Visual snow FAQ: What is it and can it go away?
What does visual snow look like?
Visual snow is a condition with which you’ll see a static-like effect over your visual field. It has been likened to the kind of fuzziness or flickering that you might see when you’re watching an old TV that loses signal intermittently, taking on a black and white fuzzy layer over the image on screen. Visual snow can manifest itself in a number of different ways. Not everyone experiences the symptoms to the same degree, nor will everyone suffer with the same combination of symptoms. Common symptoms of visual snow include:
- Night blindness
- Photophobia (light sensitivity)
- Bright dots flashing or moving across vision
- Floaters
- Dots and fuzzy vision
- Images staying present in your visual field, even when they have disappeared in real life
Some people living with visual snow have described their symptoms to help create a simulation to depict the condition. A short video covering some of the symptoms can be watched here, in order to provide a visual representation of visual snow. Of course, this will vary for each person with visual snow, but it provides a good starting point to begin to understand what the condition looks like.
What causes visual snow?
As unhelpful as it is to say this, no one really knows what causes visual snow. Some experts studying the condition believe that it occurs due to a dysfunction of visual processing in the structure in the brain called the lingual gyrus. This is the area of your brain linked to the processing of letters and encoding visual memories. Other people believe that too much time spent looking at digital screens brings on visual snow, or that screen exposure can cause any symptoms you’re currently experiencing to worsen.
There is an undeniable link to migraines as studies have shown that 59% of visual snow sufferers also experience migraine auras, despite visual changes from migraine auras being temporary, while visual snow is permanent. Suffering with one condition may increase your likelihood of developing the other, but there is nothing to say that either directly causes the other.
How can you treat visual snow?
The most important point to highlight is that there is no cure for visual snow at the moment. There are certain medications which have been found to improve symptoms in some patients but, as yet, no official cure has been discovered. Visual snow is rare, meaning that large-scale studies on symptoms and treatments haven’t been conducted yet. The range of medication which has been prescribed to patients in a bid to reduce symptoms is wide. The list includes:
- Anti-inflammatory medication e.g. ibuprofen and aspirin
- Blood pressure medication
- Anti-seizure medication
- Glaucoma medication
- Migraine prevention medication
Whether patients have found success with these medications varies on an individual basis. It might mean that symptoms are still present but are less severe, or it’s possible that patients experience the placebo effect to some degree. Recently, the American Academy of Neurology has been in the process of formally recognising visual snow as a condition or syndrome which is good news for potential cures and dedicated treatments in the future, as it allows more research to be carried out.
Are there different types of visual snow?
Yes, there are two types of visual snow – pulse and broadband. Broadband type tends to be more common and is characterised by a static image over your visual field. This is more likely to impair your vision than the other type of visual snow, pulse, as the dots can vary in size and may block whatever you’re trying to look at. Pulse type of visual snow is when the dots you see are spread more evenly across your visual field, and the dots are the same size. The dots also may flicker or swirl around, but tend to be less disruptive to your vision than the broadband type of visual snow.
Can visual snow get worse?
For some people, visual snow worsens throughout their lives. Other people might find that their visual snow improves, while there’s a third group of visual snow sufferers whose visual snow stays exactly the same for their lifetime. It depends on the type of visual snow you have – whether that’s pulse or broadband and if it’s intermittent or persistent – as well as your response to treatment for the condition.
Some people also report that their visual snow varies from day to day. This can be due to migraines, screen time, or other factors. Monitoring your symptoms and being aware of which points you develop them at can help you to detect patterns. A lot of visual snow suffers find that simply altering their actions when their visual snow symptoms worsen is enough to keep the condition manageable.
How can I have visual snow diagnosed?
To have visual snow diagnosed, you need to have been experiencing symptoms consistently for three months. If you’ve had the condition for your whole life, you might not actually know that you’re suffering with it, or even realise that what you see is anything out of the ordinary.
If you’re experiencing any of the symptoms we covered at the start of this blog post, and they interfere with your vision regularly, you should visit your opticians to begin the referral process for a diagnosis. Although, as we touched on previously in this article, there’s no official cure, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t treatments you can try to reduce your symptoms. The more people that get diagnosed with visual snow, the more time can go into carrying out studies in the hope of finding an effective cure.
We can’t treat visual snow at Optimax, but if you rely on glasses or contacts to correct your vision, then you may be suitable for laser or lens treatments to give you visual freedom from them. Give us a call on 0800 093 1110 or email enquiry@optimax.co.uk for further information on booking a free consultation. You can also book online here. We look forward to welcoming you to an Optimax clinic soon.
