Is Your Cell Phone Killing You?!

Can you picture the life without a cell phone? I can’t, since it’s very handy. I can rely on it like on a good friend. But my friend has two sides of which I have not been fully aware.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
I knew there might be some affects on my health, but I didn’t realize that there are so many.

I quickly did a research what bad things mobile phones may cause. The results were horrifying.

Cell phone may:
- Affect Protein Expression
- Affect Human Skin
- Affect Living Tissue
- Increase Risk of Mouth Cancer
- Harm Blood Cells

It turns out that my good friend morphed to the monster.

Looking for more details I discovered that the list of illnesses is not complete. I added another ones:

- Nausea, Headaches
- Brain Tumors
- May trigger Alzheimer's disease
- and…

…Acoustic Neurona (along with Brain Tumor)
If you have used your mobile phone for more than 10 years, you might have increased your risk of developing acoustic neuroma, a benign tumor on the auditory nerve.

Interestingly enough, studies found that the risk was confined to the side of the head that was used most often while talking on the phone. As a matter of fact, the risk of acoustic neuroma was nearly four times greater on the side of the head that the phone was most frequently held compared to the other side, which appeared normal.

Protein Expression, Living Tissue and Skin Disease
According to Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) study, “small area of forearm's skin in 10 female volunteers was exposed to RF-EMF (specific absorption rate SAR = 1.3 W/kg) and punch biopsies were collected from exposed and non-exposed areas of skin. Analysis has identified 8 proteins that were statistically significantly affected (Anova and Wilcoxon tests). Two of the proteins were present in all 10 volunteers.

This suggests that protein expression in human skin might be affected by the exposure to RF-EMF. The number of affected proteins was similar to the number of affected proteins observed in our earlier in vitro studies.”

Taking a stock mobile phone radiation might alter protein expression in human skin.
▪ Physiological significance of this change is not known and requires further study.
▪ Larger human volunteer study will be needed to confirm results of this pilot study.
▪ Proteomics screening is valid method for search for molecular targets of mobile phone radiation. Without this approach the identification of the proteins responding to mobile phone radiation would not be reasonably possible.

"Mobile phone radiation has some biological effect. Even if the changes are small, they still exist", says Dariusz Leszczynski, Research Professor at STUK.

According to Leszczynski it is much too early to say will these changes induced by the mobile phone radiation have any effect on health.

"The aim of this project was not detecting any possible health effects, but to find out whether living human skin responds to mobile phone radiation and whether proteomics approach is useful in sorting out this issue", he states.

Mouth Cancer
A recent research has shown that chatting on a mobile phone before bedtime would cause you insomnia. The team from Sweden's Karolinska Institute and Wayne State University, in Michigan, found that mobile phone radiation of 884 MHz provokes insomnia, headaches and concentration difficulties.

But these are short-term effects, and many cancers have a 10-to-20-year latency period. Still, one cancer risk has just been detected by a team at the Tel Aviv University. The new research published in the "American Journal of Epidemiology" shows that people using cell phones for many hours daily are 50% more likely to develop mouth cancer, than individuals who do not use cell phones at all. Moreover, cell phone users in rural areas could be exposed to a higher risk for cancer because cell phones have to emit higher levels of radiation for picking up the signal of the fewer available antennas.

Blood Cells
According to New Scientist:

“A study has shown that radiation from mobile phones may cause a substantial increase in the forces that living cells exert on each other. Experts said this research could be critical to providing answers to the question of whether radiation from mobile phones is linked to cancer and other health problems. Although several researchers believe this to be the case, they have been unable to come up with ways that radiation could produce this affect and harm biological tissue.

Future studies will be conducted to check the dielectric properties of various types of biological tissue during exposure to radiation across the range of frequencies normally used by mobile phones.”

Nausea and Headaches
Radio signals for the next wave of cell phones--third generation (3G) phones that transmit high-speed Internet data--caused headache, tingling sensations and nausea among participants in a research study.

The side effects occurred after participants were exposed to radiation from 3G base station signals. No side effects were noted from current mobile phone base stations.

Base stations transmit constant signals, exposing everyone within range, while cell phone handsets emit stronger levels of radiation to the user.

Government officials say further research is needed to confirm findings and explore long-term health effects.

Triggering Alzheimer's disease
After digging the BBC website I found something on Alzheimer’s disease. The study was carried out on rats.

Rats aged between 12 and 26 weeks, whose brains are thought to be in the same developmental stage as teenagers, were exposed to two hours of radiation equal to that emitted by mobile phones.

Upon examination 50 days later, researchers found an abundance of dead brain cells in rats that had been exposed to medium and high levels of radiation.

They hypothesized that in people whose neurons are prone to Alzheimer’s disease, radiation from mobile phones may trigger the disease earlier in life.

How to fight the radiation. Some tips
Surely the best way to avoid mobile phone radiation is to give up using cell phone. But this might hard for most of us. So I prepared other tips which easy to employ.

- Switch off your cell phone when you are not going to use it.

- Don’t use wireless mobile phone headset, as they make matters worse.

- Make sure that you are not talking on cell phone unless you are using a speakerphone or headset specifically designed to reduce radiation. Headset may reduce the cell phone radiation even up to 90%.

- Keep your mobile phone as far from your body as possible.

- Use Mobile Phone Bio-Shield which helps to relieve conditions associated with cell phone radiation.