DNA Is a Fractal Antenna in Electromagnetic Fields (2011) | Hacker News Reader

DNA Is a Fractal Antenna in Electromagnetic Fields (2011)

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

58 pointsCieplak95 comments

So the authors observed increased markers of damage after exposing DNA to a range of non ionizing EM frequencies.

Are the authors implying that even non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation can damage DNA because of resonance accross a wide range of frequencies? Is there truth to danger from cell phones?

That is certainly a popular conspiracy theory.

It’s hard to believe, though. Cellphones have been around for a generation. The early ones had higher output power than modern ones. If there was any risk of harm, we would see it by now.

perhaps it's possible that it's not enough to be dangerous in isolation, but perhaps significant enough for those that already have a lot of existing dna damage (e.g. late stage cancer patients and elderly).

The thinking of the body as a holistic system is where research seems to generally fall short, and likewise there are so many variables related to exposure - including each individuals' capacity to deal with cancer cells/damaged DNA, etc.

Edit: To add to this, when I was 8 years old my dad developed kidney cancer - or at least that is when they found it. He was a commercial airline pilot, which so happens to have a higher level of kidney cancer (probably other cancers too) due to being surrounded by electronics in the flight deck + exposure to more radiation; I can only imagine they've tried to improve reducing exposure as much as they can, however who knows if that means more direct costs and perhaps they don't care about indirect costs. I know power line workers and certain other professions have a much lower life expectancy as well, we also know that exposure to strong(er) magnetic fields like from MRI machines can disrupt pregnancy. Knowing all of this it's hard to come to the assumption that smaller quantities/exposures can't not have some impact with in the "right" environment.

The “surrounded by electronics” explanation really need a citation. It doesn’t make sense to me. Nothing in proximity to the pilot emits any kind of radiation - the radio antenna is not in the cockpit.

The higher dosage of solar/space radiation due to the altitude is surely the correct explanation.

Interestingly, there is a belief in military pilot communities that pilots will have far fewer boys than girls. Two close relatives of mine are military pilots, and my observations have confirmed this. From individual families we know, to officer neighborhoods on base that have an unusually high proportion of girls. It's still anecdotal of course, but very interesting.

Apparently there have been a few studies, but with questionable rigor. For example http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.603...

It's one of those things where I believe only mathematical/physics model could potentially show us answers, as that's the only way we'd ever be able to get "exact" resolution of what's going on between interactions. Whether we can ever model these systems to be as refined as reality is impossible to know - however perhaps we should start trying and see if what we are able to model shows anything that could perhaps help us direct more inquiry into; it makes me think of the Periodic Table, and how we were able to discover new/missing/unknown elements simply by ordering and seeing gaps in the model.

> we also know that exposure to strong(er) magnetic fields like from MRI machines can disrupt pregnancy

No. The American College of Radiology contradicts this: "Present data have not conclusively documented any deleterious effects of MR imaging exposure on the developing fetus. Therefore no special consideration is recommended for the first, versus any other, trimester in pregnancy."

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/jmri.24011

Whenever I'd start to dig into research relating to this, it always looked like there was plenty of documented interference by the industry. There's apparently a higher risk of a certain type of brain cancer, and fMRIs also show changed brain patterns (especially for children who have thinner skulls/highly developing brains) for many hours after cellphone use. There seems to be concerns being raised around the introduction of 5G now as well.

> If there was any risk of harm, we would see it by now

That statement feels a little problematic to me. Who's to say that possible effects aren't cumulative, maybe more exposure time is needed for big problems to appear, and maybe it's been contributing to smaller problems so far. Truth is, we don't really know enough to say that for sure.

Think asbestos and mesothelioma. The onset of that can be forty years after exposure to asbestos. That's roughly two generations. And a one off event can be enough.

> Think asbestos and mesothelioma. The onset of that can be forty years after exposure to asbestos. That's roughly two generations. And a one off event can be enough.

Except that mesothelioma can onset at 15 years and is less rare at 25. And it is one of the longest because of the particular mechanism of encapsulation and migration. DNA disruption has no such reason to be slow.

There are almost always some people with a fast response to a biologically active agent. DNA damage would almost certainly show up quite quickly in some subgroup.

