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Eyelid twitching

Wed, 05/02/2007 - 14:09
My left eyelid has been twitching all day. It is driving me crazy!!!!! I am taking Topamax 25mg twice a day. Have had 2 tonic/clonic seizures. Posted more about my situation in the new to site section. Should I call my doc? Have never had eyelid twitching like this before????? Thanks Julie

Comments

Re: Twitching Eyelids

Submitted by eowc on Tue, 2008-01-01 - 23:46
It is worthy to take note that in terms of the eyelid-twitching sickness, if the cause of it is clearly identifified as being induced to an individual by overdosage of or allergy to certain types of medications, especially the ones that have strong neurological effects and carry the side effects of muscle spasms such as certain drugs that are meant to cure depression, psychotic sicknesses  and other neurological-related complications like epilepsy etc, it is thus necessary to at best stop taking such medications and replace them with something else if possible in order to at least stop such eyelid-twitching problem from getting further worsened as well as to prevent a relapse of such sickness after a person gets cured from it. 
It is worthy to take note that in terms of the eyelid-twitching sickness, if the cause of it is clearly identifified as being induced to an individual by overdosage of or allergy to certain types of medications, especially the ones that have strong neurological effects and carry the side effects of muscle spasms such as certain drugs that are meant to cure depression, psychotic sicknesses  and other neurological-related complications like epilepsy etc, it is thus necessary to at best stop taking such medications and replace them with something else if possible in order to at least stop such eyelid-twitching problem from getting further worsened as well as to prevent a relapse of such sickness after a person gets cured from it. 

Non-stop Persistent Eyelid-twitching - My Comments

Submitted by eowc on Wed, 2008-01-09 - 11:04
Note : The following article is only meant as a reference material to the intended recipients and advices should be sought from the medical experts to establish the authenticity of its contents.

Eyelid twitching, which is lately referred to as Blepharospasm or Myokymia is actually a symptom of involuntary and uncontrollable movements in the muscles around a person's eyes which in turn make them appear like 'blinking non-stop' to other people.

Generally, the movements of one's muscle is controlled by the nerves around them that in turn receive signals from the brains which ultimately dictate the variety of 'ways' in which such movements are to be conducted based on a person's will.

The causes of such eyelid-twitching symptom in most common cases may just due to short-term stress, over-tiredness, over-straining of one's eyes, occasional anxiety, temporary panic fits and nervousness which in turn can be easily relieved and recover naturally by a good rest, more relaxation and trying to calm oneself down to stop getting anxious, panic and worried and stressful over certain things. In this regard, such phenomena tend to be quite common among certain students and other professionals.

However, in the cases of a persistent uncontrollable twitchings of the eyelids which only get aggravated rather than improved over time and last for months and even years, it may just probably imply that the nerves around the eyes organ are simply not 'properly functionable' enough to bring about the desired movements of the muscles based on the mental instructions from the brains of a person.

Except for any brain and other eye muscle damages/eye muscle disorders caused by permanent lack of certain nutrients and minerals etc or other irritations to that organ like dry eyes, sore eyes, bacteria infections etc, such a chronic eyelid-twitching sickness may likely be caused by certain disturbances and disorders that affect or weaken the functionality of the nerves around the eyes to bring about the desired movements of this organ based on the person's will.

In this regard, the possible reasons of such chronic eyelid-twitching sickness may probably due to the causes as mentioned above which is experienced by a person over a considerably long period of time rather than just temporarily. Apart from that, other likely causes maybe be certain traumas, especially the emotional ones, allergy to or overdosage of certain medications that carry such side effects as muscle spasms, particularly photophobia in the case of eyelid-twitching symptom.

In fact, I myself have also been suffering from such a sickness due to allergy and overdosage to such medications like Risperdal and other similar drugs (of which I have stopped taking and replaced with something else so as not to further worsen the eyelid-twitching problem and to prevent a relapse of that sickness after I get healed). As such, I would very much like to share my own genuine personal experience with you over the course of my treatment of such a sickness and I hope that it will somehow be helpful to a certain extent especially to those who have been having the similar experience as mine and I would to emphasize that it again only is meant as a reference material to anyone reading it.

