Some highlights form this study...
https://eandv.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40662-020-0175-9#Sec10
Exercise is widely known to lower intraocular pressure and increase ocular blood flow, which may be beneficial for glaucoma management. However, there are few studies that have reported on the relationship between exercise and glaucoma progression.
The health benefits of PA have been widely documented for both systemic and ocular diseases including boosting the immune system, improving sleep quality, reducing the incidence of cardiac-cerebral vascular events and is correlated with decreased anxiety and depression rates [8,9,10,11,12]. For eyes in particular, exercise can decrease the IOP [13] and decreasing IOP is associated with the magnitude of exercise [14]. Moreover, choroidal blood flow increases substantially in primary open angle glaucoma (POAG) patients with elevated exercise-induced blood pressure [15].
Past research has shown that dynamic exercise significantly reduces IOP and increases ocular blood flow. Natsis K [39] found that aerobic exercise can help reduce IOP even when patients are already on various antihypertensive drugs. Hayashi N [40] reported that increasing exercise intensity induces rising retina and choroidal blood flow. Portmann N [15] explored the response of submacular choroid blood flow (ChBF) to isometric exercise and observed that POAG patients have a smaller active regulatory capacity and a larger increase in ChBF after exercising in comparison with their healthy counterparts, indicating that ocular blood flow in POAG patients is more sensitive to exercise. Taken together, exercise not only decreases IOP, but also increases ocular perfusion (ChBF, ocular perfusion pressure and ocular blood pressure), which may explain why more PA is associated with lower risk of glaucomatous progressive VF damage.
Apart from alleviating depression, exercise can also improve sleep quality, reduce morbidity of cardiovascular diseases, boost the immune system, and even promote neuronal plasticity [8,9,10,11,12, 45], and thus have comprehensive benefits not only for the eyes, but the entire body.
In conclusion, our study found that more evening exercise (MVPA) was associated with lower odds of progressive VF damage in patients with POAG. Our data suggest that exercise habits may play an important role in glaucoma progression, but a prospective, interventional study is needed to confirm our findings.
This is a very interesting article, so thank you very much for sharing.
If I am understanding things correctly, the article makes mention that the benefit of exercise is specific to the evening hours?
For those that can make better sense of the study, just wondering why the evening hours are specified, versus something like morning, when you would think that they would show similar results.
Thanks in advance for any clarity you can share on the timing of this benefit that was discovered.