Anyone who’s had a migraine knows how debilitating can be - even more so if that person is a chronic migraine sufferer. At its worst, migraines can be all-consuming: you can't open your eyes from the pain, perhaps even suffering from nausea and vomiting.
Migraines are even more common than you think. They’re a more powerful headache, which usually affects one side of the head. Sometimes they come with warnings, but most times you’ll just get them suddenly, which is probably the most inconvenient part. Migraines can be difficult and painful. You could be having a regular day with no problems, and suddenly you'll get a jolt of pain to your head that feels inescapable.
Dealing with a migraine is often a serious challenge; you can’t just go lie down and take 30-minutes to rest up. It takes hours, even days for a migraine to end. And if you’re working, unable to take multiple days off, this is a serious problem.
Migraines can happen with or without auras. When they occur with auras, this means you see flickering light, spots, or lines. It can feel like your mind is playing games with you when in reality, it's a migraine forming.
Migraines without auras are the ones that come without warning; however, mood changes can be an indicator that a migraine is manifesting itself for you. Your eyes could start burning or watering, and your nose could be stuffy right before a migraine. They usually feel like a throbbing pain in your head, as mentioned, often on one side of the head. Neck pains and cramps are also something you could be feeling and experiencing during a migraine.
They often feel like a tightening of the whole head and body, giving a rather inconvenient sensation. It's not uncommon to experience vertigo and double vision, as well. Migraines sometimes feel incurable, precisely because of the way the symptoms can vary. You can experience one type of migraine and, within a few days, a completely different one. Sometimes they last for minutes and others, hours or days.
If you, someone you know, or a patient of yours is experiencing migraines frequently and severely, that person has probably seen a doctor for the condition. And though some people have shelves full of prescriptions, many are seeking something less invasive, without side effects, yet still effective. Well, luckily, there is a solution for non-invasive migraine treatment: light therapy lamp treatments.
Light therapy is a way of transforming your overall health. In a light therapy treatment, you not only receive relief for your migraine but also for your general health. LED light therapy health benefits multiply the more invested you are. Light therapy eases the symptoms of whatever may be getting in your way while increasing your energy and improving mood.
How light therapy can help migraines is via green light. While green light therapy has been studied for a while, recent studies are proving its effectiveness against migraines. A new study shows that green light exposure reduced the number of headache days per month by an average of about 60%. The light not only reduced the pain but reduced the time of the migraine, making it shorter and more bearable. Another study showed that immediately after light therapy treatment, patients reported reduced migraine discomfort by 20%. Green light also produces a relaxing effect and has shown a much better result at dealing with migraines long-term than any other form of light.
So by penetrating into the body’s cells, it regenerates your cellular system, and thus, the whole body. It’s a process that should be done in the darkness, at any given time, for a period of 15-30 minutes. With daily treatments, you are more likely to reap the many benefits of light therapy.
Kayian's light therapy devices are perfect for at-home treatments or for use in medical clinics, specifically designed for you or your clients’ wants and needs. They are MDA-certified and FDA-approved, ensuring that your light therapy device meets medical and safety standards.
Migraine is a neurological condition that can cause multiple symptoms. It’s frequently characterized by intense, debilitating headaches. Symptoms may include nausea, vomiting, difficulty speaking, numbness or tingling, and sensitivity to light and sound. Migraines often run in families and affect all ages.
People describe migraine pain as:
Migraine symptoms may begin one to two days before the headache itself. This is known as the prodrome stage. Symptoms during this stage can include:
The effects of green light on the brain have been researched and well-documented for years. The green light can reset the circadian rhythm through melatonin, the hormone that regulates our sleep-wake cycles. A special photoreceptor system in the human eye picks up light and elicits non-visual responses, sending signals to the brain to reset the body’s internal clock and altering melatonin production levels.
Long-time sufferers of migraines and other chronic pain conditions may benefit from exposure to LED green light. A new study, led by pharmacologist Mohab M. Ibrahim, M.D., Ph.D., found that the color green may be key to easing pain.
Ibrahim’s interest in studying the ameliorating effects of green light was inspired by his brother, who has dealt with severe headaches for several years. Instead of taking ibuprofen, his brother would sit in his garden and soak up the verdure of nature to ease the pain from his headaches.
“I wanted to see what is in his garden or in a garden, in general, that would make headaches better,” said Ibrahim, director of the Chronic Pain Management Clinic at Banner — University Medical Center Tucson.
In his clinical practice, Ibrahim also saw that his patients suffering from migraines and fibromyalgia had limited treatment options, and wanted to find a novel, non-invasive, nonpharmacological therapy.
