Female Eye Health: How Hormones Affect Your Eyesight Over Time

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Eye health is crucial for men and women alike, but the latter can be affected more by the differences in their bodies. For female eye health, there is a difference in hormones that are secreted in the body, which change with time and are found in greater concentrations than is true for men. 

This entails more eye health concerns that require a greater variety of interventions by eye doctors. The effects of the two main hormones of concern are mentioned below to help you stay aware and take appropriate measures to prevent extreme fluctuations in their levels in your body. 

Estrogen And Progesterone

What do The Hormones Help Achieve?

Estrogen is a female sex hormone that is involved in maturing the female body from the time it enters puberty. From secondary sexual characteristics to developing the female eye health and reproductive system, this hormone plays a vital role during a woman’s puberty, pregnancy, as well as menopause. The progesterone hormone is a steroid sex hormone that heavily functions in regulating the different aspects of womanhood, such as menstruation, pregnancy, and even menopause, among other vital life processes. 

Puberty

The estrogen hormone, in particular, can cause direct vision changes starting in adolescence, where its sudden surge can cause nearsightedness in many developing girls. Your distance vision gets affected, causing blurry eyesight when viewing objects that are present at a far distance. At an eye clinic, you can diagnose your eye problems and acquire optimal solutions to treat them as soon as possible for your benefit. Even during menstruation, estrogen levels rise in the female body and cause minor changes such as constant watering of the eyes. 

Pregnancy

During any trimester of your pregnancy, experiencing any blurred vision or focusing issues can also be expected, as estrogen can cause such side effects with its increased concentrations in the body. The effects are expected to last in the body long after pregnancy and often fade with time as the hormones in the body revert to their original concentrations. This can be expected after the mother ends the practice of breastfeeding her child, as milk production is also influenced by these two hormones. 

Menopause 

As women enter menopause, dry eyes often accompany various body changes. Female eye health often begins to depend on a lot more tablets and medications, such as antihistamines and even antidepressants, as their body reveals drastic changes with the shift in reproductive life. These medicines often place women at an increased risk for dry eyes, a condition wherein the eyes cannot keep themselves lubricated; hence, they need interventions to reduce discomfort. This is caused by the decline in estrogen levels that otherwise function to increase the cornea’s elasticity and the oil gland production around the eyes. 

Addressing Hysterectomy

Hysterectomy, also known as the surgical removal of the uterus, a part of the female reproductive system, can also present changes and alterations to the female’s vision. Eye specialists have observed an initial change in patients’ eyesight undergoing this procedure. Vision often stabilizes and returns to normal once hormone replacement therapy is started to recover the body from the lost hormone surges and levels. 

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