Myth or Fact? Medical Marijuana And Glaucoma Benefits

Each year more and more potential benefits are discovered for marijuana or its derivatives. Increasingly, the medicinal use of marijuana is becoming legalized in more and more states.

So what are these medical purposes? One popular perception is that marijuana can be used to treat glaucoma. Let’s investigate.

What Is Glaucoma?

Glaucoma is one of the most common eye conditions worldwide. Because glaucoma is so common, many people have heard about the condition or know someone with glaucoma Unfortunately glaucoma can lead to severe and disabling vision loss. But what exactly is glaucoma.

Glaucoma is an eye disease which leads to irreversible vision loss. Typically patients also have high pressure within the eye. Glaucoma is one of the reasons those horrible eye puff tests exists. Those eye puff tests look for high pressure in the eyes. High eye pressure doesn’t cause any overt symptoms unless extremely high and thus must be detected in screening. And high eye pressure over a long period of time causes damage.

_{Vision loss due to glaucoma; Image by National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health / Public domain}

While glaucoma all have the same basic principles, there is actually a large variety of types of glaucoma out there. While there are types which cause sudden pain and blurry vision, the most common form causes slow loss of peripheral vision and is difficult to detect without screening or testing for it. This is probably the most important thing to know about glaucoma. When caught and when treated early, vision loss can be prevented! This makes regular eye exams important.

High eye pressure also is important when we talk about the ways to treat glaucoma. All of the current strategies we have to treat glaucoma today rely on lowering the pressure of the eye. Lowering the pressure of the eye can prevent the damage from happening.

Marijuana Use And Glaucoma

So does marijuana treat glaucoma?

Marijuana in fact does lower the pressure of the eye!

But, in reality, marijuana is a poor treatment for glaucoma. Marijuana doesn’t last a long time in the system. In order for the treatment to be effective, the marijuana would need to be taken around the clock in order to keep the eye pressure low. Not very practical. There are just too many extra “side effects” that come with marijuana to allow it to be used 24/7.

On top of this marijuana just doesn’t lower the pressure as much as what prescriptions can do. It just can’t effectively compete with actual glaucoma medication.

So in the end, despite what you may hear, marijuana can’t be recommended as a treatment for glaucoma.

Check out The Hidden Mystery Behind What Is Glaucoma on EyeMountain.com for more information

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