Ocular Tinnitus?

[amandine]

Found this article about dry eye pain and thought if one substituted the words dry eye for Tinnitus then the two ailments are amazingly similar.
Are they working along the same neural pathways of pain? Same hyperactivity?

Here is the article

http://mosaicscience.com/story/severe-eye-pain

 

[Nucleo]

It sounds more like hyperacusis than tinnitus. The tinnitus equivalent of vision is visual snow - you see things, flashes of light, colored dots darting around without stimulation. It persists even when your eyes are closed, just like tinnitus does when you plug your ears.

 

[canyonero]

I have had on and off problems with dry eye pain (Blepharitus) for the last 7 years.

 

[Fungus]

Nucleo...interesting that you mentioned those light flashes. I notice them every evening on first going to bed and closing my eyes. As I also get migraine, i wasn't initially sure if the phenomena were due to that, but they didn't look anything like the migraine phenomena.
Oh, what the brain can do!

Fungus.

 

[Mario martz]

Nucleo...interesting that you mentioned those light flashes. I notice them every evening on first going to bed and closing my eyes. As I also get migraine, i wasn't initially sure if the phenomena were due to that, but they didn't look anything like the migraine phenomena.
Oh, what the brain can do!

Fungus.

this happens to me aswell!
have you got an explanation of whats going on?

 

[Fungus]

The 'flashing lights' are of different intensities and remind me of a visual field test. However, they tend to move and leave a 'wiggly tail', so they are different.

I guess the best explanation that I can give is that they are much like tinnitus. As tinnitus involves abnormal firing of (and reaction to) neurones in the auditory pathway, then the 'lights' represent the same type of phenomenon in the visual pathway.

Much as tinnitus can't harm you, neither can the visual disturbance.Best to accept them and be at ease with them.

Fungus.

 

[gary]

With me I see an arc of stars, but headache. Dr told me it was from what ever causes migraine but with out the headache. This has only happened once every three years or so.

 

[applewine]

@canyonero @amandine I have problems with dry eyes (recently itchy as well, but not in the past.) Sites seem to say this is blepheritis.

However, there is an interesting possible connection between dry eyes and tinnitus I've just been putting together.

Internal organ pain/dysfunction from the gall bladder or similar location can refer pain up the right side of the body (and possibly down as well). The pain goes up the neck and temple. Dry eyes is also a symptom of gallstones.

I have very bad myofascial pain in the right side of my body which started with the tinnitus in the right side of my body. In the following years I also developed dry eyes.

I've been posting in the thread on here about TMJ dysfunction for years. Many of us there have pain in our neck and jaw that seems to be related to our tinnitus. I'm going to go back to that thread and also post about the dry eyes.

I'm going to raise the issue of the gallblader and my muscle pain and maybe even my dry eyes at my next doctors appointment which I had to schedule several months out.

 

[canyonero]

@canyonero @amandine I have problems with dry eyes (recently itchy as well, but not in the past.) Sites seem to say this is blepheritis.

However, there is an interesting possible connection between dry eyes and tinnitus I've just been putting together.

Internal organ pain/dysfunction from the gall bladder or similar location can refer pain up the right side of the body (and possibly down as well). The pain goes up the neck and temple. Dry eyes is also a symptom of gallstones.

I have very bad myofascial pain in the right side of my body which started with the tinnitus in the right side of my body. In the following years I also developed dry eyes.

I've been posting in the thread on here about TMJ dysfunction for years. Many of us there have pain in our neck and jaw that seems to be related to our tinnitus. I'm going to go back to that thread and also post about the dry eyes.

I'm going to raise the issue of the gallblader and my muscle pain and maybe even my dry eyes at my next doctors appointment which I had to schedule several months out.

I doubt my Blepharitus and tinnitus are connected. My Blepharitus started many years earlier and is mostly in my left eye while my T is mostly in my right ear.

 

[applewine]

@canyonero It is funny you say that because often when my blepharitis starts it always starts in the left eye. It may be that the left eye is more often affected first due to some weakness, or it could just be a coincidence that both of us haev the left eye more effected.

To your point about them being connected and different sides. This actually makes perfect sense because the mechanism that is causing the tinnitus and the mechanism that is causing the blepharitis is occurring through two separate and parallel processes from the same hypothesized cause with this theory of mine. I actually imagined that a doctor or somebody would say what you just said if they didn't understand what I was saying.

The blepharitis or dry eyes which is listed as a common symptom of gallbladder dysfunction, perhaps caused by vitamin A deficiency or some other mechanism. The effect of this would be through a systemic process, not a linear path along an anatomical line on the right side of the body. Both eyes could be effected.

The referred pain from the gallbladder however is not systemic, but is following a referral pattern that is well established for that visceral organ area. This pain will go up your neck into your SCM muscle. Once this muscle spasms in pain it will create the tinnitus on that side. No matter how much you try to relieve the trigger points in the SCM they will not go away because the source of the pain will sustain them.

I've found half a dozen videos by one person on YouTube talking about the gallbladder and right side pain referall in the neck/jaw/temple area. Other areas such as the right back/shoulder or even leg can have pain as well. I have pretty much all of those.