![]() Retinal holes, tears and detachments can cause symptoms including flashing lights in your vision, floaters and a curtain moving in and out of your vision. Not all flashes in your eyes are harmless. I would love to leave it at that but there is one more thing. So rest assured that if you have been properly diagnosed with an ocular migraine your eyes are safe and sound. If you’re driving it is strongly recommended to pull over and wait it out. These vision changes are temporary and do not cause any damage to your eyes or your brain. Migraine medication can be helpful if a person is getting ocular migraines all the time and it’s seriously interfering with their life but otherwise we just recommend that a person sit back and enjoy the show for 20 minutes. We think that all those blood vessel antics are caused by the same things that cause migraines… so, almost anything (certain smells or foods, weather patterns, stress, lack of sleep. The resulting stress levels can cause the visual changes to linger for about an hour. This usually occurs if someone completely panics causing an adrenaline surge. In some cases the vision changes can last longer than 20 minutes. It’s that extreme stretch that causes the horrible pain people experience with migraines. They either return to their normal size, blood flow returns to normal levels and you stop feeling like you ate a brownie you shouldn’t have OR the blood vessels expand to their maximum size stretching themselves to be as big as they can. ![]() It takes your brain, usually, about 20 minutes to figure out this isn’t normal at which point the blood vessels do one of two things. This lack of blood flow means your brain can’t function the way it would like and you start to experience really bizarre things in your vision. So, what the heck is going on? It’s not certain but what is believed to happen is that for some reason the blood vessels in the visual cortex (the very back of your brain… about as far from your eyes as you can get and still be in your head) shrink way down and not as much blood is getting through as before. Auras or 'ocular migraines' usually last about 20 minutes and are followed by a return to normal vision and depending on the person a headache, a migraine, or absolutely no pain. You may have heard of people getting an aura that tells them they’re about to get a migraine. Some people do have migraine headaches after seeing these images in their vision but not everyone. The term ocular migraine implies that you should get a headache afterwards. This event is known as an ocular migraine. I’m an optometrist and when this happened to me even though I fully recognized my symptoms and knew what was happening my heart rate bumped up a few notches. ![]() You may have never had this happen but if these symptoms sound familiar you’re not alone. If you had this happen and didn’t panic at least a little I’m impressed. Sections of your vision may simply vanish and go dark or you may still be able to ‘see’ but things you know should be there just aren’t visible to you anymore (like whatever is supposed to be there pulled a chameleon on you and has become invisible). It may move faster or slower or not at all. You may notice shapes or colours or motion in your vision, not right in the middle but just off to the side. You’re busy doing your thing when suddenly your vision goes a little funny. The wild temperature swings wreak havoc on our systems and can cause some funny things to happen. +20C in December? -10C in July? -40C on Tuesday and +20C on Wednesday? These are just normal weather patterns here and as anyone who gets migraines can tell you it’s not fun. Alberta is a land of ups and downs when it comes to weather (you may have noticed this recently with our ‘spring’ weather). ![]()
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