So, I came back from lunch last week and all of the sudden felt like I was going blind in one eye. I pretty quickly noticed that if I could squint I could see a very large gray spot in the middle of my vision in my right eye. I got in to see an ophthalmologist the following day who examined me and then referred me to a retinal specialist, who I saw yesterday. Turns out I have Central Serous Retinopathy in both eyes, though I wasn’t noticing it in my left eye because the blister was on the periphery of my vision. After 3-4 years of recurring health problems (hernias, diabetes and related stuff, debilitating bacterial infections) I finally had a year of no problems in 2005. So much for clear sailing in 2006. Anyway this is the bad news – I can’t see very well. The good news is while the causes of this are not well understood, in most cases it clears itself up within 6 months all on its own. I have to do a daily eye chart exam on myself to track the progression of the blind spot, and if things get worse it’s back to the specialist for more examinations and possible surgery. But if as expected things slowly get better, I’ll be in the clear by the middle of the summer, and the only lingering aftereffect of this will be that I get to see a retinal specialist once a year for pictures of my eye to make sure there are no recurrences or other retinal issues. The other good news is that my immediate thought when I saw the blind spot was ‘fuck, it’s the diabetes, I’m going blind already, despite such good control over it.’ Turns out it has nothing to do with any of that which was a tremendous relief to me. The last bit of good news was that a previously known condition I have in my right eye, Pigmentary Dispersion (sometimes a precursor to glaucoma) was basically unchanged and was no cause for worry.

There’s a sort of humorous aside to this in that when I was undergoing the first examination the doctor asked me if I had ever suffered trauma to my right eye, as it’s often a cause of pigmentary dispersion syndrome. At the time I couldn’t recall anything but then on the ride home I had this vivid memory of my jr/high school era friend Mark Ross plinking me in the right eye with a snail when we were in high school during a crazed snail fight (there were millions of them on the beach during low tide at Caumsett State Park). It broke my contact lens in my eye and caused poor vision for days in that eye. So, it’s all Mark Ross’s fault. If I go blind I’ll have to track him down and give him grief about it.

So via my previous post you have some sense of the harm corn syrup is doing to us. How did things get to this point, where corn syrup is found so pervasively in our foods? Check out this post for the details. The short version is: lobbying and government subsidies, with the Archer Daniels Midlands company as the villain.

This has come up a couple of times in email and IM conversations I’ve had over the past month or so, the fact that there is evidence that there is a link between the increased intake of high fructose (and other forms) of corn syrup over the past couple of decades and the increased rate of type II diabetes in north Americans. I had lost the link I had to the first research I had read on the subject. I watch a lot of medical RSS feeds and fortunately this came through today. It’s dense, but it lays out the case pretty comprehensively. The short version for folks who can’t spend the time to read it: read the labels on your food carefully. Avoid prepackaged, pre-prepared foodstuffs, soft drinks, and prepackaged sweetened beverages in general, and above all avoid corn syrup and all its derivatives. There was a recent article in the NY Times which showed that 33% of the kids born in NYC within the last 5 years will develop type II diabetes. It’s an epidemic and no one is immune – learn to watch what you eat.

All of this is just a part of it of course – a balanced, healthy diet and regular exercise are just as important, but the above stuff is actually the easiest thing to do – stop buying the 20 oz. cokes at lunch and microwaving that chef boyardee ravioli, your endocrine system will thank you.