Finished the hands and knees – or actually hands and butt; my shorts have a wet seat to prove it! – scrubbing of my kitchen floor. One chore down!
Of course while I was down there I realized the next thing I should do is wipe down all the lower cupboard and closet doors. Things look a lot cleaner when you can’t see them.
I kept thinking “For this, I did 6 ½ years of college?”. Still had to be done. I am thinking that now, instead of doing a task when it looks like it needs it, maybe I should get a schedule. Won’t happen, but already lax housekeeping and low vision may prove to be a very nasty combination.
So now back to something a little more, shall we say, intellectual. Checked online and found some newer information being published by the Macular Degeneration Association. The one article says that AMD and telangiectasia might be caused by faulty energy metabolism in the mitochondria.
This phrase appears to be becoming popular on the lecture circuit: let us unpack that; shall we? ? Gee, did I sound professorial?
According to Kierstan Boyd, writing for the American Academy of Ophthalmology, macular telangiectasia, MacTel to it’s friends, is a macular disease causing central vision loss. In type 2, blood vessels under the macula swell and/or leak. Fluid causes the macula to swell and thicken (edema). Scar tissue forms. Type 1 is type 2 in one eye only.
Sounds similar to AMD without the RPE deaths and that divot that lets people see our choroids.
Mitochondria? Wikipedia gives us a lot of info we don’t need. The info we want is mitochondria combine oxygen and nutrients and produce ATP. ATP is a source of chemical energy for your cells. In short, your cells work and you live because of mitochondria.
Discovered from the article that retinas have more mitochondria and use more energy than any other cell in the body.
I had known eyes are energy hogs, but I did not realize they were the worst, gas-guzzlers of the body!
The findings of the study suggest there may be something wrong with the lipid (fat) sensors associated with this energy production. The sensors think they have lots of lipids stockpiled for energy production. They send out a message saying not to deliver any glucose (sugar) to burn. “Stockpiles are full. Stop all deliveries!”. The problem is, the sensors are wrong and more supplies really are needed. Energy-starved, the photoreceptor start screaming to be fed. This leads to new, inferior vessel formation and leaks leaving us with either wet AMD or MacTel.
So here we are with one more, ‘new’ eye disorder and another theory on what is going on in our poor, misbehaving eyeballs. Never heard of MacTel before, but if you have MacTel and you are reading this, welcome! It sounds as if the end results put us all in the same boat. Once again, we are on this journey together.