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You keep pushing through one more email, one more scroll, until you start to see dots,
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prisms, dark angles, rainbows, tunnel vision.
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It's not just fatigue.
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In a world lit by blue light, how are you supposed to live?
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Migraine Heroes is a podcast for chronic migraine sufferers who've seen countless doctors with
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Learn how to reduce your migraine attacks without endless medications or constant sacrifices.
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Hello, I'm Diane Ducarme, I've helped over 500 people break free from migraine, even
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after suffering for up to 60 years.
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My mission in life?
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To bring this relief to a million people, using a unique blend of Eastern medicine and Western
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In this episode, you will learn how exposure to blue wave length light and screen time
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activate brain networks tied to alertness, pain, and stress.
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Why your screen habits may be sending your nervous system into overdrive, affecting sleep,
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sensitivity, and migraine risk.
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And how both Western neuroscience and Eastern wisdom help you downshift from reactive to
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Stay with me till the end, because once you see how your devices and your brain are wired
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together, you'll understand why the quietest moments still feel loud.
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Your brain is wired to notice light, specifically the short waves, the blue end of the spectrum.
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Because evolution said daylight means wake, and dusk means to wind down.
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But when your phone, your tablet, our computer screen keeps sending that daylight signal
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at dusk, your brain stays wired to wake.
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And so research shows that even a 30 minute exposure to blue wave length light increases
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activation in the prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain that handles focus, judgment,
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And it also affects melatonin production, so the hormone that tells your body it's
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So there was a study from Harvard Medical School that found that blue light delayed
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melatonin release by double time compared to green light.
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Now imagine this, you've already got a brain sensitive to change, say from migraine, hormone,
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or stress, and you feed that system more alert signals when you scroll at night.
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And the result is your nervous system doesn't just stay wired to day, it accumulates tension
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that shows up tomorrow in pain, fog, or fatigue.
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And so studies indicate that screen time and blue light exposure correlate with poor sleep
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quality, reduced cognitive performance, and increased alertness at time your brain should
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So I tell you, I observed that too, and so I went from a Netflix evening to a book evening,
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and I have to say the quality of my sleep improves quite a bit, and I dream a lot more.
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I have really happy dreams thanks to that.
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And so that heightened alertness doesn't always feel like an alert, it often shows
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as restlessness, tension behind the eyes, lower pain threshold, especially for people
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prone to sensory or nervous system sensitivity.
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So it's not about demonizing screens, let's face it, you can't live without.
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It's about recognizing that your brain is listening, and if you keep sending it wake
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up message when it should be saying rest, you're choosing stimulation over recovery.
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In traditional Chinese medicine, if we go east for a minute, your nervous system isn't
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separate from your senses, it's your sort of internal weather.
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And screens and blue light are like a restless sun, sort of energy pouring in when the body
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When your internal rhythm is off, your head becomes a place where light gathers, energy
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rattles, and rest feels impossible.
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And so the wisdom says when your outer light doesn't match your inner time, your yin, so
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the aspect cooling, rest-oriented energy, gets blocked, and your yang, the doing, the
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alerting energy, keeps running.
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And the result is internal wind, it's restlessness, migraine, and tension.
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And so the path back isn't more effort, it's dialing down.
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Simple practices can include darkening your screen, or using warm light after sunset.
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In the Migraine Heroes app, we just introduced the dark mode, which is very exciting, a lot
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of people love it.
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Putting devices aside an hour before bed, I tried to do that, yeah, like an hour, an hour
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It's hard, it's really hard,
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I have to say, I won't master it, but I definitely try.
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Eating without screens, and really mindfully eating, breathing deeply, noticing stillness.
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These signal to your body it's safe to rest now, the resting and digesting phase of the
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When your body hears safety, your inner light dims.
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When your inner light dims, your brain can finally shift from fight to flow.
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So if you feel bothered by your screen habits, the headaches, the restlessness night, the
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sense that your brain never quite quiets, know this, you're not failing your device,
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you're just misaligning your rhythm.
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Your nervous system isn't broken, it's listening too loudly.
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It makes me think of some of the women we help, they're in so much pain every single
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day that are bedridden, they don't have an excess of blue light, they have a deficiency
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They will spend days and days in bed until their body is completely out of tune with
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the actual rhythm of nature,
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and so that's going to make them, their circadian rhythm really messed up, and prolong the effect
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So too much blue light is a problem, but also too little, or at the wrong time, is also very
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difficult to manage.
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Switching off the blue is a weakness, it's recalibration,
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and each time you do it, you're giving your brain a chance to drop the guard, unwind the
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sensors, and return to its natural rhythm.
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Because healing is not about eliminating light, it's about balancing it, turning down the
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volume in your inner temple, so your body can finally hear the whisper, you're safe, rest
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Now I want to mention something important, in everything that we have learned at Migraine
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Heroes over the last 6 years through the app and the service,
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at a minimum, we've seen two types of eye-related migraines.
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One is sensitivity to light, so aura, the dots, the prisms, the rainbow, the tunnel,
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the going blind momentarily,
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and this is what this podcast is referring to,
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this is usually triggered by excess blue light, or, or, or, it's really important because there's an
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imbalance inside of the body that allows to tolerate this, or that doesn't tolerate light.
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And so what's going to happen is, you're going to go to the ophthalmologist, and they will see
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everything's fine, with your vision,
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and you might say, uh, I wonder how that can be fine,
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I just have so many visual problems, but they'll see your eyes are technically fine.
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And so this is what this podcast is about.
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Now there's a second type of migraine related to the eyes, which is different,
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it's pressure behind the eyes, which has nothing to do with exposure to light.
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Behind your eyes, you have some of the smallest canals and vessels in your body,
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and when you get those clogged up, you will get behind the eyes migraines.
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But that one will be the objective of another podcast,
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it's a lot more pressure building and not sensitivity to light per se.
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Last but not least, I had a tea yesterday with my customer number 12,
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I served her six years ago, and I failed her miserably.
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She had this sort of every single day thing behind the right eye, that we never found what
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Now, at the time, I only knew about the first type of migraines with the eyes,
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I didn't know about the second type.
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So hold in tight for us,
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we hope that we can get it out this time around.
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And if it's not that, then I can promise you, we'll definitely get to the bottom of it and
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do a podcast about it too.
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And remember, every small step you take moves you closer to freedom.
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You are powerful, you're resilient, and you are no longer alone. Keep rising,
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migraine hero. You are powerful, you're resilient, and you are no longer alone.
