Green Light for Headache Pain Relief
- Thomas P Seager, PhD
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
MyGreen Lamp simulates forest bathing benefits
Summary
Migraine & other headache pain is a billion-dollar per day problem in the United States, and most migraineurs are dissatisfied with their headache pain medications.
While studying a phenomenon called photophobia, in which migraine patients report that exposure to light makes their pain worse, Harvardd University headache scientists discovered that low-intensity, narrowband green light could relieve pain.
Subsequent studies at the University of Arizona confirmed the Harvard results, and expanded upon them, demonstrating that green light phototherapy could also relieve the pain of fibromyalgia.
New devices, like the Allay Lamp, were brought to market that were based on the Harvard trials, but as of yet no studies has determined an optimal wavelength or intensity for pain relief.
The MyGreen Lamp is the first to offer multiple wavelengths that more closely represent the dominant light of the shady forest, and powerful enough to work through closed eyelids.
Green Light for Pain Relief
While doing research on the relationship between Vitamin D and autoimmune disorders for my Uncommon Cold (Seager 2024) book, I was studying the effects of different wavelengths of light on the body when I stumbled across a relatively obscure investigation into green phototherapy for migraine pain relief (Noseda et al. 2016). Researchers at Harvard University discovered that among migraine patients, there was only one wavelength of light that made their pain better, instead of worse.
It was green.
I don't often get headaches, but at the time I knew some other people who did. I asked them about their photosensitivity to green, compared to other wavelengths of light, and they told me they'd never noticed any difference, but they agreed to an experiment. I purchased an Ally Lamp, which was an adjustable green LED desklamp for headache pain relief that was based on the Harvard Study.
The Allay protocol requires patients to sit in a dark room, so that they aren't disturbed by any other wavelengths of light, and expose the open eyes to soft green light for about 45minutes. Clinical trials at University of Arizona used a similar protocol, albeit with different LED devices, and confirmed a reduction in the frequency and severity of migraine headaches who used green every day in this way (Martin et al. 2021).
The next time one of my friends experienced a migraine, I asked them to sit in a dark bathroom lit only by the Allay Lamp.
They were not impressed, although they did report feeling a sense of calm from the green light and maybe, if they held their heads just right and stared at the lamp in just the right way, maybe a little pain relief.
None of the studies could explain the mechanisms by which the green light was working. While there was no shortage of neurological speculation among the scientists, it didn't mean anything to me. As an engineer, I wasn't well enough versed in the science of the optic nerve and pain receptors in the brain to understand their hypotheses.
The Healing Power of Forest Bathing
What stood out to me instead was the experience of my friend Dean Hall, who credits cold water swimming with curing his otherwise untreatable chronic leukemia. I've written several articles about Dean and the mechanisms by which his three-week long swim of the cold Willamette River in Oregon likely starved the cancer from his body and stimulated repair of his mitochondria. What I haven't really talked much about is the fact that after curing his leukemia, he still suffered from lymphoma.
As impressed as Dean's oncologist was with his miraculous reversal of leukemia, he still insisted on dangerous, conventional chemotherapy for Dean's lymphoma.
Dean refused.
He begged his oncologist for a few months to try another natural healing approach called forest bathing. In Japan, the practice of walking in the quiet, shady forest at least once a week is called shinrin yoku (Li 2022) and it is associated with:
prevention of cancer by boosting the immune system,
reduced blood pressure and heart rate,
improved stress management,
increased parasympathetic activity (i.e., vagal tone),
better sleep,
reduced anxiety, improved mental health, better mood, less anger, and more energy,
Dean resolved to go deep into the Mt Hood wilderness to spend at least one full day a week in the green shady forest.
After ten months, his lymphoma was gone.
Researchers suggest that the immersive, natural experience of the forest engages five senses that promote healing:
Light. The light environment is dominated by green (in the visible domain) and near infrared (NIR), just beyond the visible (Endler 1993),
Smell. The fragrance of coniferous forests is dominated by a fragnance released from pine trees called phytoncides that have been shown to boost natural killer (NK) cells activity in human subjects (Li et al. 2009).
Sound. The bird songs, rustling leaves, and biophony of the forest improves phyiological markers of stress in human subjects (Korpilo et al. 2024).
Touch. Contact with trees has been shown to restore electrical contact between the body and the earth, reducing blood viscosity, improving blood flow, and reducing risk of cardiovascular complications.
While each of these sensory experiences likely contributed to Dean's recovery, for the purposes of phototherapy, the one that stands out is of course the light environment. I noticed that all the academic studies on green light were using wavelengths close to 525-530 nm, even though the strongest wavelength in the shady forest was closer to 550 nm.
