Eye Floaters - is there a cure/treatment?

[Francisco]

quit rubbing your eyes.

Could this cause it? I do think I tend to rub my eyes a lot... my eyes get dry a lot, and I have to work late pretty often at night, which causes some eye rubbing.

I have trouble producing tears (no emo), so if I get a speck of dirt in my eye - it can result in an hour of painful squinting, washing out my eyes, etc...

[Syntex]

Sometimes we get little bits of debris floating around in the liquid (called the "vitreous humor") that fills our eyes. This can include red blood cells (round) or fungal filaments (which look like a thick thread with small lines along it). Oddly, the lens in out eye then acts like a microscope, allowing us to see them floating around in our eyes.

These are very common, and when they have come on gradually (over months to years) and there are just a few of them, they are normal and not dangerous. When there is a new sudden shower of them in one eye this can represent a medical emergency (called a "retinal tear") which should be seen immediately. A simple laser technique can fix the tear is done early, where vision may not be recovered if the tear is allowed to progress.

Unless the "floaters" are suddenly occurring in one eye, and there are suddenly a lot of them, they can generally be ignored.

Interestingly, the longer thread like floaters (vs the small round ones) sometimes reflect an overgrowth of yeast (candida) in the body, and go away when the yeast is treated for 6 weeks with the prescription Diflucan 200mg a day. If you have fatigue, pain, sinus congestion or spastic colon, these thread-like floaters may reflect yeast overgrowth, and treating the yeast can help you feel better in general.

Hope that helps.

By the way, everyone can see these not just a select few. Best way to see them is look at a brightly lit wall (pref white) and just stare until you see something that looks like it might be under a microscope, you kinda have to let your eyes unfocus to do it.

[Psion]

I also have this thing where I see flying red dots in the dark all the time. It's so fucking weird. I can see them in the day time if I pay attention to them, but I pretty much ignore it all the time. You just get used to it. Before anyone asks, no I am not crazy. Anyone else have this?

I have this as well, though for me I've only seen a red one once or twice in my life. For me they are most of the time a brilliant blue, with occasional yellow-white, similar to an afternoon sun. I've even seen green and violet rarely, but blue and to a lesser extent, the yellow ones are by far the most common. The best way I can describe them is a resemblance to someone poking a pinprick in a black sheet of paper, then shining a bright colored light through that hole, and then rapidly flashing their hand between the light source and paper to produce a strobe effect. Except that these pinpricks last for a little less than a second, drift in random directions, and appear to be 3 dimensional, as they drift in random places, sometimes moving away or toward you (normally away), while drifting to the left or right and up or down as well. I used to think they were pieces of glitter that were floating in the air, but considering they show up in pitch darkness as well, that's probably not it.

It also isn't tied to my migraines I get, like some visual auras are, so I'm a bit puzzled as to what they are. I've seen them for several years at least, if not longer, and I tend to see several a day, and that's probably just the ones that I see near the center of my vision. If I pay attention I see them more often. Oddly enough, the yellow dots almost always are slightly larger than the other dots, and are very bright, as are the blue ones. The red ones I've seen were both very dim in comparison, barely visible.

The only clues I can seem to find about them were that supposedly they are manifestations of psychic power or something to do with monks. :D So yeah, no clue what they are really. For all I know, they're the inspiration for pyreflies in FFX. >_<; They are kinda pretty though, if short lasting.

As far as floaters, there's also another phenomena related to eyesight that you can see, by looking at a bright blue background (the midday sky, but please don't stare at the sun!) You might see a bunch of small dots wiggling around rapidly. These are apparently your white blood cells, and it's actually used as a nice way to get a good estimate of white blood cell count or some such.

Oh, and there's also phosphenes, and closed-eye hallucinations, which ganzfeld tends to enhance. I've experienced this before a couple times while playing with a ganzfeld, and once I started drifting to sleep while under it. I started dreaming I was looking at a cliff wall, then realized i was falling asleep and snapped awake. The image instantly dissolved into a bunch of tiny fragments and faded out of my vision, and I realized I wasn't dreaming it but actually seeing it with my eyes open. Was pretty neat since it looked real, before the thing seemed to turn into a bunch of tiny grey dots that scattered and faded in a second.

::edit:: just remembered to mention, I have never seen these floating dots of light when my eyes are closed. They really do seem to be... "Physical"? Or at least, they don't appear to be phosphenes, as the origin of the light seems to be without, not within. But again, they appear even in the dark, and just as bright as during the day.... so strange... :s

[toonces]

Interesting, actually going to the doctor cuz of this symptons today fatigue, pain, sinus congestion. Did BG medical hit the mark? will let you know later .