While you can't prove a negative, absence of evidence certainly moves the Bayesian priors.

Mesothelioma has a specific and distinctive set of symptoms, so people took notice and look for a root cause.

Hypothetically, if EMF radiation were to cause a wide range of low-level effects such that common diseases had increasing prevalence rates over time, how would we be able to link that back? Cell towers are ubiquitous, there's no non-exposed control group that epidemiologists can easily compare to.

> there's no non-exposed control group that epidemiologists can easily compare to.

Incorrect. Time of onset is a control.

Look at the results on breast cancer from when they stopped giving post-menopausal women hormone replacement therapy.

Different countries and areas of the country get different generations of cell phone and towers at different times.

While there may not be a huge amount of funding going into this, the result of finding an effect between cell phones and biology would be so huge, that researchers in relevant fields very much pay attention.

If someone they thought they could get any correlation, even with massive p-hacking, someone would publish it.

Time of onset only helps you if populations are relatively immobile, or latency time is relatively short.

If latency time is decades long (not unreasonable for brain cancers, for example, which are very slow growing), then every brain cancer survey will pick up people who moved in from other areas and were exposed at different times and rates, considerably lowering the signal-to-noise ratio.

Also relevant:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-studies-link-...

The Amish. Their water and soil is no less contaminated by other factors, so the only thing left is far reduced EMF exposure.

Believe it or not, some Amish communities do use cell phones. We look at their selective use of technology as a general ban on all new technology when it's more nuanced than that. But certainly some groups do reject cell phones some some sub-groups could be a partial control group.

Nah, most amish communities are surrounded by normal folks and have pretty good cell coverage. A better control group would be communities around radio telescopes where cell towers can't be built for fear of interference with research.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Radio_Q...

Not necessarily. If cellphones gave cancers to 1 promille of users it would be darn difficult to prove anything but it would still be much higher rate than many other factors.

The difficulty is in getting statistics right. How do you compare two groups of people controlling for the variable when people who don't use cellphones are very different in other aspects than people who do.

I am pretty sure the opposite is true, the newer cellphones expose users to more radiation. There was even an article few days back on HN describing the trend in context of introducing 5G.

Relative to the old analog phones which had to reach out over enormous distances? Extremely unlikely. I imagine that my single analog phone call while I crossed northern Nevada probably exposed my head to more radiation than the rest of my cell phone usage combined.

With 5G, the carriers are having to densify the cell towers significantly. So, on average you are going to have to transmit less distance for less time.

A good test would probably be: does your battery last longer doing radio things? Energy in a battery is fixed. If the battery is lasting longer and hasn't gotten bigger, it's turning less of that energy into radio power.

If beam-steering antennas are used in 5G handsets [1], the handset will beam-form a more narrow, higher ERP antenna pattern to improve transmit and receive performance if a body part gets between handset and base station. This would increase power density at the intervening tissue.

[1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/wireless/a-beam-...

Old analog cell phones used about three times as much power, but the frequencies were lower and the antennas were held farther from the head. The old tower transmitters used more power but were much less densely distributed than today and especially tomorrow. Assuming microwaves do have the potential to cause some kind of damage (beyond simple heating with absorption), the power level would be only one factor and possibly not the most important one.

There is misconception that all radiation and all patterns of it is the same. Comparing output power is largely useless because what is really important is how it affects body and this depends on very many factors, not all doses are the same.

For example, standing in full sunlight might not be a problem normally unless you stand for entire day and get burned (extended exposure without allowing the body the time to repair) or maybe the sunlight gets concentrated by a lens and burns your finger without changing total exposure to sun (concentrated in space) or maybe gets somehow converted to UV (concentrated to restrict wavelengths to hit specific molecules reacting with UV) or stored as energy in the form of oil and released quickly when burning (concentrated in time).

The first cellphones where much larger devices placing the source of the radiation further away from your body. They were also omnidirectional making sure that the maximum density of the field was low. New devices use beam forming which means it sometimes hits with a dense wave travelling through your body as if it was a sunlight concentrated with a lens.

