Eyegraines and Auras: What to Do About Chronic Ocular Migraines

Having a migraine in your eyes or one of your eyes can be a major problem. It can cause vision loss or complete blindness in one of your eyes if it persists for more than one hour. You can have these along with a migraine headache.

There are multiple names given by medical professionals, ocular, monocular or visual migraines are all some of the names this ailment goes by. It is a problem but it can arise if you’re not careful. For those that already have migraines, it affects 1 out of every 200 people.

Ocular Migraine Causes

Just having regular migraines can cause a whole host of vision problems. These are called auras and can be caused by major flashing lights or eye strain due to too much screen usage. For a lot of people out of there, they don’t realize the amount of time we are spending on a variety of screens.

Making the distinction between two different migraines is an important one to make. For example regular migraines will most likely only affect you in both eyes

Our work consists of staring at screens all day and then after we’re finished we’ll go and look at some more. That is especially true for people who like to sit back relax and play some video games. There are ways to reduce your risks for migraines by wearing gaming glasses while playing.

If you ever experience migraines you can go to your doctor so they can diagnose your condition. Different symptoms can persist between auras and “eyegraines.”

Vision Problems Flaring Up

Often our vision problems will only affect one of the eyes. Flashing lights, major glares, eye irritants and eye strain can cause the pain. Often your migraines in the eye will only last for a few minutes and up to half an hour max. Some other symptoms to look out for are flashing lights in the eyes. This can be hard to differentiate between blind spots,

A quick way to tell if it is affecting both eyes is to simply cover one of your eyes. Headaches that occur with these symptoms will also only affect on side of your head. The pain is going to be throbbing and more prevalent when you’re up and moving. Sound and light might also be irritating to you as you become more sensitive to it.

Cause of Ocular Migraines

Many leading experts aren’t quite sure where the problem stems from internally, but have a few ideas. Your eye is most likely malfunctioning because of blood vessels inside the eyes that are acting up and spreading to the back of the eye. These spread across the area in the retina and cause the throbbing pain.

Though it is rare, this type of ocular migraine has the possibility to cause a permanent loss in vision. Some medications are able to mitigate the effects, but you’re best off taking proactive measures if you already are prone to migraines.

Morgan Tomlinson works as an optician and has growing concerns about the treatment of our eyes due to our ever-connected world and the amount of screen time we now have. Her articles are published on a range of health related blogs.