Anxiety and Blurred Vision – Is There a Connection? 

anxiety and blurred vision

It is possible that anxiety, especially an anxiety attack, can impact your senses. There are numerous symptoms you can feel throughout your body, even your eyes. In this case, anxiety and blurred vision can go hand-in-hand.

If you have undergone both of these sensations, then it may be time to start looking for that connection so that you can start treating both of the issues. This begins with learning more about both anxiety and vision problems.

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Quick Breakdown

ty cause blurred vision and dizziness

Sometimes knowing the basics of the connection between anxiety and blurred vision can go a long way into making you feel more secure about coping with the issue at hand.

If you have more time, you can check out the more detailed look at the pair later on.

Can anxiety cause blurred vision and dizziness?

Anxiety has a way of attacking our senses, and this can send a rush of adrenalin through your body. That can then cause some physical symptoms such as dizziness and blurry vision.

Does blurry vision from stress go away?

If stress is causing your vision to blur, then finding ways to manage your stress levels is an effective way for the symptoms to go away. However, if your eye problems continue, then it’s important to seek professional help for more treatment options.

Can stress cause visual disturbances?

Yes, stress can cause you to have visual disturbances from tunnel vision to blurry vision. In fact, stress can go after the entire body, so the eyes are not exempt from experiencing the backlash stress can have on your body and mind.

Can depression give you blurred vision?

As depression can raise your stress levels, you can begin to feel other symptoms that include vision complications. This can come, for example, if worrying over your depression has brought about a migraine that can lead to blurred vision.

Guide to Anxiety and Blurred Vision

With a deeper dive into anxiety and blurred vision, you may better understand your symptoms and how to not just cope with them, but also work to eliminate them altogether.

What is Anxiety?

What is Anxiety

Let’s talk about anxiety.

This emotion is a common one that many will experience at some point throughout their lives. It’s characterized by feeling concern or worried thoughts.

Although you may have anxiety, that doesn’t always mean you have an anxiety disorder. As we said, it’s a common feeling. In some cases where there may be a potential danger, anxiety can even help us stay focused and out of a bad situation.

However, with an anxiety disorder, this can become overwhelming. You may feel anxiety in situations that don’t call for it. Some people may even start feeling anxious just before leaving the home.

More than enough people in the U.S. alone suffer from an anxiety disorder, roughly 40 million adults in fact.

So, with this amount of people dealing with anxiety in some form or another, it’s past time we all understood it more and how it makes us feel. Through that, we can get on the right track to healing.

Common Symptoms of Anxiety

There are many anxiety symptoms that you should look out for. Not only can these feelings of tension and stress affect you mentally, but there are physical reactions that can cause serious harm as well.

Some common symptoms include:

  • Problems concentrating
  • Feeling nervous or restless
  • Hyperventilating
  • Sleep disturbances
  • Having a sense of fear or impending danger
  • Nausea
  • Dizziness or feeling faint
  • Muscle tension

When you experience anxiety, your body is undergoing its built-in “fight-or-flight” response. This reaction, also referred to as an acute stress response, is only supposed to happen when you encounter something that is horrifying or dangerous.

As anxiety triggers this sudden hormonal release, it can cause issues laid out above such as increasing your heartbeat. Additionally, it can also cause your pupils to dilate.

While dilated pupils allow for more light to come in, which should improve your vision, the stress that comes with anxiety can counteract that. Stress can make you lose focus, making it harder to concentrate on anything. It can impact your sight in this alert state, making you have cloudy vision rather than clearer.

Alongside that, with this stress response comes rapid changes to your blood pressure. This can cause you to feel lightheaded, perhaps even nauseous, which can lead to dizziness.

How to Treat Anxiety

Even though anxiety is a normal occurrence, it can get out of hand and lead to you experiencing anxiety symptoms that interfere with your daily life. If this happens, then whether you have an anxiety disorder or not, it’s best to focus on treatment so that these symptoms to cause greater harm down the road.

Before you get any treatment, however, it’s important to seek help by alerting a healthcare professional about the situation. You may have a larger problem like a disorder that needs a specific treatment plan from certain therapies and perhaps medication.

Psychotherapy is a good place to start. Otherwise known as “talk therapy”, this is a good way to open up about your anxiety to learn more about what’s causing it and how to manage it.

Tackling the root of the issue is a good way to lessen the symptoms you may feel. From there, if you begin experiencing fewer signs of blurry vision, it’s a strong indicator that your anxiety was the cause of it all.

If therapy sessions are not improving things for you, then there is a chance that a doctor may prescribe you some medication to help with the symptoms. There are antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications that can alleviate certain health concerns that crop up with stress and anxiety.

With the more severe cases, a doctor may prescribe beta-blockers, but these do have a chance to cause addiction, so they are not meant as long-term treatment options.

