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Comment by mgraczyk | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotally, I can pretty reliably trigger a migraine by staying up 2-3 hours later than normal staring at a normal LCD screen.

With flux/redshift on, that doesn't happen. Blue light may not be keeping me up, but it definitely fucks my brain up in some complicated way.

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I have life long (since puberty) chronic insomnia and regular debilitating migraines (every couple weeks), both of which require a variety of ongoing medications, and I can honestly say removing blue light as much as possible and reducing brightness to the minimum that’s still practical, on every electronic device I own, has transformed my life.

I used to get headaches using my computer or phone unless it was in daylight, and couldn’t use any screen late at night, but these days it’s no problem at all. If I’m in a hotel or somewhere where I can’t change the brightness/colours then I get more headaches again.

It absolutely hasn’t cured me, and I still have both issues, but there has been a noticeable increase in quality of life and ability to use screens at night.

Our screens are way too bright because it looks good for marketing purposes. You get used to very low screen brightnesses very quickly, even on your TV, and whether it’s blue light or just brightness in general, I definitely think all these bright lights shined into our eyeballs at close range are doing damage.

I used to have migraines. Then I learned how to relax the muscles in my neck (with meditation). Now I can cure my migraines in about 5 mins. I told my doctor about it. She said yep, nowadays they treat migraines with botox injected into the tensed muscles. Like much of medicine, it treats the symptom rather than the cause. I believe that the root cause of most migraines is emotional tension.

I wish you peace and freedom from anxiety. The bright lights don't cause your migraines. You think they do, so you start to stress out. Then your body's automatic response to stress causes the migraines. Multiple-chemical-sensitivity is the same. I had that, too and cured myself with knowledge and stress reduction techniques. This knowledge is the cure.

"I believe that the root cause of most migraines is emotional tension."

Do you have data to support such a statement? If not, please stop before it spreads. And I don't mean some casual nod of agreement from people.

I think you're mistaking tension headaches for migraines. As a lifelong migraine sufferer, I can assure you they're different, and while tense neck muscles or stress can be a trigger for migraine, they're not the reason why I have them.

I prefer bright screens with the full light spectrum. They are easier to read with less eye strain. They don't cause me headaches and I sleep just fine regardless of how late I use them.

This could be placebo. Anything related to sleep or headaches there could be a psychological factor ie because you “know” blue light is bad it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

I used flux for a long time and thought it was only relevant for sleep. I found myself using it more during the day as it hurt my eyes less and as a result I also got migraines and headaches less often. Could be a total coincidence or even still placebo, just sharing my anecdote.

I also started using redshift (linux equiv to flux) several years ago and gradually used it more, even during the day, as I also found it seemed to help mitigate migraines at least to some extent and it just generally reduced my eye fatigue.

I have a shortcut on my KDE desktop that runs this command:

    /usr/bin/redshift -O 3500 -b 0.7

It instantly makes the screen easier to look at, no matter the lighting conditions. I also have a command to revert to normal color:

    /usr/bin/redshift -O 6500 -b 1.0

Curiously, "redshift -O 2700 -b 0.7" is less comfortable than 3500K because it's too yellow. I think what bothers me about screens is heavy saturation in any color.

You can also use `redshift -x` to reset to the default.

this was also my experience, so we can now consider it anecdata ;)

This is most definitely not placebo.

Blue light is known to cause migraines even in the blind that even lack cones/rods: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4939697/

huh... that's fascinating. Thank you for the link! Reading through it now.

Have migraines. Can verify.

Placebo effects wear off, seems unlikely.

I remember reading somewhere about placebo effects changing over time, but I thought that was across populations over time, not for an effect on an individual over time. Do you have more info on what you mean?

oh, maybe I was wrong? sorry

Could also be confirmation bias.

I went looking for evidence of time-dependence in placebo, and I only came up with this[0], which doesn't say much.

[0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232423611_Is_the_Pl...

The OP study is about circadian rhythm. The impacts of blue light on eye strain are well established.

Is it possible or ethical to offer a research option to f.lux? Like you would let the user pick that option and have the software dim the luminosity with or without cutting more specifically blue light then have them report and if they felt any difference after a week/month or a month, repeating the process for a few months/week while either alternating or changing the mode.

Maybe it is a dumb idea as it is too easy to tell whether the software is in full effect or not.

> This could be placebo.

