According to the Migraine Research Foundation, more than 90% of sufferers are unable to function normally during their migraine, which can be accompanied by visual disturbances, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, extreme sensitivity to sound, light, touch and smell, and tingling or numbness in the extremities or face.
Migraine can also be difficult for physicians to treat. Traditional therapies range from oral medications, which may have side effects, to Botox injections, nerve blocks or implantable nerve stimulators – each with varying degrees of success. But a new potential treatment that uses green light exposure is offering people who suffer from migraine new hope thanks to researchers at the University of Arizona Health Sciences.
Real migraine headaches, real data
Mohab Ibrahim, MD, PhD, medical director at the Comprehensive Center for Pain and Addiction, a strategic initiative of UArizona Health Sciences, has been studying the effects of green light exposure in rodents for several years. He led a research team that completed the first clinical study to evaluate green light exposure as a potential preventive therapy for patients with migraine.
“Migraine is one of the most common neurological conditions in the world, and it’s debilitating,” said Ibrahim, lead author of the study, professor in the UArizona College of Medicine – Tucson’s Department of Anesthesiology and director of the Chronic Pain Management Clinic.
Twenty-nine participants, all of whom had failed multiple traditional therapies for migraine, were prescribed green light exposure as part of the study.
“In this trial, we treated green light as a drug,” Ibrahim said. “It’s not any green light; it has to be the right intensity, the right frequency, the right exposure time and the right exposure methods. Just like with medications, there is a sweet spot with light.”
Overall, green light exposure reduced the number of headache days per month by an average of about 60%. A majority of participants in the study reported a more than 50% reduction in headache days per month.
Using a numeric pain scale of 0 to 10, participants noted that green light exposure resulted in a 60% reduction in pain, from 8 to 3.2. Green light therapy also shortened the duration of headaches, and improved participants’ ability to fall and stay asleep, perform chores, exercise, and work.
None of the study participants reported any side effects of green light exposure.
“The overall average benefit was statistically significant. Most of the people were extremely happy,” Ibrahim said of the participants, who were given light strips and instructions to follow while completing the study at home. “One of the ways we measured participant satisfaction was, when we enrolled people, we told them they would have to return the light at the end of the study. But when it came to the end of the study, we offered them the option to keep the light, and 28 out of the 29 decided to keep the light.”
The noninvasive nature of green light exposure makes it an ideal therapeutic candidate for other neurological conditions, such as fibromyalgia or HIV-related pain.
Searching for the how
Chronic widespread body pain. Moderate to extreme fatigue. Sleep disturbances. In the late 1800s, patients with those symptoms were diagnosed with muscular rheumatitis or neurasthenia, conditions physicians struggled to treat. Today, those same symptoms – plus cognitive difficulties, or “brain fog,” and sensitivity to touch, light, and sound – may result in a diagnosis of fibromyalgia, the treatment of which still challenges doctors today.
Fibromyalgia is one of several invisible diseases – chronic conditions with debilitating pain and fatigue symptoms that can’t be easily recognized just by looking at someone. It affects an estimated 10 million people in the U.S., according to the National Fibromyalgia Association, the majority of which are women.
“We really do not understand the pathophysiology of fibromyalgia,” Ibrahim said. “There are some theories and hypotheses, and we are getting closer, but we are not there yet. So, because we don’t really understand why some people develop fibromyalgia and why others don’t, we try to manage the symptoms associated with it.”
From 2016 to 2019, 21 people with fibromyalgia who were out of traditional treatment options completed a pilot clinical study to test the effectiveness of green light therapy. Each study participant was given two LED light strips – one white, one green – and instructed how to use the lights: white for 10 weeks, followed by green for 10 weeks.
Participants were asked to use the lights in a dark room with no other light source for a minimum of one hour every day, with the option to increase to two hours daily. They were encouraged to stay awake – no sleeping! – and engage in activities such as writing, reading or listening to music, that did not require an additional light source. Activities that introduced other light sources, such as watching television or using a smartphone, were discouraged.
Each participant filled out surveys throughout the study to document how they were feeling. The results were astounding.
“Their pain improved; their quality of life improved,” said Ibrahim, who was assisted in the research by Laurent Martin, PhD, who started in Ibrahim’s laboratory as a postdoctoral researcher and is now an assistant professor of anesthesiology in the College of Medicine – Tucson.
Specifically, participants reported an average reduction in average pain intensity from 8.4 to 4.9 on the 10-point numeric pain scale when using green light compared with white light. Participants also reported improvements in pain frequency, duration of pain episodes; ability to fall asleep and stay asleep, ability to work, exercise, and do household chores; and overall quality of life.
Ibrahim also is using a $1.78 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for a preclinical study on the effects of green light exposure on HIV-related neuropathy and the hypersensitivity associated with antiretroviral therapy.
Beyond that, Ibrahim wants to figure out how green light therapy works to reduce migraine headaches and pain intensity.
“Now we know, based on this preliminary study, that green light therapy is good. This is a great finding, but this is where the story begins,” Ibrahim said. “As a scientist, I am really interested in how this works because if I understand the mechanism, then I can utilize it for other conditions.”
In the meantime, he works with other physicians to treat patients with green light therapy when appropriate. He has received requests for green light therapy consultations from doctors as far away as Europe, Asia and Africa, as well as at home in Tucson, where he is delighted to have an economical, safe and potentially beneficial option to offer his own patients.
“As a physician, now I have another tool in my toolbox to treat two of the most difficult neurological conditions – migraine and fibromyalgia,” Ibrahim said. “So that’s very exciting.”
