Researchers Explore A Drug-Free Idea To Relieve Chronic Pain: Green Light

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/12/15/787138928/researchers-explore-a-drug-free-idea-to-relieve-chronic-pain-green-light?utm_source=pocket-newtab

December 15, 20197:01 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition

Ann Jones tried everything short of surgery for her chronic migraines, which have plagued her since she was a child.

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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.

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Some patients in the study of about 25 people noticed a change in just a few days. For others, it took several weeks. Dr. Mohab Ibrahim, the migraine study's principal investigator and an associate professor at the University of Arizona, says that on average, people experienced a 60% decrease in the intensity of their migraines and a drop from 20 migraines a month to about six.

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Ibrahim, who directs the chronic pain clinic at Banner - University Medical Center Tucson, became interested in the idea of green light therapy because of something his brother told him about his headaches. Instead of taking medicine, he would sit in a garden and eventually they would subside.

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he started to explore the idea anyway, designing an animal study, published in the journal Pain in 2017, that demonstrated that the pain response of rats decreased when they were exposed to green light.

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"The effects of the green light is pretty subtle," Heinricher says. "We need the parallel work showing what are the relevant neural circuits if we are going to make anything tremendously useful for people."

She says it also remains to be seen if the green light research translates into humans, who process color differently from how rodents do.

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In a separate clinical trial, researchers at Duke University are trying to see if that problem can be solved through a wearable treatment.

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Gulur's NIH-funded study is looking at how different shades of glasses — clear, blue and green — affect postoperative pain and fibromyalgia. She says the early results are encouraging her to pursue larger human studies for multiple conditions.

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Duane Lowe is a chiropractor with the Department of Veterans Affairs in Grand Junction, Colorado. He works with patients in chronic pain. After reading some of Ibrahim's research, Lowe wanted to see if it could help his own patients.

He ordered some green glasses online.

"I just gave them to patients to try for a week," he says. "After a very short period of time, patients were coming back giving very positive reviews."

So he kept doing it.

He makes sure to tell the patients that this is experimental — no one knows how well glasses work compared with the LED light or how long you need to wear them.

"I didn't actually have to worry about whether these studies have been done, because the side effects of giving someone green glasses is almost nil," he says.

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