Another one is taking precautions against . . . well pretty much most modern communication devices. She’s not the first:
Sarah, 51, is one of a growing band of people who claim to be experiencing extreme – and incapacitating – sensitivity to electrical appliances, as well as to certain frequencies of electromagnetic waves.“Wi-Fi, or wireless broadband networks, seem to be the worst thing,” she says.
“Closely followed by mobile phones – particularly if they’re being used in an enclosed space – the base stations of cordless telephones and mobile phone masts.
“I have to restrict the amount of time I spend on the computer or watching television, and make sure I don’t have too many household appliances on at once, because that sets me off as well.”
This may sound bizarre, but there is no doubt that Sarah’s symptoms are real.
To date, they include hair loss, sickness, high blood-pressure, digestive and memory problems, severe headaches and dizziness.
They strike with such ferocity that, since diagnosing herself as “electrically sensitive” in May 2005, she has been marooned at home.
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{ 11 comments }
I note that wireless service is also popularly blamed for a declining bee population, but this Faraday-looking headgear apparently protects against any remaining swarms, too.
On my psych rotation I met people who had solved this problem by wearing aluminum foil helmuts.
The symptoms of multiple chemical sensitivity seem an awful like those of acute low nitric oxide.
One of the things that regulates the cytochrome P450 enzymes that metabolize all these xenobiotic chemicals is NO, which inhibits it. The P450 enzymes are quite uncoupled, and so generates superoxide anion, which pulls down the local NO level and so disinhibits it, and so increases the metabolism of what ever the P450 enzyme is dealing with.
The P450 enzymes are mostly membrane bound. Would they be “wiggled” by EM fields? And so generate more or less NO or superoxide? There is hysteresis and feedback in the nitric oxide synthase system. If NOS becomes uncoupled, the zinc thiolate couple gets oxidized and the enzyme becomes uncoupled and generates superoxide instead of NO.
Of course, the placebo effect is mediated by NO.
Maybe this is the real reason why I have such a great sense of wellbeing when I go camping in wilderness areas. Yeah, it must be it! I have EMR sensitivity syndrom. You think that I can collect disability and get check so I can live in the wilderness all the time without having to catch my own food?
Some people just don’t want to feel well. Maybe we should allow them the pleasure of being sick, but why do those of us who like our safe, modern technologies be forced to give them up?
If we just called these people lazy, or even hypocondriacs, we would sell less newspapers.
If it was a physical / biochemical action, it would be highly unlikely it would be responsive to such a huge range of wavelengths. I call total BS. She needs a butterfly net, not a Faraday cage.
Isn’t this ilk just allergic, ‘er, sensitive to productive and contributory….LIFE?
Look at the benefits: all that attention. People coming from this newspaper and that to interview her (pencil and paper, please, no tape recorders, and no digital cameras either; they all emit RF.) You can claim disability and no one makes you work (and maybe that’s a good thing.) Gotta be special. Need a special place to live. Need a special environment.
I agree with the poster above: some people enjoy ill health. Others just try to.
Secondary Gain anyone??
She’s nuts.
Yes, she’s whacko.
But the really crazy part is that we (society) is her enabler, going along with her nuttiness.
If put to the test of blinded rechallenge with the EM fields she fears so much she would be unable to know when to be symptomatic. Her apparent sensitivity played out for the unsuspecting press is simple. Meet a reporter, announce that she feels poorly and it must be an electronic gadged (a fair bet that one is present). If one is then the reporter believes the connection, if one isn’t, then she looks around her house until the ’cause’ is found, thus again ‘proving’ the same.
Like psychichs and others who run con games, sufficiently vague predictions and ready backup interpretations will sucker in the credulous every time.
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