Vision (Snow, hallucinations, blurred) _{Page 3 of 4}

thats good to know your doing better. Kinda crazy how a pill thats suppose to help with anxiety gave us the very thing! anyways I might try fish oil supplements, I heard this helps with all kinds of thins!

Actually, now that I think about it my mom was told to start taking fish oil for her eyes. She doesn't have snowy vision or anything, but her eyes burn and water all the time..

Hey there everyone who wrote these posts--
I just want to say how comforting it is to know I am not alone with vision snow. I felt the urge to google that subject today as I seem to be noticing more and more vision snow lately. I am not sure if I am actually experiencing more in reality or if I am just fixating more on it. I have had this snow for as long as I can remember and it would be nice to see without it, but no one seems to know what's up. I can corroborate some symptoms in common with otheres like acute panic attacks and a history of mild to moderate untreated (with Prozac, etc. or therapy) depression. I have also done hallucinogenic drugs, but long before any of these issues I remember telling my mom one day when I was 12 or so about the snow. I don't have any remedies or suggestions but I am curious about this website and how many people seem to experience this issue.--thanks for reading--i'll keep checking the forum--cw

Hi all,I'm 21 and I've had VS for six or seven years.
I got it after having a blind aura in my vision, i thought i was going blind. It lasted about 30 minutes and it left me with a headache for several hours. I had a few of those auras, but I haven't had one in a couple of years, thank God.Like in your cases the doctors found nothing.

does anyone have a problem with not seeing a part of their vision? It's nothing serious, but when i close my left eye, i can't see a small spot in the far right side of my vision area, and vice versa with the right eye. It's not a black hole or anything, it's like I can see normaly, but in a very small area things disapear.

Dejv2000,

Very interesting. When I was younger (young teens) I used to get the migraines you are talking about. I would get the aura for exactly 20 minutes everytime and would have a migraine for about 24 hours afterwards. I usually had to sleep it off because it would make me extremely nauseous. I never associated those migraines with the VS, but maybe there is a correlation.

I can't exatcly remember, but I think that after the first aura migraine my vision wasn't changed much, I used to see the 'static' ocaisonaly. It was after the second migraine that I fully developed the VS condition. I think that the migraines caused. I never used drugs, so that can't be the cause of my problem.

Hello to everyone! It is such a blessing to me to have found this site and forum. Up until now I have felt like I was the only one with this visual disturbance. I have felt alone and even a little crazy at times when I would try to explain my vision problems to doctors, family and friends. I am a 34-year-old woman and consider myself healthy for the most part. I have had snowy or static vision since I can remember and even remember times early on about 5 or 6, when I would wake up screaming in the middle of the night and tell my mom about what I was seeing. As I am sure you all know, at night the visual snow can be way more intense and even frightening at times. As I got older I did not focus on it as much and it kind of became part of my reality, like it should. There would be and still are times when I am overly fatigued or on the rare occasion have had too much to drink and it becomes worse. In dim light or in a bright room it is also very intense.

Another thing happened with my vision, which I noticed in my early teens and that is I would see floaters. These are not the standard floaters that the medical field are accustomed to, but are floaters that look like single cell organisms a nucleus. I guess what a tissue cell would look like under a microscope. There are also long clear rod shaped floaters and they both float across my field of vision. The snow or static of course is there and I usually see this when I am looking up at the sky on a bright or cloudy day.
I have talked to a primary care physician about 9 years ago about this and she sent me to an Ophthalmologist and had all the standard eye tests done. He had never heard of anything like this and either did the primary care physician. The physician said it might be the way I learned how to see as an infant and somehow made this a part of my vision. The ophthalmologist pondered this for many many minutes and even collaborated with other doctors. He had come back to me and said 'now don't be alarmed when I tell you this, but maybe the reason you see visual snow might be due to a mild psychosis'. He then said that I might have somehow conjured this up into my reality. This scared the hec out of me and I left the office in tears. Now that I am older I think that there may be some validity in this reasoning. I do have a family history of mental illness and have an Uncle who is paranoid schizophrenic. Maybe I somehow inherited a mild form of schizophrenia. Also, I have dealt with mild depression and anxiety my whole life but gets worse around the time of my menses. I hate to admit this but dabbled in recreational drugs in college but never got seriously into drugs or alcohol. This of course is not the cause of my vision problems. I don't know any of your family history but I would look into it because there may be a correlation there. Anyways, that is my visual snow story in a nutshell. I wish you all the luck and hope some of you respond. I did not mean to go on and on but this is the first time ever that I can tell my story to other people who can relate and understand. Feel free to e-mail me or post a comment. Thank you and good luck!!!

