Cellphone Radiation May Protect Brain From Alzheimers 254
We've discussed cellphones and cancer many times. Here's a new angle: reader olddotter sends in a Reuters article suggesting that cellphone radiation may protect the brain from Alzheimer's disease. "At the end of that time, they found cellphone exposure erased a build-up of beta amyloid, a protein that serves as a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease. The Alzheimer's mice showed improvement and had reversal of their brain pathology..."
Mice (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe the mice that were talking on cell phones had a richer mental life, staving off the disease for reasons other than the radiation.
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Thank you! Thank you!
Finally, somebody has been able to point out that "correlation does not imply causation" without using that goddamn phrase.
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Actually, I think you wanted to say "Correlation does not equal causation"
Correlation often *implies* causation, especially in well designed and executed scientific studies that eliminate most other possible causes. Of course, implying it does not prove it - that is much harder.
Re:Mice (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mice (Score:5, Insightful)
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That remains to be seen.
When repeated in other labs by different researchers we can begin to talk of "proof".
Re:Mice (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe the mice that were talking on cell phones had a richer mental life, staving off the disease for reasons other than the radiation.
Nah. There was less amyloid because the mice unfortunately crashed their cars while talking on the cell phone and just died young.
Nothing to see here... move along.
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I don't know how much richer is thinking "Why does this box make noises like another mouse?"
And they'd have a less rich mental life if they're using GPS to find their cheese in the maze.
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Choice to Make (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Choice to Make (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe we've got it all wrong... Can alzheimers be the cure for cancer?
Re:Choice to Make (Score:5, Funny)
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Can alzheimers be the cure for cancer?
That's not far off being true.
http://www.healthcentral.com/alzheimers/news-456179-98.html [healthcentral.com]
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Cancer prevents alzheimer's.
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In other news, mice exposed to mobile phone radiation were found to have a lower IQs and squeak unnecessarily loudly about inane topics.
Re:Choice to Make (Score:4, Insightful)
That is entirely wrong. Alzheimers isn't the dissolving of brain tissue but growth of plaques, or at least correlated to it. Your analogy is not an oversimplification, but just a completely wrong description of what is happening. In fact, who is to say that the abnormal conditions presented by so much growth doesn't increase the likelihood of cancer and people just die too soon for it to be statistically signifigant. Please do not ever attempt to describe this disease again as you are not only misleading, but apparently compelling enough for an insightful mod.
Re:Choice to Make (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Choice to Make (Score:5, Interesting)
No correlation to cancer? That's not what studies [sciencedaily.com] are showing. I've also read that cell phones sitting in pockets have been connected to reduced sperm count.
Certainly, given the widespread use of mobile phones and their clear value to us, it would be quite earth-shattering to discover a clear and specific link between phones and cancer. However, at this point I've say the threat is likely quite minimal with moderate use. But mobile phones haven't been around nearly long enough for us to be able to gauge their effects on us. Wait until this generation starts aging; then we'll have a better indication of whether or not cell phones are a danger or not.
You seem fairly eager to believe one study over another simply because that one shows a positive side-effect. There's no reason why one study should be inherently more valid than the other, especially since many of these other studies have been conducted directly on humans.
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Also, as with tobacco, if it doesn't cause cancer in more than 50% of users, I'm less inclined to believe any study showing a correlation.
Re:Choice to Make (Score:4, Interesting)
Can someone email me a copy of the actual paper? I can't find it on the researcher's site.
Controlled according to what criteria? Did he account for possible exposure to agricultural carcinogens among rural users? Inferior access to health care there? Also, self-reported studies are inherently inaccurate: it'd be far better to go by reliable numbers involving actual cell phone usage records.
The researcher also mentioned that Israelis are particular heavy users of cell phones, implying that might be one reason he was able to produce results where others have failed. What about other reasons Israelis might be different, such as exposure to constant warfare, or dust from the Negev?
We shouldn't jump the gun on this study:
In short, given that cell phones are utterly important to our lives today, I'm going to have to see a lot more independent evidence before I even begin to suspect that they're actually dangerous.
Re:Choice to Make (Score:4, Informative)
Not to mention a Danish study covering over 400k people over periods of up to 12 years that showed no correlation at solid confidence intervals.
http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/98/23/1707
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Why would they cause cancer (any more than wifi/general EM radiation)? It's not ionising radiation as far as i know and short bursts of exposure to any sort of radiation is fine - people live in Chernobyl without any side effects and the background radiation level there is substantially above the norm.
