6 months ago

Dawna • 10

@_715

Hi all, I have been monitoring my pressure for a few months now, and have noticed my pressure increases about 3/4 after I have eaten. It doesn't seem to matter what I'm eating/drinking, or whether it's hot or cold. It also appears to stay elevated for a few hours!

I understand that our pressure fluctuates throughout the day, and I have to eat! But I find it frustrating when I have had a nice low number for a few hours to then loose it the moment I eat! I have cut out most 'snacking' and try to just stick to 3 x meals a day, and I have an early tea so it's back down before bed. But wondered if anyone else has found this trend, and if you have any tips to bringing it down sooner or avoid it going so high (I have ntg with low readings (often single figures) but still having progression, so a 3/4 is a big increase 🥺)

Thank you in advance, Dawn

6 months ago

david 4.2k

@david_fe

Hi Dawn, This is an interesting observation. First of all, kudos to you for identifying the pattern. That first step is essential for finding a solution.

Unfortunately, I cannot directly offer you a solution. In fact, I have observed the opposite trend: my IOP tends to decrease following a meal. However, I have one idea (so far). You could do an experiment with TUDCA.

TUDCA comes to mind because of its relationship to liver health and digestion. There are multiple posts in FitEyes about TUDCA. Here's a link to the most recent one:

A dietary supplement for neuroprotection found to shut the door on COVID before it can infect our cells (newly published study) | Ask FitEyes

TUDCA is a dietary supplement that has been of interest to many glaucoma patients for a long time. Douglas Rhee, MD, wrote a section on it for a consensus paper for a major glaucoma organization more than a dozen years ago. In fact TUDCA (or bear bile) has a history of use for improving vision going back thousands of years in traditional Chinese medicine (Cidian 2004; Ventura 2009).

You may get other ideas related to liver and gallbladder health that you want to experiment with. Milk Thistle is another one, but I think I'd start by reading about TUDCA and exploring whether your IOP pattern has any connection with the liver or gallbladder.

All my best - David

6 months ago

BrianB • 250

@brianb

Can I ask what was your process for making this conclusion? e.g., for how many days did you measure this? how long after eating do you see an increase? how consistent is it (100% of the time)? did you vary your eating times during the day? have you tried fasting for a day? how much do you drink with meals (it's well known that rapid fluid intake can raise IOP)? do you drink caffeine before or with meals?

I ask all these questions because humans are very good at seeing patterns where none exist upon closer analysis ("patternicity", which is a topic on which much has been written). Personally, I have run into this numerous times with trying to attribute cause to higher IOP. It's easy to attribut it to one thing, that I might suspect, but the problem is that I do 100 other things during the course of the day, and it can be very difficult to rule all those other things out. Or maybe it is none of them. We also have a tendency to want to find "some reason" for things, and that is just not always possible.