What is it?
Glaucoma is an eye disorder in which the eyeball becomes harder and the area of vision is narrowed down. It occurs in about one in 100 people over the age of 40. About 20,000 people are blind as a result of glaucoma in England and Wales alone. It is about ten times as common in close relatives as it is in the general population, and it is not catching. It can be treated, and loss of sight prevented, if it is caught early. Treatment is by eye drops, tablets and operation. Glaucoma usually affects both eyes, though frequently one more than the other.
What causes it?
Watery fluid is normally formed in the eye and then drains back into the bloodstream through a sieve-like area of tissue. If this becomes partly blocked the fluid gets dammed up in the eye and presses on the sight nerve. Parts of this nerve go out of action and this causes a loss of vision around the edge of the field of vision. Eventually, if untreated, only the centre of the field of vision is left, and it can even blind you.
Prevention
• Vitamin Ñ can lower the pressure and stem the disease. Research has shown that healthy people who consume about 1.2 g vitamin Ñ a day tend to have lower pressure inside their eyes than those who consume only 75 mg of the vitamin a day. Take 1 g a day to be sure.
• Thiamine (vitamin Bi) may also help glaucoma sufferers. A recent Californian study found that people with glaucoma usually have lower amounts of thiamine in their blood. A study in Guyana in the 1950s found that East Indians living there who ate a largely vegetarian diet, rich in  vitamins, rarely suffered from glaucoma while their fellow countrymen living on a different diet often developed the disease. This researcher relieved the effects of glaucoma with large injections of thiamine (100 mg a day for ten days) and followed this up with oral supplements.
• Modern medicines prevent the glaucoma from getting worse, even making an operation unnecessary, and saving sight. Possible side-effects of the drops are an increase in urine passed and a tingling in the fingers and toes. They generally work for only a limited time and have to be repeated every six hours or so, though the latest drops last longer and only need to be used twice a day. Tablets boost the effects of the drops and are needed in some patients.
This ‘medical’ treatment may make your eyes a little better and will certainly stop them getting worse. If you take certain tranquillizers or steroid drugs (including the contraceptive pill) you will have to be aware that your glaucoma could get worse and get your optician to measure your eye pressure more frequently than he otherwise would.
• Regular testing of your eyes for glaucoma is a simple and painless procedure which should be done every two years ii there is glaucoma in the family and every three years or so as part of a regular eye check-up for anyone over 40. This enables the condition to be caught early before irreparable damage is done to the eyesight. Screening for glaucoma, especially among ‘at risk’ groups, is an example of preventive medicine at its best. There are about 100,000 people diagnosed as having glaucoma in the UK but it is estimated that there are about 150,000 people who have the disease yet don’t know it. Given that this is a major preventable cause of blindness, as soon as you are diagnosed as having the condition do everything you can to ensure that your close family all have an eye test.
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