For your information, I have been suffering from this sickness in the past few years whereby my eyelids also tend to twitch both continuously and uncontrollably without me being able to do anything to control the twitchings at all. As a result, my eyes would seem like blinking all the while to anyone who looks at me and I totally could not drive, look directly and persistently at the pc or tv screens and most of the times, I simply can’t read any books or newspaper properly.

And I have sought lots of medical treatments and advices as well as apply various kinds of eye drops, taking various types of vitamins, mineral pills as well as many types of anti-muscle spasm medications from lots of eye specialists, neurosurgeons and psychiatrists (who explain the medical theories mentioned above to me), ENT specialists and other general practitioners, and even have the MRI examinations taken to get my eyes cured , but these efforts turn out to be in vain as they fail to yield any positive results and my eyes still keep on blinking non-stop.

Luckily, just about a year after I suffer from such a sickness, I come across an acupuncture expert who studied and observed closely about my problems and then administer a therapy needle on the part of the flesh at the back of the palm which is about 1.5 cm vertically from the point of intersection between my thumb and my forefinger of my right hand (as per attachment in http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/387431 ) to strengthen the weakened and sensitive nerves around my eyes. After that, he just ask me to press (using just mild force) that acupuncture point using such objects like toothpick /normal writing pen or anything with a blunt-pointed end for at least 2 hours a day and then consistently for about 2 months. Having done that persistently based on his order, my eyelid-twitching that makes my eyes blinking all the while just totally recover in time and I can drive, work with the pc screens, watch tv, movies and read as well as work like any other normal persons.

For your further information, I have also come across quite a couple of people in my real life annoyed by such an eyelid-twitching problem of different causes and degrees of severity, and accordingly, I just recommend the method as mentioned above to them and within weeks, they just experience significant improvements to their conditions after applying this therapy, and after a few months , they just recover totally from this sickness. . And I hope that by contributing this piece of article to you, it will somehow help you to in at least getting a clue about this sickness. Lastly, I sincerely wish that the ones troubled by such an annoying eyelid-twitching sickness can recover finally from their illness. Thank you.

Non-stop Eyelid-twitching - My Comments (extra details)

