Glaucoma Acupuncture and Chinese herb Treatment

What is glaucoma?

Glaucoma is an eye disease in which the normal fluid pressure inside the eyes slowly rises, causing damage to the eye's optic nerve, manifesting as visual field defect, contraction of visual field, vision loss, even blindness.

What causes it?

Normal eye has certain pressure, when the pressure within the eye is more than the highest level of the eyeball can withstand, it may cause damage to the optic nerve and other parts of the eye.

For Chinese Medicine point of view, glaucoma is due to long standing stagnation of the liver-Qi caused by emotional upset, which then turns into fire to attack the eyes, it may also caused by retention of phlegm-dampness which blocks the eye, or the deficiency of blood and body’s essence fluid.

How do we treat it?

According to the theories of traditional Chinese medicine, the eyes and internal organs, meridians, Qi and blood are closely related. When we treat the glaucoma, we should not only treat the eyes, but also adjust the internal organs and whole body.

The liver in Chinese medicine has the functions of storing blood, reinforcing tendons and joints, regulating flow of Qi and blood, and the sensitivity of the emotional environment, particularly of anger. Every organ system is related to a body portal, or opening. The liver is thus related to the eyes. Herbs and acupuncture points selected to treat the eyes are usually related to the liver channel or its partner, the gallbladder channel which begins just lateral to

Chinese herbs for glaucoma: According to its manifestations, glaucoma is classified into types of liver Qi stagnation, liver and gallbladder fire, phlegm-fire, and liver and kidney yin deficiency with hyperactivity of yang. The herbs for glaucoma with the effects of dispersing liver Qi and regulating liver blood, clearing liver fire, resolving phlegm, and nourishing yin and clearing heat are selected to correct the underlying causes of glaucoma, instead of treating only the symptoms.

Acupuncture for glaucoma: Points located around the eye and points on the liver and gallbladder channels, kidney channel and spleen channel are applied to invigorate blood circulation of the eyes and body, reduce the IOP, relieve the stress and calm the sprit.

Acupressure for glaucoma: Doing acupressure exercise everyday at home under Dr. Li’s instruction to help reduce IOP.

Stress and daily activities management: Trying to reduce your stress by doing exercise, meditation; watching less TV; having enough sleep, not to staying in dark place for long time, etc.

Diet: To avoid further aggravating your IOP, you need to eliminate alcohol, tobacco, coffee, dairy products, deep fry, roasted, spicy, and greasy foods which might generate heat and phlegm inside of your body. Intaking more foods with effect of reducing water retention, such as red bean, pearl barley, watermelon, winter melon, radish, etc. Intaking foods with effects of moistening intestine, relieving constipation, these foods including: banana, radish, pear, lemon, orange, watermelon, cantaloupe, tomatoes and vegetables and grains which rich in fibers.