Ann Jones tried everything short of surgery for her chronic migraines, which have plagued her since she was a child.
"They've actually gotten worse in my old age," says Jones, who is 70 years old and lives in Tucson, Ariz.
Jones would have as many as two dozen migraines a month.
Over the years, some treatments might work initially, but the effects would prove temporary. Other medications had such severe side effects she couldn't stay on them.
"It was pretty life-changing and debilitating," Jones says. "I could either plow through them and sometimes I simply couldn't."
In 2018, her doctor mentioned a study that was taking place nearby at the University of Arizona: Researchers were testing if daily exposure to green light could relieve migraines and other kinds of chronic pain.
Jones was skeptical.
"This is going to be one more thing that doesn't work," she thought to herself.
But she brushed aside the hesitation and enrolled in the study anyway.
It began with her spending two hours each day in a dark room with only a white light, which served as the control. In the second half of the study, she swapped out the conventional light for a string of green LED lights.
For more than a month, Jones didn't notice any change in her symptoms. But close to the six-week mark, there was a big shift.
She began going days in a row without migraines. Even when the headaches did come, they weren't as intense as they had been before the green light therapy.
"I got to the point where I was having about four migraines a month, if that many, and I felt like I had just been cut free," Jones says.
-------------------------------- We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home. - Australian Aboriginal proverb
Bazootiehead-in-training
Posts: 37942 | Location: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: 19 January 2010
Wow, that’s something to follow up on! I don’t have as many migraines as the woman in the article, but really, even one migraine a month is one too many. And I do have pretty strong photosensitivity just before, during and after a migraine, so maybe this is something that would work for me. Thanks for posting it!
I heard this the day after I had to drive a coworker to an after-school program. She had a migraine coming on and took her meds...I found her at the copy machine, preparing..she was on the floor, reaching up and pushing the button on the copier..OMG...If you didn't know, you would have thought she was drunk.
We went together and the meds settled (she did spend some time in a dark room while I covered for her).
The very next day our office manager was sitting at her desk looking gray..she, too, had a migraine..
Needless to say, I passed on the link to them both.
I know light therapy works, I have been using a "happy light" in winter with good results.
And I thought jodi might like to see this if she hasn't already.
-------------------------------- "Wealth is like manure; spread it around and it makes everything grow; pile it up, and it stinks." MillCityGrows.org
Posts: 11215 | Location: Massachusetts | Registered: 22 April 2005