Also, new cellphones are much better transmitters with much better control of the spectrum to maximise the power at a specific frequency. It further exacerbates the effect meaning if the beam interacts with something in the body it interacts much more strongly, again, akin to the concentrating lens. With old cellphone everything would be getting warmer a bit, with newer ones it may come into much stronger interactions because it may do it much more selectively (in space, time and choice of a molecule it interacts with).

There was something here on HN earlier this year linking WiFi to problems (health related but I don't recall what exactly). To call it a conspiracy theory is a bit much.

On related note, I've wondered if the circulatory system would function as antennas of various lengths.

Well, the rate of some cancers have increased steadily in the last 50 years, same with Alzheimer's, with no clear cause. Part might be due to the global aging of the population, it's also theorized increasing pollution or use of pesticides might be involved. If the link with electromagnetic fields exists but is very tenuous, it could be very hard to prove, but when considering that virtually everyone is explosed to artificial EM fields it could still have a sizeable effect.

A huge portion is just more diagnosis, like with ADHD. Our tools and individual access to healthcare are greater.

> So the authors observed increased markers of damage

I'm not in that field, but the way I read the article, they claim that a lot of other articles support their claim, namely that the DNA could be damaged by EM radiation which is not "ionizing." But this particular article doesn't seem to contribute any new proof, and the only "new" message of the article is: "DNA is, the way we understand it 'a fractal antenna', therefore even non-ionizing EM radiation 'could' be dangerous." But the proof of that claim on the level of physics is not explicit (not in a way I'd expect to read about it). Especially their kind-of claim that even 60 Hz EMF can influence DNA in damaging way is still very... let's say, suspicious, to me.

If somebody would actually prove something like that, I'd expect he or she would get more Nobel prizes at once... it's that much far away from what we understand. The wavelength of the EMF of 60 Hz is 3000 miles in the air. How can such a change affect anything in any DNA in any cell of any living organism, even if we accept any "fractalness" of it I can't even imagine. Even if we accept that the longest cell is in the range of 1 meter, the wavelength of 60 Hz is 5 million times longer! So even a 1 m wide DNA would "surf" on a 5 million times longer "wave." You can say "but it's fractal" as much as you want, I'd need more than that, for me it still doesn't appear different from "it's sprinkled with the dust of fairy."

On another side, the "obvious" statistics of some problems appearing should be enough even if the mechanism is not known. Given the amount of the EMF we live with, something should give us enough information...

Note that they mention "the stress response" of the cells and that since "the stress response is activated by other stimuli that are potentially harmful to cells (Kultz 2003), it is clear that the stress response is a natural protective mechanism" which could actually mean that the cells remain "more protected."

> Especially their kind-of claim that even 60 Hz EMF can influence DNA in damaging way is still very... let's say, suspicious, to me.

Yeah, I really don't understand why these kinds of people always mumble about 60Hz. That's the biggest red flag for bogosity. We have had so much extremely high intensity 60Hz flying around for so long that the effects should be obvious.

If you just simply don't mention 60Hz at all, your claims get a lot harder to refute.

And we also know which wavelengths do affect the cells: the wavelengths shorter, not longer, than 200-something nanometers (i.e. < 0.2e-6 m). That is, UV light and all shorter EM, like X-rays (specifically < 0.01e-6 m). That's at least 1e13 times shorter than 5000km of 60 Hz.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet_germicidal_irradia...

All the living organisms get a lot of EMF of longer wavelengths: the plain, sub-UV light, for the start. Much closer to the UV (e.g. blue light ~ 0.45e-6 m).

I sorta agree with you, but to be a pedantic bastard, a single hydrogen atom can absorb and emit 21cm radio wave[1], so molecular sizes don't completely rule out radio absorption.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_line

But note that that kind absorption doesn't mean that such hydrogen atom becomes "less" or more the same "hydrogen" than before. The electron remains "there" in both states: its magnetic moment gets to be either parallel or anti-parallel to that of the proton, that's all. Also note that the "mean lifetime of the excited state" of that electron which still remains bound to the proton (that is, of the "higher energy" moment of the electron) is "of around 10 million years." So all this is relevant for the observations of the light passing through the universe, that is, when we worry about the photons traveling the many light years of space, but not relevant when we worry about if electrons remain by the same atom or not.

