So today's video is gonna be a bit different from the usual tech stuff and I should point out that no
Despite the slightly clickbait title. I'm not dying or anything. I'm fine
Some of you may be disappointed to hear that darn. I gotta keep watching his videos
But really the point of this video is I just kind of wanted to bring attention to something that I've had all my life
But apparently it's so rare that I literally didn't even know
it was a thing or had a name and that thing is called visual snow where it's a condition where I literally have an
overlay of static very mild, but it's there of
Static over my vision at all times 24/7 I've had as long as I can remember
So even though I imagine most of you don't have this
I think you might still be interested in learning a little bit more about this pretty bizarre condition though
I should definitely point out that me personally. I have a very mild case of it so mild
In fact that like I said, I just kind of assumed that this is what everyone's vision was
Like I didn't notice anything wrong because it doesn't affect my visual performance at all
It's just kind of there and of course, I'll talk about my experience with it in a minute
But I do want to say that this video is not for any kind of pity party for me or anything like that
No, really
The reason for me making this video is kind of twofold
the first reason being that there are people out there who haven't much more severe than me to the point where it really
Disrupts their daily life as you can imagine just having static
disrupting your vision all the time and it is so rare that
Apparently a lot of doctors
Perhaps most doctors even most eye
Doctors have literally never heard of it and because of that there's very little research being done on it and there's actually no cure
cure Known for it. There's some treatments, but they don't really work
and
so it was pretty crazy to me to hear about this thing that I've just had all my life and
That most doctors have never even heard of so I thought you know what I kind of should talk about this
so really the second reason I'm talking about it is in case there are some other people out there who
Didn't even know this thing had a name or that it was even a thing
And that perhaps it might not be as rare as we thing
I don't know and I figured since I do have this YouTube channel
I felt a little bit obliged to at least get the out on it and make a video. Of course
I will mention a couple ways if you want you can contribute to some of this research. I'll put a link in the description
There's at least one
Organization called visual snow initiative that's doing a fundraiser for this research. This is not a sponsored video at all
I'm just doing this on my own volition
But I'll put that link in the description if you want to check that out before I do get into my experience, though
I'd better quickly explain. What the heck this is so you know what I'm talking about
so basically visual snow syndrome is a syndrome, which means that it's just kind of like a collection of
Associated symptoms that we've recognized but we don't necessarily know the actual root cause of it yet
I'll get into more the other symptoms in a bit. But the main one is commonly described as like this visual static
That's overlaid over your vision and there's different varieties of it and I'll get into how I see it in a minute
But it is there 24/7 at all times and from what I've read
There are some people who have had it since as long as they can remember
Like me and there's other people who literally wake up one day well into adulthood and there it is so you can imagine
How frustrating that would be to not have
This and then all of a sudden it's there and it never goes away pretty crazy
And I mean, I've never known any difference, so it's very easy for me to just ignore it
It's just part of what my vision is
But I could easily see how even if someone woke up one day with what I see
They could very well be very annoyed at the least and it could potentially like drive them crazy if it's a very extreme case
So anyway the background story for me. Is that really all of my life? I have noticed on occasion
It's always there but I only notice it on occasion that there is this mild
Static overlaid over my vision and usually I would notice it when looking at like a blank wall like a flat
Uniform surface or something where it's more obvious, but really anything I'd look at if I look for it I can see it
But it's very easy for me to ignore 99% of the time and because it doesn't affect my visual performance at all
I can see things clearly and sharply. I really didn't even think anything of it on very rare occasions
I would kind of notice it's there and kind of think
maybe I should go and see if there's a name for that but I would just completely forget about it a few minutes later and
I know I've had it my entire life because I do distinctly remember as like a kid
I remember telling my parents I was like yes dots everywhere and like what the heck he talking about dots
That's what I was talking about, but I didn't really know how to even describe it because I was so young
But that is what I was talking about. So I know I've had it forever basically
so anyway a quarter of a century goes by and I'm sitting on my computer pretty much just last week and
I happen to notice it again
So I think oh I should google this and see if everyone else sees this I wonder is there a name for it?
so I google literally visual static and
You can imagine my surprise when I see the first result as being the government website on rare diseases
Exactly describing what I've seen my entire life and I just thought huh. How about that?