[Ddboner]

on topic:

I have floaters too, I assume they are the non-dangerous kind because I've had the same ones for years. I just assumed they were scratches or something, kind cool to hear others have them. As others have mentioned, the best way to see them is look at a white wall or a blue sky (the sky especially). It has to be a solid color, I'm assuming the brain does something to take them out of fields etc (like the blind spot)...

A cool trick to play on people:

Remind them how they cannot pan their eye like a camera, ask them to try and they will be unable too. Their eye will 'jump' along a few points on the path you asked them to pan too.

Now tell them you have special powers that allow you to pan. 'Lock in' to a floater and follow it along your field of view slowly, let it 'lead' your eye and voila you can miraculously pan your eye HAHA... (they'll most likely think you're crazy and make sure its someone you don't mind getting up close to look at your eye)

Anyhow

@ Psion

I get red dots that dart around my eye when I try to stifle a sneeze. I know its bad but i have allergies and sometimes there is more pressure than can come out at once so it gets stifled (always worries me about having an aneurysm or hemorrhage after).

I assumed over the years this would be the rush of blood moving through the capillaries in my eye.

You may have circulation problems or something, maybe you should explain this to a doc (leave out the psychic powers part though LOL)

Also, you're description of the falling asleep thing is called hypnogogic imagery. We experience these when we fall in and out of sleep but much like dreams we have been trained to disregard them as unimportant information. If you train your concentration you can 'hold' these images long enough to fall asleep and step into them. This is known as a lucid dream, and this is only 1 of many methods of experiencing them. I love this topic and have been training for years to try and experience them fully. Fun stuff, you seem to be a natural at it (although I'm sure the device you described helped you) I would suggest pursing it. Becoming an armored core and laying waste to a city all while "sleeping" is fun, but getting to explore you're unconscious from that altered state is also very worthwhile.. plus it can be like living a second life if you are good enough at it (I'm far from it).

[Psion]

Oh, I'm trying, believe me. Actually, I think the fact that I've got a bit of asperger's hinders me a bit, since repetitive phenomena don't shut my brain down quickly like with most people. Generally though, it only takes 5-15 minutes for people to start seeing stuff... If they don't fall asleep that is =D. For me it tends to go like: stay awake 45 minutes, fall asleep 3 hours, wake up, maybe see something for a second, then get excited and decide to call it a night. Kinda aggrevating, but oh well. :s

If you want to try it, you need ping-pong balls (without logos, and a sodid color), scissors, clear tape, a red light bulb, and mp3 player with white noise downloaded on it. Just cut a ping pong ball in half along the seam or whatever, so that the light shines evenly throughout, and then cut it into more of a curved peanut shape, by cutting two thin crescents from two sides, then shaping the other two ends to be rounded. Sorta like the shape of a baseball half. These should fit comfortably over the eyes while letting you blink, but make sure to sand the edges down if they're sharp with fine grained sandpaper. then you set up a red light so it's as over your head as possible, not too bright, play the white noise with headphones to drown out other sounds, and turn off other lights. Then just tape the ping pong ball halves over your eyes with tape to make it as even colored as possible, while blocking outside objects completely. You should wind up with white noise, a dim red field of vision that quickly fades to black if you stare at it for a couple seconds (I say black but the best way I can describe it is more of an active void. It feels different from normal staring at pitch black), and it's best if you recline or lie down without moving, to allow your body to fall asleep. Keep your eyes open, and try to stay restful but awake. If you're lucky, your brain should go nuts being bored from unchanging scenery and sound, and start making shit up like when you're dreaming. This was used to test telepathy in experiments for decades, and still is, but that requires a partner sending info to you mentally. By yourself I'd assume you'd just dream, though to be fair, I've never had a dream of staring at the base of a rock cliff before... hmm.

Anyways, I'm pretty sure the blue dots I see aren't pressure related. I have normal blood pressure, and my circulation is fine as far as I know, since my hands usually aren't cold. They usually appear when I'm relaxed and not paying much attention to what I'm looking at, not when I sneeze or anything. They're a mystery to me.

[toonces]

bad case of SPK

[Max™]

Most people have remains of embryonic structures in their eye fluid, either you get accustomed to ignoring them, they float out of your main field of vision, or you scoop your eyes out with an ice cream scoop I guess.

[Theinen]

[/QUOTE]

[Murdock]

Fucking eye floaters, how do they work?

[shibby]

Shivs - 8 years later how are you doing?? are the fuckers gone ??? I have had them for 6 months now - think form taking blood thinners - they are driving me f%^&*(O ind=sane too )

[Coren]

Clearly you need to stop channeling the True Power so often if Saa are floating in your vision. Duh. Damn whiny Forsaken.