Experiencing eye pain?!


Question: Every so often (about one-two times per month or less) I will wake up with an intense eye pain (almost as if someone has punched me in the eye) it will last from anywhere between ten minutes and several hours and I can't seem to find any cause. It's not always the same eye, and I do not wear makeup. I'm going to the eye doctor tomorrow but they don't seem to know what it is and I was just wondering if anyone else had any experience with this sort of pain.


Answers: Every so often (about one-two times per month or less) I will wake up with an intense eye pain (almost as if someone has punched me in the eye) it will last from anywhere between ten minutes and several hours and I can't seem to find any cause. It's not always the same eye, and I do not wear makeup. I'm going to the eye doctor tomorrow but they don't seem to know what it is and I was just wondering if anyone else had any experience with this sort of pain.

This symptom, severe pain, enough to wake you up could be due to a number of different etiologies.

I'm not sure what the description of the pain is. Is is sharp? Like you have a rock in your eye or other foreign body? or is it an intense ache?

Starting with the first type. If this is a sharp pain and it goes away after about 10 or 20 minutes and you go back to sleep and wake up in the morning and it is pretty much gone.... that's probably due to an erosion. Lots of people don't close their eyes when they sleep. The eyes are 'almost' closed, but not quite. The lid margin may stick to the surface of the cornea (clear part), and when you go into rapid eye movement sleep or the dream sleep, your eyes move and the eyelid sticking to the surface will tear the cornea. Hurts! a LOT! There's a lot of tearing, and you'd swear some spider went in there and bit you. But it's just the tearing of the corneal surface which heals by the time you wake up. This is called a recurrent erosion. It occurs because the epithelium doesn't have time, when it's healing over, to lay down basement membrane, so the layers of cells do cover the defect, but aren't stuck 'tight' like normal cornea is. This area is at high risk of eroding again until that basement membrane is laid down. A way to stop this from happening is to put some sort of ointment between the lid and cornea when you sleep. If there's nothing available medicine-wise, you can use Vaseline. Put a little inside the lower lid... makes everything yellow, and go to sleep. Wash it out in the morning with water (not soap) and it'll float off nicely.

The other cause that may be possible besides different types of spasms of the iris or ciliary body muscles which would be like a cramp of those muscles, could be an intermittent angle closure or acute glaucoma.

If the fluid inside the eye cannot get out via the normal routes, the pressure can rise suddenly beyond that threshold which causes pain. The pressure will be up above 40 or so but is usually around 60 by the time there's that much pain. Some people with very narrow angles (the angle is the 'angle' between the cornea or clear part, and the colored part or iris).

At he point where the iris meets the white part (sclera)
and the clear part over to the side, is a sponge-like meshwork called the trabecular meshwork.

The aqueous produced behind the iris on the ciliary body epithelium, then moves in front of the lens, through the pupil into the anterior chamber, then moves over to the side where it filters through this trabecular meshwork into the canal of Schlemm and then into aqueous veins into the blood stream.

If someone has narrow angles, at night when the iris dilates

(because it's dark and the pupil gets larger in the dark),

the iris can push up against the cornea and occlude the angle. This causes an acute or sudden rise in the eye pressure and causes fairly severe pain. Many people get intermittent angle closures through their lives and never get diagnosed until later on when someone notices that the nerve is damaged, even though they have fairly low eye pressures when measured at the doctor's office.

Another mechanism would be that the pupil gets pushed against the lens forming a block, the aqueous gets filtered out normally, the anterior chamber shallows and produces an angle closure.

This pupillary block glaucoma is also fairly painful as it has the same mechanism as the 'regular' narrow angle attack.

The treatment is to make an opening in the iris somewhere out near the angle so fluid can pass into the anterior chamber and not have to go through the pupil which is tight against the lens.

When those little openings are made, for instance with a laser, there's a sudden flow of pigment and aqueous into the anterior chamber and the iris/lens diaphragm falls backwards. It's fairly dramatic when it happens. Later on when the eye is a bit more calm or quiet, a larger iridotomy is performed, or iridectomy is performed which makes it so that pupil blocking mechanism won't or can't happen again. Cataract extraction with removal of a large lens can also relieve the contact between the lens and iris and avoid further attacks. This allows the iris to fall back so it almost goes straight across the anterior chamber instead of bowing forwards on the surface of the curved lens.

Other than those two or three types of ocular pain that occur at night, you'll have to talk it over with your eye doc to see what are the anatomical characteristics of your eyes that could contribute to this type of symptom.

it could be stress related or hormonal....do u drink coffee? caffine can stimulate muscles and that is most likely the cause of the pain.. try sleeping with a eye ice pack at night. it works wonders with puffy eyes also.

Go see an M.D. a CAT Scan may be needed.
The problem may not be with your eyes.
This is important!

the problem may not be your eyes, it could actually be a headache. i get migraines and they always start at my eye, they are only on one side, and very intense. sometimes they can be short, and sometimes they can even last for days. tension headaches an be similar. you may want to ask your doctor, instead of an eye doctor.





The consumer health information on answer-health.com is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice or treatment for any medical conditions.
The answer content post by the user, if contains the copyright content please contact us, we will immediately remove it.
Copyright © 2007-2011 answer-health.com -   Terms of Use -   Contact us

Health Categories