I strongly disagree that it is some type of mental illness. I have the EXACT same floaters and visual snow you described. That was a great description of the floaters--I always have a hard time with that and end up drawing people a picture. Anyways, definitely has caused some panic attacks for me at night.

Thank you for responding. I am glad to hear that you don't think this is due to some kind of mental illness. The idea of that truly scares me. Do you have any other ideas on what this could be from? Also, what age do you remember seeing the snow? I am interested in hearing all the possibilities. I am so sorry to hear that you have had panic attacks from this. Nightime can definetly be scary for me as well. Panic attacks are an awful thing!!!

I forgot to mention that I've never done drugs, so that isn't the cause of mine either (although it can be the cause of it if you've done LSD, ecstacy, mushrooms, etc). I found something one night (one of the bad nights when I was freaking out and up half the night) about it being associated with a type of migraine--which would make a lot of sense, because I'm prone to migraines. I used to get them like once a month (the kind where you see an aura in one eye for 20 minutes). I haven't gotten one of those in years (knock on wood!), though. Anyways, it's called Persistent migraine aura.

http://www.visualsnow.com/

There are also simulations on that website which can help to show someone who has no idea what you're talking about what it looks like. Mine doesn't look quite like the simulation, but it's a pretty good generalization.

I am trying to respond but this site is not allowing me to do so.

Hello! I am having issues posting my comment. Anyways, I did read a little about the migraine theory and It seems as though most people with the visual snow has a history of migraines or has a family history of it. You too have it and so do I. My mother use to get severe ones maybe 6 times a year and I get them maybe 3 or 4 times a year. There may be something to this. Anyways, I decided to do the sophia greene's survey from the visual snow forum. Have you heard of this or are you already involved? I got the link from this website. Hopefully they find out some useful information for all of us suffering.

Thank you for the information on the simulations. I had went to that sight the night I found this site and have to say it was kinda eerie. For me the simulations were about 95% accurate. What about you. What is different about your visual snow? Let me know when you get a chance. I am curious.

It is fairly accurate-it would probably be hard to get extremely close to what it looks like. For me, it's just not white and on top of stuff like that--it doesn't prevent me from seeing anything.

I haven't done the survey...I'll look for it. My mom also gets HORRIBLE migraines very often...but when I showed her the information on the visual snow she said 'that's scary' so obviously she doesn't have it! haha. Anyways, I did mention it to an eye doctor one time and they had no idea what I was talking about. A neurologist might be a better way to go.

Hi, Daniel here.

I've had a visual problem that's best described as lots of dots flashing over my entire field of vision for a very long time. It's kind of like film grain or static, just with a redish tint of sorts that's most visible on whites.

It's horrible in the dark; I can't see details due to how bad it is. It's also strangely more 'flashy' on bold text with a white background or when reading white text with a black background - When using a PC in other words.

I also have another problem; vertical double vision. It's relatively minor but it is very noticeable when looking at bright objects on a black background.

I've gone to around 3 different opticians and none found anything amiss. I also went to the eye department in my local hospital, only to have eye drops put in, a light shined into my eyes and declared perfectly healthy.

Hello,
I've been searching online for a long time and am so relieved to find that I am not alone. I have the snow in my vision. I see white auras around people, not all the time, usually when I'm listening to a speaker. But mostly I see the air move, like it's fuzz. I can actually see the fuzz and focus on a point in the air around me. Sometimes it seems things swirl past me. I'm 38 and this started when I was using drugs from 25 - 30 years old. So I've always assumed it was from that. Only... it never went away.
Also, I suffer from migraines, and I have depression and anxiety. So, it seems I have all of the possible reasons for my vision problems covered in this forum. That doesn't help me get closer to a solution, but I do feel much better knowing it's not just me.

Much luck to everyone...

do any of you get migraines with auras? does this increase the risk of stroke? I have snowy vision all day but also get aura migraines where I get blind spots in my vision and zig zag lines, a dull headache afterwards. Please if anyone has any info on this or any tips on treating these, please share them with me!!

For me there are no migraines with the auras. The static or snowy vision is always present and if I do get a migraine nothing happens out of the ordinary. I do sometimes however see zig zag lines but I get no blind spots just a bit of a blind spot from a small always present floater in my right eye. Have you visited migraine-aura.org yet? This is the site that is involved with with the migraine study and has lots of great information including information on migraine aura and stroke. This was also a concern of mine so I found info about stroke on here. I found this website from visiting ezboard.com. You may have already went to this site but if not this is also a great site. I found it is a little hard to navigate in but you should be able to find the forum on migraine aura by typing in static or snowy vision. I hope I have given you new information and if so I hope this information helps you!!! Keep me posted and good luck!

