

Most of the studies demonstrated very little impact on the course of glaucoma. Here are some of the things researches have looked at.

Aerobic exercise: This means doing something at least four times per week for more than 20 minutes at a time that raises your pulse rate to a level that makes your heart work harder. Going from a sedentary lifestyle to active one with aerobic exercise resulted in a very slight decrease in baseline eye pressure.

Yoga: A study conducted at the Mount Sinai Health System (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0144505) showed a significant increase in eye pressure with any head-down positioning. People with glaucoma would be wise to avoid any exercise that involves a position where your head is lower than your heart.

Weight lifting: Holding your breath while exerting yourself (called the Valsalva maneuver), is also a time when your eye pressure can go sky high. So if you lift weights for exercise, which is generally a good idea to maintain bone density, make it low weights with more repetitions of lifting, rather than heavy weights that make you grunt.



Wearing tight neckties: This creates a very short-duration increase in eye pressure but doesn’t seem to have any long-term effects.


Things that don’t seem to make much of an impact: alcohol consumption and caffeine intake are pretty much unrelated to causing glaucoma or making it worse.

The other concern that many glaucoma patients have is “using your eyes.” Go ahead and “use” them all you want. Things like reading, using a computer or watching TV don’t have any impact on glaucoma.


Article contributed by Dr. Brian Wnorowski, M.D.


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