Eye-Focusing Problems and Anxiety

Causes

1. Anxiety-Activated Stress Response

Anxious behavior, such as worry, activates the stress response, which secretes stress hormones into the bloodstream, where they travel to specific locations to immediately prepare the body for emergency action – to fight or flee. This instinctual survival reaction is often referred to as the Fight Or Flight Response [1][2].

Visit the “Stress Response” article for the many ways it can affect the body.

Some of the stress response changes include:

• Quickly converts the body’s energy reserves into “fuel” (blood sugar) to provide an instant boost of energy.
• Increases heart rate, respiration, and metabolism due to the boost in energy.
• Stimulates the sympathetic nervous system, increasing nervous system activity to be more sensitive and reactive to danger.
• Heightens most of the body’s senses to be more aware of danger.
• Tightens muscles to make the body more resilient to injury, including the muscles that control eye movement.
• Suppresses the lacrimal gland (the gland responsible for producing tears) so that your vision isn’t blurred by tears when fighting or fleeing.
• Dilates the pupils so that we can take in more visual information.
• Narrows our vision so that the brain can more accurately focus on potential threats without distracting peripheral visual information.

The degree of stress response is proportional to the degree of anxiety. The more anxious you are, the more dramatic the stress response changes.

Any combination of stress response changes that affect the eyes can cause acute eye-focusing problems.

An active stress response is a common cause of acute eye-focusing symptoms.

2. Hyperstimulation

When stress responses occur infrequently, the body recovers relatively quickly from its changes. However, frequently activated stress responses, such as from overly anxious behavior, can prevent the body from completely recovering. Incomplete recovery can leave the body in a state of semi-stress-response-readiness, which we call “stress-response hyperstimulation” since stress hormones are powerful stimulants.

Hyperstimulation is also often referred to as “hyperarousal,” “HPA axis dysfunction,” or “nervous system dysregulation” [3][4].

Visit our “Hyperstimulation” article for more information about the many ways it can affect the body and how we feel.

Hyperstimulation can cause the changes of an active stress response even though a stress response hasn’t been activated.

Just as an active stress response can cause acute eye-focusing problems, hyperstimulation can cause chronic eye-focusing symptoms.

Chronic eye-focusing problems are a common symptom of hyperstimulation.

But that’s not all. Hyperstimulation can cause eye-focusing problems in other ways, too. For instance:

The eye is a complex organ that, in conjunction with the nervous system and brain, contains a vast amount of nerve cells. These nerve cells receive and send information back and forth to and from the brain. For example, optical information is received in the eye and transmitted through the optic nerve to the brain. The brain interprets this information and forms a visual image we “see” in our minds [5].

Moreover, when we want to look at something, our voluntary thoughts cause nerve impulses in certain muscle groups attached to the eyes. These nerve impulses cause the appropriate eye muscles to contract, causing the eyes to move in the direction we want to look.

For example, when we say a vast amount of nerve cells are involved in this process, we mean VAST! One optic nerve alone contains over 1 million nerve fibres, and the nervous system (which includes the brain) contains over 100 billion nerve cells that link to tens of thousands of other nerve cells located throughout the body.

When the body and nervous system aren’t hyperstimulated (chronically stressed), the eyes and nervous system function normally, where we can track and focus seemingly without effort.

However, when the body becomes hyperstimulated, the eyes, muscles that control the eyes, and the nervous system can experience anomalies. As the degree of hyperstimulation increases, so can the type, number, intensity, frequency, and duration of eye-related symptoms.

For instance, hyperstimulation can cause eye muscle movement problems, such as stiffness and fatigue. These problems can cause issues with focusing and remaining focused.

Hyperstimulation can also cause other eye-related problems, such as periods of fogginess, blurriness, visual distortions, and many of the other eye-related symptoms listed in our anxiety symptoms list.

Furthermore, the body’s nervous system is responsible for sending sensory nerve impulse information from the body’s sense organs to the brain for interpretation and then for sending nerve impulse information from the brain to the body.

The nervous system accomplishes this “sending and receiving” via specialized cells called “neurons.” Neurons communicate using an electrochemical process (the combination of electricity and chemistry) [6][7].

For example, if you touch a hot burner, the nerve receptors in the skin send this sensory information – electrical signals - through the nervous system network to the brain. Once the brain interprets this sensory information as being “hot,” the brain then sends nerve impulse information back through the nervous system to the muscles that control the arm and hand to pull the hand away from the hot burner [8].

This “back and forth” interaction happens quickly – nerve impulse information can travel as fast as 268 miles per hour [9]. This “quick reaction” can prevent the skin from being burned.

This system of nervous system communication and reaction performs normally when the body and nervous system are healthy. However, problems can occur when the body and nervous system become hyperstimulated [10].

For instance, neurons are particularly sensitive to stress hormone stimulation because of their electrochemical properties. When neurons become hyperstimulated, they can act erratically.

This erratic behavior can cause neurons to “misreport” nerve impulse information to and from the brain [11][4]. These abnormalities can cause many sensory and muscle movement symptoms, such as muscle twitching, spasms, tension, and feeling odd pressures and pain anywhere on or in the body, including in and around the eye(s).

Moreover, because hyperstimulation can cause an increase in the electrical activity in parts of the brain, which can cause neurons to become even more unstable, neurons can fire even more erratically when the body and nervous system become hyperstimulated [12].

Eye symptoms, such as difficulty focusing, distorted, foggy, or blurred vision, are examples of how the body can misbehave when the body becomes hyperstimulated (chronically stressed).

At the height of a particularly stressful time in my (Jim Folk) life, the vision in my right eye became blurry when I looked at objects at a distance. Initially, I thought this occurred because I was getting older. So, I went to an optometrist and had an eye exam. The doctor determined that I needed glasses to correct my right eye’s far-sighted vision.

When I received my glasses, objects at a distance were in focus again. However, months later, when I reduced my body’s stress, objects at a distance were blurry again for my right eye. But when I took off my glasses, they were in focus. It seemed that stress affected how my right eye functioned.

This is just one example of how hyperstimulation can impact normal eye function. (My eye hasn’t done that since.)

Eye symptoms, including focusing problems, blurred vision, distortions, and fogginess, are common symptoms of hyperstimulation, including anxiety-caused hyperstimulation.

3. Other Factors

Other factors can create stress and cause anxiety-like symptoms, as well as aggravate existing anxiety symptoms, including:

• Medication
• Recreational drugs
• Stimulants
• Sleep deprivation
• Fatigue
• Hyper and hypoventilation
• Low blood sugar
• Nutritional deficiencies
• Dehydration
• Hormone changes
• Pain

Select the relevant link for more information.