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CAUSES OF HEADACHES: GLARE

Too much light can cause just as many problems as too little light: too much light causes us to screw up our eyes tightly, causing muscle tension and headaches.

What else could it be?

Quite a number of conditions causing headache can also give eye symptoms. These have all been covered in other areas of this book.

Pain radiating from one eye can occur as a result of migraine or cluster headache.

Herpes zoster, (shingles),’in a painful skin infection which can attack both the eye, and the skin of the forehead above the eye.

Cervical spondylosis and arthritis of the neck can in certain circumstances cause severe spasm in the muscles of the neck, which creates pain that appears to radiate out of one eye.

Pain behind the eyes or just above the eyes in the forehead is often associated with muscle spasm in the neck, particularly the upper part of the neck. ‘Pension headaches caused in this way often cause eye pain.

Although flashing lights in the eye tend to be associated with migraine, in pregnant women they can also be associated with pre-eclampsia.

Blurred vision can be associated with focusing problems that require spectacles. It can also be a symptom of high blood pressure, acute glaucoma, and uraemia.

A tumour of the pituitary gland can ‘pinch’ the visual field to produce ‘tunnel vision’, in which there is loss of peripheral vision. Sometimes a brain tumour stops the patient seeing one sector of his visual field.

Permanent blindness can occur in temporal arteritis and glaucoma (see above); and brain and pituitary tumours can each cause progressive blindness as a result of pressure on the nerves. Usually the loss of vision is progressive, but sometimes can be halted or reversed by prompt treatment. Temporary loss of vision with a headache is usually caused by migraine

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