Hi all,
So I'm not sure if this is actually strange or if it's just normal and I know nothing about it, so by all means feel free to let me know.

A few days ago I really hurt my back, I think by just sleeping funny. It started out feeling sore, then throughout the day it started spasming and I could barely move. The good news is that it's better now, it's very stiff and sore but I can at least get up and down as I please without it feeling like torture. The spasms are 50 times less severe and are much shorter lasting than they started, so I'm happy.

Anyway, last night I decided I was going to use a heating pad on it. The heating pad I have is one of those types where you plug it in and choose the appropriate intensity.

The stupid part though, and what lead me to make this topic in the first place, is that I can't really use it. For some weird reason, when I turn it on, the heat from it triggers this very weird reflex where my face, particularly my eyes, go tense. It reminds me precisely of the days when I was a little kid and I had enough light perception to need to wear sunglasses when the sun got bright. My light perception has dimmed somewhat so that isn't a huge problem for me anymore, in fact I think it's dimmed a lot more than I realize, but still. It was totally dark in my room last night, yet I had this overwhelming impulse to smother my eyes with blindfolds as long as my back was on the heating pad. So I ended up having to turn it on for a minute, then back off. I had this issue last time I used a heating pad too, but the one I was using then was old and was slow to heat up, so the onset wasn't so sudden if I remember correctly. This is kind of fascinating, but quite frustrating too.

Maybe the issue is that the pad is too large. It covers my entire back, and isn't localized to that one spot which I pulled. Perhaps i need to change which part of the pad I lay on so that the only spot which really feels heat is that one? That's the only thing I can think of. Above all though, I'm wondering if this is just a normal phenomenon I've never heard of or if I'm just strangely wired.

When I tried those muscle relaxer creams which create heat in a localized way, I don't recall feeling like that. So maybe I should go back to using those...

So yeah, do you have thoughts on this reflex I described?