Can Simon Cowell’s £20 orange specs really beat migraines?

At less than £20 a pair, Simon Cowell’s orange tinted sunglasses are probably one of the cheapest fashion accessories he has ever bought.

Still, the pop industry icon has rarely been seen in public without them since they first showed up at a taping of America’s Got Talent last fall.

And with good reason: Cowell insists the glasses, which he is said to have bought online for just £19.98, are helping him combat the crippling migraines that have apparently been affecting him for years.

Although the TV personality missed a few auditions during last week’s filming of Britain’s Got Talent – ​​due to the sudden onset of a painful migraine – he insists the glasses are still a big help.

A friend told reporters: “He swears by them and says they make a huge difference.”

But can a cheap pair of brightly colored sunglasses really provide a simple solution to a condition that affects an estimated seven million people in Britain?

Migraine is a complex neurological condition that can run in families, but also affects people randomly.

The main symptom is an intense, often one-sided headache that can be so painful that those affected become largely incapacitated.

In about 80 percent of cases, it also causes nausea and increased sensitivity to light or sound.

The effect of light sensitivity (known as photophobia) is so great that some patients have to stay in a darkened room for hours – sometimes days – until the attack passes.

Women are three times as likely to experience migraines as men, possibly because attacks are linked to the female hormone estrogen, which is believed to increase brain cells’ sensitivity to pain.

Most patients rely on painkillers or prescription medications called triptans, which can shorten the duration of attacks.

And in recent years, a new class of drugs has emerged—the first major breakthrough in migraine treatment in about thirty years—that aims to prevent migraines in the first place.

These drugs, called CGRP inhibitors, which can be injected into the arm once a month or taken as a melt-in-the-mouth wafer every few days, can halve the number of attacks. They work by blocking the effects of a chemical called calcitonin gene-related peptide, which is responsible for causing migraines (the main ones are erenumab, galcanezumab and fremanezumab).

But the use of these new drugs by the NHS is strictly limited to the most serious cases – usually people who have at least four attacks a month and have failed to achieve improvement with at least three other drugs.

In the meantime, avoiding triggers – light being one of the most common – can help prevent a migraine from happening in the first place.

Could tinted glasses – which can range from as little as €20 to €300 per pair – be a good investment for people who suffer from migraines and find light bothersome?

‘I remember researching light exposure for migraines about 25 years ago,’ says Dr Andy Dowson, clinical lead of the headache service at East Kent NHS.

‘At that time we discovered that migraine attacks were much more likely when patients were exposed to light in the red and blue wavelengths than, for example, to light in yellow or green.’

All light consists of a spectrum of colors, each with different wavelengths.

At one end of the spectrum are blue and purple – which have the shortest wavelengths – and at the other end are red and orange, which have the longest wavelengths.

Several studies have shown that light at both ends of the spectrum – for example red and blue – is more likely to trigger migraines than mid-spectrum colors such as green or yellow. It is not known why, but certain wavelengths appear to increase sensitivity to pain in migraine patients.

Wearing glasses coated with chemicals that prevent it from reaching the eye has been shown to help block red or blue light.

‘Some people in the study I did reported that the frequency of attacks was reduced by half to three-quarters if they regularly wore tinted glasses that blocked a large proportion of red and blue light,’ says Dr Dowson.

But he says it’s not necessarily the color of the lens that counts, but the chemical coating that filters out the harmful light.

The main coating, called FL-41, was first tested by scientists at the University of Birmingham in the early 1990s.

In their study, twenty children with migraine (who were light sensitive) were given glasses with FL-41 coating for four months. The study found that the average number of painful attacks they suffered fell from 6.2 per month to just 1.6.

Dr. Dowson says colored specs may be in greater demand than ever before, and not because of the Cowell factor.

Instead, there is evidence that modern lighting makes migraines worse in some people – or at least more common.

In 2016, the European Union banned the public use of old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs due to their energy inefficiency.

They have largely been replaced by LED lamps (or light-emitting diodes) that operate on a fraction of the energy.

These now illuminate everything from offices and shops to computer screens, smartphones and car headlights.

But LED light tends to be much richer in blue light — one of the most common triggers of migraines — than old-fashioned incandescent bulbs, says Dr. Dowson. The whiter the light, the more blue light it contains.

“Older lamps had a more even distribution of light across the entire color spectrum,” he says.

‘But the EU made them illegal in 2016 and a few years later they were finally phased out (from public use).

‘Ten years ago I was part of a group that lobbied the European Commission to convince it that some people were very sensitive to these lamps and should be able to continue buying light bulbs for home use.

“A lady I knew was virtually housebound because everywhere she went there were LED lights that were causing her migraines.”

The EU agreed that light bulbs can still be bought for private use, although they are now much harder to obtain.

However, blue light emissions are not the only problem with LED lighting.

They also create a flickering effect — invisible to the human eye — that can trigger migraines and headaches in some people, says Dr. Dowson.

This effect is a widely recognized problem. Some migraine sufferers may be bothered by light flickering through trees or the invisible flickering of a computer screen. In both cases, the visual part of the brain becomes over-excited by this effect, paving the way for a migraine attack.

Dr. Dowson says: ‘LED lights can also flicker, which can be a factor in migraine attacks. That could be one of the reasons why Simon Cowell suddenly felt unwell.’

The music industry guru has spoken in the past about how spending hours at a time under bright studio lights can increase the chance of a migraine attack.

Manufacturers of some tinted glasses claim that they also protect against the flicker effect, although there is little published research to support this.

Are Simon Cowell-style glasses worth the money?

Dr. Dowson says there’s no harm in trying an inexpensive pair if light is a trigger—and Dr. Mark Weatherall, consultant neurologist at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Buckinghamshire, agrees.

‘About 80 percent of migraines are photosensitive, so wearing one during an attack can be particularly helpful.

“And some people find it helpful to wear them all the time, as light can also be a trigger for migraines.”

However, although there are no clear reports of any adverse effects from the glasses, the charity Migraine Trust is not convinced of their usefulness.

The website states: ‘Different types of glasses are advertised that help with migraines and protect your eyes against certain types of light.

‘But there isn’t enough high-quality scientific evidence to know whether these glasses help or not, so we can’t recommend them.’