Aerobic exercise helps reduce eye pressure –a factor that could help slow the progression of glaucoma–, a disease that affects one million people in Argentina, is the main cause of irreversible blindness and rarely presents symptoms Therefore, specialists recommend ophthalmological controls to prevent it, within the framework of the World Glaucoma Day commemorated on Sunday.
It is calculated thatIn Argentina, the pathology affects 2% of those over 40 years of age and between 6% and 8% of those who are over 80.
Therefore, it is estimated that there are approximately a million people with this conditionalthough most ignore it because of the absence of symptoms.
The head of the Argentine Glaucoma Association, Marcos Geria, assured Telam that the sports practice of aerobic exercises, such as walking, running or cycling “tends to significantly lower intraocular pressure although temporarily, returning to the initial values about 40 minutes after finishing the activity”.
“But it has been shown that People who exercise routinely maintain lower intraocular pressure values at rest than those who do not.which could help slow down the progression of glaucoma,” the specialist remarked.
However, not all exercises are advisable for patients with this pathology since many activities involve strength and breath holding, which can increase intraocular pressure in the same way that “some yoga postures in which the head is lowered a lot head or wearing swimming goggles that fit too close to the eye,” he said.
Geria affirmed that of the total number of people who suffer from glaucoma “50% are underdiagnosed”.
“The People who exercise routinely maintain lower intraocular pressure values at rest than those who do not.which could help slow the progression of glaucoma.”Marcos Geria
“It is a situation in which it is important to take measures as soon as possible to preserve the visual health and quality of life of the population,” he added.
Risk factors and checkups
Age is the main risk factor to develop glaucoma, a pathology that is usually more frequent from the age of 40, and in which family inheritance influences, which multiplies between 4 and 8 times the risk.
Illnesses like I gaveabetes, myopia and hyperopia Are others factors that increase the chances of suffering from this disease which is progressive and is characterized by the degenerative nature of the optic nerve which produces a visual field damage.
“The earlier glaucoma is diagnosed, the less damage will be to the optic nerve and the more vision the person will be able to preserve, which is why it is so necessary to carry out vision checks,” said the oophthalmologist at the Hospital de Clínicas, Javier Casiraghi, former head of the Argentine Council of Ophthalmology (CAO).
Meanwhile, Geria explained that the disease “usually has no symptoms because if one of the two eyes is more damaged, the other tends to compensate for the decrease in vision or the brain ‘fills in’ those areas of the visual field, so that the person does not realize that they see less, which enables the progression of the disease”.
To detect glaucoma ocular pressure is measured and a fundus is performeda non-invasive procedure that lasts a few minutes.
Regarding when to perform cchecks to diagnose it on time, the World Glaucoma Association recommends doing it every two or four years before the age of 40, and a maximum of every three between that age and 60. From the age of 60 the period is reduced to a maximum of two years.
However, the frequency of The controls will depend on the risk that each person has in particular.
glaucoma in children
Although I knowIn very few cases in girls and boys, the owner of the service Ophthalmology of the Garrahan Hospital, Viviana Abudiindicated that in that population “the most urgent glaucoma requiring immediate surgical treatment is congenital and that of children under 5 years of age”.
“Adult glaucoma has its great victim, which is the optic nerve and that of the child, in addition to affecting it, it will generate an increase in the size of the eye, which causes myopia and myopic astigmatism because the cornea increases in size and sometimes breaks and it fills with liquid,” he explained to Télam Abudi.
The ophthalmologist pointed out that in addition to the decrease in sight the pediatric patients “have photophobia, pain, and irritability.”
“The pathology is produced by a alteration in the exit grid of the liquid of the eyewhich increases along with eye pressure, and that tIt would end up collapsing the arteries that feed the optic nerve.or, that it is the cable that connects the eye with the brain. In such a way that this cable would die because they are neurons,” he explained.
According to the specialist, the congenital glaucoma it is seen “in children who are born with very large eyes, very arched eyelashes and sometimes also have a gray color, because the cornea fills with fluid.”
“In some cases, the patient is born with fewer symptoms, they are later forms or secondary to other eye diseases, or they can appear in patients who underwent surgery for childhood cataracts or who receive corticosteroid treatment for transplants or autoimmune diseases,” he said.
To Pprevent the disease or detect it earlyAbudi accompanies the recommendation of the Argentine Association of Pediatric Ophthalmology that calls for carrying out preventive controls in the first months of lifewith pupillary dilation and eye fundus, a new check-up at 6 months and then a year when the use of glasses is evaluated.
Then the controls must be repeated “fundamentally for the use of screens as patients are currently having more nearsightedness.”
The CAO will carry out an open and free national campaign on April 21 to the community in different health centers and public hospitals to reinforce controls, raise awareness about the disease and remember the importance of going to the ophthalmologist.
