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: [phone]

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to the Jazzy Eyes podcast.
Taking care of your vision withexpert precision.
Here's your host, dr LauraFalco.

Jeremy (00:15):
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 youagain.
Happy New Year to you.
I hope you and your family hada wonderful holiday and are
ready for a prosperous andexciting 2024.

Dr. Falco (00:35):
Yes, thank you, happy New Year to you too, and yes,
it was exhausting and ready tostart 2024.

Jeremy (00:43):
Indeed, indeed, and I know you mentioned that you
wanted to start off.
January is Glaucoma AwarenessMonth.
Yes, and this is going to beanother one of those topics
where, like everybody else, I'veheard the term glaucoma a
thousand times, but if you askedme what it was, I'd be hard

(01:04):
pressed to actually tell youthat.
So please enlighten us, talk alittle bit about glaucoma, and
then we shall proceed from there.

Dr. Falco (01:14):
Yes.
So January is GlaucomaAwareness Month and it's
important because you can loseyour vision completely from
glaucoma.
So it is one of the causes ofblindness in this country,
complete blindness.
So everybody's eye has apressure, kind of like blood

(01:36):
pressure, but it's in the eye.
So if your eye pressure is waytoo low, your eye would be like
a raisin.
If your eye pressure is veryhigh, it would be very hard like
your eye would be a rock right.
So the range of eye pressurethat your eye needs to be and
the range is between, say,people get a little like,

(01:59):
overdone with this, but between10 and 20, for lack of like, you
can get a little higher, alittle lower and still be okay.
But let's say, 10 millimetersof mercury is how we measure it
between 10 and 20.
So when you go to your eyedoctor, some people use an air
puff and that is one way theymeasure air, the pressure of the

(02:20):
eye.
I use a blue light which comesquite close and measures the
pressure of the eye.
So if you want to think aboutthis in like a physical, physics
way, think of it as there isinflow of fluid to the eye
constantly and outflow and as wemature.

(02:41):
Sometimes it happens whenpeople are younger, but
typically it's as we age.
The exact pathophysiology isnot 100% clear, but some people
will start making more fluidthan they used to, but they're
draining the same amount as theyalways did.
So if you're adding more fluidbut draining the same, you're

(03:02):
going to have to do that.
The pressure increases.
The other thing that happens aswe age is sometimes the outflow
becomes impaired, so we aremaking the same amount of fluid
we always did, but we're notdraining 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.

(03:24):
Those are the main mechanismsfor what we call primary
open-angle glaucoma, becauseglaucoma can arise just like
that, or sometimes there areadditional traumas and Dr Nguyen
will talk about that that cantrigger pressure changes.
So when people think they'resuper aware of their eyes and

(03:47):
they would know if theirpressure is up, you don't.
You have no pain sensors on yourretina.
So if your pressure starts toincrease unless your pressure is
ridiculously high and thenyou're in a lot of pain you have
no idea your pressure isincreasing as you age unless you
get an annual eye exam, whichis why it is so important for

(04:10):
people to have that.
Now I'll tell you when thepressure is too high for that
particular eye, you start tohave death of the nerve fiber
layer, which means that isneural tissue, that is your
optic nerve, that is the cablethat connects from the back of
the eye that sends the signal tothe brain of vision.
When the fibers in the cablethat connect to the brain start

(04:33):
to die because the pressure istoo high, it can never come back
, even if you lower the pressuresubsequently.
What's gone is gone.
So it is really important asyou age, even if you feel like
you don't need a glassesprescription and you see really
well, that's fine you reallyneed to have a health check,

(04:55):
because these are some of thethings that can develop as we
age.

Jeremy (04:59):
So is glaucoma strictly a function of deterioration due
to aging, or is there a geneticcomponent to that at all?

Dr. Falco (05:06):
Yes, that's a great question.
No, there is a geneticcomponent, absolutely.
If you have a sibling withglaucoma, there's a stronger
link.
I think people have a.
They think that blood pressureand eye pressure are related and
they are absolutely not.
So you can have somebody thathas low blood pressure and have
high eye pressure.

(05:27):
You can have somebody that hashigh blood pressure and low eye
pressure, low eye pressure.
So those two things are alsonot.
And a big problem, unfortunately, when glaucoma becomes
symptomatic, because whathappens with the optic nerve
dying is that you start to loseyour peripheral vision and just

(05:51):
like we have two eyes andbinocular vision and we have
optic nerves that are our blindspots, but the brain fills in so
we don't see our blind spots.
The brain is so ahead of thegame.
It fills in because there's twoeyes working together.
Those peripheral vision lossesto a point Now when the brain

(06:12):
can no longer fill in.
It's advanced, it's bad, andsometimes that's when people
come in to see us when theythink they can't see well out of
their side vision, out of theirperipheral vision, and again,
like I said earlier,unfortunately that's like trying
to stop a runaway train anddamage that has been done is

(06:33):
gone and there is nothing thatwe can do to bring it back.
So that's why it kills me whenpeople wait and wait and wait
and think they know they wouldfeel it.
You don't, because the brain'ssmarter than you.
It fills in those missing spotstill it can no longer do it,
and then by that point it'sreally hard to stop permanent

(06:54):
vision loss, complete, permanentloss Very interesting.

Jeremy (06:57):
We're always fascinated by the human eye.
As you know, that was a lot ofinformation a long time back.

Dr. Falco (07:03):
Yes, it is, I know, I know I'm sorry.

Jeremy (07:05):
And then I know you wanted to.
We wanted to kind of break thisup into different segments so
we're not giving informationoverload.
So let's wrap it up there andwe will pick this up in another
segment, absolutely so stickaround everyone, check out the
next episode and we will see youshortly.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
Thank you for listening to the Jazzy Eyes
podcast.
For more information, visitjazzyeyescom or contact
954-473-0.