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If you've ever had problems with your eyesight you know just how precious good vision is. Having your eyes examined can be an excellent way to help protect their health.
Eye examinations are obviously good for your eyes, but it's not just your eyes that will benefit from such scrutiny. Eye doctors often find early signs of disease and disorders in other parts of the body.
An eye doctor has a clear view of blood vessels in and around the eyes. This can tell them quite a bit about other parts of the body.
Dr. Noel Bairey Merz, director of the Women's Heart Center at Cedars Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles, said that vitreous fluid is transparent. Looking through the iris' opening makes it possible for an eye specialist to clearly see blood vessels.
Dr. Marco Zarbin, chief of ophthalmology at the University of Medicine, Dentistry, New Jersey said that diseases such as brain tumors, leukemia, and multiple sclerosis are frequently identified by the use of an eye examination.
An eye exam can reveal the existence of bleeding from blood vessels or from the eye. It can also uncover swelling in a part of the eye called the macula.
An eye examination can issue warnings for health problems in your body like high cholesterol, hypertension and diabetes. Possibly as many as one-third of all Americans with diabetes are not aware that they are diabetic.
Sickle cell anemia, jaundice, and spondyloarthritis (inflammatory rheumatic diseases) can be discovered through an eye exam.
Gardner syndrome is a genetic disorder that may be revealed to an eye doctor by lesions that are found on the retina. Gardner syndrome is linked with colon growths or polyps, bony tumors of the skull, and more teeth than is normal.
Eye examinations have proven to be very helpful methods of identifying health problems without having to use an arsenal of invasive, complicated, and stressful tests.
Research that has come out of the University of Edinburgh has found that potential heart attack patients may be alerted to hitherto unrecognized cardiovascular problems and cardiac disease because of having had an eye examination. To predict the possibility of heart attack, vessels behind the eye are examined.
Similar research has been done in the United States by Women's Ischemia Syndrome Evaluation. This was financially supported by the National Institutes of Health. The study looked into the possibility of being able to identify risks of the eyes' microvasculature by examination of the eye.
Jody Smith is a freelance writer for Empowher.com
Sources:
Why Are Eye Exams Important?
http://www.allaboutvision.com/eye-exam/importance.htm
Get An Eye Exam: Arthritis to Cancer Seen in Eye
Related Links:
Is It Time for an Eye Exam?
http://www.empowher.com/nearsightedness/content/it-time-eye-exam
The Importance of Eye Examinations
http://www.empowher.com/eyes-amp-vision/content/importance-eye-examinations
Eye Makeup Tips for the Visually Impaired
http://www.empowher.com/beauty/content/eye-makeup-tips-visually-impaired
