Age-related macular degeneration is a serious eye condition and also one of the major causes behind significant loss of vision in people of age 50 years or more. So, what is this condition? Macula refers to a small part of your retina that is responsible for rendering sharp central vision to you. It is because of macula that you are able to clearly view the objects which are situated right ahead of you. Age-related macular degeneration is related to the deterioration and damage of this important part of retina. Because of the damage to macula, your central vision is lost to a major extent. While you may still retain the peripheral vision in your field of view, the center of your FoV would be darkened or blurred.
On the other hand, there is another eye condition called glaucoma that is just as threatening to the eye health. Glaucoma is linked to causing damage to the optic nerve because of the fluid and pressure building up inside the eye. Because the optic nerve is an important channel of communication of visual information between the retina and the brain, damage to the nerve can lead to vision loss and subsequently blindness. Glaucoma begins its attack first on your peripheral vision and then on central vision.
Macular degeneration and glaucoma both pose severe risks to your vision. There is no direct correlation between these two conditions, but the occurrence of them together can endanger your eye health even furthermore. Let’s take a closer look at the dynamics of what happens when these two diseases attack together.
Age-related macular degeneration neither directly causes glaucoma nor it directly impacts glaucoma’s process in any way. But the macular degeneration does weaken your visual capacity in a general sense thus making your eyes vulnerable to other different eye diseases. While macular degeneration impairs your central vision, your peripheral vision is at primary risk in glaucoma. In case you develop both these eye conditions together, the cumulative damage happening to your vision would be significantly more than the damage that each of these conditions is capable of causing individually. Even though these two diseases won’t actively impact one another, they could together impair a much greater area of your vision.
What this means is that development of age-related macular degeneration and glaucoma together will not only negatively affect the quality of your everyday life, but will also increase the speed of vision loss. To promote a good eye health for yourself it’s important that you do everything in your capacity, in terms of making wise and healthy lifestyle choices, to lower your risk for both these eye conditions. Avoiding smoking, eating a well-balanced diet, wearing appropriate protective eyewear whenever needed, and maintaining a daily exercise routine are just few basic habits that you can follow as you strive to take better care of your eyes. These could ultimately make a huge positive difference in your overall eye health.