"eye exam"

You live a busy life. With the responsibilities associated with your job, family, and well, everything, you may not get enough sleep.

More than one in three Americans don’t get enough sleep—defined as seven or more hours each—on a regular basis, according to the CDC. It’s been well established a lack of sleep can increase the risk of a number of serious health issues including high blood pressure, obesity, and depression, but does it contribute to serious or long-term problems for the health of your eyes?

Lack of sleep can leave you looking worn-down and with dark circles or heavy bags under your eyes. While this isn’t an ideal look, it’s usually nothing that a good night’s sleep can’t fix. However, as doctors learn more about our vision it has become abundantly clear that a chronic lack of sleep can have significant, and in some cases lasting, effects on your vision and the overall health of your eyes.

It’s often said the brain is an extension of the eye, and for that reason a headache may be a symptom of an vision problem.  Headaches that are related to the eye can be of the forehead, temples, behind the eyes, and at the back of the skull. They may be excruciating or dull. They may or not be alleviated by Tylenol or sleep. They may even present with blurred vision.

If you are having headaches with blurry vision, your eye doctor may ask you the following questions:

• Where do your headaches occur?
• Do you wake up with headaches? Do they worsen with near work?
• How long does your vision stay blurry when you have the headache?
• If you were to grade the severity of the headache on a 1-10 scale, what number would you give?

Here are the 8 most common reasons for headaches combined with blurry vision, and how they are diagnosed and treated.