Dr. King:
Hey there. Welcome back to Days of Our Eyes. I’m Dr. King.
Dr. Cha:
And I’m Dr. Cha.
Dr. King:
And on today’s episode we’re gonna be talking about ocular migraines. What are they? Isn’t it, is it the same?
Dr. Cha:
No, that was good.
Dr. King:
In this video we’ll be talking about ocular migraines. Is it the same as a regular migraine? Stay right here and find out.
A typical migraine by definition is like a spasm of nerves and blood vessels. Well, if it happens in the brain, it’s hitting pain sensors and and things like that. Or in the head so you end up with a headache. In the eye on the retina, we don’t have pain sensors or pressure sensors. We only have vision sensors. So when it happens in that area, you get symptoms such as a kaleidoscope or some sort of visual response and not usually pain associated with it. It can move on back into the brain and the headache can come during or after. It’s the same process, just in a different type of nerve tissue.
Dr. Cha:
Their common symptoms like Dr. King was already kind of prefacing like something in your vision that just unexplainable like a kaleidoscope. People see shapes, colors, a lot of times, zig zags, like lightnings. Have you even had patients say like they get tunnel vision.
Dr. King:
The symptoms vary quite a bit, but it’s always this weird visual phenomenon that you’ve never experienced before. Mm-Hmm. You name it, we’ve heard it. Yeah.
Dr. Cha:
Other times it’s not something you can like see through When you have other things like floaters or other you know, phenomena, you can sometimes see a rounder or see through it. But when it comes with these ocular migraines or migraine with aura, really it could be quite drastic. You know, people have to like pull over to the side of the road because they’re virtually blind.
Dr. King:
Sometimes it’s pretty subtle and sometimes it’s very pronounced and the first time it happens, it’s scary. I had patients thinking that they were having a stroke and it wasn’t. One thing about ocular migraines, they tended to have a limited time. They’ll last, you know, 20 to 40 minutes and then they fade away and things return to normal. A lot of times you can have a feeling of tiredness or fatigue afterwards.
Dr. Cha:
And you could get the headache afterwards.
Dr. King:
And you can get the headache afterwards.
Dr. Cha:
With or without the headache.
Dr. King:
Yeah. The cause of ocular migraines. That is a million dollar question. I wouldn’t have to work anymore. Right? If I could answer that completely. A lot of folks kind of have to work to find their triggers. They’ll kind of journal what they were doing before an onset. I have one patient, she was able to winnow it down. It took her a while. She was able to find out chocolate was her trigger. A lot of times we don’t know and they can happen for a period of time. You can go 20 years and not have anything, then they’ll start back up again. My experience is a lot of my patients will have ’em in clusters. Is there something stressful going on? Are we going through some health changes? Hormonal changes, something major in our life.
Dr. Cha:
But the thing about migraines or migraines with aura, ocular migraines, they’re kind of a diagnosis of exclusion. Meaning that when we have something that’s so drastic that changes our lives or stops us in our tracks like this, we wanna make sure it’s not anything else more serious.
Dr. King:
Correct.
Dr. Cha:
Connect with your primary care doctor and also your primary care eye doctor to make sure nothing more serious in the brain might be happening. It’s caused by vessels, dilating and changing shape, even pushing up on your brain. So what can you do to prevent them? That’s another million billion dollar question.
Dr. King:
I was gonna say that one again. Preventing a migraine. Oof. That’s a toughie. If you can, you know, keep track of what the types of things that tend to set you off into a migraine, that’s, you know, then you want to control those or eliminate those. Making sure that other things are under good control, blood pressure, blood sugar, keeping up with your primary care doc, making sure that there isn’t anything else going on that can throw things out of balance. Do you have any good tips on that?
Dr. Cha:
Prevention? No.
Dr. King:
I mean, prevention is a toughie.
Dr. Cha:
Yeah. You know, you know, be your best advocate. Be mindful of your body and do what you can to take care of yourself, especially if it happens the first time. Right. Don’t try to tough it out. Be safe. Make sure everybody else else around you is safe, that you’re safe once it’s subside and if it does come, let us know. We’ll run some tests and see what we can do to help you at least point you in the right direction.
Dr. King:
If it starts happening, a lot of folks have had good luck with taking some sort of migraine medication. If they are prescribed something for migraine headaches or something as simple as a caffeine combination. If, if you’re able to take that barring any allergies or contraindications, most famous brand is Excedrin Migraine. Sometimes that will shorten it up and help with the symptoms a little bit.
Dr. Cha:
Acetaminophen, which is Tylenol, right? And then caffeine, right? So Tylenol with some caffeine. Like a coffee or a Coke or something.
Dr. King:
Yeah. Aspirin and Coffee.
Dr. Cha:
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Dr. King:
Hit that subscribe button.
Dr. Cha:
Yeah. give us some feedback in the comments section. If you have questions we can try to elaborate on things.
Dr. King:
We’ll be back.