, sardines, herring, and tuna.

Tuna is the number one source of omega-3s in the American diet, but now the FDA warns Americans not to eat it more than twice a week because of problems with high mercury content. To provide a healthy source of omega-3s for relief of dry eye irritation for those who won’t, don’t or can’t eat sardines every day, TheraTears Nutrition for Dry Eyes (omega-3 supplement with flaxseed oil, fish oil and vitamin E) is a great way to get the omega-3s that you need.

The omega-3s in TheraTears Nutrition seems to help provide dry eye relief in three ways. First, omega-3s improve eye comfort by suppressing inflammation. Second, the oil glands in the eyelid use essential fatty acids to manufacture the oil layer of the tear film. TheraTears Nutrition provides the omega-3s your oil glands need to make a healthy protective layer of oil that coats the tear film and makes dry eyes feel better. Finally, the omega-3s work together to protect the tear gland and help it make more tear fluid.

In addition to soothing the symptoms of dry eye, omega-3s carry other benefits for diabetics. High dietary intake of omega-3s correlates with a lower incidence of type 2 diabetes, omega-3 have been shown to reduce elevated triglycerides in non-insulin dependent diabetics, and even more importantly, omega-3s reduce the risk of death from coronary heart disease and total mortality in diabetic women.

If you have dry eye and diabetes, you are not alone. There are excellent treatments available that can greatly add to your health and comfort.


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About the author:Mike Adams (aka the "Health Ranger") is a best selling author (#1 best selling science book on Amazon.com) and a globally recognized scientific researcher in clean foods. He serves as the founding editor of NaturalNews.com and the lab science director of an internationally accredited (ISO 17025) analytical laboratory known as CWC Labs. There, he was awarded a Certificate of Excellence for achieving extremely high accuracy in the analysis of toxic elements in unknown water samples using ICP-MS instrumentation. Adams is also highly proficient in running liquid chromatography, ion chromatography and mass spectrometry time-of-flight analytical instrumentation.

Adams is a person of color whose ancestors include Africans and Native American Indians. He's also of Native American heritage, which he credits as inspiring his "Health Ranger" passion for protecting life and nature against the destruction caused by chemicals, heavy metals and other forms of pollution.

Adams is the founder and publisher of the open source science journal Natural Science Journal, the author of numerous peer-reviewed science papers published by the journal, and the author of the world's first book that published ICP-MS heavy metals analysis results for foods, dietary supplements, pet food, spices and fast food. The book is entitled Food Forensics and is published by BenBella Books.

In his laboratory research, Adams has made numerous food safety breakthroughs such as revealing rice protein products imported from Asia to be contaminated with toxic heavy metals like lead, cadmium and tungsten. Adams was the first food science researcher to document high levels of tungsten in superfoods. He also discovered over 11 ppm lead in imported mangosteen powder, and led an industry-wide voluntary agreement to limit heavy metals in rice protein products.

In addition to his lab work, Adams is also the (non-paid) executive director of the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center (CWC), an organization that redirects 100% of its donations receipts to grant programs that teach children and women how to grow their own food or vastly improve their nutrition. Through the non-profit CWC, Adams also launched Nutrition Rescue, a program that donates essential vitamins to people in need. Click here to see some of the CWC success stories.

With a background in science and software technology, Adams is the original founder of the email newsletter technology company known as Arial Software. Using his technical experience combined with his love for natural health, Adams developed and deployed the content management system currently driving NaturalNews.com. He also engineered the high-level statistical algorithms that power SCIENCE.naturalnews.com, a massive research resource featuring over 10 million scientific studies.

Adams is well known for his incredibly popular consumer activism video blowing the lid on fake blueberries used throughout the food supply. He has also exposed "strange fibers" found in Chicken McNuggets, fake academic credentials of so-called health "gurus," dangerous "detox" products imported as battery acid and sold for oral consumption, fake acai berry scams, the California raw milk raids, the vaccine research fraud revealed by industry whistleblowers and many other topics.

Adams has also helped defend the rights of home gardeners and protect the medical freedom rights of parents. Adams is widely recognized to have made a remarkable global impact on issues like GMOs, vaccines, nutrition therapies, human consciousness.

In addition to his activism, Adams is an accomplished musician who has released over a dozen popular songs covering a variety of activism topics.

Click here to read a more detailed bio on Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, at HealthRanger.com.

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