Gerstein Eye Institute: LASIK and Cataract Surgery Chicago

4 Simple Ways to Prevent Diabetic Retinopathy

In addition to affecting your blood sugar levels, diabetes can also cause complications with other aspects of your health, including your veins, feet and eyes. Diabetic retinopathy is a condition that causes damage to the blood vessels inside your eyes, particularly those in the retina where light is focused. This damage can lead to poor vision and even blindness over time, so it is crucial to schedule regular visits with your eye doctor if you have diabetes. He or she can help you protect your eye health and prevent your vision from deteriorating.

Take Charge of Your Diabetes

Taking control of your health and your diabetes is one of the most effective to prevent diabetic retinopathy. Monitor your blood sugar levels and blood pressure, and take the necessary steps to keep them in a healthy range. Talk to your primary physician and your ophthalmologist to learn the warning signs of the disease and for tips on managing your condition.

Exercise Regularly

Regular exercise can help keep your body and your eyes healthy. Exercise aids in the maintenance of blood sugar levels, blood pressure, and a healthy circulatory system, which in turn reduces your risk for diabetes complications like diabetic retinopathy.

Visit Your Eye Doctor

Maintaining a schedule of regular checkups and screenings with your eye doctor will help you detect early symptoms of diabetic retinopathy and other vision changes. Early detection of this condition is key to successful treatment, so keep your appointments and contact your ophthalmologist immediately if you notice any changes in or difficulty with your vision.

Don’t Smoke

Keeping your body healthy is always important but becomes especially so when you have diabetes. Smoking not only contributes to poor health but also affects blood vessel function, which can be a contributing factor in the development of eye disease.

Now Hiring: Ophthalmic Technician

Our busy ophthalmology practice is seeking a full-time, experienced ophthalmic technician/assistant to join our outstanding staff.

The successful candidate will have a minimum of one year experience. This position requires organization, teamwork, strong communication skills, and the natural ability to be warm and compassionate to our patients. Bilingual a plus, but not necessary.

Responsibilities include: assisting the Ophthalmologist in chart documentation, patient histories, eye testing, and educating patients on products and services offered by the practice.

Our practice is a state-of-the-art facility, with a pleasant working environment. Our excellent benefit package includes: competitive pay, health  & dental insurance, STD, Life Insurance, 401K with employer matching and paid time off (vacation, sick, personal, and holidays). Our practice is located near the bus and CTA blue line. Free parking is also provided for our employees.

To apply for this rewarding and stimulating career opportunity, applicants should fax a cover letter, explaining why they would be the best candidate for this position along with a resume with salary requirements to (866) 337-3667 or email dtorres@gersteineye.com.

Correcting Vision, Improving Lives: Resources for Further Reading

If you have poor vision, you know that eye problems can significantly impact your quality of life. In addition to the daily maintenance required by glasses or contacts, blurry vision can also prevent you from enjoying your favorite activities. Thankfully, a variety of options exist to treat poor vision and manage vision problems. Talk to your eye doctor to learn what might work for you.

• Being legally blind means your visual acuity is poor even with the help of glasses or contacts, but it isn’t necessarily a permanent condition. Some causes of legal blindness, like cataracts, can be treated to help improve or restore your vision.
• If you suffer from common refractive errors like nearsightedness, farsightedness or astigmatism, ask your eye doctor about LASIK surgery. This procedure can reshape your cornea to improve your vision and enhance quality of life.
• While some degenerative eye conditions like glaucoma or AMD have no cure, getting the appropriate eye care can prevent the disease from progressing or worsening. Learn more about managing your glaucoma with the help of your eye doctor and this guide from the Glaucoma Research Foundation.

Try Out Your Vision On the Go

While only your eye doctor can provide an accurate evaluation and diagnosis of your eyesight, being aware of your vision and any problems you might be experiencing can help you seek out the care you need. With the Vision Test app for the iPhone and iPad, you can test your eyes for potential problems and gain access to a wide array of useful eye facts.

With the Vision Test app, try your hand—and eyes—at acuity, astigmatism and duochrome tests. Using the app can be an entertaining way of learning more about how the eye works and the different capabilities it has. If you have questions or concerns about your test results, schedule an appointment with Dr. Gerstein. Only a professional can provide accurate information about your eye health, but he or she can answer any questions you may have about your vision.

What Does It Mean to Be Legally Blind?

Many of us have blurry vision that requires a dependence on glasses or contacts, but could your vision problems qualify you as legally blind? Characterized by severely diminished eyesight, legal blindness can constitute a wide range of conditions and circumstances. Like others whose myopia or cataracts can be treated through surgery, some patients who are legally blind can have their problems corrected. Others must contend with permanent eyesight issues but can turn to their eye doctor for additional resources and management recommendations.

Definition of Legal Blindness

If visual acuity in your better eye is less than 20/200 even with corrective means applied, you qualify as legally blind. As an illustration, a person who is legally blind would need to stand 20 feet away from an object in order to see it as clearly as a person with 20/20 vision could at 200 feet away.

Degrees of Legal Blindness

Being legally blind can result from a variety of visual impairments. Of those who are legally blind, only 10% are completely without sight. The remainder possess some degree of sight ranging from faint light perception to moderate visual acuity.

Conditions Contributing to Legal Blindness

Legal blindness may develop from a number of physiological and neurological causes. Some individuals are born without sight, while others gradually lose their vision over time due to degenerative diseases. Still others may suddenly lose their eyesight if involved in a traumatic accident or injury. However, legal blindness is not a permanent condition for all those in this group. Some conditions such as cataracts, for example, may be so severe that they reduce a person’s sight to legally blind levels, but with cataract surgery, patients can restore vision to 20/20.