Night blindness is not a disease

Your vision becomes blurry at night or hard to see in dim light? Maybe you have nyctalopia or night blindness. This condition occurs when cells in the retina that help see in the dark, experience interference. You need to know beforehand that night blindness is not a disease, but rather a sign or symptom of a certain underlying disease. For this reason, do not take it for granted as night blindness, this condition requires careful examination and proper handling to be overcome.

Characteristics of Night blindness

For those of you who experience night blindness, its characteristics can be recognized when carrying out daily activities, such as the following:

• Difficult to see the road when driving at night.
• It's hard to see around when walking in a dark place, for example in a movie theater.
• It's hard to see stars in the sky.

In addition, another symptom of night blindness is the difficulty of seeing in the dark, your vision may deteriorate during the transition from bright to dark rooms. To help clarify this complaint, try to compare it with the vision of others around you. If other people can still see clearly under poor lighting, then you are most likely to experience night blindness.

Disease That Causes Nearsightedness

Some diseases or conditions that may cause night blindness symptoms:

• Vitamin A deficiency

One of the bad effects that can occur in the eyes when vitamin A deficiency is keratomalacia. Keratomalacia is a disorder in both eyes. In addition to dry eyes, your first sign of having this condition may be night blindness.

• Nearsightedness or myopia

Without the aid of correction of glasses or contact lenses, people with myopia have difficulty seeing distant objects.

• Cataract

Lenses that should be clear become turbid in people with cataracts. This makes your views unclear.

• Glaucoma

This condition is often associated with pressure buildup in the eyeball (intraocular pressure). Glaucoma can damage your optic nerve (the organ that transmits images to the brain) and make it worse over time.

• Diabetes

Uncontrolled diabetes in the long term can make sufferers vulnerable to eye disorders.

• Keratonocus

Keratonocus sufferers have thin corneas and over time, the cornea can turn into cones. This makes vision blurry and sensitive to light.

• Retinitis pigmentosa (RP)

This is a hereditary eye disease. This condition occurs when the retina is filled with dark pigments.

• Usher syndrome

One of the symptoms of this condition is retinitis pigmentosa or RP. This condition includes hereditary diseases that affect vision and hearing.

• The effect of certain drugs

The use of drugs for glaucoma can make the pupils narrow, causing side effects such as night blindness.

How to deal with night blindness

Overcoming night blindness must be adjusted to the cause. To find out that, the doctor will trace your medical history and do a physical examination of the eye. After that, maybe the doctor will do a blood test to find out sugar and vitamin A levels in the body. Here's how to deal with it according to the cause:

• Vitamin A deficiency may be overcome by taking vitamin A supplements.
• Keratonocus light can be overcome by using glasses or contact lenses. But for most people, contact lenses are the most effective way. For severe corneal thinning that cannot be treated with contact lenses, a surgical pathway may be needed.
• If night blindness is caused by myopia, the way to overcome it is to use glasses that are adjusted to your minus.
• For people with cataracts, you can undergo surgery to replace cloudy eye lenses with clear, artificial eye lenses.
• Use eye drops from a doctor to reduce eye pressure in glaucoma sufferers. This drug works by reducing the formation of fluid in the eye. Use of oral drugs, surgery, or laser therapy can also be done if treatment with eye drops alone is ineffective.
• If you experience night blindness due to drug use, do not immediately stop taking it. Consult your doctor first before lowering the dose or stop taking it.

You should not drive at night or do activities in the dark, to avoid accidents or other risks. Consult an ophthalmologist to get further treatment of night blindness.