It has been about 4 years now since my last post on this subject.  My eyesight has not gotten any better, but, it does not seem  to be much worse either, which I am thankful for.  Even though  there are many things I cannot do any longer, such as drive and read books, I am very glad of the small amount of eyesight I still have as it still allows me to do many things I enjoy.

And still, there is no definitive explanation as to what actually happened  to cause this situation, I have been doing a lot of research over the years, of and on, reading articles and following leads.  It is hard to say if I could ever get a doctor to agree with my theory or not.  There are so many ways for this type of blindness to happen, is one of the reasons the medical profession has had a hard time dealing with it.

Ignore my earlier posts here.  Many of those were just desperation, as I wanted my eyesight back.  Here are the things I know and seem to be relevant.

Around 1998, or so, I started to develop digestive problems.  This was at about the same time my doctor suggested I should be losing weight.  And lo and behold,  I started to lose weight.  At the time, I thought I was doing really good, and why did other people think losing weight was so difficult.  It was also at this time I started to have problems with diarrhea. Well, not much of a problem, it would happen on occasion, it was just ignored.

Around 2000, I found out I had an arrhythmia.  The cardiologist said it was benign, so it did not require treatment.  However, this was probably the first solid warning sign, but, nobody recognized it as such.  Although, that was probably a good thing.  The two doctors who thought the  arrhythmia should be treated wanted me to go on beta blockers.  My cardiologist said no, so I never took them.  Beta Blockers may have treated the symptom, but probably would not have treated the cause.

The cause?  Most likely, from what I have read, it was probably low magnesium.  Low magnesium can cause arrhythmia as well as hypotension.  Hypotension is low blood pressure.  The arrhythmia and hypotension are both risk factors for Anterior Ischemic Optical Neuropathy. However at the time, my regular doctor was pushing to put me on blood pressure medication for high blood pressure.  Quite often I would come out at 140/80 at the doctor’s office, which is right at the border line.  I am sort of glad I was stubborn about the blood pressure medicine.  It can aggravate a situation where AION is involved.

The next thing in the mix was a colonoscopy.  The evil part of that, the prep, gives you real bad diarrhea, which probably made a big hit on my magnesium levels.  When they hooked me up to the EKG, they commented on my arrhythmia, but I stupidly assured them that my cardiologist said everything was OK.

And finally, Proton Pump Inhibitors.  These also lower your absorption of magnesium.  I was on Protonix for about 6 months before I had my first episode of AION in my right eye.

Now, like I said, this is only a theory.  No where did I actually find anything that tied this altogether.  I found little pieces of information, like, low magnesium can cause hypo tension and Protonix can cause low magnesium and hypo tension can cause AION.  And there were papers that talked about people who had digestive problems that went on PPIs that seemed to be prone to AION.

This is one of the problems with the medical profession is that tend to treat symptoms rather that fix causes.

Now that my digestion has stabilized, the arrhythmia has gone away.  This tends to illustrate the problem of going to doctors.  I don’t think you will ever hear a doctor say “Heart problems, get your digestion fixed”.  Not that all heart problems are related to digestion.  Still, I think you probably have experienced something similar to this.

My recommendation is that if you are taking a proton pump inhibitor (Priolosec, Protonix, Nexium, Previced, etc), I would take a calcium/magnesium supplement as well as B-12.  All of these have absorption problems related to PPIs.