Hi Svenska - thanks for posting your follow up information. It is great to see that you've been educating yourself.
You are correct that the definition of glaucoma is now based more on optic nerve damage than on intraocular pressure alone. However, elevated intraocular pressure remains the #1 risk factor for glaucoma. Furthermore, your goal should be to prevent optic nerve damage from ever being allowed to start. I am told that once nerve cells start dying, this process triggers a cascade of nerve cell death that can be hard to stop. (Healthy optic nerve cells can be killed as innocent bystanders by the immune system's process of cleaning up the dead cells.) Even if you reduce IOP at that point, healthy nerve cells can keep dying. And allopathic medicine has no way to reverse the nerve damage either. So it is smart to be safe and reduce IOP before the optic nerve damage becomes detectable.
You can always do the same alternative things you plan to do (such as exercise) even if you started glaucoma eye drops. Then, when your activities are successful, you can stop the glaucoma eye drops (probably in conjunction with discussions with your doctor).
Most people using glaucoma eye drops do not have serious side effects. And for many of the side effects that could happen, there are alternative treatments that reduce those side effects. For example, see Use Coenzyme Q10 with Timolol Eye Drops for Glaucoma.
The risk of side effects from the glaucoma eye drops is probably less than the risk of optic nerve cell death from waiting several months to begin treatment. Allowing optic nerve cells to die is a big deal. I would call this (optic nerve cell death) a serious side effect. I cannot imagine that you would have any side effect from glaucoma eye drops within a few months that would rival the loss of optic nerve cells. And if you are as successful as you hope to be with alternative treatments, then you will not need glaucoma eye drops for the rest of your life.
In my own experience, it is indeed possible to reduce IOP with alternative treatments. However, the percentage of people that do this successfully is very small. I do not know of anyone that has done it without a tonometer. (If you are out there and you have had success reducing your IOP without self-tonometry, please comment here and tell us your story.) And every case I have seen of success with alternative treatments has taken time. I believe it takes time because real success in reducing IOP via non-allopathic means requires making fundamental changes at a deep level of our being. Exercise certainly does help, but exercise alone is not enough for someone with IOP around 30 mmHg.
From what you reported above (and I thank you for providing so many details), I would guess that your doctor is right about your status as a strong glaucoma suspect. It sounds like he gave you good advice to start the eye drops. Regarding his comments on ALT vs. SLT, I cannot offer you any insights. Maybe someone else here can.
Congratulations for doing your research. Reading the OHTS Study was a good move. Keep doing your research. Let me know if you find any research that disputes what I've said.
Dave
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