Eye Flashes of Light

If you experience eye flashes of light, you might be a bit alarmed by them at first. You could see eye floaters or spots as well that look like there is something in your eye. Maybe it has even become so annoying that you try to remove it from your eye or try to focus on it so you can get whatever it is out and then you discover it moves when your eye moves.

To understand this, you need to know what causes eye flashes of light, eye floaters and spots. Usually this is due to posterior vitreous detachments, called PVDs. In very rare cases, it could be from a retinal tear or detachment.

Knowing that it comes from PVD can be helpful but what causes these in the first place? This gel-like substance fills the back of the eye and will press against the retina and attach some to the retina. Over time, the gel that's in the middle of the eye gets a bit more liquefied. Then the central gel cannot support the thicker, heavier gel and the thicker gel can collapse into the center, watery gel.

When these tiny pieces detach and float around the eye, you actually see the shadows passing in front of your retina, not the pieces of debris themselves. This is why when you try to move your eye or focus on it, it seems like they are drifting.

This is also why the eye flashes of light seem worse when you look into a direct light or stare at a computer monitor. Light flashes during the process of floaters means that traction is applied to your retina during the PVD. This increases your risk for a retinal tear.

Lisa Mason is a freelance writer with a specialty in Internet content and SEO articles and the author of How to Earn a Living Writing for the Internet as well as two poetry anthologies and a how-to poetry book. She has written thousands of articles, hundreds of ebooks and thousands of website pages and related content.

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