What Are Causes Of Eye Floaters

What Causes Eye Floaters

What Causes â€œEye Floaterséâ€� For those who've never experienced the phenomenonof â€œeye floatersâ€�, they are little oddly shaped objects that appear in your vision,often when one looks at bright light such as a blue sky. Their shapes vary greatly,but will often appear as spots, cobwebs, or randomly shaped stringy objects. These arenot optical illusions, but rather something your eyes are actually perceiving. There area few different things that can cause this, but in most cases these eye floaters are causedby pieces of the gellike vitreous breaking off from the back portion of your eye andthen floating about in your eye ball.

The vitreous humor, or often just â€œvitreousâ€�,is a clear gel that fills the gap between your retina and lens, helping maintain theround shape of your eye in the process. This gel is about 99% water and 1% other elements;the latter of which consists mostly of a network of hyaluronic acid and collagen. Hyaluronicacid ends up retaining water molecules. Over time though, this network breaks down whichresults in the hyaluronic acid releasing its trapped water molecules. When this happens,it forms a watery core in your vitreous body. As you age, pieces of the still gellike collagenhyaluronicacid network will break off and float around in this watery center. When light passes throughthis area, it creates a shadow on your retina.

This shadow is actually what you are seeingwhen you see the eye floaters. Children and teenagers usually don't experiencethese types of eye floaters as there must first be some deterioration of the gellikesubstance in their eye creating the watery core for these floaters to appear. However,they do still sometimes experience a certain type of eye floater that often appears morelike a crystallized web across their vision. These floaters aren't found in the vitreoushumor like the aforementioned floaters. Instead, they are found in the Premacular Bursa area,right on top of the retina. These floaters are microscopic in size and only appear asbig as they do because of their proximity

to the retina. Unfortunately, their microscopicnature makes them almost impossible to treat in most cases.Bonus Facts: â€¢ Interestingly, if the eye floaters wouldjust stay still instead of floating around, your brain would automatically tune them outand you'd never consciously see them. Your brain does this all the time with things bothin and outside of your eyes. One example of this inside your eye are blood vessels inthe eye which obstruct light; because they are fixed in location, relative to the retina,your brain tunes them out completely and you don't consciously perceive them. The reasonthe floating specs never seem to stay still

is because floaters, being suspended in thevitreous humor, move when your eye moves. So as you try to look at them, they will appearto drift with your eye movement. â€¢ The reason you can see floaters betterwhen looking at, for instance, a bright blue sky, is because your pupils contract to avery small size, thus reducing the aperture, which in turn makes floaters more apparentand focused. â€¢ If you ever see a ton of floaters appearout of no where, possibly with some light flashes, you should get to an eye immediately.There is a chance (1 in 7) that your retina is about to detach from the back of your eye.If that happens, you have very little time

to get it fixed before it effectively diesand you go blind in that eye. â€¢ â€œLight flashesâ€� not caused by actuallight, also known as photopsia, will often occur when the photoreceptors in the retinareceive stimulation from being touched or from being torn. This produces an electricalimpulse to your brain, which your brain more or less interprets as a light flash. Thisphysical stimulation is often caused when traction is being applied while the vitreousdetachment is taking place. The flashes should subside when the vitreous finally detaches.These flashes will also often temporarily occur when you get a sharp blow to the head.The sudden jarring causes pressure on the

What are those floaty things in your eye Michael Mauser

Have you ever noticed something swimmingin your field of visioné It may look like a tiny wormor a transparent blob, and whenever you try to geta closer look, it disappears, only to reappearas soon as you shift your glance. But don't go rinsing out your eyes! What you are seeing is a common phenomenon known as a floater. The scientific name for these objectsis Muscae volitantes,

Latin for quot;flying flies,quot; and true to their name,they can be somewhat annoying. But they're not actually bugsor any kind of external objects at all. Rather, they exist inside your eyeball. Floaters may seem to be alive,since they move and change shape, but they are not alive. Floaters are tiny objectsthat cast shadows on the retina, the lightsensitive tissueat the back of your eye.

They might be bits of tissue, red blood cells, or clumps of protein. And because they're suspendedwithin the vitreous humor, the gellike liquidthat fills the inside of your eye, floaters drift alongwith your eye movements, and seem to bounce a littlewhen your eye stops. Floaters may be onlybarely distinguishable most of the time.

They become more visiblethe closer they are to the retina, just as holding your hand closerto a table with an overhead light will result in a moresharply defined shadow. And floaters are particularly noticeable when you are lookingat a uniform bright surface, like a blank computer screen, snow, or a clear sky,

where the consistency of the backgroundmakes them easier to distinguish. The brighter the light is,the more your pupil contracts. This has an effect similarto replacing a large diffuse light fixture with a single overhead light bulb, which also makesthe shadow appear clearer. There is another visual phenomenonthat looks similar to floaters but is in fact unrelated. If you've seen tiny dots of lightdarting about

when looking at a bright blue sky, you've experienced what is knownas the blue field entoptic phenomenon. In some ways,this is the opposite of seeing floaters. Here, you are not seeing shadows but little moving windowsletting light through to your retina. The windows are actually causedby white blood cells moving through the capillariesalong your retina's surface. These leukocytes can be so largethat they nearly fill a capillary

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