Psychomatic sinusache?

December 28, 2007 10:18 AM

Slightly weird one: I occasionally get what I think is a psychosomatic sinusache. It seems to be induced by looking at a sharp edge or point, and perhaps happens to me once every one or two weeks. I'm wondering if anyone else has ever experienced this, and/or has any input into what's going on (mentally or physically) and any fixes or things that alleviate what's going on. As always,

In such cases, it can severely increase in intensity, making it difficult to continue remaining focused on anything, requiring that I close my eyes, rub the bridge of my nose, and then try to return to staring at the screen. Taking off my glasses and rubbing the bridge of my nose, or blowing my nose, doesn't seem to alter the ache; it seems to quite literally be something changed by mental focus. I don't believe it's eye strain or mucus. I'm not sure if some underlying part of me imagines my eyeball being pierced or something, and the ache is an aversion thing, or if it's related to mental focus, or what. This has been with me for years, but it just occurred to me the other day to inquire with you guys as to whether it was just completely out of left field or was something other people had experienced.

posted by WCityMike to health & fitness (4 answers total)

I can definitely start getting strong anxiety reactions when there seem to be pointy things too close to my face, even if those pointy things are in reality unlikely to hit me. (I notice this a lot when I'm sitting on buses and standing people's elbows are near my head.) I tense up and start to get a weird congested/overwhelmed/buzzing feeling in my head, and I tend to rub my forehead with the heel of my hand to try to make it go away. It's not a headache, though; more of a panicky feeling.

I've always kind of classified it in with my mild claustrophobia, actually.
posted by occhiblu at 10:27 AM on December 28, 2007

I used to get this all the time when I was little and all those pokey-hangy things in stores were at eye level; it still happens rarely. It's not so much an ache for me as itchiness, but it's definitely alleviated by rubbing my eyes. It's definitely anxiety-related.
posted by uncleozzy at 11:34 AM on December 28, 2007

Maybe you were implanted by aliens in your sinuses?

I get the same thing when my wife puts on the Tori Amos or Ani DiFranco, so who KNOWS!
posted by Sukiari at 12:07 PM on December 28, 2007

Thank you for asking this very interesting question. It surprises me that this is happening to you, because I think you bring to light a more sophisticated and complex mechanism for protecting the eyes than I would have said existed.

I think the sinus ache you experience is a result of sensations arising from increased blood flow to the lacrimal glands and other secretory apparatus for the fluids lubricating your eye, together with the sensations caused by the newly fluid-charged glands themselves, all in precautionary preparation for the possibility that sharp thing you are looking at will end up in your eye.

As I have cause to know, the slime slugs produce to crawl harmlessly over the edges of razor blades has little or nothing on the stuff your eye can make. This summer, as I was composing a comment to MetaFilter, my favorite coffee cup that I had been using daily for about five years, a tiny two ounce demitasse made by Standard (of Italy), consisting of a naked, vacuum insulated pink glass insert screwed into a beige plastic holder with a handle, spontaneously imploded about an inch from my mouth as I was raising it to sip, filling my right eye with two ounces of hot coffee (thank goodness I use a lot of milk!) and more than a hundred fragments of glass from about the size of two BBs down to tiny dots that glittered like preternaturally bright snow crystals. I sat absolutely still and unblinking (a trick I learned from a really terrible bout of contact lens trouble a long time ago) with my eyes completely wide open for about five minutes, waiting to feel the fluid from my eyeball running down my cheek and the unimaginably awful pain to begin-- but it never did. When I finally got into the bathroom to see what was going on in the mirror, I looked like a glitter rock wannabe with the worst hangover induced bloodshot eyeball in history, and I had to spend about the next 40 minutes carefully peeling my lower eyelid down and dragging the fragments out onto my cheek in little slimy strings. The next morning I woke up with a bunch more microscopic shiny bits in material in the corner of my eye, which felt a little irritated, but as far as I know, I didn't even get a corneal abrasion out of it all, and I wore my contacts as usual the following day.

The point of this for your question is that the eye's defenses are really very effective, and that it makes sense to get them ready to deploy if a need for them can be reasonably anticipated. What is surprising about your report is that it looks as if you have a built-in program to do this when you see sharp objects close to your eye. This puts it on the level of fear of heights or spiders, and i think that's amazing, if it's true.

So yes, I think you are absolutely right and have had an extremely deep insight into human physiology when you speculate that "some underlying part of me imagines my eyeball being pierced or something...."
Congratulations.
posted by jamjam at 2:19 PM on December 28, 2007 [1 favorite]