Phase 1 · Understand the Body — Why the disease behaves the way it does.
The One-Line Truth
The whole disease in one chain
Everything on this page exists to explain this line.
Slow, painless rise in eye pressure that quietly damages the optic nerve and side vision.
A Clogged Sink Slowly Crushing a Pipe
Your eye's aqueous humor system is like a sink with a slow drain. The ciliary body is the faucet running 24/7, making fluid (the water). The pupil and front chamber are the sink basin (the space filling up). The trabecular meshwork is the drain screen—normally it lets water flow freely, but over years tiny debris (like hair and soap scum) clogs the mesh, so water backs up. That backed-up water (rising pressure) presses down on a delicate copper pipe running under the sink (the optic nerve), slowly flattening it. The pipe's walls get crushed, blood cannot flow through to feed the nerve, and the nerve dies section by section. Unlike a real pipe, you cannot replace a crushed nerve—the damage is forever.
American Academy of Ophthalmology Preferred Practice Pattern · American Glaucoma Society · National Eye Institute (NEI) · Cochrane Eyes and Vision · reviewed 2026-07-09