For 5-6 days now my top eyelid of my right eye keeps twitching.
Initially I was not a bit worried, even so I was not sure what it meant, I assumed it was probably due to a few bad nights of sleep I had (hey, I am a parent with young children) and it was going away real soon, but after a few more days, no sign of going away (and the kids have been sleeping thru the night fine), so .. new research into the anomaly was required with good ol’ Google.
The good news is that I am not in the first stages of a stroke, neither the twitching is my imagination (wife actually sees my eyelid contract) .. apparently this is something called “Eyelid Myokymia“.
The definition as per emedicine.com is:
Background: Myokymia is the spontaneous, fine fascicular contractions of muscle without muscular atrophy or weakness. Eyelid myokymia typically involves the orbicularis oculi muscle of one of the lower eyelids; occasionally, the upper eyelids also can be affected. In most cases, eyelid myokymia is benign, self-limited, and not associated with any disease. Intervention is seldom necessary. Rarely, eyelid myokymia may occur as a precursor of blepharospasm, Meige syndrome, hemifacial spasm, and spastic-paretic facial contracture.
Pathophysiology: The pathophysiology of typical eyelid myokymia is not well understood. The focus of irritation is most likely the nerve fibers within the muscle. However, pontine dysfunction in the region of the facial nerve nucleus also has been implicated. Possible precipitating factors include stress, fatigue, and excessive caffeine or alcohol intake.
So, I am either Stressed, Tired or Drunk … or all of them combined 😀
Upon further research it seems it’s common to have the bottom eyelid to twitch .. for me is the top one, which is rare, but not uncommon .. the story of my life 🙂
Luckily I do not have any major meetings to attend to this week, otherwise it would be quite embracing to be speaking with clients or techs and constantly have your eye twitching at them, somebody might take is as you making a pass on them, and worst, try to collect on it 🙂
A few more good nights sleep, is what the doctor would have prescribed .. so I’ll do my best to oblige.
Technorati Tags: Eyelid Twitching, Myokymia, Overworked, Stress, Tired
I’ve found that eating ready-cooked chickens makes it worse. The more they’re smothered with tasy marmite-type stuff, the more the effect!
My top right eyelid has been spasming on and off for awhile, but the last 2 months it has been doing it non stop! It especially affects me when I am driving, which is distracting. I heard potassium may help, hot compresses may help, but nothing has helped me. It affects my vision and sometimes feels like my eyelid is out of sink with my blinking, like I can’t open it wide enough. If anyone has any help – please help. I am afraid it will get worse! I neither lack sleep, drink caffeine at all, and I am not particularly stressed! And I don’t drink at all! HELP! jetsetjenny02@aol.com
Hi Holly
I found one of the biggest problems that leads to the twitching is indeed lack of proper sleep 🙁
Spasm was occuring just below my eye in the “bags” area. This area was spasm so back I thought I had ants crawling in there. This has been occuring for three days. Even a good night rest did not help. It was not until today after taking a good three hour nap, that I noticed it go away. Still, I am afraid of it coming back.
Good day, I have read about the stories of many people having troubled by the eye sickness of eyelid-twitchings and hence I would like to share my own personal experience to you over the course of my treatment for this sickness, and it is only meant as a reference material to your website. For your information, I have been suffering from exactly the same type of sickness like yours in the past few years whereby my eyelids also tend to twitch both continuously and uncontrollably without me being able to do anything to control the twitchings at all. As a result, my eyes would seem like blinking all the while to anyone who looks at me and I totally could not drive, look directly and persistently at the pc or tv screens and most of the times, I simply can’t read any books or newspaper properly. And I have sought lots of medical treatments and apply various kinds of eye drops and even have the MRI examinations taken to get my eyes cured , but these efforts turn out to be in vain as they fail to yield any positive results. Luckily, just about a year after I suffer from such a sickness, I come across an accupuncture expert who studied and observed closely about my problems and then administer a therapy needle on the part of the flesh which is about 1.5 cm above the middle part between my thumb and my forefinger of my right hand. After that, he just ask me to press (using just mild force) that accupuncture point using such objects like toothpick /normal writing pen or anything with a blunt-pointed end for at least 2 hours a day and then consistently for about 2 months. Having done that persistently based on his order, my eyelid-twitching that makes my eyes blinking all the time just totally recover and I can drive, work with the pc screens, watch tv, movies and read as well as work like any other normal persons.
For your further information, I have also come across quite a couple of people in my real life annoyed by such an eyelid-twitching problem of different causes and degrees of severity, and accordingly, I just recommend the method as mentioned above to them and within weeks, they just experience significant improvements to their conditions after applying this theraphy, and after a few months , they just recover totally from this sickness. As a matter of fact, I actually intend to put an illustration of that part of the hand (the one between the thumb and the forefinger of the right hand) to demontrate that accupuncture point to you more clearly, but this cannot be done due to limitations of this website. However, shall you have any further enquiries about the method I recommend above, you are welcome to address it to mary_perkins81@yahoo.com and I’ll try my best to help you.
Lastly, I sincerely wish that the ones troubled by such an annoying eyelid-twitching sickness can recover finally from their illness.
Steadyhealth : Non-stop eyelid twitching
I had the same problem-
my upper eye lid keeps twitching.
I made sure I had earlier nights as i was very tired and it went away and has not come back since.
HOORAY – for sleep!