EP #16: Glaucoma's Silent Gaze: Preserving Your Vision with Knowledge and Prevention

Unlock the mysteries of glaucoma with us, your Jazzy Eyes family, as we welcome 2024 with an eye on health. Glaucoma Awareness Month is here and there’s no better time to explore the silent threat that could be looming in the corners of our vision. Our very own Dr. Laura Falco guides us through the often-overlooked nuances of this vision-threatening condition. Discover how a simple eye exam can detect the imbalance of fluid pressure that might be quietly damaging the optic nerve, leading to irreversible vision loss.

We're not just raising the alarm; we're equipping you with knowledge and preventive strategies to safeguard your sight. Dr. Falco unravels the reasons why feeling fine doesn't equate to being fine when it comes to your eyes. With a focus on the importance of regular check-ups, our discussion unveils the subtle and insidious progression of glaucoma. Tune into this crucial discussion—it's an opportunity to learn, to understand, and to take action for the health of your eyes.

For more information visit: JazzyEyes.com

or contact: (954) 473-0100

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to the Jazzy Eyes podcast. Taking care of your vision with expert precision. Here's your host, dr Laura Falco.

Jeremy: 0:15

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Jazzy Eyes podcast. I'm your co-host, Jeremy Wolfe, and I'm joined, as always, by your host, Dr Laura Falco. Dr Falco, so nice seeing you again. Happy New Year to you. I hope you and your family had a wonderful holiday and are ready for a prosperous and exciting 2024.

Dr. Falco: 0:35

Yes, thank you, happy New Year to you too, and yes, it was exhausting and ready to start 2024.

Jeremy: 0:43

Indeed, indeed, and I know you mentioned that you wanted to start off. January is Glaucoma Awareness Month. Yes, and this is going to be another one of those topics where, like everybody else, I've heard the term glaucoma a thousand times, but if you asked me what it was, I'd be hard pressed to actually tell you that. So please enlighten us, talk a little bit about glaucoma, and then we shall proceed from there.

Dr. Falco: 1:14

Yes. So January is Glaucoma Awareness Month and it's important because you can lose your vision completely from glaucoma. So it is one of the causes of blindness in this country, complete blindness. So everybody's eye has a pressure, kind of like blood pressure, but it's in the eye. So if your eye pressure is way too low, your eye would be like a raisin. If your eye pressure is very high, it would be very hard like your eye would be a rock right. So the range of eye pressure that your eye needs to be and the range is between, say, people get a little like, overdone with this, but between 10 and 20, for lack of like, you can get a little higher, a little lower and still be okay. But let's say, 10 millimeters of mercury is how we measure it between 10 and 20. So when you go to your eye doctor, some people use an air puff and that is one way they measure air, the pressure of the eye. I use a blue light which comes quite close and measures the pressure of the eye.

Dr. Falco: 2:26

So if you want to think about this in like a physical, physics way, think of it as there is inflow of fluid to the eye constantly and outflow and as we mature. Sometimes it happens when people are younger, but typically it's as we age. The exact pathophysiology is not 100% clear, but some people will start making more fluid than they used to, but they're draining the same amount as they always did. So if you're adding more fluid but draining the same, you're going to have to do that. The pressure increases. The other thing that happens as we age is sometimes the outflow becomes impaired, so we are making the same amount of fluid we always did, but we're not draining as efficiently, say, the drain gets a little clogged, so we're not draining as efficiently as we used to. So the pressure will increase. Those are the main mechanisms for what we call primary open-angle glaucoma, because glaucoma can arise just like that, or sometimes there are additional traumas and Dr Nguyen will talk about that that can trigger pressure changes.

Dr. Falco: 3:42

So when people think they're super aware of their eyes and they would know if their pressure is up, you don't.

Dr. Falco: 3:52

You have no pain sensors on your retina. So if your pressure starts to increase unless your pressure is ridiculously high and then you're in a lot of pain you have no idea your pressure is increasing as you age unless you get an annual eye exam, which is why it is so important for people to have that. Now I'll tell you when the pressure is too high for that particular eye, you start to have death of the nerve fiber layer, which means that is neural tissue, that is your optic nerve, that is the cable that connects from the back of the eye that sends the signal to the brain of vision. When the fibers in the cable that connect to the brain start to die because the pressure is too high, it can never come back, even if you lower the pressure subsequently. What's gone is gone. So it is really important as you age, even if you feel like you don't need a glasses prescription and you see really well, that's fine you really need to have a health check, because these are some of the things that can develop as we age.

Jeremy: 4:59

So is glaucoma strictly a function of deterioration due to aging, or is there a genetic component to that at all?

Dr. Falco: 5:06

Yes, that's a great question. No, there is a genetic component, absolutely. If you have a sibling with glaucoma, there's a stronger link. I think people have a. They think that blood pressure and eye pressure are related and they are absolutely not. So you can have somebody that has low blood pressure and have high eye pressure. You can have somebody that has high blood pressure and low eye pressure, low eye pressure. So those two things are also not.

Dr. Falco: 5:37

And a big problem, unfortunately, when glaucoma becomes symptomatic, because what happens with the optic nerve dying is that you start to lose your peripheral vision and just like we have two eyes and binocular vision and we have optic nerves that are our blind spots, but the brain fills in so we don't see our blind spots. The brain is so ahead of the game. It fills in because there's two eyes working together. Those peripheral vision losses to a point Now when the brain can no longer fill in.

Dr. Falco: 6:14

It's advanced, it's bad, and sometimes that's when people come in to see us when they think they can't see well out of their side vision, out of their peripheral vision, and again, like I said earlier, unfortunately that's like trying to stop a runaway train and damage that has been done is gone and there is nothing that we can do to bring it back. So that's why it kills me when people wait and wait and wait and think they know they would feel it. You don't, because the brain's smarter than you. It fills in those missing spots till it can no longer do it, and then by that point it's really hard to stop permanent vision loss, complete, permanent loss Very interesting.

Jeremy: 6:57

We're always fascinated by the human eye. As you know, that was a lot of information a long time back.

Dr. Falco: 7:03

Yes, it is, I know, I know I'm sorry.

Jeremy: 7:05

And then I know you wanted to. We wanted to kind of break this up into different segments so we're not giving information overload. So let's wrap it up there and we will pick this up in another segment, absolutely so stick around everyone, check out the next episode and we will see you shortly.

Speaker 1: 7:23

Thank you for listening to the Jazzy Eyes podcast. For more information, visit jazzyeyescom or contact 954-473-0.