Submitted by eowc on Wed, 2008-01-09 - 11:12
Note : The following is only intended as a follow-up of my previous article
About my personal experience of getting totally healed from this eyelid-twitching sickness, well, in fact I was initially instructed by a psychiatric to take Rispderdal in the first place for the treatment of my Schizophrenia sickness. And having taken this medication for about one year based on his prescribed dosage, my eyelids started to twitch, quite unnoticeable by me at first, but when more and more people began to ask me the reason why I kept on blinking my eyes to anyone who looked at me, I just started to sense this particular eyelid-twitching symptom but without being aware of its underlying causes at all.
It was only when my eyelids began to twitch non-stop and violently day after day without me being able to do anything to deal with it, I then just referred this problem to my psychiatric who subsequently told me that he couldn't do anything about it and referred me instead to a the eye doctors, ENT Specialists and neurosurgeons. Having examined my conditions, medical history as well as my diet and the existing medications that I was taking by that time, they all unanimously arrived at the diagnosis that the eyelid-twitching was definitely and undoubtedly caused by the prolonged intake of Risperdal which actually carried such side effects of muscle spasms especially the ones inflicted on the upper part of the face of a person who took it for a certain period of time.
In fact, by that time, I just accordingly followed the advice of the new psychiatrist and replaced this Risperdal with an alternative medication called Seroquel,which was actually a second-generation drug that didn't cause that much muscle-spasms side effects. However, even after I had quit taking Risperdal for more than 6 months, the violent non-stop twtichings still persisted. And actually before I decided to seek acupuncture treatment (as recommended by my friends) to deal with this sickness, I did accept the suggestion of a neurosurgeon to take Botox injections to deal with the problematic eyelid-muscles that caused all the twitchings. Next, the Botox injections, in fact did give positive results in the first place whereby my eyelids just didn't twitch that violently after being given the injections.
However, upon knowing from the neurosurgeon that Botox injections was actually not an effective cure for this eyelid-twitching sickness, for the very reason that the medications would just serve to sort of 'half-paralyse' the eyelid muscles without being able to do anything curative to the problematic nerves around the twitching eye muscles, coupled with the fact that such Botox medications tend to get immunized by the human body, it thus would just mean that larger and larger dosages of such medications would be required for each subsequent injection therapy (which would last for 3-6 months each) in order to achieve the similar healing effect of the previous ones.
Besides, it was also actually a very expensive therapy as it would cost me about 5,000 dollars for each injection therapy session and hence, to keep on spending such huge sums of money to stop my eyelids from twitching would just be very expensive and unreasonable.
Whilst the neurosurgeon mentioned to me also about a surgical treatment to effectively cure the eyelid-twitching, the operation, apart from being very costly, was also actually a very risky one as its failure may very well bring blindness to the persons being operated. At the same time, even such surgery were to turn out to be successful, it would also be unable to achieve 100% complete healing to anyone being operated in the sense that the eyelid-twitching conditions can never 'look perfectly normal' like the ones who were totally not troubled by such a sickness at all. So, I just eventually gave up the idea of getting a surgery to treat the sickness.
Being terribly desperate, I just came to the decision of referring my eyelid-twitching sickness to an acupuncture expert which was recommended to me previously by my friends. Frankly speaking, at first I didn't actually have any faith or confidence in such a needle-based therapy and I hardly believed that these needles alone would be able to get my eyelid-twiching healed. Next, having received such therapy, my eyelids still twitched violently like before without any improvements.
However, after taking a good sleep at night that particular day after the acupuncture treatment, I just woke up the next day and found that there were lots of dried mucus that stuck around my eyes, and surprisingly, after rubbing away these dried mucus to open up my eyes, my eyelids just don't twitch so violently anymore and immediately I was able to do the simple readings and watch tv as well as work with the PC screen without getting any discomfort. And based on the acupuncturist who dealt with my sickness, that acupuncture point as mentioned in that main article was actually directly interconnected with the bundle of nerves around the eye muslces, and so by administering treatment to it, that will sort of applying some kind of 'reflexology stimulus' to the nerves around the eye-muscles to improve the blood circulation around that area as well as to strengthen these specific nerves and to enable any unwanted metabolism wastes, blockages and toxins accumulated around that eye areas to be effectively purged out of a person's body (through dried mucus around one's eyes) And having applied that therapy on my own as instructed by the acupuncturist, my eyelid-twitching condition just got better and better day after day and within 2 months, the sickness was totally gone whereby my I just appeared to be perfectly normal to anyone who talked to, looked and stared at me until now.
Though the therapy mechanism mentioned above could hardly be scientifially verified and proven by the modern medical science, however, as far as a patient suffering from this sickness is concerned, it is more the very effective cure for such sickness itself rather than all other medical and scientific reasonings that would eventually matter the most to the patients. As such, this is the main reason why I would seek acupuncture treatment as a last resort to deal with my eyelid-twitching sickness.
And being subsequently encouraged by the dozens of successful cases of those other people in my real life who had been troubled persistently by such non-stop eyelid-twitching sickness and who then eventually got effectively and totally healed in time through the acupuncture technique that I recommended to them, I was thus greatly inspired to post such articles about my very own genuine personal experience of getting totally cured from such a sickness to at least give a clue and some guidelines to the ones who are still being troubled by it so that the similar wonderful thing will happen to them too.
