At some point, you’ve probably experienced a bad case of eye twitching and spasms.
While it can be super annoying, it’s actually quite common and usually comes and goes for a few days, weeks or months without warning.
Most of the time, it’s brought on by a variety of factors, including stress, fatigue, eye strain, dry eyes, and caffeine – known as a minor eyelid twitch.
“Eye twitching is usually caused by fatigue of the smooth muscles around the eye,” explains Dr. Bola Oyeyipo, a family physician in San Antonio, Texas and co-founder of Healthgist.com. “Unlike skeletal muscle, which we can control, smooth muscles are out of our control as humans.”
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For the most part, it’s nothing to worry about, but you’ll need to treat the underlying cause to make the twitching stop.
In addition to minor eyelid twitching, there are two other types of eye twitching: Benign Essential Blepharospasm and Hemifacial Spasm.
Benign Essential Blepharospasm is characterized by excessive blinking and can eventually lead to light sensitivity, blurry vision and even facial spasms.
Hemifacial Spasms, on the other hand, are rare and go beyond the eyelid muscles and all the way down to the mouth muscles. In most cases, a Hemifacial spasm affects one side of the face.
