Glaucoma-Is there any cure?

I came to know that Glaucoma-atrophy of optical nerve-is not curable, only appling some drugs can restrict the progress of dicease. What is the best eye exercise for this dicease? Your suggetions are wel-come on this subject. Please help.

Look at it this way....if you want..

The eye is a closed ball. It has a firm outer surface. The sclera, the white part becomes clear in the front...the cornea. When you look at someone's eyes, you look through the cornea and can see the they have blue or gray or green or hazel or brown or ? eyes. That colored part is the iris.

Where the clear part (cornea) connects to the white part (sclera) is pretty much the same part where the iris meets the sclera. On the other side of the colored part is a continuation of the iris called the ciliary body. The surface of the ciliary body has epithelial cells which 'produce' fluid, aqueous by filtration (passive) and by secretion (active)...

In order for your eye not to collapse like a prune, you put fluid into the middle of it from that ciliary body epithelium. Let's say you put in 5 drops a day. Being a closed system, you also DRAIN 5 drops a day at a certain pressure. If the drain gets stopped up, the pressure in the eye goes up till it's now forced out at 5 drops a day. But now the pressure in the eye is higher than it was.

The definintion of Glaucoma is basically damage to the optic nerve somehow related to the pressure.

The nerve cells in the retina on on it's surface course back to the optic nerve from all over. The one's far out go towards the nerve, then the ones a little further back get on top of those and go back, then the ones a little further back go on top of those and head back. It makes it so when all the fibers finally reach the nervehead, the ones from way out are the first ones around the bend and they head back towards the brain.

If the pressure in the eye gets too high, whatever that level is, those nerve fibers that hit the white sclera get pushed, become damaged, and that causes the nerve cell to get sick and possibly die. So the first loss of vision is from way out to the sides. So they do visual field studies to see if there's been any loss of field. If there is, and it takes a certain pattern consistent with the way the nerve fibers run in the retina, it's called Glaucoma.

The type of glaucoma depends on whether or not we KNOW whats clogging up the drain. If it's pigment from the iris, that's called pigmentary glaucoma. If it's caused by exfoliation of the lens capsule, that's exfoliation glaucoma. If it's caused by blood, tha't's hemorrhagic glaucoma. If it's caused by white cells, it's called leukemic (person may have leukemia or lymphoma) glaucoma. There are people with such high cholesterol that you can see the crystals floating around in the anterior chamber. They too get caught in the drain. If it's due to the angle between the cornea and the iris being really narrow, that's narrow angle glaucoma (this one is fast and painful). If it's caused by medicine such as steroids....steroid induced glaucoma....

If we don't know....essential glaucoma or chronic open angle glaucoma.

Whatever the cause.....the pressure is too high for the nerve. The treatment is to lower the pressure. Two ways to do that. Open the drain or slow down the production of fluid.

A lot of drops used in glaucoma do both. Some even change the way the fluid leaves the eye so that it leaves via a different type of circulation.

Then there's surgery. The surgery can be destructive and destroy the cells that make the fluid...laser to the ciliary body (hot) OR cryo (freezing)...called cyclocryopexy does this. Or the surgery can open a drain as mentioned by Jennifer with argon laser trabeculoplasty (ALT) or selective laser trabeculoplasty (SLT), or by opening the trabecular meshwork (trabeculectomy), or by (the newest one)..opening the canal into the anterior chamber by canalizing the canal with a tube and tearing open the meshwork.

In the end, the point is to lower the pressure in that eye enough to stop or really slow down the slowly progressive nature of the field loss.

It's complicated enough that there's an entire subspecialty in Ophthalmology dedicated to it....Glaucoma Specialists.

In Europe they do surgery NOW. In the USA they start drops. The europe folks feel it's cruel to put someone on drops for the rest of their lives when you could do a relatively minor surgery and they don't have to take any drops at all. But in the USA, we have, er.....ah.....lawyers. And the statement is...you operated on a normal eye for glaucoma and it was lost from infection or ?, when you could have just given him some drops, a few lousey drops!!!!!!

The drain is located at the area where the white sclera and the clear cornea meet, just in front of the colored part (iris). There, theres some spongy tissue that allows the aqueous to percolate through to a canal, the canal of Schlemm, which drains to the ocular surface via some aqueous veins. These little veins are visible on the ocular surface. One can see the vessel half filled with blood and right next to it a clear column of fluid. The surgery for glaucoma usually is directed towards doing something with or around or through or opening or puting a valve or tube or...through this meshwork into the front of the eye making a 'new drain'.

If you are going to use drops, make sure you get the drops. I've seen people on 4 different types of drops for glaucoma and the pressures not controlled. When asked to show how they put the drops in, they do....squeeze their lids and down the face runs the drop. These aren't supposed to be face drops. Squeeze your eyes. No reallyk squeeze your eyes shut now, fairly hard. ........Now your lids are wet. They're wet from your own tear film. So put a drop in on top of that and the squeeze.....face drops. Face drops don't work very well.

Suggestion: hold the lower lid down. That forms a little sac. Put a drop into the sac. Do your little got something in my eye startle dance, but hold on to the lid so you don't refexively squeeze the drop out. Once that reflex is over, let go of the lid and blink gently. Close your eyes. Now that medication is between your cornea and your lid. It'll absorb into the eye. After about 20 seconds or so, reblinkd and you'll pull more medication from the tear lake down there over the cornea again. Close again for another 20 seconds. Do this 3-4 times. You'll be surprised...one drop does work.

medicinal marijuana.

I'm not joking!
They say that marija. works, but who knows.
Yes, there is a control that works better than anything else out there.
Please follow this link for important information that can help your life:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcf2co65l...
It is caused by eyeball pressure, so exercises may not help.

See if you can get some medicinal marijuana, as that seems to work best to reduce the pressure
no "eye exercises" could or would ever help with glaucoma. if you heard that somewhere, it is absolutely incorrect.

drugs & surgery are the only 2 options to try and stop the progression of vision loss/tissue loss
optometrist

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-wsz1uw8ha...