Transcript
So I'm in the middle of an optical migraine right now, which means I literally can't see in this part of my field of vision. And it's very ironic because I've been spending the last couple weeks ensconced in this research around using green light to treat migraines. And I don't get migraines very often, but sometimes they happen and it's super weird because I just lose vision. to things like nature exposure. Because there's actually two different pathways by which green light could help people with migraines. One is that, you know, around 80% of people with migraines are photosensitive. They get triggered by bright lights, especially when they are in the middle of having a migraine. And the initial research showed that when they looked at different colors of light, red, green, blue, and white, the green light triggered a smallest amount of electrical signal spiking in the brain. to light, and you get these spikes going from your retina to your thalamus, and it produces like an added signal in the brain. When you have the smallest signal in response to a stimuli, that's the least likely to trigger it. But they also found that when some people were exposed to green light, it actually made it better. So there's an active benefit, even more so than just being in the dark. And that is linked to nature exposure. As a lot of you have commented, there's a lot of data nature is good for us in so many different ways. And it seems like a part of that might actually be literally getting to look at so much different green light. Part of it has to do with maybe a lot of curves, a lot of passive attention where your brain can sort of pay attention to lots of little details without having to focus on any individual amount. But we can talk about that in another video because right now let's talk about the green light. So there's another pathway by which green light can help treat pain. And that's the green light seems to trigger the production of endodiac. Opogenous opioids in the brain. They're sort of like endorphins, feel good chemicals that literally can help to lower the amounts of pain that people are experiencing, which is why it doesn't just help with migraines, it can help with fibromyalgia, even post-surgical pain. But in terms of how to do this yourself, there's a lot of nuances to take into account. It's why it's taking me so long to get you the full buying guide, which I'm working on. But here's some of the things to keep in mind. So number one, when treating migraines, the key is actually to have a very so that you are both not triggering the bad stuff as much as possible and getting that good opioid effect as much as possible. Don't worry, it's not addictive, I think. When you're doing that, you need a light that's able to go dim enough. And some of these green light bulbs that I've been testing out here, they produce the right light, but you actually don't want it to be super bright. And dimming it can be a problem because there's a whole another body of research showing that when light gets dimmed, especially LEDs, it does it by flickering on and off very rapidly. want that because that can trigger headaches, which is sort of against the point. So instead, I've been using a fancy light meter, which is over there somewhere, where I can test exactly how much everything flickers and exactly how green it is. And the key point here is your brain actually has, or your retina has three different types of cones, which process color, rods process light and dark. So the cones that process color, there's cones for red, green, and blue. specifically want to trigger only the green as much as possible and not the red and the blue. So a very narrow band green light where it's only green is going to trigger green optimally. Of course, the absorbent spectrum for a green is a little bit different than the LEDs that we get. And the maximum sensitivity of those green cones actually overlaps more with the red cones. So it's not that we want the green wavelength that maximally triggers the green cone. maximally triggering the green cone while also minimally triggering the other ones, which happens in the realm of 515 to 530 nanometers wavelength. So when I've been measuring these lights, I'm looking at specifically how narrow that wavelength band is, and I'm actually running a bunch of calculations to see for a given light how little it triggers everything else and how much it triggers the green as well as there's parts of our eyes called intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, which exist sort of a the cones in the retina, and these are responsive to light of all colors. It's actually responsible for triggering our circadian rhythm and things like photosensitivity and migraines. There's data showing that even people who are blind can actually get triggered by light, even though they don't consciously perceive the light, because it's still triggering those IPRGCs. Similarly, it'll also help set their circadian rhythm. So we need to calculate exactly what wavelengths are triggering the IPRGCs in addition to the green cone. and there's its own absorbent spectrum, and I'm calculating that as well to accomplish some sort of composite migraine calculation. And that's all coming soon. Where was I? Right. In terms of other things that you need to get a good light to deal with migraines or chronic pain in general. When you have light, you can have either a diffuse source or a point source. So think about a small LED that's very bright, that's a little hard to look at it itself, but it doesn't actually light up the room that much. Or even a very small lamp, if you're looking directly at it, it seems pretty bright, but as soon as you look away, it doesn't light everything up. And the problem there is that one of the triggers for pain is actually very high contrast because your brain and your eyes, you know, they dilate when things are dark. So when your eyes are more dilated, then they're more likely to get triggered greater by that even less bright source. And in general, high contrast tends So rather than a strip of LEDs that uses like LED blank, LED blank, which is in fact what it was used in the studies to treat migraines with green light, I think it would actually be better to have a diffuse light source where you're getting that green light and it's coming into your eye, but you're not getting any sort of source of high contrast. At the same time, though, the cones in your eyes only really perceive strong color within like the 10 degrees of focus, your primary area. that you're looking, less so out of your peripheral vision because that's where the rods process light, not the cones. So if you're sitting in a dark room with only green light for one to two hours, as is the treatment protocol for using green light to treat migraines or chronic pain, you want to be having the green light within that primary area of your field of vision, not just off to the side, but you want it to not be very high contrast. You want it to instead be fairly diffuse. So you can do that by a desk lamp that's very green. If you're looking and reading a book right. in front of the lamp, or if you have a more diffuse form of lighting like I've got going here, then you can be a little bit more active in the room, maybe doing stretching exercises, and keeping that green coming into your cones that's still triggering them at the right level without having to specifically be staring at it. And that's an advantage of a large diffuse light source as opposed to the very small ones, like the lamps or the tiny little LEDs. I'm trying to take all of this into account as I come up with my overall buying guide for this sort of stuff. It's dealing with a lot of different calculations, but I'm going to have something cool for you guys soon. If you want it, check out my newsletter because I'm only going to be able to cover some of this on these short form platforms. Not that this was short form. I'm just going to post it and see how it goes because this is me rambling while having a migraine and literally not being able to see the camera or anything else because my field of vision right now is like just this. So I hope you enjoyed this ramble. I'm just going to post it and see what happens.
Additional notes
Replying to @nick_uru this is what happens when I spend 20+ hours staring at all sorts of different lights. I decided to test not just their green ability, but also their ability to produce good white for color reproduction, mood, and cool RGB effects. I can't really see my screen to edit anything right now, so I figured I'd just ramble for a while for the 5 of you with the attention span to handle it
References
- Green-light migraine studies discussed in transcript; study titles, DOI/PMID numbers, and source links not listed in workbook.
- Green-light endogenous-opioid pain pathway discussed in transcript; study titles, DOI/PMID numbers, and source links not listed in workbook.
- LED dimming/flicker research discussed in transcript; study titles, DOI/PMID numbers, and source links not listed in workbook.