Damage from diabetes can occur in different areas of the eye. It can occur to the cornea, nerves controlling the muscles of the eye, the lens, optic nerve and retina. The retina is the complication that most people and medical professionals think of first in terms of diabetic complications.

Diabetic retinopathy is simply damage to the light sensitive retina. This damage is brought about by hyperglycemia, the medical term for high blood sugar. Retinopathy is directly responsible for approximately 12,000 to 24,000 cases of legal blindness every year in the USA alone. It is reported that there are over 200,000 cases each year globally.

Diabetic complications are even more insidious than these numbers because there are several other types of diabetic eye disease created wholly or in part by high blood sugar in diabetics.

What Can Be Done To Prevent Eye Disease?

It stands to reason that the more informed a person is about a particular situation the better equipped they will be to handle it. Diabetic eye disease is just such a case in point. We need to think of the whole person and not just the eyes when discussing diabetic education because diabetic complications run from eye disease, heart disease, nerve damage, kidney damage, etc. Although benfotiamine has been found useful for all of the above, for the sake of this article in terms of prevention, we will discuss diabetic eye disease in terms of diabetic retinopathy.

Diabetic retinopathy is a disease that every diabetic faces the possibility of suffering from somewhere in the course of their disease. The better patients of diabetes are equipped to handle their disease, the lower their risk that they will develop retinopathy. If retinopathy does develop in a patient who is doing all he/she can do to lessen the impact of blood sugar on their bodies, the better chance that they can live productive lives despite the complications and the slower such complications will progress.

What Works Best?

Unfortunately, there are very few options that are showing much promise for the diabetic in terms of diabetic complications. Benfotiamine has been suggested recently to be a strong deterrent against the development of diabetic retinopathy and also shown to slow its progression significantly if it develops. It is showing great promise in the arena of retinopathy, neuropathy and heart/circulatory conditions brought about by excess sugar in the cells.

Benfotiamine, a lipid soluble derivative of water soluble vitamin B1 (thiamine), has been used for the past 12 years in Europe for the treatment of neuropathy, retinopathy as well as heart and circulatory conditions and has shown no adverse effects.

Much of the current research on benfotiamine can be discovered by typing the term benfotiamine into a search engine such as google, AOL, yahoo, etc.

Conclusion

Diabetic complications are a reality that must be an accepted possibility for every diabetic. Diabetic education is highly necessary so that the diabetic community is able to make informed decisions as to their treatment and prevention methodologies. There are few things that show great promise in preventing and/or helping neuropathy, retinopathy, heart and circulatory problems brought about by diabetes. Keeping blood sugar levels close to normal along with adequate exercise in line with the abilities of each individual has shown to help slow the onset of diabetic complications.

Benfotiamine is a nutritional supplement that has shown to be helpful in Europe over the past 12 years in terms of diabetic complications and is now available in the United States, and might be worth the time to investigate further. How about for the diabetic who faces the insidious nature of diabetic complications?

Zach Malott is CEO of Brentwood Health International, a nutritional supplement company involved in distribution and supplying wholesale, retail and end users.