11mo ago

I'm never lonely cuz i got these little guys with me :)

106 comments

Floaters. If you see a sudden increase in them, get a referral to an ophthalmologist ASAP.
- Why?
  
  Potentially detaching/detached retina if I'm remembering correctly.
- Worth noting that it's totally normal to see a lot more of them if you're looking at a bright blue sky. That's when they'll be more apparent.
- This happened to a relative and it turned out to be a serious issue, which they were able to deal with luckily. For weeks after I was so paranoid everytime I saw even one.

I got grounded for insisting I saw these when I was younger. I am now vindicated 😎
- This seems like a very... Odd reason to get grounded.
  
  Some parents are weird. I once got grounded because I left my room, forgot something, and went back in to get it. Wasn't even going anywhere or doing anything important. Just randomly got yelled at and grounded.
  
  With my parents it was either agree that they’re right or be punished.
  
  I pronounced "nuclear" wrong.

Floaters in the vitreous of the eyeball (aka clumps of your vitreous that got stuck together as your vitreous gel started to liquify, which happens naturally with age for everyone).
They're normal if they appear gradually as you age. Most common in people with myopia. Can be caused by a variety of things including hits to the eyes or head, possibly by steroid eye drops, anything that increases the pressure in your eye, or just plain old aging.
They never go away but if you're lucky they might "settle" or get stuck to the side. Never happens for a lot of people though, and they can be quite distressing for many people - especially for people who have many large and moving floaters.
Most mentally healthy people will neuro-adapt and they'll become less noticeable over time. It can take about six months before this happens though and it does suck at first. I got some new ones after LASIK and I was pretty upset. Now I only notice them on light backdrops like snow or my shower. But even then I just notice them briefly and my thoughts quickly move elsewhere. No stress.
For people who are absolutely driven insane by a large number of them, there is a risky surgery to remove them, but if it goes wrong you can be looking at blindness so you definitely need to weigh your options.
The non-surgical laser treatment for floaters doesn't work. It seems to maybe work for some people in the short term but most people report that it doesn't help in the long term. It can even create more floaters or break up your big ones into many smaller ones that move more. The laser is also dangerous for younger patients because the floaters are closer to your retina when you're younger. The laser can cause damage to the retina and it's hard to avoid doing that when the floaters are close to it.
There are currently a couple groups researching how to get rid of them non-invasively. Last bit of news I saw said a group had been using gold flakes and a new type of laser to successfully and safely break them down. Personally, I will get mine treated if there is a non-invasive way to do so, but I'm not too bothered by them so I can wait for that.
Worth noting that if you suddenly get a lot of floaters and are feeling pain in your eyes or seeing bright flashes that look like a camera flash, you need to go seek medical attention immediately as these are signs of a retinal tear. Retinal tears are treatable but only if you go take care of them immediately. The consequences are not taking care of them quickly can be severe.
For most people, these are harmless and just a part of getting older. You'll get used to them.
- This part bears repeating, as you CAN lose vision in one eye (partial or ALL) due to this.
  “ if you suddenly get a lot of floaters and are feeling pain in your eyes or seeing bright flashes that look like a camera flash, you need to go seek medical attention immediately as these are signs of a retinal tear. Retinal tears are treatable but only if you go take care of them immediately”.
- For most people, these are harmless and just a part of getting older. You’ll get used to them.
  I've had these since I was in preschool.
  They're far less pronounced (almost entirely absent, really) now in my 40's than they were throughout my single digit years, but I still see them once in a great while
  
  I've always had them too and I think they're just as pronounced now, but I rarely notice them. Of course, right now I can't stop noticing them.
  
  I think your brain learns to ignore them better at a certain point in life. So though you have fewer of them at a very young age, you notice them more because you haven’t filtered them out of your vision yet.
  
  Okay good I'm not crazy, I remember having them when I was a kid but now in my 40s I don't.

Taking a screen shot with your eyes
- just double tap the vagus nerve and left temple at the same time
- Close both eyes for 3 seconds for screenshot
- Does it come with a shutter sound?

Everyone on here talking about theirs going away over time and I'm wondering if I'm supposed to go in for regular scraping as I get older
- They're little bits of debris and fibrous points in the gel matrix of your eye. They don't go away ever, but they float to a part of your eye you don't pay as much attention to. They tend to "go away" in people who consistently sleep on the same side. If you're a back sleeper, or move around a lot, they tend to stick near your macula (your main focal point).
  When I run ocular scans on people I can see them drifting around. They're not a problem unless they're dense or dark, then they might be blood due to a retinal tear or diabetic retinopathy.
  
  So, in theory, I should be able to get in one of these centrifuges that NASA has, and they’ll all get pushed to one side?
- Think thry never go away but your brain ignores them like it ignores your nose (close one eye)
  
  Mine often become visible to me shortly before experiencing a migraine. Is there a reason for this? I've told my doctor, but they didn't seem to react to this information much, just said it can happen.
  
  Joke's on you, my nose covers half of my view on both eyes.
- Them going away is probably an illusion, probably a result of sensory adaptation.

