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Improper weight lifting can create intense eye strain, lead to blindness
BY DELTHIA RICKS
Newsday Staff Writer
September 12, 2006
Lifting weights improperly can cause an increase in potentially damaging eye pressure, especially when lifters hold their breath during repetitions, a team of Manhattan researchers report today.
The role of intense pressure during exercise joins a growing body of studies that have looked at everything from tight clothing to blowing into wind instruments as causes of strain on the inner eye, which is seen as a risk factor for glaucoma, a leading cause of blindness.
"I had been thinking about conducting this study for 20 years," said Dr. Robert Ritch, a professor of clinical ophthalmology and chief of the glaucoma service at Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital. "At that time we had a number of patients who had experienced an unusual phenomenon related to glaucoma."
One patient developed severe intra-eye pressure while performing yoga exercises, requiring handstands; another had been held hostage in Iran and was forced to hang upside down. In each instance, the unusual position forced blood pressure to increase in the jugular veins, and hence inside the eyes. The yoga exerciser became blind as a result.
Intrigued by his early observations, Ritch wondered whether weight lifters experienced a similar phenomenon, especially when they held their breath during intense repetitions.
Working with collaborators in Brazil, Ritch measured how pressure increased in the eyes of 30 men between the ages of 18 and 40. None of the test subjects were affected by glaucoma. All had normal eye pressure and were required as part of the analysis to perform four repetitions of a bench press exercise in two ways.
In the first, pressure was measured in the right eye as lifters held their breath during a 150-pound bench press. In the second, pressure was measured in the left eye as participants breathed normally throughout the exercise. During the first round, intraocular pressure increased in 27 participants. In the second round, pressure increased in 18 weight lifters. The study demonstrated that pressure was greatest when lifters held their breath. Because all the weight lifters in the study were healthy, increased eye pressure was temporary. Exhaling while lifting weights is important, Ritch said, to prevent unnecessary pressure in the eyes.
Ritch said the increased pressure might be because of greater pressure in the chest, which occurs as air is retained in the lungs. Complete results appear in today's Archives of Ophthalmology. The team concluded that weight lifting can increase intraocular pressure so significantly as to pose a risk for someone who might be predisposed to glaucoma. The condition is an insidious blinding disorder marked by increased intraocular pressure.
Three years ago, Dr. Theodore Krupin of Northwestern University in Illinois found that men who wore tight neckties also experienced a potentially damaging increase in intraocular pressure.
"It is a well-known fact that high intraocular pressure is one of the key risk factors for glaucoma," said Scott Christensen, president of The Glaucoma Foundation in New York City. "Any activity that elevates intraocular pressure places the patient at the greatest risk."
Eye-popping study about pressure
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