The Surprising Benefits of Green Light for Migraines

Video: https://www.tiktok.com/@distilledscience/video/7563111097574657310

Transcript

Do you get migraines? Researchers from the University of Arizona just discovered a really cool treatment, and it doesn't involve any painkillers, injectables, or drugs of any sort. All they used was light, green light, to be specific. Here's what happened. They enrolled seven participants with episodic migraines and 22 with chronic migraines. They were each given LED light strips to take home and instructed to set aside a consistent one to two hours per day where they were in a room lit only by those LEDs. They could read, listen to music, exercise, but no screens. Tough, I know. But to make sure that it was the color that mattered and not just the time off. They all spent 10 weeks using white LEDs and 10 weeks using green LEDs with a two-week washout in the middle. The results were amazing. By the end of the 10-week green light period, the episodic migraine sufferers went from suffering roughly 8 per month to 2.5. And the chronic migraine suffers? They went from 22 down to 9. That's a similar effect size to the best drugs on the market. But the white light had almost no effect. And what's crazy is that we have almost no clue why this works. The human body is amazing. But so is science. Quick update, I first posted this video over a year ago, at which point we really didn't know how the green light might help with migraines. And since that point, there have been several more studies released, first showing that, yeah, in humans, green light still does help with migraines and headaches, and also helps with fibromyalgia patients. But there was another study that showed that the mechanism by which it does it, or at least one of them, is by acting on neurons in the brain that produce an excitatory, excitatory neurotransmitter called glutamate, which is involved in a whole bunch of stuff. stuff. But basically, the light acts on these neurons in a way that helps to mitigate pain sensitivity, which is super cool, and actually the opposite of how red light works on the brain, or at least pretty differently, which we're going to be getting into more in the upcoming series on red light. So stay tuned.

Additional notes

Green light produces antinociception by activating glutamatergic neurons in vLGN, and red light promotes nociception by activating GABAergic neurons in the ventral lateral geniculate body (vLGN) This works with normal LED strips you can get online! Just set them to pure green and relax :) Note: The newer human trial was less rigorous, but involved 698 participants who were classified as “responders” or “non responders.” Headache improved in 55% of all 3,232 attacks, in 82% of the 1,803 attacks treated by responders, and in 21% of the 1,429 attacks treated by non-responders. 📚 Studies Referenced: doi: 10.1177/0333102420956711 doi: 10.3389/fneur.2023.1282236 doi: 10.1093/pm/pnaa329 doi: 10.1016/j.nbd.2023.106164 doi: 10.2147/PRBM.S388042 DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.abq6474 #science #headaches #migraines

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