Visual Snow: Anyone experience this?
Has anyone ever experienced "visual snow"? My daughter suffers from this and sees it 24/7. No doctors seem to be able to help her. We've been everywhere in Chicago, and nobody can help her so they left it with "sorry, she'll have to learn to live with it". She's only 12 years old! So I'm trying Mayo now. Just wondering if anyone out there has ever experienced this; apparently it's rather rare.
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Just wanted to let you all know that this discussion, "Visual snow," has now been moved to the Mayo Clinic Connect Eye Conditions group.
Hi, all - several of you have mentioned experiencing "visual snow" or ocular migraines, and wanted to check in and see how things are going. I think your responses will be helpful to many here.
@ryman - are you still having ocular migraines? How is the blurriness in one eye you mentioned?
@avmcbellar - are you still free of the visual snow you previously experienced?
@jcalifornia - how is the snow you were having in your vision? Are the relaxation practices you talked about helping?
@suscros68 - how is your vision? Do you still experience the "winter storm" at times?
This may be what is in my left eye. Thanks!
Possible---some issue the Dr's cant address
Hi, @mstephen - are you experiencing some visual snow lately?
Hi, can you please explain to me in details what you did to treat your visual snow? You put an eye patch for a month? I developed VS 2 weeks ago and I'm trying to treat it
Hello, @bashark - my apologies for my tardiness, but wanted to welcome you to Mayo Clinic Connect. I'm hoping that @avmcbellar may have some detailed information to share with you about how you treated your visual snow, including the eye patch.
bashark - wondering how you are doing lately?
Hello - I know this is an old post but I was wondering if you ever found what worked for your visual symptoms?
Asteroid hyalosis is completely unrelated to visual snow. Asteroid is a condition in which visible (to patient and doctor) tiny spheres(spherules) of a calcium based crystalline structure firm, in a relatively fixed position within the collagen scaffolding that supports the vitreous gel of the eye. I'm an eye doc, and I have lived with asteroid for 30 years. Etiology/cause is still not fully understood.
Visual snow is a visual processing issue, that rakes place (best guess) behind the eyeball itself, in the visual pathway in the brain. As visual snow is a relatively newly described condition, my first thought is that it may be related to visual processing of information coming from electronic devices. Our retinas respond to light sources by firing the rods and cones, flipping off (think of a Pez dispenser) the next segment that is biochemically reafy to respond. This occurs constantly, and the signal this generated is integrated along the visualpathway in the brain, all thevway to the backnof the brain above the neck, the visual cortex. Along the way', we have pattern recognition neuron arrays, that respond to incoming information. We have something called "flicker fusion frequency", the ability to ignore the inherent on/off nature of capturing tge light response as the "Pez dispenser" rod and cone cells reload the next responding segment. If youve ever been bothered by a flickering fluorescent light bulb it's because it's flickering out of sync and at a speed (cycles or herz) that's sliwvenough for us to see it, not ignore it. I suspect that visual snow is related to constantly, many hours at a time, using electronics: phones, iPads, computers, that flicker and refresh their pixels constantly. Because of this, I'd
suggest that you experiment with eliminating use of all electronic devices for a couple of weeks, get outdoors in natural light, no tv/computer/iPad etc, to see if the brain can do a reboot. This whole issue of visual snow makes me wish I could go back into academia to design some experiments to seek out the true source of the visual snow experience! But I'm retired.
Sorry for typos-- my phone is not the best device for long winded replies!