What is macular degeneration? This condition is one of the most common causes of vision impairment, and develops in three stages. Early macular degeneration doesn’t cause obvious symptoms in your daily life and is harder to diagnose. The intermediate stage has mild symptoms, but the late stage is significantly disabling and can make driving dangerous. To prevent this, patients in Glenview, Illinois, are increasingly turning to therapies such as acupuncture.
Symptoms of Macular Degeneration
Unlike diabetic retinopathy, macular degeneration causes a loss of central vision. Another difference is that straight lines can appear wavy, or you notice blank spots and must turn your head to see something.
The two types of macular degeneration, wet and dry MD, have one key difference. As dry macular degeneration involves the macula being worn down, vision loss is always gradual. The wet form involves inappropriate blood vessel growth, and because these are less resilient than healthy vessels they will eventually break and damage the retina. This increases the risk of sudden vision loss.
What is the Main Cause of Macular Degeneration?
Macular degeneration is driven by aging, which is itself driven partly by inflammation. Some factors that increase this inflammation are smoking, being overweight or obese, lack of exercise, and a diet high in nutrient-poor processed foods. Wet MD includes an excess of VEGF, a growth factor that encourages blood vessel development, as an underlying contributor.
Treatments for Macular Degeneration
Macular degeneration therapy is inadequate in conventional medicine. Wet AMD, which affects only 10-15% of patients, can be treated with medications that reduce VEGF, and the dry form can be slowed with antioxidant supplementation.
Acupuncture for macular degeneration is a new treatment that Vadim Dekhtyar, DACM is proud to offer at Life Balance Clinic. The AcuNova system of AcuVision was developed by Danish acupuncturist John Boel, and uses acupuncture points on the hands and feet that benefit eye health when stimulated correctly. One study shows an average improvement in vision of 27%, an amazing result when you consider that macular degeneration worsens over time and other treatments only slow the disease.
German research shows that the points used in AcuNova can effectively improve or stabilize macular degeneration, even though the condition is usually age-related and becomes worse over time. In a Chinese trial of 47 patients, acupuncture treatment led to greater benefits in symptoms such as blurred vision, eye fatigue, and distorted vision compared to supplementation with vitamins C and E. Seemingly unrelated symptoms improved too, such as poor memory, constipation, and lower back pain. These were related to Chinese medicine’s syndrome patterns, however.
New treatments for macular degeneration using modern acupuncture techniques, such as AcuNova, can significantly improve age-related vision loss. Dr. Vadim Dekhtyar, DACM is highly sought after by patients as one of the few US specialists to offer this treatment, and he was trained by Dr. Boel himself. To learn more about whether AcuNova is right for you, contact us at Life Balance Clinic to book an appointment.
What our patients say
"I wish I was a better writer because this is very important for anyone who is diagnosed with Macular Degeneration. After all, our vision is at stake. Recently, I was diagnosed with Wet Macular Degeneration, and I have the “black hole” in my left..."
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"I was diagnosed with Macular Degeneration about a year and a half ago. I was told by my doctor there's nothing that can be done. The only thing they could do was give me vitamins and that just was not good enough for me. So, I did my research and ..."
"For the first time in my life, I had difficulties completing the required vision test when I was renewing my driver's license. It was at that moment that I remembered that three years ago I had been diagnosed with Macular Degeneration. My eye doct..."
"Macular Degeneration is an incurable genetic disease which runs in our family and has already robbed my cousin and my brother of their vision. I myself developed the proverbial black hole in my one (dry) eye a year ago, wondering every morning if..."
"The problems with my vision started 15 years ago when I was first diagnosed with Open-Angle Glaucoma. About 5 years ago my vision dropped dramatically. It when my doctor told me that I developed Age-related Macular Degeneration. I was given a cour..."
"Thank you for introducing a new alternative treatment for my eyes. It helped more than the shots I took for my macular degeneration. I am planning to continue this acupuncture treatment. The shots from the retinal doctor I used to go to were done ..."