EMF's and our wireless devices

Symptoms and Treatments
1

Hello Everybody, I am not sure if many of you remember but I signed up to this forum, desperately trying to help my 11 year old son, who developed symptoms of ER. It has started after summer. We noticed first that his toes got very red, after his sole, then top of his feet and continued up to his ankles. This only happened when he was sitting in the kitchen or bathroom, feet dangling over linoleum. He could not stand in the kitchen or brush his teeth longer than a minutes before his feet was red as a lobster.
Then the itching started and at the end, his toes started to swell. Now first, I thought he was allergic to vinyl but when I made him lay down on the vinyl floor, feet straight on it, nothing happened. He had to be on his feet or his feet had to dangle from something for his symptoms to flare up. When it got unbearable for him, he had to elevate both his feet and in a few minutes, all his symptoms went away. I have to tell you first, my son is otherwise a healthy 11 year old, no family history of anything like this.
After dealing with this for weeks and months, I told him that maybe you have to live with this until the end of puberty - as the medical literature said puberty could be the reason for it to come out all of a sudden. I was actually happy - if you can say that - that there is one room in the house for him to get releif from his pain and itching so when he came out to the lliving room and sat in the chair, feet started to get red, itch over carpeting, that’s when I started to think that maybe this has nothing to do with vinyl or carpeting or hardwood and started recording his what he did that day and his symptoms. One thing showed up right away in his daily routine. Something that he did - being a teenager - of course, using his electronic devices. I am talking about computer, smart tv, xbox, cell phone all in his room. When a couple of months ago my second son started to show the same symptoms, I knew right away that I am possibly dealing with and environmental issue than medical. He, of course, had the same electronics in his room, playing and talking on the same devices.
I am sorry for the long story but I wanted to let everybody know how this whole thing started and what we did. I made it my mission to help my kids and I hope maybe others can find hope and some relief.
Anyhow, back to the electronics. Long story short… over the weeks, we have started taking steps to eliminate as much wireless devices as we could. No more wireless router in the house. Back to wired internet. No wi-fi reception on our phones, no laptop!!! no wireless keyboard, no wireless mouse, electric cords, power bars at least 4-5 feet away from where the kids sit. All the black boxes in the middle of the power cords for computers, monitors and the biggest black box for the xbox is as far away as possible from their feet. Purchased special filters to remove “dirty electricity” from the power lines. No more cordless phones. Purchased special EMF and RF meters to see what was I dealing with in our home as we spent most of our time here. I was shocked to learn the amount of EMF was running in the house, in the wall, right by the desk under their feet, beside the bed all day, or night 24/7, or how much Radio Frequency was the router gave out 24/7 and made my son tired as soon as he got close to it in the kitchen. And we thought it had something to do with the floor!!! OMG make me sick just to think about it.
Now, I am not sure if this is all a fluke or what, but ever since I made these radical moves - that, of course, was not welcomed by my family as they said “Mom it can’t be that” my two kids have no more symptoms. It has taken a couple of weeks for their symptoms to gradually to go away, but in the last few days, they had no flare-ups whatsoever.
Like I said, I am not sure what to make of this, but, what I know is this… it helped my kids, maybe it can help somebody else too when there is no medical reason for the why??? is this happening to me???

Thanks for reading our story and I sincerely hope it will help others.Even if just one person can find releif, it’s a victory.

Oli

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please have your son checked for Lyme disease and coinfections, this is the root cause of my EM and many other conditions- electronic devices can be troublesome for those with neurological lyme- be sure to use a good lab for blood testing for this,
like Igenex in CA

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Thank you jane3, will make an appointment tomorrow morning.

Oli

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Shawnigan Lake is not exactly in a “lyme area” and incidence on Vancouver island is so low with less than 1% tick in infection rate that infection rates are less than 1/200,000. Not saying it is impossible but highly unlikley to almost the point of impossibility. I would be very hesitant to subject or involve a child in the world of lyme. Especially without a lot more to go on. (An infectious disease consult certainly isn’t out of order) PLEASE what ever you do don’t involve your kid in the IgeneX tin foil hat world.

Yes you likely are onto something with the wireless world. Its NOT unheard of, there is a medical reason, and certainly not related to infectious disease. In any event eliminating the stimulus solves the problem. Your kids are lucky to have such a bulldog for a mom. There are a number of good studies going on about what you suggest, and there appears to be some link. here is a good one: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0144268

By the same token you may want to consider going to cat5 switch in lieu of the wireless. Disconnecting your kids in todays world also comes with some other difficulties especially as much as you son loves his game box.

