EYE FLOATERS

EYE FLOATERS: ARE THEY REALLY MY ILLUSION ??

Why to go in search of mysteries when our own body and mind is one big package of mystery and thriller! 

“While looking at the sky or while staring at any bright plane surface or even closing our eyes on flashes, we feel like some small worm like creatures are crawling

Eye floaters

and moving. Sometimes appear as dark spots or specks. Is it really there? Or am I just imagining things?? Now this is the stage at which we blink once to see whether those creatures are still there or not. And NO they won’t; conclusion - we are having some defect.”

Now this is a context commonly seen in our life. During childhood days, we are fascinated about these, try to know them more, try to see them more and gets surprised when someone else say that they experience the same. So what are they???

No fantasy is applied in this case, but pure science. It is our own eye playing with us. Human eye consist of different layers through which light passes through and thus vision is possible. Among these layers, retina, which is inner most part where light rays touches and receptors start functioning. Just before the retina, we can see a huge chamber called ‘vitreous body’ that is filled with ‘vitreous humor’- the transparent gelatinous tissue- behind our lens. It not only gives shape to our eyeball, but also absorb the shocks happening to eye and keeps retina intact to the back wall of eye. Sometimes this gel like structure form clusters causing a hindrance for the light to fall on the retina. In this condition, it forms a shadow effect to our vision when looking at bright plane surfaces. This shadow due to the clusters of vitreous humor are the eye floaters.

Layers of eyes

This can be seen and experienced from our early stage of life and categorized as non-dangerous. However, when you feel like the number of ‘those worms’ are increasing, then, it should be taken into consideration as they can be serious issue, especially when we age. Just like other cell get ruptured in our body due to aging, retina also gets ruptured and detaches from the back wall. This later fall into the vitreous humor and forms clumps or strands of various sizes and shapes. Similarly, posterior vitreous detachment can also form these clumps. However, some other reasons can also contribute for the increased number of eye floaters:

• Myopia (nearsightedness) – condition where you can see near objects clearly;
• Inflammation inside eye – vitreous layer consists of many blood vessels and therefore inflammation can not only increase the number of foreign bodies, but also RBC and WBC and other particles
• Treatments or surgery – people who undergo surgery, especially for conditions like cataracts

It is fascinating to know something that we thought never exited till then was actually a part of us, just like the illusion of some floaters. As the philosophers says, our life itself is a miracle or an unsolved puzzle. When we go in search to the depth, we get tangled by new knowledge and a bag of puzzles. Then again, who knows what we learn today is the actual truth !!!