CAUSES OF HEADAHES: EYEPROBLEM (SQUINT)
Each of our eyes has six muscles which move the eyeball to point in the direction we want to look. Normally these muscles work in concert, so that both eyes move to fix on the same object, but when one or more muscles are paralysed, too short or too contracted, a squint results. Again, minor degrees of abnormality can be overcome by using the muscles of the eye more than usual; the extra muscle tension from doing this is likely to cause headaches.
There are two ways to treat a squint: firstly, to go on using the eyes, using procedures and exercises to strengthen the muscles; secondly, if necessary, to operate on the eye muscles to re-position them so that the eye no longer turns in (or out).
One word of warning: The way in which the brain processes information means that a child with a squint soon learns to ignore the information coming from the squinting eye, which may therefore go blind. It is therefore enormously important to spot a child who is developing a squint.
The critical time can be surprisingly early in a child’s development. Before the age of seven it is often possible to correct a squint, so that the child no longer ignores information coming from the squinting eye.
Even though a child may have vision out of each eye, still she may well not develop proper depth vision, especially in those squints that always were constant.
Large squints are therefore a considerable hazard to ‘the development of normal vision, but squints like this don’t; usually cause headaches. It is the minor degrees of squint that cause the excess muscle tension associated with headaches.
Type of headache
The headache of eye-strain is at. the front of the face and forehead. It is often worse after reading, or other close work.
‘Tension headache is often perceived over the forehead or round the eyes. Temporal arteritis is associated with tenderness of the arteries in the temples – and also, unfortunately, with sudden blindness.
Many people with headaches ask if it could be due to eye-strain: the only sure-way to find out is to see an optician and get a full check on your eye-sight, including (in children) a test to check for squinting.
Self-help
If you have symptoms that sound like eye-strain – pain in the eyes, which is worse after reading or intensive close work, and which goes away after a period of rest -then the remedy may be simple. Have your eyes checked. And use the glasses that the optician suggests.
The biggest problem comes with those whose vision is good enough to do without glasses on most occasions, but not quite good enough to be able to see properly without screwing up the eyes slightly.
Dim light makes focusing that much more difficult and someone with more or less normal vision in bright light may be quite severely short-sighted under dim conditions. A person like this may only need to use her glasses in dim light – such as in theatres and cinemas, when driving at night, and also when watching television. However, if she doesn’t use .her glasses in dim conditions, she’s likely to get tense muscles from straining the eyes.
This obviously brings up a convenient way to reduce eye-strain – don’t work in dim light. The older we are, the more light we need in order to see properly and if we can’t see properly we tend to peer and strain and tense up those muscles around the eye again. To read clear print, a sixty-year-old person will need up to fifteen times as much light as a child at school, and ten times as much light as a twenty to thirty-year-old.
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