TJ

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I think that is certainly the answer to go to wired rather than WiFi. Much depends on the location of the router of course. My computer is wired it’s so much faster and reliable anyway.

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This is an interesting story. Im going to give my non professional opinion.

First EMF allergies might be a rare possibility for a very few people, but there is no scientific evidence of this actually happening. It’s usually people saying they think EMF is causing a probllem. It’s almost on par with magnetic therapy and sleeping inside a pyramid or facing north when you sleep. These wn other strange beliefs are promoted by a few but there is little in the way of scientific proof that it’s a cause or a cure of problems. That being said, not to pile on more problems with that line of logic there is a good dark comedy spoof show that I’d like to plug called Better Call Saul which is a spin off of the Breaking bad series. It’s a dark comedy about a lawyer and his borother in the show is suffering from allergies to EMF. During the show he goes to the hospital and the ER doctor in the show says it’s a phychological illness, and demonstrates to Saul that the brother isn’t experiencing pain from electronics.

That introduction and spoiler plug aside, I’ll go on and give some thoughts as to how you might do a test to verify that EMF is actually affecting them. But of course you should have a doctor give a true diagnosis. Maybe a neurologist could give insight. But before I give you my test idea I’ll give you a couple examples of other physical problems that could be at play here. First it’s probably okay to get rid of wifi if that makes you feel better my quick unprofessional guess is the wifi change caused your son to complain and change his lifestyle. That lifestyle change made him more active and that physical change caused his symptoms to go away. As an example I used to work at a store and one day sat on a conveyer belt. I had my legs dangling over the edge. I had a problem with a strained back from twisting and carrying a returned item. It was a problem but a minor back strain. When I sat down and let my legs dangle it made the pain worse and caused more stress on my back. When I walked outside into the cold air my muscles tightrened up more and the back strain and pinched nerve became worse. I had thrown out my back but the additional act of sitting on a conveyer belt before the stor closed made it worse. I was in such bad shape I had to call for help an have my parents drive out and I laid on the back seat of their car as they drove me home. Because I could not bend at all.

Sitting for a long time can cause problems with blood flow if you sit on long flights you could experience blood clots in your legs, so people are told to exercise and walk about and not sit for a long period of time. It could be that your son by being in certain positions is causing his legs to be physically affected. Something like a pinched nerve like tarsal tunnel syndrome can cause EM symptoms. Or perhaps something is going on in the blood vessels as well. I don’t thing nerves run under the legs and intrapement is happening from the direct contact, but strain from that position mit be causing something to happen.

Once you stopped the wifi if his lifestyle changed it could be that it caused a recovery. That’s my quick nonprofessional guess… Now for a proposed test that doesn’t rely on wifi reactivation.

Wifi uses broad soectrum radio waves but it’s rather narrow in the spectrum. There is a device that generates a lot more EMF that wifi and will overwhelm the wifi signals locally and it can perhaps be used as a device to test your sons conditon, but to do a scientific test you may want a doctor or other medical professional to give their feedback and suggestion. You need to have a set of tests which means you measure and have your son do the same thing both times to eliminate the problem of a physical activity being the cause. This means you need to do the test with a double blind method. Double blind means he does it twice and actually you’d also want him to be blind to the process as well, meaning he can’t know when the EMF is being used. Because if he knows he might imagine it to be the cause through the power of suggestion.

The device I suggest you use is a microwave oven. A microwave oven will give off 100 times more EMF locally close to the oven than your wifi setups. It will give off a huge amount of EMF. To do the test you’d need to determine how long and what type of chair his feet dangle from to create the symptoms. Then move that chair into the kitchen near the microwave oven. You can tell you son about the test but when you run it you will need to set it up so he won’t know if the oven is being run or not for the EMF portion of the test.

You may even want to blindfold him or have him sit facing away from the oven while you use it. To make him unaware of the microwave being on you will want to isolate him from any wind sensation from the fan blowing as some microwaves blow air while they work and of course the noise of the microwave has to be undetected. To mask the noise you can have him wear a set of headphones and listen to some music loud enough so he can’t tell if the microwave is running or not. You may need to have a long piece of music for him to listen to and headphones that completely enclose the ear would be necessary to isolate him from the sound of the microwave. Noise cancelling would be cool as well. Okay let’s say the microwave oven has to run for 20 minutes. Of course your going to want to heat something and it should retain the heat and be something you can throw away, so perhaps you’ll sacrifice a small chicken or ham or something that of course will be nuked for 20 minutes or so. If twenty minutes would be long enough for the test you’d run two tests of twenty minutes. You may even want him to have a space of time between the tests so the second test is not enhanced by the dangling legs of the first one. The second test would be more apt to show symptoms thatthe first if you run them to close together. Activity before each test lets say a 30 minute activity would have to be the same basic activity to make it double blind.

