If you’re experiencing eyelid twitch right now, also known as Myokymia, then no doubt you’re feeling annoyed right now about it and you may be also concerned about whether this is the symptom of something more serious. This blog post will cover that and also give you some tips that have been helpful to my patients over the years.
So you’ve got this eyelid twitch, what’s going on and what does it mean? Well, the twitching eyelid can occur in your top or your lower eyelid and it’s something that in my clinic I’ve seen very often over the years, it’s something that I’ve had myself on several occasions.
So for the first piece of my point that I want to reassure you with, it’s the fact that eyelid twitches are very common, in most cases of eyelid twitches can be categorized as a Myokymia, which I think is a name that sounds quite dramatic and often scary as well.
Myokymia is a broad medical name given to mild involuntary contractions of muscles, it’s possible to experience facial myokymia as well as limp myokymia.
So second peace of mind point that I want you to take away a results from the fact that Myokymia is also categorized or classed as being self-limiting, and this means that no treatment or surgery is necessary because it usually goes away of its own accord over time and in my experience, this usually takes several weeks to go away. But ideally, obviously, you want to do what you can to reduce it as quickly as possible.
Let me know in the comments section below how long you’ve had your eyelid twitch for? In my experience, usually lasts for about three weeks or so. As I’ve said before, let me know if that’s been your experience so far.
What causes eyelid twitches?
Is one of these conditions that are not very well understood as to what the cause may be, however, the thinking is that it is related to tiredness and stress levels and certainly my clinical experience, most people who come to see me reporting eyelid myokymia will usually confirm that one way or another they’ve been going through something that’s very stressful in their life of a recent or they perhaps lost quite a lot of sleep as well. So certainly the times that I’ve been experiencing myokymia myself have been usually times where I lost a lot of sleep because of deadlines and things like that, or back in my student days during exam preparation times, you kind of pull all nights and things like that. Certainly, I find it quite common in students as well.
If eyelid twitch has been persistent for more than several weeks to a few months, then this may be something that we call Blepharospasm which is a spasm of the eyelid, which may be more nerve-related, and this needs a bit more medical investigation. So it’s worth getting an eye examination for this just because it may require some other medical intervention, possibly even Botox, for example, just to stop the eyelids spasming when it comes to helping eyelid myokymia to move along and resolve a lot quicker, people often say, you should relax, but that probably stresses you out more if you’re somebody who is, having problems with relaxation and stress.
Here are some tips to help you distress and to speed up how long it takes for your twitching to stop.
First of all, plan eight hours of sleep.
You probably haven’t had that, things like having power naps and making sure that your room is blacked out when you sleep. Planning two to three nights off, you know, early nights if you can’t regularly get early night’s sleep. One of the things I find is that with the kind of stress and the lack of sleep, it’s a cumulative effect, so it builds up over time, because people who experience these eyelid twitches have been experiencing a build-up of a lack of sleep or buildup of stress, then that tends to be where the problem is.
So if you can somehow break that vicious cycle, perhaps by including and introducing two or three early nights in a week, if you can’t do every week going to bed early, then, scheduling two or three nights, you can go to sleep about nine o’clock or whatever the case may be and you get a good long sleep that has, you know, plays a big role in being able to break down this vicious cycle and this cumulative build-up of stress and sleep deprivation, which leads
to these eyelid twitches.
Secondly, cutting out stimulants as much as possible.
That means that coffee, Redbull other energy drinks, so even just for a few weeks, a week or two, whatever the case may be, just so you have a period where you almost detox just to allow yourself to be free of these kinds of stimulants. You also find that then helps you sleep better and may help your stress levels as well and then sugar for some time as well, just to help with the whole kind of stimulated state with sugar highs, etc. that will also play an important part.
Engage in at least 30 minutes of vigorous exercise.
A couple of days, week, if not regularly, then that just helps to kind of detoxifying the body and just helps to kind of remove some of those stress hormones and help you to sleep better get your energy levels up, which then also helps you feel a bit more positive overall. In my experience, I found that people doing these simple things really can play an important part in helping you to get rid of the eyelid twitches a lot faster.
Let me know in the comments section below, do you feel that stress is playing a part in your eyelid twitches? Are you getting plenty of sleep? Are you under work stress at the moment? Are you a student and going through exam preparation and things like that?
Thank you and I look forward to seeing you guys in the next one.
Take care.
