What Causes Cataracts?
Facts About Smoking and Your 20 20 Vision

What causes cataracts? It just might be the long term effects of cigarette smoking.

The facts about smoking reveal that one of the four major risk factors for developing cataracts is smoking. Losing your 20 20 vision is one of the real dangers of cigarette smoking.

There are many known causes of cataracts including diseases like syphilis, fetal exposure to rubella, steroid drug therapy, diabetes, radiation and trauma.

These are a few things on the list of what causes cataracts but aging still seems to be the most significant factor overall in the development of cataracts.

Development of Cataracts

As a person gets older the lens of the eye becomes less and less transparent eventually becoming so cloudy that light cannot pass through and vision is affected, goodbye 20 20 vision!

Cataracts are a condition associated with aging but why the lens undergoes the changes that lead to cataracts is not completely understood. What is known is that the structure of the protein fibers in the lens of the eye begin to breakdown over time so that could be the explanation of what causes cataracts in most people as they age.

Attention is now being paid to what factors cause or contribute to this protein breakdown.

Facts About Smoking and Your Vision

Smoking has long been identified as one of the factors that increases your risk to develop cataracts.

Cigarette smoking is now known to be a risk factor because epidemiological studies have determined that the incidence of cataracts in smokers is higher than in people who have never smoked.

Somehow smoking accelerates the development of cataracts. There is lots of evidence to suggest that this is somehow related to the overall effect of smoking on prematurely aging your body. Probably because of the presence of the free radicals in the body that build up over time from cigarette smoking.

One possibility that has been suggested is damage caused by unstable molecules known as free radicals. Smoking and exposure to the ultraviolet (UV) light rays such as in sun exposure are two sources of free radicals in the body.

This is the same mechanism that causes the skin to wrinkle and age prematurely. Not only are the chemicals contained in a cigarette circulating through your entire body, but they are also swirling around your face and your eyes causing damage to the tissue externally.

Your vision can be affected by cataracts, but restoration of vision by removal of the cataract and implantation of an artificial lens is one of the most common surgeries performed today.

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