This also may seem strange but obviously you’d have to turn on the microwave so you move,ears should be the same for both tests and you might even want to blindfold him or somehow conceil the microwave and your activities from his position, maybe using a large curtain or tarp. He cannot know if the microwave is in or off. Of course if he knows then his knowledge will make your double blind test faulty.

I’m guessing but it’s only my guess it’s something physical not related to EMF. Others may have ideas how to do this test. I’ve also had times when I wondered if wifi and devices could be affecting me, so those thoughts are common as we hear about them and think they may be in play, I have a ringing in my ears and sometimes wonder if it’s from wifi. But the truth is I had a gun go off near my ears without hearing protection so I have had ringing ear and ear damage for about two years now. At times of being quiet I can hear it more, likely when I’m on the net so it will seem to be related to wifi, but it’s just my imagination.

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Thanks for taking the time to write this watchman. I will definitely try this and you actually gave me hope that maybe it’s not even EM. Doctors still can’t figure it out here, and he hasn’t seen a specialist yet. At this point, I am happy if his flare-ups are manageable until we find a definite answer from a specialist. Until then I will try to get answers from other peoples’ experience. Thanks again!!

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Thanks sheltielife, you are right, our internet got a lot faster and if nothing else, we sleep better.

1 Like
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Here’s an interesting article about Lyme testing.

Seenie

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I notice the article is dated 2005 did they ever prove this. Could it be that the manufacturers of the antibiotics were paying the lab to give positive results?

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I don’t know that there was collusion but what DID happen is IgeneX (and similar) quit interrupting their results as a result of the lack of science behind them and no established norms.Several of the similar closed and one faced murder charges and bunch were sued.

So what you get now is after each band is a: +, ++, +++, -, -/+ or inshort: “some,” a “little more,” a “little more yet,” “none,” and “we don’t know.” Instead of improving the situation it ended up creating an open season on the unsuspecting by the “lyme literate docs” to interrupt the results anyway they chose. The tests themselves are 1500.00 (not covered by insurance) results with no meaning

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I don’t want to be a buzzkill, but if electromagnetic radiation could induce Erythromelalgia there would have been a spike in EM cases when electricity was first adopted and then again when personal EMF emitting devices became ubiquitous in the later half of the 20th century into the 21st. No such spikes occurred. You’d also see elevated incidences of EM in employees of electric substations and in those who live near high voltage power lines or cellular communications towers. Again, no such incidents are known to have occurred. Erythromelalgia was rare when first described by Silas Weir Mitchell in the later 19th century and remains rare today.

What you’re describing in your son is that symptoms are present when feet are in a dependent position and absent or alleviate when in a non-dependent or elevated position. That is certainly consistent with Erythromelalgia.

Lifestyle changes that accompanied a reduction in screen time could be responsible for the current elimination of symptoms. My doctor has always said exercise is good, even if it would appear to be contraindicated. My personal experience has been that increased exercise and movement is beneficial.

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I find this very interesting. My suggestion is to monitor things for a full year. This should show if your son’s improvement was actually related to outside weather as those with EM tend to have a lot more difficulty in hot summer weather.

In the US, an organization called EPRI (Electrical Power Research Institute) conducted studies on the effect EMF could have on health. They did find a slight risk of childhood leukemia with exposure to magnetic fields, and an even weaker correlation to adult brain cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. I recall one of my professors in engineering school (over 40 years ago) had a grant where he and some of his grad students were studying the effects of EMF on cattle and people living near power substations. He said they had not found any correlation between EMF and health. If there was a significant danger it would surely have been reported by the news media by now.

http://emf.epri.com/

That said, I do have some anecdotal information to share. A company I worked for in the late 1980s (later acquired by GE) did pioneering work developing an imaging technique that is now known as MRI. The magnets used were very high field strength (the EMF was much higher than you’d find from wifi and appliances). One of the engineers had her desk on the floor above one of the magnets. She complained that her feet felt numb and tingly when experiments were being conducted. MRIs work by varying the magnetic field so perhaps she was sensitive to that, she ended up relocating her desk. And one of my coworkers, a PhD researcher, after a few years left the company to become a university professor. He also continued his MRI research. Nearly 30 years later he died from brain cancer. He likely was exposed to long term EMF, though it would be hard to prove that was the cause of his brain cancer.