Compared to all that, the ionizing radiation (UV and shorter, that is, measured in nanometers or smaller, and not in centimeters) does remove or add the electrons around, changing the properties of the atom, and as soon as the electron is being hit by the photon. That is why it is provably damaging.

Of course, there's never only one wavelength of the photons, it's always a distribution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight#/media/File:Solar_spe...

But that would still mean that the potential for the damage is order of magnitudes bigger by the "plain" light than by the infrared, micro, radio or 60 Hz waves. The photon energy is proportional to the frequency (i.e. more Hz more energy):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%E2%80%93Einstein_relati...

The authors observed nothing. There is no experiment and no result in the underlying paper. It's a low quality meta-review of literature.

This is old news. Electromagnetic waves have all kind of effects on cells. There is also a ton of very old literature out there (also, quite a bunch from China). Stuff like this and older: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3729999

In fact, a former friend had some good ideas regarding this and I wrote a patent for a start-up but then he pussied out.

What were the ideas behind the start-up? Very fascinated/curious

This is long time ago. I may not be bound by any NDA but I am still bound by my word. But I am sure any guy with a biotech background would get some ideas.

The main specific ("high value") target would not be of so much interest anymore today since this problem has been solved.

This idea is a plot device in Greg Bear's 'Darwin's Radio'. Good yarn and it dates OK.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64923.Darwin_s_Radio

What’s up with light having a helical shape and dna as well?

Light doesn't have a helical shape, it's just diagrammatically drawn that way to illustrate the orthogonality of fields.

It kinda does https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_angular_momentum_of_...

I didnt expect that! Interesting that there are even telecommunication experiments with "circular polarized" light. It still seems most light has no circular polarization though and it can't supercoil like DNA either, unless guided through a coiled fiber or something.

I think most light has some circular polarisation component. Also, modern 3d films use clockwise and anticlockwise polarised light to project the left and right images.

That's the shape of a light beam, which can be arranged anyway you like.

It’s not any way. You are very restricted to either a helix or a disk.

Well, there are things such as Airy beams - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airy_beam - I am not sure they fit a helix or disk that well.

So there isn't going to be any noise or interference in this electric field?

A shot in the dark: it’s characteristic of a complex exponential function ergo the trigonometrical nature of waveforms in time. (Euler’s Formula and all that Jazz)

I am inclined to think of both as communication signals.

I believe that that is the case, yes.

A helix is a quaternion.

>A helix is a quaternion.

Thanks for that observation. You have given me yet another way to look at quaternions. If you take the axis vector and the rotation and consider them combined, yep, is a helix.

Yup. They are quite a beast. The next step is dual quaternions which correspond to screws.

In that case, I could really do with a dual quaternion.

It's very obvious why it works like an antenna. It is unlikely that it should not

I used to have no issues at all with EMF; not that I was very healthy, but I didn't feel any effects. Then I stopped entirely for six months while I lived in an ashram out in nowhere doing Yoga all day.

And sure enough, after coming back I could barely do 10 minutes with my laptop on a wireless network before feeling sick for hours. These days, I don't even use a cell phone unless I absolutely have to; and I only use wired technology at home. Working in an office or spending a lot of time in cities is not even on the radar.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I see people raving about their AirPods online, walking around all day with wireless antennas in your ears looks like suicide from here.

So; there goes the karma, I guess. I am painfully aware this is not a very popular perspective, but it's my authentic experience and this is my Internet as much as anyone else's.

Edit: See, I told you. Keep chasing your tails then, I don't care. It's evolution in action.

Do you have a lawyer yet to sue the ashram? You were fine before and after spending six months there you have a debilitating disease. Clearly there is a causal relationship.

Unfortunately there hasn't been much legitimate study into this area, in part likely because there seem to be very few who are sensitive enough to 1) notice it, and 2) for it to bother them significantly. I have found people who just from talking to them, based on their life experiences, predicted they would be very sensitive to EMFs - and then upon shielding their laptop temporarily they could notice the difference; I do want to do blind studies related to this to dispel naysayers (who also don't have proof to the contrary).

