Eye tissues provide vital clues as to your overall health. An optometrist may be able to tell if you have diabetes or high blood pressure by the shape and presence of retinal blood vessels and cholesterol deposits on retina.

Cholesterol deposits often present themselves as white or gray rings around the cornea known as xanthelasma.

1. Detection of Cholesterol Levels

Cholesterol is an essential substance in your body that serves multiple important purposes, from building cell membranes and producing sex hormones to synthesizing vitamin D. But excess levels increase your risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke; so regular cholesterol tests should be undertaken.

High cholesterol levels can be detected via laboratory blood test; however, this process is lengthy as you must fast for nine to 12 hours prior to taking the exam.

One of the telltale signs of high cholesterol levels is yellowed skin or small fatty bumps around the eyes – known as xanthelasmas – which signal high cholesterol levels but do not impair vision. Although they don’t affect vision directly, xanthelasmas should serve as a warning signal that needs to be checked soon.

Corneal Arcus, also known as Familial Hypercholesterolemia (which indicates high cholesterol throughout the body), can also serve as an indication of high cholesterol.

Eye exams can also reveal other indicators of potential health problems, including Graves’ disease – associated with dysfunctional thyroids – where symptoms include protruding eyeballs and changes to pupil size on one side only.

Recently, a research team developed a system to help individuals detect cholesterol levels through images of their eyes. This process involved preprocessing 60 training and 30 test images and features extraction using FLBP; CRM-filipin was found to provide good discriminative power while remaining easy for use.

2. Preventive Measures

Many of the same diseases that cause high cholesterol in your bloodstream can also damage the eyes. An eye exam is necessary to detect these problems before they have an opportunity to pose serious threats to either your health or vision.

Example: An accumulation of cholesterol in the retina can block arteries and restrict blood flow to the eye, ultimately leading to stroke. Your optometrist can detect this problem by closely inspecting your blood vessels in your retina for signs of blockage; they can also identify symptoms related to thyroid disease like protruding eyeballs or dry eyes caused by too much or too little thyroid hormone production.

Your eye doctor is also well-equipped to identify diabetes, which poses a high risk of diabetic retinopathy – damage to the optic nerve due to diabetes. A regular eye exam can prevent this issue; in particular, pregnant women must get one prior to conception and throughout each trimester of gestation.

Your optometrist can also detect high blood pressure in the eye, which is potentially lethal if left uncontrolled. Changes to your eye’s blood vessels lead to swelling, hemorrhages and leakage – and can often be detected before regular doctors recognize its existence and treat it successfully before cardiovascular problems or other related ailments arise.

Some ways that can reduce your risks for health conditions that affect eye health and vision include eating a well-rounded diet rich in dark leafy vegetables and omega-3 rich fish such as salmon. Exercise can also be helpful. Smoking increases your risk for macular degeneration, cataracts and diabetic retinopathy and should therefore be discontinued as soon as possible.

3. Treatment

Eyes are often considered the “windows to our soul.” From a health standpoint, they’re also invaluable indicators of total body wellness; studies have demonstrated that an eye exam can detect 20+ diseases early on – such as diabetes, high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol.

High cholesterol levels can contribute to the formation of xanthelasma – fatty deposits in the skin surrounding your eyes – known as lesions. While they don’t pose any direct health threats, they may obstruct vision. As such, it may be recommended that these lesions are removed as soon as they appear; the best time would be before they have grown larger in size. Likewise, your eye doctor in Brooklyn, NY can assist in taking preventative steps to stop future lesions from developing altogether.

Your eye doctor is well equipped to detect signs of cancer within the structures and surroundings of your eye and its immediate environment. Basal cell, squamous cell and melanoma skin cancers often appear near or on the outer surfaces of the eye or its surroundings; other cancer types, including lymphoma or leukemia can also appear within its interior structures or on its outer surfaces.

Your eye care specialist should also assess for abnormalities in the back of your retina and macula, which could indicate wet age-related macular degeneration (wet AMD). Wet AMD is characterized by new blood vessel growth beneath central retina/macula, leading to bleeding, leaking or exudative damage of central vision resulting from bleeding blood vessels beneath these areas resulting in bleeding, leaking and exudative damage of central vision.

Your eye care provider can test for abnormal blood vessels in your retina using an Amsler grid test, using a special color chart. This simple procedure can detect distortion or waviness in your vision that might indicate blood vessel abnormalities that pose health risks to you and others.

4. Prevention

Eye exams provide a window into one’s overall health. An extensive eye exam can detect 20 or more disease conditions that might otherwise remain undetected by other medical tests.

Arteriosclerosis, in particular, can reduce bloodflow to the retina and choroid, leading to decreased visual acuity from blocked or clotted vessels that destroy retina cells and ultimately vision loss. A simple eye test that injects dye into retinal blood vessels can detect such blockages.

High blood pressure can have detrimental effects on the eyes. With elevated blood pressure, fluid that fills your blood vessels may leak out through their walls, leading to vision loss or eye diseases like glaucoma or diabetic retinopathy.

Cancers that manifest early signs in the eye include basal cell, squamous cell and melanoma cancers that appear on the outer layers of skin; leukemia and lymphoma that metastasize to tissues surrounding eyes; breast, lung, and other bodily cancers that change interior structures of eyes; as well as breast, lung and other bodily cancers that alter its interior structures. A recent study showed that those diagnosed with diabetes, high blood pressure or cholesterol through early diagnosis during routine eye exams experienced reduced health plan costs as well as reduced lost work time and termination rates than those without such early diagnosis.