Note : The following is only intended as a follow-up of my previous article
About my personal experience of getting totally healed from this eyelid-twitching sickness, well, in fact I was initially instructed by a psychiatric to take Rispderdal in the first place for the treatment of my Schizophrenia sickness. And having taken this medication for about one year based on his prescribed dosage, my eyelids started to twitch, quite unnoticeable by me at first, but when more and more people began to ask me the reason why I kept on blinking my eyes to anyone who looked at me, I just started to sense this particular eyelid-twitching symptom but without being aware of its underlying causes at all.
It was only when my eyelids began to twitch non-stop and violently day after day without me being able to do anything to deal with it, I then just referred this problem to my psychiatric who subsequently told me that he couldn't do anything about it and referred me instead to a the eye doctors, ENT Specialists and neurosurgeons. Having examined my conditions, medical history as well as my diet and the existing medications that I was taking by that time, they all unanimously arrived at the diagnosis that the eyelid-twitching was definitely and undoubtedly caused by the prolonged intake of Risperdal which actually carried such side effects of muscle spasms especially the ones inflicted on the upper part of the face of a person who took it for a certain period of time.
In fact, by that time, I just accordingly followed the advice of the new psychiatrist and replaced this Risperdal with an alternative medication called Seroquel,which was actually a second-generation drug that didn't cause that much muscle-spasms side effects. However, even after I had quit taking Risperdal for more than 6 months, the violent non-stop twtichings still persisted. And actually before I decided to seek acupuncture treatment (as recommended by my friends) to deal with this sickness, I did accept the suggestion of a neurosurgeon to take Botox injections to deal with the problematic eyelid-muscles that caused all the twitchings. Next, the Botox injections, in fact did give positive results in the first place whereby my eyelids just didn't twitch that violently after being given the injections.
However, upon knowing from the neurosurgeon that Botox injections was actually not an effective cure for this eyelid-twitching sickness, for the very reason that the medications would just serve to sort of 'half-paralyse' the eyelid muscles without being able to do anything curative to the problematic nerves around the twitching eye muscles, coupled with the fact that such Botox medications tend to get immunized by the human body, it thus would just mean that larger and larger dosages of such medications would be required for each subsequent injection therapy (which would last for 3-6 months each) in order to achieve the similar healing effect of the previous ones.
Besides, it was also actually a very expensive therapy as it would cost me about 5,000 dollars for each injection therapy session and hence, to keep on spending such huge sums of money to stop my eyelids from twitching would just be very expensive and unreasonable.
Whilst the neurosurgeon mentioned to me also about a surgical treatment to effectively cure the eyelid-twitching, the operation, apart from being very costly, was also actually a very risky one as its failure may very well bring blindness to the persons being operated. At the same time, even such surgery were to turn out to be successful, it would also be unable to achieve 100% complete healing to anyone being operated in the sense that the eyelid-twitching conditions can never 'look perfectly normal' like the ones who were totally not troubled by such a sickness at all. So, I just eventually gave up the idea of getting a surgery to treat the sickness.
Being terribly desperate, I just came to the decision of referring my eyelid-twitching sickness to an acupuncture expert which was recommended to me previously by my friends. Frankly speaking, at first I didn't actually have any faith or confidence in such a needle-based therapy and I hardly believed that these needles alone would be able to get my eyelid-twiching healed. Next, having received such therapy, my eyelids still twitched violently like before without any improvements.
However, after taking a good sleep at night that particular day after the acupuncture treatment, I just woke up the next day and found that there were lots of dried mucus that stuck around my eyes, and surprisingly, after rubbing away these dried mucus to open up my eyes, my eyelids just don't twitch so violently anymore and immediately I was able to do the simple readings and watch tv as well as work with the PC screen without getting any discomfort. And based on the acupuncturist who dealt with my sickness, that acupuncture point as mentioned in that main article was actually directly interconnected with the bundle of nerves around the eye muslces, and so by administering treatment to it, that will sort of applying some kind of 'reflexology stimulus' to the nerves around the eye-muscles to improve the blood circulation around that area as well as to strengthen these specific nerves and to enable any unwanted metabolism wastes, blockages and toxins accumulated around that eye areas to be effectively purged out of a person's body (through dried mucus around one's eyes) And having applied that therapy on my own as instructed by the acupuncturist, my eyelid-twitching condition just got better and better day after day and within 2 months, the sickness was totally gone whereby my I just appeared to be perfectly normal to anyone who talked to, looked and stared at me until now.
Though the therapy mechanism mentioned above could hardly be scientifially verified and proven by the modern medical science, however, as far as a patient suffering from this sickness is concerned, it is more the very effective cure for such sickness itself rather than all other medical and scientific reasonings that would eventually matter the most to the patients. As such, this is the main reason why I would seek acupuncture treatment as a last resort to deal with my eyelid-twitching sickness.
And being subsequently encouraged by the dozens of successful cases of those other people in my real life who had been troubled persistently by such non-stop eyelid-twitching sickness and who then eventually got effectively and totally healed in time through the acupuncture technique that I recommended to them, I was thus greatly inspired to post such articles about my very own genuine personal experience of getting totally cured from such a sickness to at least give a clue and some guidelines to the ones who are still being troubled by it so that the similar wonderful thing will happen to them too.

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