Headache Symptoms

What are headache symptoms and dizziness?

Almost everyone experiences headaches or dizziness at some point. These can have various causes. An eye condition almost never causes headaches, but the cause can be ophthalmic. Often your eyes are not corrected, or not corrected properly: you don't wear glasses when you need them, or your glasses/contact lenses don't correct your vision well.

How do I recognize headache symptoms and dizziness?

Headaches can be recognized by the following symptoms:

• Pain on one or both sides of the head

• Stabbing, throbbing, or pounding pain in the head
  

Dizziness can be recognized by the following symptoms:

• A lightheaded feeling

• The sensation that your surroundings are moving or spinning

• Nausea

What is the cause of headache symptoms and dizziness?

Headache symptoms and dizziness can have ophthalmic causes. If your symptoms are caused by your eyes not being corrected, or not corrected properly, you often experience the following symptoms:

• Headache develops throughout the day

• You get a headache after long periods of reading or working with a screen

• The headache is above the eyes

Do you recognize the symptoms above?

 Then it could be that the cause indeed lies in an ophthalmic problem, such as:

• An uncorrected (or improperly corrected) refractive error

• (underlying) farsightedness in young people (hyperopia, plus power)

• Overcorrected nearsightedness (myopia, too much minus power)

• Needing reading glasses (presbyopia)

• Astigmatism

Migraine and eye problems

Headaches and eye problems can also be a symptom of migraine. Migraine comes in different forms. There is common migraine, classic migraine, but also ocular migraine. Ocular migraine doesn't necessarily involve headaches and can cause various eye problems, such as:

• Seeing an enlarging blind spot

• Jagged figures (zigzag)

• Stars or heatwaves

• Temporary visual field loss

• Temporary narrowing of the visual field and/or tunnel vision

• Flashes of light and/or auras

To determine if your headache can be explained ophthalmically, it's important to have your eyes thoroughly checked. For this, we perform a standard eye exam, as well as an additional measurement. During this extra examination, we dilate your eyes. This temporarily prevents your eyes from exerting effort and focusing. This is necessary so we can get a good look at what's going on. If you want to know more about this examination, please contact us.

Incorrect prescription and dizziness

Like headaches, dizziness also has many different causes. If it's related to your eyes, these are the most common causes:

• No, or an incorrect, prescription for your contact lenses or glasses

• Lenses that are incorrectly ground into your glasses or are not perfectly straight

• The cooperation between your eyes is not optimal

Determine the cause

With headaches and dizziness, it's always important to find out where your symptoms are coming from. The specialists at Oogwereld can help you with this and investigate whether it's related to your eyes.

We are here to help you

Do you continue to experience headache symptoms and dizziness? Contact one of the stores near you.