Testing for Glaucoma Necessary?

Glaucoma is a condition that causes damage to your eye's optic nerve and gets worse over time. It's often linked to a buildup of pressure inside your eye. Glaucoma tends to be inherited and may not show up until later in life.

When your parents or grandparents have or had glaucoma, it is wise to have your eyes checked regularly. My mom has glaucoma and I used to have my eyes checked every 2-3 years by just having it checked by the optometrist. 

It should have been done every year but you know, time flies by and before you know it three years have passed! This is how the test is done. A small amount of pressure is applied to the eye by a tiny device or by a warm puff of air. This is done without any drops. It's not painful, it is just annoying and for the over sensitive person like me, I blink my eyes too often, afraid of the puff of air to come, resulting in multiple shots of air onto my eyes. If the eye pressure is too high, you need to have your eyes checked more thoroughly. If the pressure is fine, you're good to go.

However, times have changed!, and nowadays we know that eye pressure measurement is not a 100% guarantee that you haven't developed glaucoma. Your eye doctor needs to have a close look at the inside of your eyes to determine if there is any damage of the eye nerves.

I had a test done yesterday. Again, this is not painful, just annoying. You get a few eye drops, they sting slightly, and they are not meant to numb your eyes but are meant to widen your pupils so the eye doctor can have a good look at the inside of your eyes. The results are in straigh away.

Next, you can have your eye pressure checked every year by your optometrist, or, you can have this more thorough test done by your eye doctor once every three years. Or, do both. As for my results, they are fine and this is a great feeling ofcourse. For those who do get diagnosed with glaucoma: the sooner the diagnosis, the better. This way eye pressure and inflammation can be kept under conrol so damage can be limited to a minimum.

​Foods and Glaucoma

Health Sense wouldn't be Health Sense if there wasn't some information on food related to this article. Great foods for eye health related to glaucoma:

1. Kale & collard greens: Harvard researchers followed participants in the Nurses' Health Study (63,893 women; 1984-2012) and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (41,094 men; 1986-2012).  They found getting more nitrates and leafy greens in your diet was linked to a 20 percent to 30 percent lower glaucoma risk.  The link was even stronger for a type of glaucoma linked to poor blood flow.  In those cases nitrates cut risk by 40 to 50 percent.​
2. Oranges & peaches: Women in the NIH study who consumed more than two servings per week of fresh oranges or peaches cut their odds of getting glaucoma.  The women who ate oranges cut their risk by 82 percent while eating more peaches cut risk by 70 percent.
3. Green tea, cocoa and red wine: A new meta-analysis study showed that flavonoids have a promising role in improving vision in patients with glaucoma and high eye pressure.  They appear to play a part in improving and slowing the progression of visual field loss.

Sources: 

• Nurses'Health Study
• Health Professionals Follow-up Study
  
• Shaheen Patel, Joyce J Mathan, Ehsan Vaghefi, Andrea J Braakhuis. "The effect of flavonoids on visual function in patients with glaucoma or ocular hypertension: a systematic review and meta-analysis." Graefes Arch Clin Exp Ophthalmol. 2015 Sep 4. Epub 2015 Sep 4. PMID: 26340868.