Visual Snow: Anyone experience this?

There is a condition called asteroid hyalosis which causes opaque floating particles in the vitreous, or "jelly" of the eye. These can cause some problems with vision if they are dense enough. I don't think anyone would do surgery for this in a 12 year old. It's basically like snow floating through the fluid. No other problems with it. I also am not familiar with the doctor's from UCSF and recently worked in ophthalmology there. They may just be researchers

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Possible---some issue the Dr's cant address

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I am glad to hear you have found a remedy that works for you. Continue your methods for destressing. Seems to be a big help. The neuro ophthalmologist told me it didnt matter if I covered the eye causing the double vision so I learned by trial and error. I was told it was a brain issue and not an eye issue. That eye had become sensitive to light after my AVM. I covered the eye with a patch for over a month to avoid the double vision. In time, I discovered the longer I had the patch on, the snow in that eye increased and got worse. The snow was very bothersome so I decided to remove the patch. At first, the vision of snow was very strong in that eye but slowly it diminished and went away. I was so relieved. I now have both eyes uncovered and see no snow. My sensitivity to light is not as intense but it is still there. I prefer no snow over the sensitivity. It is much easier to deal with.

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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

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I feel for her it’s very depressing. Same thing is happened to me in April 2017 started seeing large spots with a bad with a headache. Then to follow was my visual snow that will not go away. I had a good 4 months recently where I wasn’t noticing it anymore it was after a steroid injection in my neck for my disk bulge. Doctors wouldn’t connect the two but I think it may be related. Two weeks ago the visual snow came back bad and it may be because my steroid injection is wearing off. I’m going in tomorrow to doctors office to try Botox for migraines I will let you know if it helps with my visual snow.

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There is a condition called asteroid hyalosis which causes opaque floating particles in the vitreous, or "jelly" of the eye. These can cause some problems with vision if they are dense enough. I don't think anyone would do surgery for this in a 12 year old. It's basically like snow floating through the fluid. No other problems with it. I also am not familiar with the doctor's from UCSF and recently worked in ophthalmology there. They may just be researchers

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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.

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