No one had yet tested the efficacy of 550 nm wavelength green light for pain relief, so I had a dual wavelength LED lamp manufactured that offered both 530 nm and 545 nm exposures that the user could adjust themselves. When the prototype arrived, it seemed far too bright -- but it worked.
Invention of MyGreen Lamp
The MyGreen protocol was invented on the spot by a woman I was dating at the time who suffered from regular, debilitating migraines. Rather than sit in a closet or a bathroom for 45 minutes a day, she took the prototype lamp and placed it on full-blast, right up against her face with her eyes closed.
Shutting her eyes effectively blocked out all other wavelengths of light, while about 30% of the intense green light from the MyGreen prototype could still penetrate the eyelids and reach the optic nerve. She reported feeling instantaneous pain relief.
None of the Harvard nor Arizona researchers would have dared try the experiment that she ran on herself. Everything in their data suggested that bright green light would make the pain worse, not better. But no one had ever tried the combination of longer wavelengths, more closely approximating the shady forest, and eyes closed until she discovered that it worked faster and better than any other combination tried before.
She and her teenage daughters began testing the MyGreen Lamp and discovering that it stopped migraines, releived the pain of other types of headaches, and promoted a sense of calm.
Case Studies in Green Light for Headache Relief
Since that discovery, hundreds of people have been using the MyGreen protocol for fast relief from migraine and other headache pain. While it doens't work for everyone, we've now documented several successful case studies using MyGreen under clinical supervision.
The most recent is an Urgent Care Physician in Ohio who experienced a bad headache during her evening shift. She rated her pain as an 8 out of 10 -- the kind of pain that often causes a patient to have to excuse themselves from completing their shift and take a sick day.
Twenty minutes with the MyGreen Lamp and she reported her headache disappeared -- without additional medications -- and she was able to complete her shift free of pain.
Nothing she learned in medical school prepared her to treat herself, or her patients, with green phototherapy. These findings are so new that you won't find them in any textbook. They won't be part of any continuing education training programmed sponsored by any pharmaceutiful company.
Like Dean Hall's miraculous recovery from leukemia and lymphoma, there are some healing journeys that current medical science does not yet have adequate scientific explanations for.
I have yet to meet a single patient or clinician who has suffered from persistent and debilitating headaches who really believed that green phototherapy could provide relief. Typically, they come to MyGreen only after trying a thousand other medications, home remedies, or new medical devices. By the time they pick up a MyGreen Lamp, they're usually desperate for relief, willing to try, but understanable skeptical.
At least when their expectations are low, they won't be disappointed if it doesn't work for them. But for those for whom it does work, MyGreen seems miraculous.
References
Endler JA. The color of light in forests and its implications. Ecological monographs. 1993 Feb;63(1):1-27.
Korpilo S, Nyberg E, Vierikko K, Ojala A, Kaseva J, Lehtimäki J, Kopperoinen L, Cerwén G, Hedblom M, Castellazzi E, Raymond CM. Landscape and soundscape quality promote stress recovery in nearby urban nature: A multisensory field experiment. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening. 2024 May 1;95:128286.
Li Q. Effects of forest environment (Shinrin-yoku/Forest bathing) on health promotion and disease prevention—the Establishment of “Forest Medicine”—. Environmental health and preventive medicine. 2022;27:43-.
Li Q, Kobayashi M, Wakayama Y, Inagaki H, Katsumata M, Hirata Y, Hirata K, Shimizu T, Kawada T, Park BJ, Ohira T. Effect of phytoncide from trees on human natural killer cell function. International journal of immunopathology and pharmacology. 2009 Oct;22(4):951-9.
Martin LF, Patwardhan AM, Jain SV, Salloum MM, Freeman J, Khanna R, Gannala P, Goel V, Jones-MacFarland FN, Killgore WD, Porreca F. Evaluation of green light exposure on headache frequency and quality of life in migraine patients: A preliminary one-way cross-over clinical trial. Cephalalgia. 2021 Feb;41(2):135-47.
Noseda R, Bernstein CA, Nir RR, Lee AJ, Fulton AB, Bertisch SM, Hovaguimian A, Cestari DM, Saavedra-Walker R, Borsook D, Doran BL. Migraine photophobia originating in cone-driven retinal pathways. Brain. 2016 Jul 1;139(7):1971-86.
Seager tp. 2024. Uncommon Cold: The Science & Experience of Cold Plunge Therapy. Morozko Media. Available from morozkoforge.com.
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