DOI: 10.21276/sasjm.2019.5.1.2

Pages: 4-9

Migraine is a wide-spread disease from which many men and women suffer, and visual deficits are one of several reasons for headaches. The effectiveness of spectacles has been documented not only for headaches, but in many other kinds of illnesses. According to the current literature, the correction of disturbances of the color vision with colored glasses appear to be effective e.g. for dyslexia, psychosomatic diseases, or epilepsy. This aspect has been taken up in the present study for migraine attacks. Methods: A total of 27 subjects were divided into an experimental and a control group. They were asked to wear either colored (experimental group) or slightly mirrored glasses (controls). Colored glasses were selected according to the personal preference of the patient. In migraine diaries the patients recorded the weekly number of migraine attacks with these glasses, which have to be worn for at least three hours a day and without glasses as well. Results: There was a significant improvement for the experimental group after the eight-week study period (from 1.6 to 1.03 migraine attacks per week, but the control group experienced also a reduction of weekly migraine attacks (from 1.29 to 0.89 attacks per week). In addition, both groups showed an improvement in color perception in the Ishihara-test (17.8 to 20.0 correct detected numbers in the experimental and 18.0 to 19.6 in the control group). A possible explanation for the small differences between the experimental and the control group is that the mirroring glasses, which were used as placebo-condition, even increased the contrast of the vision and therefore could have had a real positive effect, too. They darkened the vision and many migraine-patients complained about being disturbed by bright light