But you are smart to be cautious, because frankly I don’t think anyone truly knows for sure whether there is link between EMF and health. I do believe we are now exposed to more EMF than ever due to the proliferation of wifi. I live in a city, and when I run WifiInfoView on my PC, I can see 30 wifi networks in addition to my own. (WifiInfoView is free software you can download, you can find it in an internet search).

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I should also mention in addition to EM, I have Raynaud’s, pernicious anemia, and also a neurodegenerative disease called pure autonomic failure. At 60 I’m becoming a poster child for autoimmune illnesses. :unamused:

In my lifetime I’ve had magnetic field exposure while working on NMR instrumentation (MRI), hydrocarbon exposure while working summers in the oil field during college, pesticide exposure as I walked my dog alongside a golf course (runoff from it went through my yard), took birth control pills for over two decades, and of course wifi is everywhere. Who knows what has caused all my health problems, whether it be genetics or environmental or a combination. All I can hope is someone will figure this out so future generations don’t have to go through this.

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Every article and study I have read claims that exercise can induce an attack. I have Erythromelalgia, diagnosed about a year ago. I also have Raynaud’s disease since I was 19 years old.(1973). That is a constriction of the small vessels in response to cold or emotion. Mine is due to cold/freezing weather or staying in a climate under 59 degrees. I used to get blue fingers then white and then defrost, which is very painful. I’m now 63 years old. Now I just get creamy white/yellow fingers and it is extremely painful. Mostly it happens in the supermarkets which are kept very cold. I use gloves but they do not help. Defrosting fingers was very painful as then my hands/feet would get hot and lobster red. That still happens. Doctors said years ago that I may have Lupus as there were other signs of it like alopecia areata, which is small patches of hair loss.
In 1992 I was diagnosed with MS, due to total vision loss in my left eye. I had other signs of it but not the typical signs like numbness and balance yet. I was 38 years old.
Fast forward to December of 2015. I was vacuuming my house, slowly as I break up my work around the house as my body allows with the MS. My feet started to feel raw. I do have some arthritis in my feet and also neuromas in the balls of each foot to complicate matters.
I took off my shoes and socks and my feet were raw, red and purple! I called the doctor and went to see him the next day. Long story trying to make it short, heart tests, Doppler’s etc all proved negative for disease. My neurologist said that it seems the autonomic nervous system is causing the EM. It’s possible. He told me it’s rare and I read it’s even more rare with Raynaud’s. He said I want you to research yourself. I had always doubted the diagnosis of MS and thought I had Lupus. Doctors in the past said I may have both as MRI’s confirm MS.
I can’t decide whether I hot or cold sometimes.
I also read that Fabry’s disease can cause EM. So I found a doctor in NYC that took my blood, (I had it drawn and mailed it). It confirmed that I didn’t have that disease. Oli I suggest you have your kids tested for that illness.
You are a terrific parent. I am so sorry your kids suffered. You may be on to something, everyone reacts differently to different stimuli and factors.
Also Lyme disease is rampant here where I live on Long Island. Not sure where you live. This disease can cause a myriad of strange symptoms and illnesses.
Good luck and please keep us posted.

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Well, yes. Exercise can induce a flare in the short term. That still doesn’t mean you should avoid movement and exercise. It’s possible exercise has long term effects that could minimize flaring. That doesn’t mean go out and train for a marathon. With certain conditions vigorous exercise is contraindicated. But you’d be hard pressed to find a doctor who would tell you to not do any.

Because the individuals in this case are young and related, I’d first seek a SCN9A-related inherited Erythromelalgia genetic test. Primary Erythromelalgia is an independent disease state with an onset typically in childhood. The etiology of secondary Erythromelalgia is unknown and more accurately described as a condition than a disease. It may have a varied number of etiologies, which could account for the wide disparity in severity, progression, and pharmacological response.

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Hi Carterdk,
Thanks for your reply. Yes I try to keep moving and get exercise as much as I can stand it. I do find that my feet are more painful at bedtime when I’ve been on them and walk too much. I love to walk and use to do a lot more of it until I developed the neuromas. They too are very painful. I have two in each foot. I’m not a runner or even a power walker for that matter. I never even wore high heels. Only “sensible” shoes and sneakers, which are called walking shoes these days.
You are very well versed in this condition. I suspected that those brothers may have the gene for the primary EM type of this condition or disease. As I said, I was tested for Fabry disease as sometimes it is mistakenly diagnosed as MS. I tested negative. I still am very puzzled about this condition and I’m trying hard to cope as I have other autoimmune conditions as well. Also aging is not helping. I do count myself lucky though because people get this in childhood or young adulthood. I hope your EM is not too debilitating for you. Wishing you the best.