>Unfortunately there hasn't been much legitimate study into this area

What would be your take on studies such as these two? -

Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity: A Systematic Review of Provocation Studies

https://insights.ovid.com/crossref?an=00006842-200503000-000...

Radiofrequency electromagnetic field exposure and non-specific symptoms of ill health: A systematic review

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001393510...

edit - they were picked purely as being the first two I came across in a very quick search. It doesn't seem as though research is that thin on the ground.

Thanks for linking those - I'll add them to bookmarks for when I have a chance to dive into this all more seriously.

I'd like to ask you though what experiences you have with developing your own self-awareness, introspection, etc?

If you can really sense EM fields of that kind without knowing that they are there, (a double blind experiment) then I believe there is a lot of money to be made.

Edit: apparently the most famous, Randi’s million dollar prize has ended, but I’m sure there are others.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Dollar_Paranorma...

This sounds relatively simple to test.

Get a laptop, write a script to randomly enable/disable wi-fi every $timeinterval (and log whether or not it was enabled). (Also need to block the taskbar icon, somehow... can probably just hide it.)

If 10 minutes of Wi-Fi being on is enough to cause noticeable symptoms, it should be quite easy to prove that - if you can successfully determine whether or not Wi-Fi is on, better than chance, you have one heck of a significant result! You could save lots of people, most likely, from nasty symptoms

And if not... well, you have options there too.

(Of course, you have to make sure you get enough trials- and fix it ahead of time, can't just stop when you see a significant result!)

For myself, it's the electronics in the base of a laptop that bothers me most that I must shield from - and I use a wireless keyboard to keep my hands off of the keyboard of the laptop, otherwise my hands start to hurt very quickly. I don't appear to be sensitive enough to sense interference or sensitivity to wi-fi etc, or it's too subtle compared to stronger electrical pollution, so I just can't perceive it.

That sounds far more ergonomic than electromagnetic or possibly temperature sensitivity. If that was the case then the wireless keyboard should be even worse.

I found at times switching to a non flat keyboard helped when they were starting to bother me.

No, this isn't an ergonomic issue - though yes, my shoulders are relaxed with the keyboard on my lap.

Also, wifi would be far less of a strength of EMF than whatever is being emitted from the laptop base - so I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that wifi would be worse.

Edit: For anyone wondering how I know this, I can rest my hands where I have my laptop, however if I have the EMF shield/cover over the base, then my hands don't start to hurt when resting them.

What are the typical radiated power levels from a modern laptop over 20kHz-5.8GHz, excluding Wi-fi and other radios? Does anyone have any references to share, such as E/H spectrums of a typical modern laptop, which has gone through EM compliance testing?

I was able to find one stumbling around google, if anyone else is interested. Lenovo X1 G3 from Sporton[1]. And a less comprehensive report from Intek, for 2016 random brand convertible [2].

[1]: https://fccid.io/2AJN7-TP00089ASI

[2]: https://fccid.io/2AAWC-ELL1102

Did you do anything to confirm it was EMF/Wifi?

Like moving further away because E/M strength falls off with the square of the distance.

Perhaps your laptop screen has developed a flicker, which gives you a headache from long use? Perhaps your eyesight or room lighting has changed so the contrast now strains your eyes?

Perhaps your study room now has a bunch of cars parking outside, and is filling with fumes, or there's a gas leak in your house, or a bit of heating/melting plastic somewhere releasing fumes?

Perhaps you're returning with a lot of apprehension, and getting a bunch of stress just sitting down to rejoin "work" and getting a lot of stress-related muscle / skeletal tension and gut upset? Perhaps it's a correlation - you make coffee and sit down to work, but it's the coffee you're not adjusted to anymore?

The world is an electric place - homes run mains electric cables all around, the atmosphere is filled with radio and TV and satellite transmissions, things like streetlights are quite electrically noisy, neighbours with wifi is common. A "good" signal strength might be in the region of -30 to -65dbm, or 0.000001 Watts to 0.0000000003 Watts at the receiver. Compare that one way with a 1KW electric heater - this is a lot weaker. Compare it another way to the way you can turn a radio or TV on and pick up strong signals which are always around and going through you - but I have no idea how the signal strength compares.