Lifestyle Changes

Other than professional help, there are ways to take your stress and anxiety management directly into your hands:

  • Counting techniques: It’s one of the oldest tricks around, but slowly counting to 10 or 20 can help center yourself and calm your racing thoughts down.
  • Deep breathing: Just like with counting, you can take slow, deep breaths to try and still your nerves.
  • Clear your mind: Sometimes getting out of your head is a good way to reduce your anxiety and any anxiety attacks that follow. This can be done through acts like mediation, yoga, etc.
  • Develop better sleep habits: This might be easier said than done, but getting enough sleep is a good way to feel better throughout the day and experience less stress along the way.

Causes of Blurred Vision

Causes of Blurred Vision

With blurred vision, it’s almost as if you have cloudy vision. Like everything you look at is in a fog or through a screen.

This may impact your entire vision, your peripheral vision, or even affect just one eye.

There are many things that can cause blurred vision besides anxiety such as these common eye problems:

  • Eye trauma or injury
  • Strain
  • Age-related degeneration
  • Chronic dry eye
  • Glaucoma
  • Near-sightedness or far-sightedness

There are also some highly serious causes of blurred vision such as migraines, strokes, and low blood sugar.

Treatment for Blurred Vision

Before there can be any treatment for blurred vision, you must first understand the cause of it. As we mentioned before, if anxiety is the culprit, then managing that will be the first step to solving your blurry vision problem.

It’s best not to assume you know the issue for why you’re experiencing cloudy vision. So, the safer option is to bring this up with a healthcare professional so that they can diagnose the issue.

Your eyes will be examined to check for any physical causes, and if needed, you may have to get some blood tests done to rule out any other conditions.

From there, a doctor will know what is causing the blurred vision and how to correct it.

If something drastic is the cause of your blurred vision such as the case with cataracts, then surgery may be required to correct the problem. Surgery also comes into play if a traumatic injury to the eyes or to the brain is the cause.

Natural Treatments

Sometimes, a case of low blood sugar can be the cause of your blurred vision. Better managing of your blood sugar levels can prevent many health complications down the road before you have to undergo severe treatment in the form of insulin.

On the other hand, high blood pressure from anxiety and stress can cause your blurred vision as well. Severe cases can also lead to you taking medication to manage the situation, but you can get it under control prior to it getting that bad.

This starts with making dietary changes as well as lifestyle changes.

When it Becomes an Emergency

For those of you that have anxiety and blurred vision, it may become such a regular occurrence that you don’t see the need to seek out emergency medical help. However, there are cases where blurred vision requires immediate assistance.

Sudden blurry vision accompanied by additional symptoms should be treated as an emergency. Be on the lookout for these complications:

  • Severe headache
  • Confusion
  • Slurred speech or difficulties speaking
  • Dizziness or loss of balance
  • Numbness or weakness, more so on one side of the body
  • Lack of consciousness
  • Ringing in the ears
  • Fatigue
  • Upset stomach and/or vomiting
  • Chest pains
  • Flu-like symptoms

These can all be symptoms of much larger health concerns such as a stroke, a traumatic brain injury (TBI), and even a case of carbon monoxide exposure.

In these situations, it’s important to get yourself to a healthcare professional as soon as you can. The faster you’re seen, the more you reduce your chance of suffering long-term health complications.

If it isn’t a sudden and noticeable situation, then keep a watch out if your blurred vision is getting worse over time. This can mean that an underlying health condition is worsening as well, and it’s important to find the cause and work on a treatment plan.

Preventing Blurred Vision

There are numerous ways to manage your blurred vision once you understand the cause of it. However, there are some ways that you may prevent it entirely.

For one thing, you can undergo some of the at-home remedies for anxiety and stress we listed before. This includes practicing mindfulness and keeping yourself centered.

Beyond that, you can remember to wear sunglasses as protection under sunny outdoor conditions. If you are engaging in other activities such as painting, operating machinery, or woodworking, then you should wear the right eye protection to prevent injuries.

To lower the risk of any infection, wash your hands before touching your eyes, especially if you are removing contacts.

You can also undergo regular health exams so that if there is any health condition at play, it can be caught fast.

Also, you can always focus on your diet and focus on eating foods that will optimize your eye health. This includes having good amounts of Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin E, zinc, and even omega-3 fatty acids.

Takeaway

It’s unfortunate that anxiety and blurred vision can go together. Anxiety can bring about stress, and an attack can lead to numerous symptoms that can affect you from head to toe.

To manage this, it is best to focus on getting your anxiety under better control. Whether you seek help in the form of therapy, or you agree to some medication, it’s important that you work on getting better so that you reduce the likelihood of experiencing something like blurred vision.

Of course, there may be another cause, so remember to get checked by a healthcare professional to make sure you know where this symptom is truly coming from.

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