Transcript
Migraine treatment or money waste. Most green anti-migraine glasses are fooling you and getting away with it on a technicality. Or maybe they just don't understand the science themselves. I tested six different pairs under $20 plus two higher-end contacts. And the results were, to varying degrees, illuminating. The basic premise is that blue light triggers migraines a lot. Red light a little, and green light actually helps, as we've discussed. So if you filter out all the blue light, presto migraine relief. But here's the problem. The blue cones in your eye are most sensitive to pure blue, but they actually have a whole range of colors that they respond to. Imagine three little gremlins sitting in the back of your eye yelling at your brain. The blue one shouts blue, blue, blue really loudly when it gets hit by blue light. But he's still shouting at a medium volume when he sees this sort of sky blue, which is actually on its way towards green. And his voice is so annoying that even hearing it at lower volumes causes headaches. I used a fancy spectrometer to measure how much of normal white light gets through different glasses. Turns out, while it's true that these three block 95% of pure blue light, they let through around half of this sky blue color, which triggers your blue cones by around 50%. I ran the numbers to figure out how much of each cone gets triggered by white light shine through each of these lenses. These three were pretty bad with 15 to 18% blue cone activation. These two were okay with 8 to 10%. These two Alteus brand contacts, both the green and the red, were pretty big successes with less than 3% blue cone activation. And of everything tested, these deep, green glasses by Light Me Up were the only ones to fully mimic pure green light, blocking basically all of the blue and red. But they also block 95% of the total light intensity, which makes them great for simulating green light therapy, but not as great for every day use. For all the links and graphs, check out my website.
Additional notes
Your eyes have 3 types of cones, that process red, green, and blue light, as well as cells called ipRGCs that set your circadian rhythm, and are most sensitive to light BETWEEN pure green and blue. Almost… sky blue. Migraines and headaches get triggered MOST by blue cone activation AND ipRGCs. (The latter even triggers BLIND people). So most “migraine glasses” will try and just block out blue wavelengths–like “FL-41”, which let through greens, yellows, oranges, and reds. And some blues. Which is fine if you want high functioning lenses that still let you see color, BUT some research shows that RED light also produces a more triggering signal in the brain than green. AND, beyond being just ‘least triggering,’ green light also can trigger the production of your body’s own opioid system. Maybe because… nature (vid on that coming soon) So for MAX MIGRAINE MINIMIZATION you want JUST GREEN getting through… as if you were sitting in a room lit ONLY by GREEN LEDs. I built a dashboard on my website where I calculated the total area under the curve of cone activation and ipRGC, based on the spectrometer data. Another important point when evaluating these glasses is that some of them are shaped like standard glasses without any protection for your peripheral vision. And we know that your IPRGCs get triggered pretty strongly by light coming in from the periphery. #science #Migraine #migrainerelief #edutok
References
- Blue/green/red cone activation and ipRGC migraine-triggering explanation included in caption; study titles, DOI/PMID numbers, and source links not listed in workbook.
- Red-light vs green-light migraine response and endogenous-opioid green-light pathway discussed in caption; study titles, DOI/PMID numbers, and source links not listed in workbook.
- Spectrometer dashboard and tested migraine glasses/contacts mentioned in caption/transcript; direct source links not listed in workbook.