Coping With A Twitching Eye
A personal story by guest author Sean Jones
If you are like me and a lot of other people out there, once in a while you will have a little muscle spasm in your eyelid area that causes some involuntary twitching to occur. My eyelid spasm usually occurred whenever I had a lack of sleep but would occur at other times as well. The eye twitches were not painful but were very annoying because they would twitch whenever I was trying to concentrate on something or trying to watch tv. Hopefully by following some of the tips in this article, you will be able to reduce the eye twitches that occur.
Why Does Your Eye Twitch?
A simple explanation of what actually causes eye twitching is just an involuntary muscle spasm around the eyelid. Why the eyelid, you ask? Well muscle spasms can occur in other places as well including the facial area. There are different names for eyelid twitching because of what actually causes the muscle contractions. Hemifacial spasm is a muscle spasm of a side of a face including the eyelids. If your eyelids and other facial muscles are contracting involuntarily, you should see a doctor as the condition could get worse, leading to other serious problems. The eye twitch that I have and most people have is the not life threatening type that is more of an annoyance. Three possible causes of this type of eye twitching are being essential blepharospasm, myokymia of the eyelids, or just normal muscle contractions. Myokymia is not a twitch but more of a slow muscle contraction. Blepharospasm is more of the quick muscle contractions, or twitching of the eyelid area. Regular muscle contractions of the eyelids occur but not often and are not annoying as they usually come and go. If you have eye twitching, you should first determine what causes it and the severity.
Preventing Eye Twitching
Because eye twitching can occur at anytime and most often at the worst times, they can become big annoyances. Normal eye twitching will usually go away but I have found that taking a few steps often helped reduce the eye twitches altogether. The first is stress. Every time I seemed stressed with work, the eye twitches just came. This lead to an investment in a stress management book which helped a lot. If you are seriously stressed, invest in some stress management techniques which could help lessen the eye twitches. The next key tip is to prevent over fatigue and lack of sleep. Both of these can be prevented. We all have those toss and turn nights that make us extra tired. Thus trying to get to bed early can help or taking a nap after a long night. To prevent fatigue, just do not over do it. Stay relaxed and even pass on the exercise or other activity on those really tiring days. Minimizing your caffeine intake can also help. I switched to decaf and found it helped reduce the restless nights and extra tiring days. These little steps can help reduce eye twitching that occurs. There are treatment options like surgery and botox injections but I just rather assume coping it the natural way.
[Page updated 12/2010]