So how I would describe it is very much similar to how if you ever take a camera picture with a video camera
Still camera and if you don't have perfect lighting a lot of times, there's just noise on the image
It's from sensor noise and I can demonstrate this by turning up the ISO on my camera to increase the sensitivity
Which will therefore increase the noise and I'll try to do that now
so I've just cranked up the sensitivity on my camera the ISO sensitivity and
Maybe depending on the YouTube
Compression. Hopefully, you can see that there's quite a bit of static especially on darker areas like my shirt and
That kind of is an analogue to what I see, of course, maybe to a lesser degree. Maybe a more degree
I can't really see based on the small screen how bad it is, but you can get an idea
It's kind of hard to describe but I would describe mine as clear. So it's not really like something is in front of it
it's more just like my vision is composed of an infinite number of like tiny little
flickers or fluctuations in light and
They're so small fluctuations that again. They don't disrupt what I'm seeing
They don't adjust the sharpness of edges or anything, but they're just there
but they do definitely get more noticeable in darker rooms when there's less bright things to kind of
Drown out that noise and from what I understand I could be wrong
But I do believe I read that everyone to some degree in very very dark rooms
does see a little bit of visual snow because of the inherent noise in the cones in your eyes that are
perhaps getting less signal from photons and
Again, there's less light to drown out the inherent noise. So I don't know if this is true for everyone
Definitely normal people don't see this during the day, but perhaps you can test it out yourself at night
maybe
Kind of take a notice to see if you see what I'm talking about and really one of the reasons I never even searched for
It up until now is because me using cameras and being interested in cameras all of my life
I know how ISO sensitivity works and I literally just assumed oh well cameras have inherent noise in the sensor
I guess our eyes do too. I had no idea it would be any different. So I just didn't even think anything of it
Really? I think that's enough of the high ISO example
So I'll go ahead and switch back to the normal image now
so I did mention that there are other commonly associated symptoms one of which that I know is
tinnitus or ringing in the ears
And as long as I can remember again, I've had this very minor but it's there ringing in my ears
usually I only notice it if it's in a very quiet room and it doesn't affect me otherwise very much like the visual thing and
There is actually one theory that visual snow is the result of overexcited neurons or perhaps
Overly sensitive neurons that are just showing you things that normally a normal
Person wouldn't see because they're being filtered out but perhaps if the signal is too strong to be filtered out
well
you see it when other people normally wouldn't and that would make sense how you get some in the ear with tinnitus and
Visual snow. I don't know. It makes sense to me a lot of times
Also, I've read that migraines are heavily associated with visual snow. They're not
Necessarily associated I thankfully for example don't get migraines never really have
but a lot of people I guess get what are called like auras where it kind of disrupts your vision during the migraine and they
think perhaps
Visual snow syndrome has to do with migraines and some people I don't know. There are also some other possible associated symptoms such as
Photophobia, which is an over sensitivity to light which would kind of make sense if the other theory that I talked about is true also
trailing images like a poor images that are stronger than what normally people see and also impaired night vision another
Associated thing is so-called enhanced and topic phenomena
Which I'm not going to get into because it would probably take me too long to explain but I would recommend
Googling that because it's something that I believe
everyone does have just to not nearly the degree that
Someone with visual snow has but you might be interested to notice these things
That you might not notice with your eye before now for me besides the tinnitus. I haven't really noticed any of the other
Symptoms, so I'm not sure really if I have the full-blown syndrome
I obviously definitely have the visual part of it - a very mild degree
But keep in mind that syndromes for the most part are just defined by what we notice as being
Associated symptoms so that can definitely change over time especially as we learn more about it
I don't know. So that's really why more research does need to be done on it
but again, like I said
A lot of people who have this have said that most of their doctors have never even heard of it
They have to go through several doctors even several eye doctors before they have a doctor that even knows what it is
And it's usually like some sort of specialist now like I mentioned before there is at least one
Organization called visual snow initiative that is doing a fundraiser for more research
I'll put a link to the description for that
If you want to check that out through a few bucks towards it and there's also another website
I found that is pretty helpful, especially in describing. A lot of the symptoms called visual snow foundation
I'll put a link to that as well
I mainly just want to get the word out because this is the first time that I've experienced something where
something so basic to me is completely unknown even to
Doctors that apparently are supposed to specialize in this it's just so rare
And of course when I first was hearing about it
I was kind of concerned like is this something that's gonna get worse?
Luckily from what I've read people who have had it since they were born typically say that it doesn't get worse
so that's good for me and
Luckily, I don't consider it nearly bad enough where I would even need to seek out treatment
but like I said, there are people out there who really
really are
disturbed by it and I definitely think it's still worth talking about because
It seems to me like something where if this does have to do with how the brain processes visual information
You know, it might uncover things
We don't know about the brain because you know
Even if it's a very rare condition if we figure out why it happens
It might be a key to unlocking other more common conditions. Who knows
So anyway, that's pretty much all I wanted to say about it
The link will be in the description if you want to check out some more information
So if you guys want you can check out some of my other videos
I usually make tech videos on here if you're new so until then. Thanks for watching
Be seeing you