I had been bothered by snowy vision for several years. when I enterd a dark room, I always seemed to be looking though white marbleing. My eye dr and family dr couldn't offer any help. I even saw a neurologist who found nothing wrong with me. I have never been a drug user. A couple of months ago I came across some articles about iodine deficiency and I thought I was very likely iodine deficient. My doctor did not seem to know anything about this or have any test to check this out. I started taking an over the counter multivitamin that contained 150mg of iodine and after about a month, the snowy vision cleared up. Most multivitamins do not contain iodine but many multivitamins for senior citizens do. It is such an inexpensive, non-invasive possible solution that I recommend everyone try it.

I recently started taking 'Pristiq' which is an SSNRI and it has cleared almost all of the snow out of my vision. I suspect that the neuropinephrine component of the medicine is responsible for the improvement. I have had the 'black snow' for a long-long time. Also, when I look at a specific object for more than about 8 seconds everything else will fade away into the black snow. Now I can see in 'high definition'.

Hello everyone,

I had migraines vith auras when I was in highschool. Then I developed the visual snow as well. I am glad that I found this forum, because I thought that I was the only person with these issues. I don't get migraines anymore, but sometimes I feel very dizzy, and I have to spend all day in bed. My doctor said I probably have silent migraines now which cause the dizziness. I still have the visual snow...and floaters. Many of them!!! They can be really annoying.
The previous post talks about multivitamins and iodine defficiency. I think I will try taking multivitamins. Thanks a lot!!!

Hi Nanica,

I am vey curious to hear how your trial of multivitamins containing iodine affects or doen't affect your vision. Please let me know after you've tried ti for about a month.

Hi Franb,

I will let you know how things go. I'm hoping for the best.

Heavy Metals - Specially MERCURY could be the cause.
I found this out accidentally during a chelation treatment/test.
I believe that I have snowy vision since I was born, or very little, because I remember telling my mother about it when I was 5 or 6. I am not depressed, I don't have migraines, never used drugs, never smoked, and I don't drink alcohool.
1 month ago I had my urine tested for heavy metals and my mercury levels were OFF the charts.
My Homeopathic doctor told me to stop eating fish, remove any amalgamam from my teeth, if I had any (which I don't) and to start a chelation therapy.
In my first chelation, I noticed my vision getting better. It got clear for about 5 minutes and went back to snowy. I could expect anything BUT that. I have snowy vision for so long that I just got used to it. I wasn't expecting this to happen. For me this was the 1st time that I have seen things so colorful and vibrant.
My doctor gave me some literature about mercury. Mercury intoxication CAN cause vision problems.
I still have many more sessions of chelation to go, because my levels were too high (180) and takes time to eliminate all that, but I think that mercury is the answer.
After my 2nd session of chelation, my vision got a little worse, which means that the mercury that was trapped in the cells got released in the blood to be eliminated, which caused even more dots!
The doctor advised to drink a lot of water to wash off all that released mercury faster. After a few days, the 'extra' dots disappeared again.
So to me, mercury is the answer. It caused my vision to get better for a little while during the chelation, and made it worse when the mercury got released in my circulation.
I believe that once my levels of mercury drop, my vision should be clear for good, not only for a little bit.

For vision problems, though I have guided many people at ABC Forum with h-pathy advice...experience has shown me that herbal treatment gives better and quicker results.

Can guide you if you are interested.

Pankaj Varma

The specific herbal treatment has no known side effects.

Hi I am a 28 year old woman who has suffered with vision snow and other funky visual disturbances for 8 years. I find it truelly compelling and remarkable that their are so many others like me. I swear that if I would've known this 8 years ago that things would've been alot different. My vision snow started (I believe) after an experimental incident with weed laced with cocaine and embalming fluid. Freaky I know. At the time I did not know the weed contained extras but nevertheless I had a bad reaction to it. Since then I've suffered from halos, trails, afterimages, black dot phenomena, vision snow, and alot of other odd disturbances that drove me crazy. What was worse is that no one understood or believed me. I had countless trips to opthamologists, neuro opthamologist, neurologist and had mri's, ct's, spinal taps and lots of lab work done, only to be told that I was healthy. I was even told that I could have lupas, ms, psuedo tumor, migraines, scotomas and other diseases that I really didn;t have at all. To make matters worse, because there was no clinical explanation for my symptoms everyone thought it was just in my head. I was so depressed and distraught that I thought about suicide. Even I began to think I was crazy! All I knew was that I saw what I saw and no one could tell me why. Eventually I learned to adjust to what Iwas seeing and taught myself how to ignore it. I knew that I had to go on living somehow. This worked because now I am married with two kids. The snow is still there but I do not notice it as much so to me it has gotten alot better. What I will say is that I do notice that when I am under a huge amount of stress the vision snow gets worse which causes alot of anxiety. To those who are new sufferers keep your head up and know that will get better for you too!