I appreciate your analysis. To contrast this, simply to bring everything into a larger perspective: we developed in a natural world without all of this electrical pollution. And as your questions suggest, it is very difficult to pinpoint what any one cause may be, including what state of health a person is currently in - and whether that is perhaps making them hypersensitive, likewise it could be a 'skill' or sensitivity they developed and can feel only in specific contexts which would further make testing it difficult.

>we developed in a natural world without all of this electrical pollution.

That big glowy thing in the sky might disagree.

It's clear that people's understanding of EMFs is low overall based on comments like this - where the presence of the sun and other natural levels of EMFs that make it through our atmosphere at different quantities, at different times, etc is being compared as equal to say electrical power lines, screens/monitors, CPUs, etc; it's naive.

Do you think that there is something qualitatively different between electromagnetic fields based on whether the source is produced by humans? Of course they can be directly compared, the field doesn't give a shit what made it.

There are lots of factors that make it different. The most all-or-nothing version of it would be to realize biologic material will burn up if you're right next to the sun, and you won't be impact by the sun "at all" if you're in a lead container that's thick enough (a faraday cage blocking EMFs).

Yes, the Milky Way does ping us with a pretty good shot of microwaves when it's above the horizon, even when we are where its visible light is not visible because of light pollution.

It's mostly wireless antennas, from my experience. Distance helps a lot. It's not like I was secretly wishing for this to happen. It sucks enough without having people spitting and laughing at you to mask their own ignorance.

>I only use wired technology at home.

Do you shield all the wires in your house? Any powerline ethernet adaptors will be spamming radio noise everywhere. They are a real headache for ham radio enthusiasts.

Also, don't unroll sellotape. Is a wideband source that emits from microwave RF, right through the visible spectrum, all the way up to x-rays.

I think there's an element of accumulative and quantity/volume effect with EMF sensitivity, so perhaps not having heavily shielded wires is necessary; the arrangement of the wires could also have an impact as to whether they create a closed faraday cage or not.

I think there is a lot of psychological stuff at play if you only feel it off things you associate with electricity, but don't get it from unrolling sellotape.

Hm, I'm not sure about sellotape for myself - however there certainly are a wide range of EMFs and electrical (static or otherwise) to test for.

Breaking up various rocks is a good one. You can get all sorts of RF emissions doing that.

But then, you have no idea who I am or what level of introspection I'm capable of. Assuming thousands of people are just imagining it because the people who sell the crap and their hangarounds told you so doesn't make you look very smart.

I really don't think it was the manufacturers of radio equipment that have been informing me about the radio emissions of sellotape. It was an aside in an article about research into making x-ray images with sellotape as the source, so if radio manufacturers and their 'hangarounds' (whatever they might be) did smuggle that in, they are getting very subtle with their propaganda.

> Also, don't unroll sellotape. Is a wideband source that emits from microwave RF, right through the visible spectrum, all the way up to x-rays.

Wow, how does this work? I mean in terms of the mechanism(s) that cause it.

You mention it goes right through the visible spectrum. Does this mean I could create circumstances that would allow me to see the effect in the dark?

>Wow, how does this work? I mean in terms of the mechanism(s) that cause it.

Is called triboluminescence and is caused by the breaking of chemical bonds through mechanical action.

>Does this mean I could create circumstances that would allow me to see the effect in the dark?

Yes. Just unroll sellotape in the dark and look at the line where it is peeling. You will see flashes of light along the line where it is separating apart.

Also, while you do get the effect with normal sellotape, I have found that decent duct tape works particularly well if you want to see the effect a bit brighter.

I upvoted you - in part because I don't believe in downvotes, however also because I share a similar sensitivity to EMFs. I used to be much more sensitive, hypersensitive, to EMFs including magnetic fields. Now in order to use a laptop I put a protective cover over the main part of it, and I use a wireless keyboard; if I would keep my hands over the laptop keyboard - where the underlying electronics are - then my hands will start to hurt almost immediately and continue to hurt for a length dependent on how long I've kept them above. I have other related experiences to sensitivity, and hypersensitivity: in my early 20s I have audiograms showing I could hear at 0 Dbs at all frequencies, and another one showing I could hear at -14 Dbs at certain frequencies (the sound equipment couldn't test for lower than that). Laptop screens still do bother me, however magnitudes less than the CPU etc; I have found other people who are as sensitive.