Awwww man. I just now realized that my little eye buddies disappeared at some point. Wonder where they went. I hope it was on vacation.

Mine disappeared as I got older, like around 25 or so. Now if they or similar visual effects come back it means I need to rush for my migraine pills or I'm in for some serious ass whopping... Don't know what I did to my old friends to deserve that kind of treatment.
- Maybe your vision got worse enough to where you can't see them well enough anymore
  
  Unlikely, perfect 20/20 vision last check-up (which I did due to said migraines to rule out deteriorating vision as a cause).

Oh wow I used to see those all the time when I was younger but it's been years lol!
- Yet one more victim of climate change

Floaters are one thing, but what about the internal electric / static activity you can see, what is that called? I was always way more intrigued by that than some eyeball sludge.
Do you see a reflection of neural activity or something? Just like floaters they're only visible when looking at larger plain things with 1 colour. They seem projected, and less obvious than the floaters but more common in your whole view.
- Did you mean this? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_field_entoptic_phenomenon
  
  Awesome, thanks, exactly that!
  
  Cheers from me also, always wondered what this was.
- Visual snow. I have it too. Really sucks when I want to look at the stars.
  
  Do you get diagnosed for that? I am pretty sure I have that. I will talk about it to my optometrist the next visit. I thought that was my vision degrading as I aged, but the intensity of it varies with fatigue, stress and migraines.
  
  I had cataracts done, have tons of floaters. Also makes it almost impossible to follow a golf ball in flight. I used to play, but got fed up not having a clue where I had hit the damned ball.

Oh squiggly line, I see you there in the periphery of my vision

I know they are not parasites, but what are they? Strings of dead cells? Dead optical nerve? Any biologists here?
- If it's a persistent pattern, it's likely to just be variation in the density of the vitreous humor (eye jelly).
- Not a biologist but it's called blue light entoptic phenomenon. Pretty interesting in general.
  
  Wouldn't these be floaters?
  
  For anyone too lazy to look:
  Some may be individual red blood cells swollen due to osmotic pressure. Others may be chains of red blood cells stuck together; diffraction patterns can be seen around these. Others may be "coagula of the proteins of the vitreous gel, to embryonic remnants, or the condensation round the walls of Cloquet's canal" that exist in pockets of liquid within the vitreous.
  ~ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entoptic_phenomenon
  
  That's a different phenomenon from the picture. The picture shows a body in the vitreous jelly. The article you linked is a "brain filling in gaps" phenomenon.
  Still, very cool article. I had never read about that.
  
  Fascinating
  
  I see that sometimes when I cough or sneeze too hard.

I think my eye sight must be getting worse cos I've not seen these in years!
- In most cases these are left by one of 2 things: small debris on the eye getting blurred and magnified, or as a trail left by the eye being hit by a bright light source as it rolls in it's socket.
  So certain lifestyles almost never experience these.
  
  Thats not true, they float around and your eye movement can kind of influence their direction.
  They are actually blood cells or proteins floating around in the liquid inside your eyeball. There was this one building where I regularly went to for about a year and they had walls in a white color so bright that I saw these every single time.

If nobody got me, I know the floaters and searing, incapacitating pain on the sides of my head got me
- cries in cluster headache

HOW DID YOU TAKE THAT PHOTO
- Eyeballcam

The first snowfall of this year made me realize the extent to which I have an entire fucking universe within me. Mostly in my eyeballs, apparently. So many white backdrops to highlight them. It was alarming.

I thought I was just weird.
- Don't worry, this doesn't mean you aren't weird.

I'm so relieved the comments validated what I thought this was about, and I'm not alone :)

i only ever see these when i look up at the sky
- I work at a specialized manufacturer, and we have a light table for inspecting parts. If you look at the table surface you'll find floaters you didn't even know about. It's freaky how many there are.

XP wallpaper?

Bro what I tought i was the only one I even went to a lot of doctors and took tons of supplements Tf is it
- My eye doctor calls them "floaters". They're pretty common from how the Dr talks about them. Dr says come in if there's suddenly a spike in them. I gather that's a sign something bad is happening with the eye.
  
  I got hit in the eye (long story short, my cousin learned to throw cards like Gambit and nailed me straight in the eye).
  I was seeing flashes so went to an eye doctor, and they warned me of retinal detachment. Aside from the flashes, a sudden increase in floaters is another warning sign.
  
  Yeah afaik it's just normal dead cells but if there's loads it's a sign that things are falling apart.
  
  I got a sudden spike in floaters... Fun fact: Retinal repair is a lot like spot welding... If you're spot welding the back of your eye with a laser!
- Blood vessels in your eye
- Visual snow syndrome. Yeah, the fussy tv static you also see? Ain't normal and also part of it. You likely have constant ringing in your ears? Tinnitus is almost always linked with VSS.
  
  That’s a different thing. Floaters are objects in your vitreous humor.
  
  I have a plethora of oddities but no static vision (sometimes a buzz in the ear but like a strong buzz, rarely btw). No tinnitus or at least I think so, maybe i am just used