Macular degeneration, often called age-related macular degeneration (AMD) because it is seen mostly in people over 60, is an eye disease that destroys central vision over time and is the leading cause of severe vision loss in the elderly.
It doesn’t cause complete blindness because it only effects the retina, which controls only central vision. This is horrible enough though; imagine having a big hole in your vision right in the central place where you are trying to look.
What Causes Macular Degeneration?
In order to understand the cause of AMD, you need to know a little bit about the structure of your eye. The retina is located at the back of your eye and controls the light coming in. The very center of the retina is called the macula, which is made up of tiny bundles of nerves called rods and cones. Light shines onto the macula and the millions of nerves transform the light into images that your brain perceives as vision. The retina only controls central vision which is why complete blindness doesn’t occur.
What happens with AMD is that the blood vessels that nourish the macula become brittle and fail to keep the macula healthy. The nerves begin to die and you start getting tiny blind spots in your central vision. There are two types or phases of AMD; dry and wet. Dry is the least severe and is nearly always how macular degeneration starts.
With dry AMD, the macula start to die at a faster pace than usually occurs during the aging process. You might not notice anything wrong for quite awhile. Your retina gets yellow deposits that cause your vision to deteriorate. Sometimes only one eye is affected at first but it almost always ends up affecting both eyes. This type can range from very mild blurred vision to losing your central vision entirely.
With wet AMD, what should appear to you as a straight line will appear wavy or crooked and you’ll start to notice blind spots in your vision. Sight loss with this form is much faster more severe; it will probably lead to legal blindness.
Risk Factors for Macular Degeneration
In addition to being genetic, there are several other factors that doctors have noticed as contributing to AMD. These include smoking, eating a high-fat diet and obesity. Women and Caucasians are also more likely to develop the disease.
How Does the Doctor Test for Macular Degeneration?
If your doctor suspects wet AMD he will give you drops to dilate your pupils and will do a test called a fluorescein angiography. He will inject dye into your arm and then take pictures of the blood vessels in your eye to look for leaking vessels. If he is looking for dry AMD, he will have you cover one eye and look at an Amsler grid, which is a grid with a dot in the middle. If the lines appear wavy, you probably have dry AMD.
Treatment
There is no treatment for advanced macular degeneration but lasik surgery may be done to stop the blood vessels from leaking. Also, some studies indicate that a special combination of vitamins may help slow the disease if it isn’t too severe, so finding a quality eye supplement can be of great help.
Unfortunately, there is no way to reverse AMD so the best course of action is to see your doctor regularly and try to catch it early. Also, eat a healthy diet and maintain a healthy weight. This is just good policy in general; your whole body will thank you.