I agree there's likely a lot of placebo effect going on around this topic. I think there are certain people who are more photo-sensitive and chroma-sensitive than others, however, I suspect it's not a huge percentage of the population. There are also some potentially huge confounding factors making it harder to tease out the practical effect in our everyday lives. As a first-order effect, there's artificial room lighting itself without blue or screen light that's de-blueified. It seems likely that non-blue artificial light is going to have more effect above baseline than the delta between blue artificial light and 'corrected' non-blue artificial light.

The even bigger effect I wonder about is that the screens we look at generally have content and we look at them because that content is engaging our minds and holding our interest. It's often interactive and involves two-way communication. All of those things are going to be highly stimulating to our brains and I think that will likely swamp the effect of removing blue from the artificial light. We already know that reading or watching exciting content is going to make it harder to fall asleep for some time afterward - regardless if it's on a printed page, live or via a screen. Personally, I find that factor to be much larger than any chroma-effect.

Trouble with f.lux is it reduces blue. Doesnt eliminate it. Speciality glasses give more dramatic results. Axon or Thermaspecs brand name.

I’m hyper sensitive to lights and medications, 10 minutes of exposure is enough to trigger a migraine. Plus side, it makes trial and error testing Much easier.

Same, my eyes completely stopped hurting at night when I switched to flux, permanently.

similarly, after switching my tv,gaming rig,work laptop,phone to twilight/flux/redshift/night mode for several months, I find going without at night to be uncomfortable almost to the point of pain.

my ex-wife found them to be too dark and painful to her eyes.

I've found no difference after ~2 years of going (pretty deeply) red on all my devices and suddenly going back to filterless every now and again. I can't believe how blue it looks, but then I adjust.

I continue to redfilter out of neurotic superstition. Like maybe we'll all have a macular degeneratory epidemic in the future because blue light was our generation's asbestos or cigarettes. Have you seen the new Blade Runner? They have yellow lights everywhere. Pretty sus, imo.

Try if you can trigger a migrane if you stay 2-3 hours later than normal on lcd screen, but do neck excercises every 15 minutes of that time.

I thought I had hunger headaches but after some epiphany it turned out that I was not eating for many hours when I was at my computer and when I was at my computer my neck suffered (painlessly) from lack of movement and that (not the hunger) triggered headaches.

I'm doing 24h fasting with no ill effects. Also when headache is building up when I'm at my computer I can make it go away with some neck excercises instead of suffering for hours.

I'd second this to some extent.

I've been using f.lux (and now the default Night Shift in macOS/iOS) for years. I don't remember if my eyes hurt normally, but I can say that if I now turn it off at night my eyes hurt, I strain and get a headache after a while. It may just be because I'm used to the colours now.

I don't think it has helped my sleep patterns much, though, it's only reduced eye straight for me. Using a computer (or a phone) beyond a certain time usually kills my sleep regardless.

can confirm. tools like flux and smart light that warms the colours after sunset saved my sleep quality.

I think everytime you mess with your sleep pattern you may get some headache (oversleeping especially). Also blue light helps to mess your sleep (getting asleep later). Anyway that's how it works with me.

Same. When I don't have Flux on, I can't sleep for hours

After I started using it, I sleep like a baby even when I use Mobile/Laptop just before sleeping.

This software has changed my life.

I practically stopped having headaches once I started using blue light blocking glasses. Not only at night, but when I first wake up too, specially if it's still dark.

is this a normal screen late at night in a dark room or a normal screen late in a well-lit room? Because the combination that provokes headaches and eyestrain for me is a bright monitor in a dark room.

Did you adjust for brightness?

I only turn on night mode when the brightness on my Pixel is already at its minimum. It would be nice if I could turn the backlight even lower instead. In complete darkness, even the dimmest setting is unnecessarily bright.

It seems like the ability to further reduce all light (including blue) would be a clear improvement, but I assume there's a reason why the minimum is what it is. Is there some sort of hardware limitation on the minimum brightness of the backlight?

I agree, the lowest brightness on Pixels is still too bright. I used to use the "Lux" app to reduce the brightness even more, but IMHO Lux has so many buggy features that it's not worth the trouble. I just want a manual slider. Are there any simple Android apps that can manually reduce the brightness beyond the minimum?

There are apps that filter all colours equally, but it's not nearly as good as reducing the backlight brightness would be. When 0-255 is remapped into 0-127 (or lower), you're inherently going to start losing the ability to distinguish colours. Unfortunately, you lose contrast a lot faster than you lose brightness via that method, so it's not very useful.

I wonder if a physical filter for the screen might be the simplest method.

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