How Smoking Can Affect Your Vision

Studies reveal that most chronic ocular diseases are usually associated with smoking. When a person takes a puff of a cigarette, the smoke is inhaled into the lungs and the toxic elements entering the body travels to other parts through blood or tissue. Since the eye is made of fluid and tissue, and it constantly absorbs nutrients and oxygen from the tears as you blink. If there is pollution in the air, it affects your eyes; so the more you smoke, your eyes are exposed to the pollutants.

There are around 600 ingredients in cigarettes and they produce almost 7000 chemicals in tobacco smoke, several of them are toxic. Some of the chemicals are - Butane, Carbon monoxide, Methane, Acetone, Formaldehyde, Cadmium, Arsenic, Tar, Benzene, Ammonia, Methanol, Lead, etc.


Reasons, why one should kick the habit as early as possible, are - Tobacco chemical damage blood vessels in the eyes; it causes biological changes in the eyes that can lead to vision loss. Smoking causes oxidative stress and damages retina, it is also a key factor for AMD. The chemicals interfere with the production of tears and also reduce the amount of oxygen reaching the macula.

Smoking is one of the major risk factors in the development of cataract and also diabetic retinopathy. It also increases the risk of dry eye syndrome and is also associated with the development of thyroid eye disease. Nicotine poisoning also leads to color vision deficiency and are also twice as likely to suffer Uveitis as non-smokers. Smoking in pregnancy increases the risk of your child having a squint, also your loved ones risk of suffering sight loss increases.