Floaters

What are floaters?

Causes of floaters

Prevention / remedies / treatment for floaters

References

What are floaters?

Floaters are visible shapes in your vision that look like pieces of hair, threads, fragments of cobwebs, spots and blobs. They are most apparent when looking at a blank surface like a white wall or plain blue sky. These shapes can vary in size, consistency and movement. Often they are opaque.

Eye floaters also known as known as myodesopsia, myiodeopsia, myiodesopsia, or myodeopsia.

Floaters are collagen particles in the eye's vitreous humour, the thick transparent gel that fills the eye. Often these collagen particles are glycated, forming Advanced Glycation Endproducts (AGEs), where sugars and collagen combine into a harmful form. AGEs are the outcome of a high sugar, high carbohydrate diet. Floaters drift in this fluid, and generally follow rapid movements of the eye.

Floaters are quite common and do not intrude enough to affect the lives of most people. However in severe cases they are a nuisance and distraction, and can prevent the ability to read, drive a vehicle, or in other ways live a normal and functional life.

About 70% of adults have floaters in varying degrees, many children have them too.

Most doctors and specialists say that floaters don't usually change much, and for many people the most prominent floaters continue to be seen in the field of vision for a lifetime. However it is my experience that they do move around, they can come and go, and they can completely and permanently disappear.

If you are healthy and active, floaters will often disappear on their own. The time can vary from minutes to months!

Warning. The appearance of flashes or the sudden onset of numerous floaters should be urgently investigated by an eye specialist, as it may indicate a torn or detached retina that can cause permanent blindness.

Causes of floaters

• Blood sugar problems. Those with high levels of blood glucose and diabetics tend to have more floaters than the general population.
• The result of injury, trauma or surgery such as a cataract operation. In some cases the sufferer had them before, but only took notice after the injury as the quantity increased.
• Degenerative changes of the vitreous humour or retina related to aging.
• Vitreous detachment. The eye is filled with a clear jelly-like substance called vitreous gel. Vitreous jelly degenerates with age and with trauma. It can liquefy, collapse or separate from the retina. This is called a posterior vitreous detachment (PVD). Along with weird flashing in the eye, it can cause the onset of new floaters.
• Toxoplasmosis (parasitic infection by the protozoa toxoplasma gondii).
• Embryonic origin. Tiny floater spots are present in most young children's eyes, which come from remnants of embryonic structures in the vitreous humour. In active healthy children these spots normally disappear.
• Congenital (less common).

Prevention / remedies / treatment for floaters

• Autophagy is when the body recycles old and damaged cells. The best way to stimulate autophagy is fasting. Consuming all your food in a restricted time window every day, and full fasts where you don't eat anything for a day or longer, are one of the best things you can do for your health and to rid floaters. A ketogenic diet does something similar and is also very successful in achieving great health and ridding floaters.
• Eliminate sugar and all sweet foods and drinks (which also stimulates autophagy).
• Eye exercises. Daily eye exercise for five minutes, looking five times each as follows: up/down, left/right, a clockwise circle/anticlockwise circle, and at the tip of the nose and then infinity. Do this gently and slowly, provided it causes no pain or discomfort, and with the agreement of your doctor or eye specialist.
• Pineapple contains a protease enzyme called bromelain which some research has shown to be quite effective at digesting floaters. (1) Other fruits like paw paw and kiwi also contain enzymes that are helpful in removing floaters. This study (2) found a 70% improvement in floaters after subjects used a mixed fruit regime. A range of other supplements may also be helpful. (3)
• Taurine.
• Iodine supplementation sometimes helps floaters to disappear.
• Avoid canola (rapeseed) oil. In Grow Youthful you are warned against using Omega-6 polyunsaturated oils made from grains and seeds. These oils include corn, sunflower, safflower, soy, cottonseed and peanut oil, for example. I have heard anecdotes that avoiding canola/rapeseed oil removed floaters, and suspect that this will also apply to the other polyunsaturated oils.
• Beetroot juice. Raw beetroot can be quite hard on the digestive system and is not a food to eat in large quantities. The juice of raw beetroot is a potent cleansing medicine and you should first test drinking it in small quantities to see how you cope with it.
• Castor oil. A small smear of castor oil is applied to the base of the eyelashes or the edge of the eyelids with a clean cotton bud. The most convenient time to do this may be before going to bed.
• MSM. Eye drops are available with MSM as an ingredient. Varying levels of success have been reported in using MSM eye drops for floaters (and also for dry eyes). The only acceptable additional ingredient in these eye drops is vitamin C, but apart from that it should just be pure water without any other chemicals.
• Laser vitreolysis is a highly specialised outpatient process that is much less invasive than surgery. A laser is focused onto the floater and vaporises or cuts it up. The claimed success rate is about 90%. It is faster, cheaper than surgery, and has fewer side effects.
• Surgery. A vitrectomy is the surgical removal of some of the vitreous humour from the eyeball. It is an intrusive and high risk option that should not normally be attempted except in the most extreme cases.
• See details of remedies recommended by Grow Youthful's visitors, and their experience with them.

References

1. Chi-Ting Horng, Fu-An Chen1, Daih-Huang Kuo1, Li-Chai Chen1, Shou-Shan Yeh, Po-Chuen Shieh1. Pharmacologic vitreolysis of vitreous floaters by 3-month pineapple supplement in Taiwan: A pilot study. Journal of American Science 2019; 15(4).

2. Ma JW, Hung JL, Takeuchi M, Shieh PC, Horng CT. A New Pharmacological Vitreolysis through the Supplement of Mixed Fruit Enzymes for Patients with Ocular Floaters or Vitreous Hemorrhage-Induced Floaters. J Clin Med. 2022 Nov 13;11(22):6710. doi: 10.3390/jcm11226710. PMID: 36431188; PMCID: PMC9695351.

3. Emmanuel Ankamah, Marina Green-Gomez1, Warren Roche1, Eugene Ng, Ulrich Welge-Luben, Thomas Kaercher, John M. Nolan Dietary Intervention With a Targeted Micronutrient Formulation Reduces the Visual Discomfort Associated With Vitreous Degeneration. 14 October 2021, Nutrition Research Centre Ireland, School of Health Sciences, Waterford Institute of Technology.