Glaucoma Awareness Month: Three Ways to Help

January is Glaucoma Awareness Month, and at 1st Eye Care Arlington, we’re eager to join in the efforts to spread awareness and build understanding about the disease.

As we’ve been talking about over the past couple months here on the 1st Eye Care blog, glaucoma  can be a devastating condition for many people in Dallas-Ft. Worth—it’s nicknamed the “silent thief of sight” because of its slow, gradual progression. In fact, nearly 120,000 people in the United States are blind from glaucoma today.

Glaucoma Awareness Month is simply an annual nationwide effort to address such a problem.

So what can you do to help?

Learn about it:

Knowledge is power, and without it, the slow deterioration of vision and gradual onset of some forms of glaucoma can be a terribly frightening thing. So the first way to help is to learn—about the symptoms, the benefits of early detection, and the emerging forms of treatment.  A thorough understanding of glaucoma will put you in the position to spot it early in yourself or your loved ones, and give you the ability to ease the fears of others who are fighting it.

We’ll keep you updated about the latest advancements in treatment and detection here on the 1st Eye blog, but for more information, check out the Glaucoma Foundation, the Glaucoma Research Foundation, or the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

Raise awareness:

One of the frustrating aspects about glaucoma is just how preventable some of its symptoms are in many cases. At 1st Eye Care, for example, early detection and treatment makes it much, much easier for us to make life with glaucoma a robust, pain-free life for many of our patients.

So the key is raising awareness—if more people understood what could happen and how to prevent it, fewer people would suffer. There are a couple ways to do this:

The Glaucoma Research Foundation is encouraging people to order free education booklets, and to share them with friends. And the Glaucoma Foundation is helping people plan Eyevents—basically gatherings of friends and loved ones to educate them about eye health and glaucoma prevention.

Raise funds:

Thankfully, there are multiple innovative researchers out there devoted to curing glaucoma or making life easier for those afflicted with the condition. If advancing glaucoma research is a cause you’d like to support, visit the Glaucoma Research Foundation or the Glaucoma Foundation to learn more about their needs.

Contact our Arlington, TX certified glaucoma specialists for more information, or to schedule a comprehensive dilated eye exam. The earlier we can detect vision problems, the easier they will be to treat.