Ocular Hypertension

Today, I want to take a question today from a listener who has high eye pressure, but no Glaucoma. I want to go into the causes and what you can do to bring your eye pressure down. Enjoy the show. If you want more, sign up for my newsletter at: www.drsamberne.com. If you have any questions, submit them to hello@drsamberne.com or you can now text me! Text ‘Join’ to 1-844-932-1291 to join the community and ask your questions! SUMMARY KEYWORDS eye, hypertension, glaucoma, ocular, pressure, aqueous, podcast, coleus, blogs, improve, optic nerve, xanthan, eyedrops, histamines, soft cloth, information, integrative medicine   00:06 Hey everybody, its Dr. Sam, I’d like to welcome you to my EyeClarity podcast. If you want to get in touch with me with questions, you can email me at hello@drsamberne.com. And you can always text me your questions at 1-844-932-1291. I would like to let you know about my new membership program. This is going to offer members new information on how to improve their vision and wellness. So you will get access to articles, video, blogs, podcasts, and webinars. Also a live Q&A with me. And all of this information will empower you to make informed decisions about your vision and your health. So to sign up to go to my website, drsamberne.com. And you can see the details there. All right now on to the show.   01:37 Hey everybody, it’s Dr. Sam and I want to take a question today from a listener. She’s got high eye pressure, but she doesn’t have glaucoma. So I want to go into the causes and what you can do to bring your eye pressure down. So in ocular hypertension, there’s a consistently high eye pressure reading that the doctor measures, but there’s no optic nerve damage or visual field loss. Usually it’s a problem with either the aqueous production or the drainage in the eye. And this is what causes the high eye pressure. So even though I am a believer in the epigenetics model, which says that the genes are expressed, based on our environment, our diet lifestyle, there is a link genetically if your parents or grandparents have had glaucoma, you do have a higher risk of having either glaucoma or in this case, ocular hypertension. I’ve also seen that as you get older, and you have more free radical damage or inflammation in the eye, there’s a higher risk of ocular hypertension and or glaucoma. And in ethnicity, African Americans tend to have more glaucoma or ocular hypertension. And so these are things to note if you fall into any of those categories. So I’ve done many video blogs and podcasts on primary open angle glaucoma, narrow angle glaucoma, you can find those on my website or YouTube or Facebook. But today because the question is about ocular hypertension, I want to talk about some other causes. One of the causes could be taking either oral or topical corticosteroids. So when you take steroids, this can artificially raise the eye pressure. And so you have ocular hypertension, if you’re taking any kind of corticosteroids. I’ve also found that eye trauma or eye injury can cause ocular hypertension. And this trauma can change the fluid dynamics and flow in the aqueous. And this is another reason why I’ve seen ocular hypertension. I’ve also seen that certain eye inflammatory diseases like iritis and Uveitis can drive the eye pressure up. And even secondary glaucoma like pseudo exfoliation, glaucoma, which has these flakes that can deposit in the drainage areas of the eye, which also cause ocular hypertension. You know, another thing that I asked a lot about is what kind of medications you’re taking, because certain medications can actually cause your eye pressure to go up. So let’s go through the list. We have things li