Perhaps a few odd questions for you: 1) do you or did you used to eat wheat (maybe before the ashram?), 2) did you ever have ear infections as a child, were they painful at all?

Feel free to email your answers matt@engn.com

And no doubt the mob will punish you for it. Still, thanks for showing some courage and integrity, it's rare in these times.

Yep, started getting red itchy patches on my palms from resting them on the laptop so I moved to a stationary setup.

I used to eat meat and processed crap, until I stopped I had issues with wheat. Now that I'm on a vegan organic diet I have no issues. Could be that eating meat and poison messed up my intestines to the point where wheat became a problem.

The only weird thing with my hearing that I know of is that I'm missing a band of frequencies entirely. I don't have a good explanation for that one. I have better directional hearing than most, but difficulties following conversations in noisy environments.

The thing is, I'm pretty sure the sensitivity isn't the actual problem. As long as I keep myself out of harms way; I feel better than I ever did before, and it keeps improving.

The problem is that we've built a society on top of technology that's harmful to humans, despite all sorts of warnings along the way.

>The only weird thing with my hearing that I know of is that I'm missing a band of frequencies entirely. I don't have a good explanation for that one.

That's normal hearing loss. You'll have damaged or be missing some stereocilia of that resonant length.

Buy the book "Hearing Equals Behaviour: Updated and Expanded" (is on Amazon) if you want to learn more about sound and hearing, and things like hypo-sensitivity. Physical damage is certainly a possibility, however your statement of "that's normal hearing loss" is ill informed/ignorant and/or arrogant; that fits with your other responses in this thread, so it's not surprising.

>your statement of "that's normal hearing loss" is ill informed/ignorant and/or arrogant

Frequencies going missing is a completely and utterly standard symptom of normal hearing loss.

Yes, I said "physical damage is certainly a possibility" before pointing out that there are other ways a person can have/developed a hypo-sensitivity to certain frequencies, which you'll find out in more detail if you read the book I referenced above.

I just looked up the book and the auditory integration training it promotes. Getting a very strong smell of woo from the whole thing. Do you make any money from it?

>The American Academy of Pediatrics and three other professional organizations consider it an experimental procedure. The New York State Department of Health recommends that it not be used to treat young children with autism.[3] The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has banned the Audiokinetron, the original device used to perform AIT, from importation into the U.S. due to lack of evidence of medical benefit.[1] The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association has concluded that AIT has not met scientific standards for safety.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_integration_training

No, I don't make money off of it - however I have benefit greatly from it myself, and I saw it greatly benefit others. In my early 20s I had developed a severe hypersensitivity to sound (hyperacusis) after being prescribed a medication. Audiograms that followed showed that I could hear at 0 Dbs across all frequencies, and a later one showed many that I could hear below 0 Dbs, and a few at -14 Dbs (the equipment couldn't check lower than that). The AIT sound therapy undid all of that (and more, however you're not a receptive audience I care to share that with/spend the effort writing it out here to you).

Although I appreciate skepticism, your level of research you're presenting is fairly shallow and so I don't really feel like engaging further with you right now. Once again, based on your other arrogant answers, it's not surprising you'd get a "strong smell of woo" from it. The process of knowledge spreading through society takes time, it takes time for things become mainstream. Another example I'll bring up related to knowledge taking time getting to mainstream, with more concrete biological evidence available to reference (as well as concepts already having been in society for a long time) is related to stem cells/regenerative medicine. Stem cells will heal injuries, regenerate tissue. Even though this is the case, assuming an evolved process is used (meaning proper/adequate training etc) my physician absurdly still didn't believe that the impact I had personally to treat pain had healed anything or would be permanent; and that's primarily because he hadn't encountered anyone who had had went for a stem cell treatment before, even though there have been doctors doing it and evolving the process for 18 years now - and from doctors doing it, they have said it likely won't become mainstream for perhaps even 15 more years. Anyway, I'm writing this out more for my benefit since I don't think you'll actually understand the connection I'm trying to make. P.S. The US had stem cell research ban for a long time. Also, that Wiki URL has a surprisingly scarce/limited amount of information on it. Once again, I'll refer you to the book, Hearing Equals Behaviour.

