Dr. Dinesh Amar

Glaucoma is a group of diseases that causes damage to your eye's optic nerve and gets worse over time. The optic nerve is a bundle of millions of nerve fibres which carry visual impulse from the retina at the back of eye to the brain. The increased Eye pressure, called intraocular pressure, can damage the optic nerve and fasten the natural nerve fibre loss. Since nerve cells can't regenerate this damage is permanent and irreversible.

Without treatment, glaucoma can cause total permanent blindness within a few years. Because most people with glaucoma have no early symptoms or pain from this increased pressure, it is important to see your eye doctor regularly so that glaucoma can be diagnosed early and treated before significant functional visual loss occurs.

If you are over age 40 and have a family history of glaucoma, you should have a complete eye exam with an eye doctor every one to two years. If you have any risk factors, you may need to visit your eye doctor more frequently.

What Are the Symptoms of Glaucoma?

For most people, there are usually few or no symptoms of glaucoma. The first sign of glaucoma is often the loss of peripheral or side vision, which can go unnoticed until late in the disease. This is why glaucoma is often called the "Sneak Thief of Vision" or "Silent Thief of Eye Sight".

If you have any of the following symptoms, seek immediate medical care:

1. Seeing halos around lights
2. Vision loss
3. Redness in the eye
4. Eye that looks hazy (particularly in infants)
5. Nausea or vomiting
6. Pain in the eye
7. Narrowing of vision (tunnel vision)

Risk Factors

There are several risk factors, which may lead to glaucoma, such as

1. Age of the individual
2. Ethnicity- African, Caribbean, Hispanics and Asians are at higher risk
3. Increased eye pressure or IOP History of glaucoma in family or relatives
4. Presence of Myopia or Hyperopia
5. Previous eye injuries
6. Use of steroids- as injections, tablets, eye or ear drops or ointments or protein supplements for muscle building in gyms or inhalers
7. Previous history of anemia
8. Individuals conditions affecting blood flow like hypertension, diabetes or high blood sugar, migraine etc are also at risk.

Treatment-

The treatment for glaucoma relies on the nature and seriousness of every case. Generally, glaucoma cannot be totally cured, but it can be controlled. Eye drops, pills, laser strategies, and means of surgery are utilized to maintain and prevent further harm from happening. Talk to your eye doctor to find out if you are at risk of developing glaucoma. If you wish to discuss about any specific problem, you can consult an Ophthalmologist.

Eye exercises might not necessarily improve eyesight but they help in preventing eye problems and maintaining the correct eyesight level. Eye exercises are usually designed to provide strength to eye muscles, while improving focus, allowing flexible eye movements and helping stimulate the vision centre of the brain.

1. Palming: This exercise is also very simple to perform. All you have to do is cover your eyes with your palms. Once you have done this, just wait and see that there are no bright flashes of light. If you see that there is a bright flash of light, just wait till they go. This is used primarily to distress the eyes.
2. Flexing: This is simply rotating your eyes in circles. Roll your eyes in the clockwise direction for one minute and then roll your eyes in the anticlockwise direction for one minute.
3. Blinking: Your eyes get strained due to long hours of sitting at the computer or television and you tend to blink less. Whenever you blink, your eyes stay in darkness for a few microseconds that help to keep the eyes fresh, while reducing eye strain.
4. Stretching: This is the most common and also one of the easiest to do. It requires you to just look up, hold for two seconds, look down, hold for two seconds and then repeat this procedure for each corner of your eye, which means top-left, top-right, bottom-left and bottom-right corners.
5. Near and far focusing: This exercise helps in strengthening the eye muscles and improves the vision of your eyes.

It involves the following steps:

1. Either sit or stand in a comfortable position for 2-3 minutes
2. Bring your thumb about 10 inches in front of your eyes and try to focus on it
3. Now try focusing on an object that is about 10-20 feet in front of your eyes
4. Try switching between focusing on the other object and your thumb on each deep breath