All a bit blurred.

I was diagnosed 3 weeks ago and I am still working hard to stabilise my levels. I am so glad that I have joined and read this thread as I am suffering badly with blurred vision making typing this a little hard !
I am now reassured that I do not need to dash to the opticians which I was planning to do and will wait, probably not patiently as I am a great reader, for my vision to return.



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When diagnosed I went from 20/20 to short sighted. After a couple of months my eyes readjusted. Though now I need reading glasses. However, having the symptoms of hypoglycemia, I constantly get blurred vision most evenings and only sleep will return it to normal. You will get your regular eye checks to check any degradation.

Vision changes are pretty common with large changes in your blood glucose. As my doctor explained to me, it's caused by the change in the glucose levels of the fluid in your eyeballs; higher glucose changes the optical properties of the fluid. So if you suddenly change that (for instance by discovering you have diabetes and then managing your blood glucose level) it will change your vision.

In my case, I have perfect far vision, but need reading glasses for close up. I noticed about 3 or 4 years ago, that my vision suddenly got better! I didn't need as strong a reading glasses prescription - it moved from +2.5 diopters to about +1.75 diopters. But when I was diagnosed with diabetes 10 weeks ago, then brought my blood sugar levels down, I ended up having to get new glasses. Guess what the new prescription was... back to +2.5 diopters. The silver lining is that it gives evidence of when diabetes set in for me.

So I think the reason people report blurry vision is if that high glucose levels make you more nearsighted. This would cause your vision to be blurry, like suddenly becoming nearsighted. Then when glucose goes down, vision goes the other way to being less nearsighted.

That's my theory, at least!

P.S. i should probably point out that this is a completely different mechanism from what causes diabetic retinopathy. (You know, the thing that can cause you to go blind.) Retinopathy is caused by damage to the small blood vessels in the back of the eye caused by high sugar levels, causing them to essentially burst and obstruct vision.

Having vision changes or blurred vision doesn't mean you have retinopathy. My scan came up perfectly clean, no retinopathy at all.

I'm having the same blurred vision. Was short sighted and now can drive without the glasses but now need reading glasses have borrowed my husband's temporarily it's very odd. My bloods dropped from 28 to about 12 in a week since being on insulin so my body is very confused.