In his study, which has yet to be published, Ibrahim exposed 25 migraine volunteers first to white lights for two hours as a control, then to green LED lights. He measured multiple parameters, including pain reduction, frequency of migraines or headaches, frequency of fibromyalgia flare-ups, pain intensity and duration, and quality of life.
On a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 indicating no pain and 10 the highest level of pain, migraine volunteers had an initial average baseline pain score of 8. After completing the green light therapy, their score dropped down to an average of 2.8. The frequency of headaches dropped from 19 to 6.5 per month, and the overall quality of life climbed from 48 percent to 78 percent.
“The best part about it … is the simplicity, the affordability and, most importantly, the lack of side effects,” Ibrahim said. “It’s a normal light. We’re not using a high-energy laser or anything like that.”
But if pain works through the nervous system, how exactly can green light, which works through the visual system, make people feel better?
New studies show that there are neuronal connections that span from the retina all the way to the spinal cord, passing through the parts of the brain that control and modulate pain. Green light changes the levels of serotonin and alters the endogenous opioid system, an innate pain-relieving system found throughout the central and peripheral nervous system, gastrointestinal tract, and immune system, said Bing Liao, M.D., a neurologist at Houston Methodist Hospital.
“The endogenous opioid system … allows the body to generate something similar to opioids and gives us a sensation of pain relief and happy feeling,” Liao said. “Research has found that, with green light, the receptors of the endogenous opioid system can increase production in the brain and body, and the hormone by itself can increase in production, as well. … It might be an explanation for why people feel good when they’re in a green environment.”
While more studies must be done to test the efficacy of green light therapy as a treatment for chronic pain, Ibrahim said he is trying to advance this therapy as a complement to current therapies.
“What this green light therapy offers is a non-invasive, non-pharmacological additional tool, so it might help reduce opioids,” he said. “I don’t think it will eliminate opioids, but at least it may reduce it enough. It may provide people just with extra help or extra relief so that they may not need the number of opioids that they’re on.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28001756
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21182447
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23964217
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7769534
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26989758
Migraines are considered one of the most disabling illnesses in the world, most of whom are unable to function normally during a migraine. Migraines are much worse than the common headache - bringing on excruciating pain and other symptoms like dizziness, blurred vision, or vomiting.
Green light therapy lamps have been recommended by Harvard Medical School headache specialist Rami Burstein who found that light exacerbates migraines. Photophobia (extreme sensitivity to light) is associated with more than 80% of migraine attacks - but the green light in his research is different. He found that a narrow wavelength of green light is less aggravating than other colors because it sends a smaller, less disruptive signal to the brain via the visual cortex.
Stueids have been recording of dura- and light-sensitive thalamic neurons in rats to show that green activates cone-driven retinal pathways to a lesser extent than white, blue and red; that thalamic neurons are most responsive to blue and least responsive to green; and that cortical responses to green are significantly smaller than those generated by blue, amber and red lights.
"It became apparent that we should be able to use a narrow band of green light to treat photophobia," Burstein says.
Now patients could put their kids to bed, read a book, or enjoy a hearty meal with friends - instead of being isolated in darkness. Not only did green light fail to trigger pain, his research even found that it has a soothing effect.
Padma Gulur, who does not work with Burstein, is looking into the possibility that green light might relieve other forms of pain besides migraines. Already one year into a clinical trial - testing the effects of green, blue, or white light on people's post surgery or fibromyalgia pain experience - Gulur says the data looks promising that green light therapy could provide benefit to those in pain. Gulur, a Duke University anesthesiologist, says that finding a way to reduce pain without drugs is essential, given the addictive nature and side effects of opioids and other pain relievers. Not only did green light fail to trigger pain, his research even found that it had a soothing effect.
"We have very few options that are safe, easy to comply with, and have an impact on the pain experience. So it was a quest for non-pharmacological options that could help patients in pain that led to looking at the potential for light-based therapy," she says
Mohab Ibrahim, an anesthesiologist at the University of Arizona, found that when rats were exposed to green light, they felt less pain - or, at least, they were able to tolerate more discomfort in the form of heat or pressure. Wondering which mattered more - the light washing over the skin or contacting the eyes - Irbahim created tiny, rat-sized contact lenses. He found that when rats were wearing the contact lenses, which let only green light through, they similarly showed less discomfort.
Green light exposure has been found to significantly reduce migraine intensity and discomfort from fibromyalgia. In Kaiyan Medical we can create your green light therapy device to treat migraine and other conditions.
