My Eye Won’t Stop Twitching—Am I Dying?

Recently a friend of mine complained of a nonstop eye twitch, so, helpful friend that I am, I looked up “eye twitch” on WebMD for her. As is usually the case when someone with zero medical background consults WebMD looking for a diagnosis, this was a huge mistake. Of course I saw the early, so-called “most likely” causes—fatigue and stress—but I scrolled right past them on to the graver possibilities: brain or nerve disorders like Bell’s palsy, some kind of muscle disorder called dystonia, even Parkinson’s disease. Slightly panicked, I turned to my second-most preferred online health resource: the Mayo Clinic website. There I found even more possible diagnoses: glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, Tourette’s syndrome, and a few more conditions that sounded like space odyssey movie character names—entropion and uveitis, for instance. A search for “eye twitch + ALS” reveals a number of very concerned health forum posts from people who, like me, wish to jump to the worst possible conclusion. Much like headaches, it seems, eye twitching is the sort of symptom for which you can easily find dozens of possible culprits covering the full diagnostic range between “Eh, whatever” and “You’ll be dead tomorrow.”