The eye has six muscles that allow it to fixate on a common point, but weakness in these muscles can cause double vision and other symptoms. Causes include eye strain, injury, and amblyopia. Untreated weakness can lead to permanent squinting and other problems, so prompt treatment is important.
The human eyeball has six muscles with the sole purpose of pulling the eyeball in different directions. The purpose of this is to allow each of the two eyeballs to fixate on a common point. Without this, people would see double. Of course, as with any part of the human body, these powerful muscles are also prone to problems. One major problem is eye weakness, a worrying symptom common to a number of ailments.
This condition occurs when at least one of the six muscles has insufficient strength to support the eyeball. This could lead to the eyeball falling inward during nearsighted activities or otherwise falling outward. Also, this general weakness can cause a person to see double. These are all common symptoms of eye weakness.
Causes of eye weakness generally include severe eye strain, injury, or paralysis. Sometimes, it’s a simple cause of a temporary problem, like an underlying weakness during a bout of the flu. Other times, it can be a more serious problem, such as amblyopia, a problem coined by many as “lazy eye.”
Amblyopia is one of the more well-known ailments involving eye weakness, but the causes of lazy eye go beyond those six muscles. This is a disorder in which the optic nerve and brain cannot transmit vision information correctly, so the term “sluggish brain” may be more appropriate. A patient will normally only have amblyopia in one eye, although it is not uncommon for both eyes to be affected by the condition.
If you start to see double or experience blurry vision when you normally see clearly, you may be experiencing eye weakness. Patients who notice these symptoms of weakness should make an appointment with an optometrist for an eye exam. Depending on the disorder associated with the particular muscle weakness, a patient may also experience a variety of other symptoms. For example, anxiety, dizziness, joint pain, and muscle weakness elsewhere than the eye may also be present. When this happens, see a primary care physician together with your optometrist.
Untreated eye weakness can lead to a variety of problems. Patients with long-lasting, untreated weakness can lose all function in the muscle at fault. This places more stress on the nervous system, leading to more problems, including the possibility of a permanent squint, further demonstrating the critical need to treat any such problem promptly.
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