Thursday, August 02, 2012

Weizman's institute - EHS


Weizman's institute - EHS


All the below (including the remark on the related painting-) is from Weizman Institute's Davidson scientific education institute website:  
As always, when a subject has a touch to medicine, we would first say: the writers of this sections are not M.Ds and all that is written in the response comes from a scientific background. Not to see in this response a medical recommendation or a substitute for examination and and medical consultation. After the short forward it is possible to give a short and long answer:

There is no such thing "a disease" of  EHS because until today they did not succeed to isolate the cause of this phenomenon, define the "symptoms" and the treatment. (In the words "did not succeed" the intention is not that the science failed, but another reason, about it later), except for Sweden where the phenomenon is recognized by the medical institution as a "cause that harms the function" (not as a disease!). The phenomenon is not considered as a disease or a functional impairement in any other place, including WHO. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs296/en/

And now to a longer answer. "EHS Electromagnetic hypersensitivity" is a term which describes a collection of different medical complaints, that people attribute to EMF. It is unnecessary to note that EMF certainly have an effect on the body but it is in higher power densities than that of the normal levels that are in the computers and electrical equipment around us. Whoever wants to delve in the data and documents on levels of non ionizing radiation and health effects, http://www.icnirp.de/documents/RFReview.pdf    is invited to do it on the website of the ICNIRP. http://www.icnirp.de/activities.htm 
The complaints are refered mainly to computer screens but also to wireless home phones (not cellular), pwoerlines, transformers and more. The symptoms on which people report are many and are not specific, starting from skin burning, dryness of eyes, headaches and throw ups, weakness, ringings in the ear and memory problems.

Different double blind studies that were done did not succeed in finding any association between EMF to these complaints. The results showed that the people who complained did not succeed in knowing when they were exposed to EMF and when not. Moreover also in the times when they reported on the symptoms, there was no correlation between the field strength and the symptoms strength. This fact is problematic if one wants to find a direct association between cause and effect.

Press for an example to such a study  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16520326
Another point that was raised in several studies, that checked how much the phenomenon is frequent in the population, is that there is a direct association between the exposure in the media to the problem and the number of people who complain.

In other words, in places where the phenomenon is reported in the media and there is a discussion on the subject, more people (in percents of the population) complain on EHS. Of course this fact alone does not prove that the problem does not exist (one can say that, whoever did not hear on this phenomenon will have difficulty to link his symptoms to something so daily) but if we relate to the results that were mentioned in the former paragraph, the combinations of facts certainly does not strengthen the claim.

All the above of course does not contradict the fact that people suffer of certain symptoms but it is certainly directed to other factors. Physicians and researchers who work in this area point to a combination of external and internal (mental) causes, that lead to the described symtpoms. The crazy living pace, the pressure we are in, chronic lack of sleep, the great stimulations quanitity to which we are exposed (vocal, vision stimulations) cause many to chronic fatigue. We would add to this also imbalanced eating on the one hand and lack of physical excersize on the other, but with sitting of hours in front of the computer in an abnormal freezed position and we could get many problems.
points also to the fact that there is a strong mental component in the EHS phenomenon. The paper also brings references from other papers that show that treatments which include support and recognition of the person who complained, support groups and conversations (an area called congnitive behavioural therapy) can lead to siginificant improvement and even to the solution of the problem. However the writer fences his saying and notes that the subject was not enough exhausted and more research is needed.
In summery- all facts point to that the EHS to low levels and daily power densities does not exist.

The source of the symptoms reported are probably derived of different factors and/or combinations of mental causes that lead to physical symptoms.  

The painting that is given on this page- is a bit smiled description of a headache (from 19th century, from Wikipedia).

By: Dr. Meir Barak, department of structural biology, Weizmann science institute.

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