When to see a doctor
Contact an eye specialist immediately if you notice:
• Many more eye floaters than usual
• A sudden onset of new floaters
• Flashes of light in the same eye as the floaters
• Darkness on any side or sides of your vision (peripheral vision loss)
[0] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/eye-floaters/...
The gel in our eyes begins to shrink with age (and detach from the retina). As is the case with all things aging, it doesn't follow a set pattern. It happens early for some and late for others.
If you are seeing more floaters than you normally do, don't panic but do consider going for eye exam just to ensure that your retina is fine.
As for the floaters, my ophthalmologist gave me a long ass story about conscious attention, how he lived near a train track and with time he became immune to the disturbing sounds of trains passing by yada yada.. Point is you should become blind to the new ones with time :)
[0] https://www.webmd.com/eye-health/posterior-vitreous-detachme...
Our family once moved into a larger house in an older part of town. It took only a single night to accommodate to passing trains. But the sound of rain falling on the galvanized tin roof was magical - we tried to lie in bed and listen every rainy night but nonetheless failed!
Apparently the brain accommodates remarkably well to simple floaters. Recently, while selecting DVDs at the local library, much to the alarm of a nearby patron, I found myself swatting at a large moth attempting to land on my left hand. Almost immediately I realized the "moth" was inside my eye! A month has passed and this floater, which (according to my opthalmologist) consists of two segments of tissue hinged together at one end and which flaps like a butterfly when my eye moves, now appears as a single smaller floater. With time, perhaps it will be rendered invisible.
See a competent optician. There is a very expensive laser treatment I believe for giant floaters but more importantly you may have underlying problems. (Like.. pvd)
I don't know if the risks of an operation to remove them are worth it...
Also it can vary a lot, you can have more at some times and less at other times. They can end up falling down out of the field of view with time and things get better.
I also heard being well hydrated helps but I couldn't really make that correlation from my personal experience
VIM on dark background helped a lot!
I got lucky and had my lenses replaced and the eye fluid completely removed (Vitrectomy). A somewhat risky operation, considering my myopia, but my vision is completely clear now.
I think Vitrectomy is the only sure way to get rid of them. Simply because they get sucked out together with all the old fluid.
Beware though, the floaters could be a sign of some retinal trouble.
> It is not often treated, except in severe cases, where vitrectomy (surgery), laser vitreolysis, and medication may be effective.
I'm not a doctor, but it may be worth it to ask one about options.
I have floaters, but I can't see them unless I try very hard to focus on the sky. Your case sounds more severe.
Although I've never read this, my own conjecture is that one cause of floaters is that you're actually cooking the proteins in the vitreous humour, and that this is especially likely if you're nearsighted, since that means there's a point in front of the retina where the rays converge to a point. I suspect this provokes a localized maillard-like protein cooking reaction (irreversible, just like cooking an egg) and that it's hard for your body to clear that out.
This view is (slightly) further buttressed by the fact that my floaters have gotten a little (not hugely, but noticeably) better since I've been taking significant doses of senolytics (fisetin, quercetin, etc.) I wouldn't have expected those to make too much difference, since if the problem is just junk protein floating around, it's hardly alive, and I don't know why a senolytic would help unless the cooked cells still are alive, so maybe it's the result of some of the other things that I started at the same time (high dosing of K2, for instance) - it's hard to know for sure, but my floaters are definitely somewhat better than they were a few years ago. YMMV, but trying anti-aging treatments is probably won't hurt (but that's not certain, either!), but may help a large number of conditions. We still don't even know what we don't know about this stuff, which is one reason I get really chapped about people thinking they know what to do about new viruses using unproven gene therapies, and then trying to pass those off as "vaccines". But that's another rant entirely...