>Although I appreciate skepticism

Well, this gave me a laugh at least.

Glad you at least have a sense of humour, even if perhaps your critical thinking is lacking - it's likely you're just not motivated or interested enough in the topic to be able to have a deeper conversation around it, yet still replying as if you're somehow an expert on it or more knowledgable/experienced about it than I am.

My sense of humour does keep me going.

I assume you may have found me to be acerbic so far, given your repetitive comments on what you suppose to be my character. I apologise for this, I just get very prickly around woo, having friends who are now dead because of it.

Now you may get upset at me calling this woo.

So lets look at the website of the AIT institute (https://www.aitinstitute.org) and see what they claim AIT is a medical treatment for.

So, here is their list of things that they say AIT can treat; ADHD, Aggression, Anxiety, APD - Auditory Processing, Apraxia, Aspergers Syndrome, Autism, Brain Injury, Depression, Developmental Delays, Down's Syndrome, Dysgraphia, Dyslexia, Echolalia, Head Banging, Head Injury, Hyperactivity, Hyperacute Hearing, Hyperlexia, Language Disorder, Learning Disabilities, Oppositional Defiance, Pervasive Dev. Delay, Reading Challenges, Sensory Processing, School Behavior, School Performance, Sound Sensitivity, Speech and Language, Speech Delay, Stroke, Stuttering, Tinnitus, Vaccine Injury, and last but not least, the Vestibular System.

I must say, that is quite the array. I pointed my bullshit detector at it and the needle fell off.

You have said repeatedly on here that I am ill informed, arrogant and ignorant. That is ok, you are fully entitled to that opinion.

Especially since I think that you help to tend the horse of Pestilence as a side gig.

Now please have a lovely day, and do try to get through it without feeding people any more erroneous nonsense.

edit - Been poking through that site a bit more and I just saw the list of links to things they consider related. Is all homeopathy and antivaxx shit. These are dangerous bastards. In all seriousness, please stop promoting them.

Starbeast. I really understand you my friend. I agree with you.. i am also hypercausis and it is severe. Can you tell me what type of stem cells you had and how much you are improved? Can you tell you are cured? I believe stems are very strong. People dont agree with me.. i have found your comment and i was suprised someone got this.. how is your hypercausis now? Thanks

Hi mate. Sorry this was very complicated english for me, pls forgive me. I couldnt understand the topic. Did you get stem cell and greatly improved? Thanks

Hi loceng. I am glad you got better from severe hypercausis. I was thinking no cure for it.. i mean maybe we cannot call it cure but lets say treatment.. can you please tell me what type of sten cells you got and how much better you are now?do you have middle ear problems now and any sensitivity? Can you love totally normal? Thanks

I seem to have a troll or two following me around downvoting me, likewise people who lack a critical mind and compassion will impulse downvote things that seem kookie to them - simply because it's outside their realm of experiences.

The reason I asked about wheat is that it acts like an opiate for some people, and so if you consumed it most of your life and then stopped - I theorize, in part, that your sensitivity level and nervous system set its baseline having developed with that numbing aspect of the opiate - and now without that numbing your nervous system is hypersensitive.

So you did or didn't have any ear infections? :P

Re: Missing band - you could be hypo-sensitive at a specific frequency or range. You can do an audiogram to check for hearing imbalances, checking how LOW of a Dbs you hear at different frequencies in each ear; at different/certain frequencies of imbalance you can predict with 100% accuracy a set of behaviours that person may have - there's a book on Amazon called "Hearing Equals Behaviour: Updated and Expanded" if interested in reading more about it; there's a sound therapy to help the brain unlock the sensory imbalances, letting/helping/allowing it find equilibrium again.

Not thinking the sensitivity is a problem in itself, the lack of awareness and disconnect that many people seem to have is an issue; and some of us who seem to be more sensitive, perhaps from a natural fragility or due to whatever environmental or developmental circumstances, are more impacted by EMFs.

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