I don’t like CFB, it makes more difficult to read and gives me some headaches, but it doesn’t give me migraines.

Both plasma and LCD displays trigger migraines. I found that unlike it is commonly believed, both LCD and plasma do flicker. Yes, that’s right, they do. Most people don’t feel the flicker because times it takes to refresh the display is much lower than in CRTs, however, it works like a flash.

Unlike Plasma, in an LCD panel, each transistor (TFT) cannot be polarized all the time under the same tension, so, typically, it is reversed every frame. However, transistors are not perfectly symmetrical; as a result, there is a flicker at half the refresh rate (25-30Hz). This effect appears almost unnoticeable to most people due to pixel interleaving. Another aspect that applies to plasma and most of the LCD panels, is the FRC (Frame rate Control), sometimes called temporal dithering, which is a technique to increase the number of levels of color. With FRC, some colors tend to introduce flickering at frequencies that range from 1/4 (15Hz) to 1/2 (30Hz) of the refresh rate.

I tried LCDs with LED backlights but the problems remained.

I believe that my problem is due to flicker only. However, until now I did not found any solution for it.

Steven, do you known any kind of medicine that might lower the flicker symptoms, or the sensitivity to these kind of “flash flicker”, so I could be able (even if with small headaches) work with LCDs for short periods?

Any help is highly appreciated.
Thanks.

John

I also get highway hypnosis. I wonder if that is also related in some way.

I thought it was strange and when I mentioned it to my brother, he said he has it, too.

Any solutions? Does magnetic therapy help?

0. Strobe lights such as at a dance or theatrical event, 100% of the time cause a migraine.

1. Sun through the trees in a car, definitely 100% of the time causes her a migraine. This is of course a very bright flash at a relatively slow rate. Sunglasses don’t help. She has to look away or avoid such travel.

2. Older ballast fluorescent overhead lights (buzzing kind) cause a migraine almost all the time for her. Certain places she has to go from time to time consistently cause migraines, they have those lights in places. So flashing lights at 60 cycles cause them.

3. CFB’s cause her migraines. I had one in my office, only room in the house with a CFB at the time. She got headaches when she used the computer. I changed refresh rates, then monitors, no luck, until I changed the bulbs in the room back to incandescent and the problems went away. She can tell right away when she goes into a CFB-lit room that there will be a problem (feels a “pull” on her eyes)

4. (most) LCD’s do flicker! They use CCFL — cold compact flourescent lights. If it’s true that they flash 20,000 times per second, then my wife’s brain can process that. I brought home a brand new 37″ LCD TV (fluorescent backlit) last week, it caused a headache, she could feel that “pull” the moment I turned it on, I packed it up and returned it within an hour of unpacking. The laptop LCD monitor (1920×1200 15″) causes a headache.

5. CRT monitors with refresh rates set up in the 100’s do not cause her migraines. I can only guess that it’s due to the phosphors being slow enough to be apparently steady. The Sony Trinitron CRT we had on a system before the laptop was fine for headaches.

6. CRT TV’s do not cause her migraines. I would imagine again it’s the slow phosphors. Our CRT’s are slowly dying and becoming obsolete as HD approaches., we will soon be forced into some sort of flat screen model. As metioned, the LCD experiment was a dismal failure. I’m hoping plasma is better, but our main viewing room is awash in sunlight.

I live in Canada. CFLs were just mandated here. Will I be forced so smuggle incandescent bulbs in from the US? Will I eventually get arrested for it?

If my wife stays in our house (all incandescent, all CRT televisions) and doesn’t use the LCD-equipped computer, avoids flashing sunlight during drives, and goes only sparingly to stores lit by fluorescent tubes, she can have a migraine-free existence.

We have talked to medical doctors and eye doctors. They either dismiss or disbelieve our story.

Finding this article confirms at least that others have this experience to some degree.

This is a debilitating thing to live with. Avoidance is rather infeasible. As LCD TV’s and CFB’s gain traction, it will surely become almost impossible.

Is there any hope of fixing this problem for her? Medication? Surgery? Therapy? So far we can’t get anyone to even acknowledge that it’s real, which is why I was so happy to find this article. Fixing it seems like a pipe dream…

Anyway, it would be great if you could comment.

- you haven’t offered any evidence for your hypothesis than this :

“Patients who have photophobia commonly report that fluorescent lights especially will trigger their migraines.”

- and the statement at the top of this post:

“However, 38.1% of migraine headache suffers are sensitive to bright or fluorescent lights, which can trigger migraine attacks.”

- is simply factually incorrect – the abstract makes no mention of ‘flourescent lights’ – let alone the new bulbs.

It would seem that the new energy-efficient bulbs are no brighter than incandescent bulbs – and they don’t actually flicker.

Before you start writing prescriptions for light bulbs, perhaps you should examine the evidence a little more critically, and employ a little scepticism? Have you considered there is a psychological element to triggers?? – since ’stress’ is the most effective trigger of all, there would seem to be rather strong evidence for this from the same study? If patients learn to associate new light bulbs (or any other random stimulus) with migraine – Pavlovian conditioning will lead to a rise in stress levels which itself should be enough to trigger an attack…??

You may not be doing your patients any favours by encouraging such a belief – and may be limiting them to an existence where they can only live where they believe the lightbulbs are ’safe’…

I did not mean to imply that the conclusion that migraines can be triggered (a better term than “caused”) by bright lights is dependent upon this one study. This is a very well established feature of migraines, and is part of the diagnostic criteria. I referenced this study just to indicate the probable percentage of migraine sufferers who report that their headaches can be triggered by bright light.

Basing such conclusions on the subjective experience of the patients and survey-type questioning is problematic, but is not the same as “satisfaction surveys.” Subjects are not asked to make a judgment, just report the presence or absence of a symptom. There is still a subjective component, but it is not the same thing. Also, a a recent study shows that if anything surveys underestimate the number of patients with light-sensitivity. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17868350?ordinalpos=8&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum)

Other studies, and common clinical practice, use headache diaries – patients record the incidence of migraines, listing symptoms and possible triggers. This is more quantitative than surveys.

As a clinical neurologist I take very careful migraine histories, with detailed questioning, not just generic survey questions. And the 38.1% figure for photophobia is much lower than in my patient population. I figured this was likely due to the fact that I see a more severe mix of patients. Patients who have photophobia commonly report that fluorescent lights especially will trigger their migraines.

This seriously undermines your point – in effect you are using the same level of evidence as the kind of ‘consumer satisfaction surveys’ employed by homeopathic ‘hospitals.

The article doesn’t even mention ‘flourescent’ light – just ‘light’…

‘weather’ and ‘not eating’ are greater factors… – – what conclusions do you draw from that…??

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7172662.stm