People with ocular migraine may have the loss of sight or one eye blindness for less than an hour. One can have it either during the migraine or after it. It’s rather an uncommon affliction. Some experiments show that often the indications are connected with other health problems. Permanent headache attacks can provoke sight problems (aura), which includes blind spots and flashing lights. Usually both eyes have these signs.
Go to the doctor and make sure it’s ocular migraine not other diseases with the same symptoms. Ocular migraine has other names like: monocular, ophthalmic, retinal and visual. The warning indications of it are: a headache continuing from four to seventy-two hours. It usually pulsates or throbs, you feel worse when moving, sense pain, the latter influences one side of your head.
Sight problems may alter just one eye. This may be a sight change or migraine with an aura. It continues from some minutes to half an hour. Sometimes it’s difficult to determine whether only one eye feels it. The blindness or flashing lights can be on one side of the vision, but the signs may be connected with both eyes. Aren’t you sure? Close one eye and after this another one. Other indications involve: sensitivity to the sounds and light, vomiting, sickness.
Specialists still don’t really know what provokes ocular migraine. Some people suppose that it’s caused by changes in nerve cells in the retina. Spasms in blood vessels in the retina, the mucous in the back of the eye. It happens not very often, but the above-mentioned kinds of migraine may cause a constant sight loss in one eye. Doctors are not sure whether medicines against migraines (anti-seizure cures or tricyclic antidepressants) can avoid the sight loss.
But if you’ve got an ocular migraine, even if it passes by itself, consult a doctor concerning its signs. How to determine this illness? The doctor should ask the patient about their symptoms and examine their eyes. He’ll try to exclude other triggers which can provoke the same problems, for example, conditions, preventing the blood from clotting within normal limits (polycythemia and sickle cell anemia). Drug addiction, various blood vessel troubles, connected with autoimmune diseases must be omitted.
The same symptoms may be during the giant cell arteritis. It is an illness causing blood vessel inflammation. It can provoke blindness or sight problems. Also you must be sure you don’t have spasms inside the artery bringing blood to the retina. Amaurosis fugax is a short-term blindness because of insufficient blood flow to the eye. It’s caused by the obstruction in the artery leading to the eye.
How to get rid of this affliction? Usually the uncomfortable symptoms end by themselves within half an hour. So no treatment is needed in such a case. It’s necessary to rest your eyes till your sight normalizes.
If you suffer from a headache – take a painkiller your doctor advises you. If you have a sight loss just in one eye, it may be provoked by a serious condition, that has nothing to do with migraine. Talk to your doctor at once or call an ambulance.
There have been not enough experiments as for the best ocular migraine cure or prevention. A doctor can prescribe you blood pressure medications like calcium-channel blockers or beta-blockers. As you see, it’s a dangerous condition, which requires the same attitude towards it. So be very attentive to your health.