Why am I seeing stars?

[metagirl]

Every once in a while I start seeing stars - I could be sitting down at home or walking outside. Is this normal?

[4getmenot]

are you getting dizzy or just seeing famous people?

[dot.hawkes]

maybe you have a blood pressure problem might be worth getting it checked

[metagirl]

i wish I was seeing celebrities! sometimes I have low-blood pressure. maybe its time for a checkup. thank you.

[Carakeel]

Hi metagirl, go see your doctor. You may have circulation, blood pressure problems, which can most likely be sorted fairly easily. Bar that, he might recommend you get your eyes checked. Hope you feel better soon.

[havinmysay]

were gonna say blood pressure but every1 else beet me to it

[WendyS]

Perhaps time for an eye check too.

Sometimes you can get little "floaters" in the eye which move around and sometime distort your vision.

[DaSwede]

Hi metagirl. Not to freak you out, but based on what little knowledge I myself have on seeing stars and what my ophtalmologist told me, I do recommend that you give yours a call. Please bear in mind I'm no expert, and can only tell you my own story. Before you read it, also know that I sincerely believe there may be several other explanations for seeing stars than the one reason I'm familiar with myself.

This is what happened to me: I saw stars for a while, and later on these 'floaters' that WendyS mentions. Eventually (months after the symptoms set in) I finally got an appointment with the ophtalmologist, she examined my eyes and told me I had... hm, I have no idea what the diagnosis is in English! But there's a great part of the eye that in Latin is known as the corpus vitreum (I'm sure you'll find it on the internet), and as we grow older this part of the eye sort of shrivels. That in itself is not a diagnosis, it's just ageing, but if you are terribly unlucky the shrivelling corpus vitreum may in a few cases pull at and tear the retina, and that may in turn cause the retina to sort of fall down or fold over - I'm not sure how to describe it in English, but as you can imagine, it's not a good thing, and you would certainly want to discover those tears before the retina collapses. To put it bluntly, the way I understand it you would lose your eyesight if that happened. But if there are tears and they are discovered in time, it can be fixed.

(continued below)

[DaSwede]

(The 'floaters', by the way, are debris - tiny parts of tissue that has been torn off inside the eye during this (normal) shrivelling process. This debris remains inside the eye, and we see not the 'floaters' themselves but the shadows that they cast. They don't go away, but you get used to them.)

I was lucky (as most people are, in this case) and didn't lose my eyesight. But based on what the eye doctor told me I've decided that if this happens to me again (more star cascades, new 'floaters' that I don't recognize) I will insist on getting an immediate appointment with the ophtalmologist, just to make sure there are no tears in the retina. Until you do get your appointment, don't carry anything heavy and don't work out at the gym - that's what they told me.

Again, metagirl, I'm no expert. See one, or call one.