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Posts Tagged ‘LED lights’

Creating a Migraine-Friendly Home Environment

March 6th, 2009

When I was a kid one of the games my brother and sister and I used to love to play on a Saturday was the Farm Game. It involved the Encyclopedia, and a pad and pen. We designed an imaginary farm for the three of us to live on and run, and we would draw it and plan it, and use the Encyclopedia to select our location and all our animals and plants.  I’m sure the farms we created would have been impossible to run, with animals that wouldn’t get along, and plant species that wouldn’t grow wherever it was that we were going to be. But it kept us busy for hours, and we loved it.

Creating the Migraine-friendly home enviroment is a little like that. I could spend hours, and use home design and architecture magazines, catalogs, the web, and a lot of imagination. I could spend bottomless amounts of money I don’t have, to create this environment, have a great time doing it, and I don’t know how practical it would be at the end. But what I’ll try to do here, instead, is mix fantasy and reality, pie in the sky with down to earth, and see if we can come up with some things you can actually use.

Starting outside, the Migraine-friendly home should be well-shaded, with deep covered porches and pollen-free trees.  Migraineurs need fresh air and good circulation, but have trouble with extreme heat and bright sun, and often get triggered in high-pollen season.  So let’s make it possible to get outside even with a Migraine, and to open the windows and enjoy the fresh air.

Inside, lighting is very important.  If you can choose lighting fixtures, great. I discovered the hard way that “high-hat” spot-lights are terrible for me, bright lighting coming down into the top of my eyes is about the worst from a triggering standpoint.  Torchiere type lights, which point the light upwards and spread it gently on the ceiling, illuminate the room more indirectly and can give plenty of light without glare.  Many Migraineurs find that fluorescents, even compact fluorescents, trigger them. Good old-fashioned shaded incandescent lamps can be good. We just recently got some of the brand new soft-white LED lights, which we have put in the “high-hat” sockets, and they are terrific.  Non-flickering, soft illumination, but plenty of it. For the first time, I can have light coming down from above that doesn’t trigger me! They are very good for the environment, too.

Having a quiet place to escape to is key. Lots of my Migraineur friends spend time on the couch, for me it’s my bed. I have 2 kids and a husband who like lots of music and tvs on and I need a place where I can control the light, sound and stimulation level. If you could really set it all up beforehand like the Farm Game you would choose yourself a quiet partner and quiet kids, but I wouldn’t trade the ones I have. I just have to buffer them at times.

Ideally, the Migraine-Friendly home environment would be tidy enough that the Migraineur was not tripping over stuff all the time, without the Migraineur having to be the one to tidy it up all the time. This also falls into the realm of the Farm Game – the ideal Migraine-friendly home environment comes with enough money to hire someone to do the house-keeping. Either that or choose your spouse based on their neatness and housekeeping abilities, though that may not be the best reason to choose your life companion.

Don’t forget to keep what you need for comfort on hand, whether it’s pillows, blankets, eye-shades, ice-packs, comedy DVDs, kitties, doggies, books on tape, spouses, children, best friends, rocking chairs, ginger Altoids, Ben & Jerry’s Heath Bar Crunch, you name it.  What else would you add to the design for the Migraine-friendly home?

– Megan

P.S. No, that is not a picture of my house. I wish!

Wisconsin Farm image courtesy of Randen Pederson; craftsman house image courtesy of David Sawyer.

Tags: LED lights, lighting, Migraine triggers
Posted in Managing, Musings, Silliness, Tips & Techniques | Comments (1)

Protect Migraineurs from Compact Fluorescents

May 14th, 2008

In December 2007, the U.S. Congress passed the Energy Independence & Security Act of 2007, which mandates the phasing out of incandescent lighting from stores by 2012, in order to conserve energy and help the environment. The act does not mandate the use of compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL’s), but given that they are the most widely available energy saving bulbs on the market at this time, the least expensive, and the only ones which can be used with existing lighting fixtures, the likelihood is that they will become the standard.  There are other types of energy saving lighting available and under development; including LED lighting, halogens, and improvements in energy efficiency of incandescents.  Let’s encourage the growth of those technologies!

We migraineurs are just as supportive of energy conservation as anyone else. We also want to reverse
global warming and create a sustainable future. But we strongly support making that happen in a way that does not involve CFL’s! Although CFL’s do not visibly flicker as do old fashioned fluorescents, they still flicker, and that flicker is perceptible to the brain if not to the naked eye. Many migraineurs find that CFL’s are a trigger for them. They can also trigger epileptic seizures and lupus flare-ups.

A group of us who blog about and advocate for migraineurs and migraine research have put together a petition, asking Congress to amend the Energy Independence & Security Act to encourage development of other energy-saving technology. We too want a green future, we just don’t want one where we cannot take part in life outside our homes, for fear of encountering migraine triggers. Please join us in asking Congress to amend this law. You can sign the petition at ipetitions.com at this link: Protect Migraineurs from Compact Fluorescents.

– Megan Oltman

Please help us keep the world livable!

Compact fluorescent image courtesy of J. Nathan Matias.

Tags: Compact fluorescent lights, epilepsy, halogen lights, incandescent lights, LED lights, lupus, migraine, Migraine trigger
Posted in Advocacy | Comments (4)