Well, the story about my jumping eyelids goes back some months now. I don’t remember exactly when it started, I just know now that it comes and goes. I do remember however that it came out of nowhere, one random day my right eyelid started going crazy. A couple of minutes later my left eye followed. It’s a very awkward feeling, as if a little vein under my eyelid started twitching. It’s not painful, it’s just really uncomfortable and it makes you stop what you are doing for a moment to think of how annoying it is.

I didn’t do anything about it for some days, thinking that eventually, it was going to go away. Then I started thinking what could be causing it, and I couldn’t think of anything that I had done differently those days. After a week of the jumping eyelid dilema, I decided to do a little research on “old pal google” to find out what the hell was going on (sometimes I’m not sure if having all this information readily available is good or bad, as it can sometimes develop into major “l could have a tumor” freak outs). To my surprise there’s even a term for it, it’s called Eyelid Myokymia. Check out the medical definition for it:

Myokymia is the spontaneous, fine fascicular contractions of muscle without muscular atrophy or weakness. Eyelid myokymia typically involves the orbicularis oculi muscle of one of the lower eyelids; occasionally, the upper eyelids also can be affected. In most cases, eyelid myokymia is benign, self-limited, and not associated with any disease…

And the causes for Myokymia according to this same article:

“The cause is unknown but may be associated with stress, fatigue, and excessive caffeine or alcohol intake“.

I’m not a big alcohol or coffee drinker, so that’s not my case, however I do suffer from insomnia every now and then (and that’s a topic in itself, maybe for another post). I do remember that around that time I was not getting enough sleep, something that is not uncommon for me. I have a three year old daughter, and sometimes the only time I have to get stuff done is at night, when everybody’s sleeping. After a week of relatively good night sleep, it finally went away. Then I forgot about it…

Yesterday, it came back again and it’s about the fourth time it happens (as I mentioned earlier, it comes and goes). I guess I’ll have to learn to live with it…Anybody out there having the same problem?