Certainly this is an interesting study, but they chose a relatively small sample size and a pretty obscure cancer. Interestingly it IS NOT brain cancer, they state a 50% increased chance of salivary gland
Re:Choice to Make (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you understand the difference between EM radiation and particle radiation? Unfortunately the difference between the "radiation" fallout from nuclear weapons and disasters and the "radiation" from cell phones is lost on the media. Particle radiation is high-energy particles of matter, e.g. alpha particles, that smash into atoms and molecules and cause damage at the molecular level to your DNA.
EM radiation is pure emitted energy. Light is EM radiation. Heat is EM radiation. Microwaves and radio signals are EM radiation. The wavelength of cell phone radiation is so long (between 10 and 30 cm) that it is literally impossible for it to interact with single molecules and cause damage to your DNA. However, at that wavelength it can still transfer heat, like a microwave oven.
The notion that cell phone radiation causes cancer directly, as in through genetic damage, is ludicrous. It would only be able to cause cancer by causing localized heating of parts of your brain which may set into effect a cascade of effects that may manifest as cancer. However, I think this is unlikely.
As for sperm counts, I think carrying a cell phone in your pocket is about bad for your sperm count as would be carrying around one of those chemical warm packets or wearing tighter underwear--the extra heat is the only culprit.
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There's no reason why one study should be inherently more valid than the other, especially since many of these other studies have been conducted directly on humans.
Except this study is directly studying the problem by blasting rats with cell phone radiation and studying the effects. The study you cited was nothing more than a survey conducted on Israelis with tumors in their salivary gland. There is a HUGE difference.
The best you'll ever be able to claim with a survey is correlation, you cannot prove causation that way. However, you CAN prove causation with controlled experiments on rats, a-la TFA.
Again, one study is a group actually experimenting on rats, the othe
Re:Choice to Make (Score:4, Insightful)
This opposition to cell phones is part of a much larger Luddite movement today. From cell phones, to nuclear power, to vaccination, to practically any other field of science, we're seeing large numbers of people, honestly or not, yearn to return to a supposedly simpler, less mechanized time. The desire has been around as long as technology has, but the recent greatly-accelerated pace of progress has exacerbated the problem.
Unfortunately, we'll be stuck with these people until they die. It's "common sense" for them to opposite scary new devices with atoms and wavelengths and things, and "common sense" is something acquired early in childhood and immutable thereafter. The new generation of people growing up with these things will be much less susceptible to anti-technological fear mongering.
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Cell phones are not actually known to cause any health problems by any valid study . . .
Not quite right, but this fact shouldn't be abused by those claiming a health risk. If something is sufficiently studied, then there will always be outlier studies that got everything right but show the opposite results all the others. There are, in fact, a few well-run studies that show a correlation between health risks and cell phones, but these can be simply discounted against the overwhelming number of studies against.
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There are times when I do believe that there are people out there worried that any technology is going to turn around and bite them, are concerned that texting causes cancer of the thumbs, or that too much typing causes you to ingest fatal doses of plastics through your finger tips.
Are we paranoid yet?
Re:Choice to Make (Score:5, Funny)
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Not necessarily. I believe some people now living may reach a time when medicine conquers aging. I also believe I'm in this group, since several of my ancestors lived more than 100 years.
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RTFA Use the cell phone after onset of Alzheimer's.
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I'm thinking, cell phones good, Tesla coils better [vimeo.com]?
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Except that I've heard of numerous studies showing no link between cell phones and cancer, and no studies showing they do. From TFA:
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i wonder about a bigger question: does having a cell phone next to your head for a couple of hours per day affect your health? between studies saying that it does/not cause cancer and now this about effect on Alzheimer's, is it safe to say that having a phone to your head for X hours/day has some kind of effect? or have people accepted the fact that cells will somehow affect the brain or head, just not sure what the effect is?
Of course it must be true (Score:5, Funny)
Hello, Mickey? (Score:5, Insightful)
The results were a major surprise and open the possibility of developing a noninvasive, drug-free treatment for Alzheimer's, said lead author Gary Arendash of the University of South Florida.
He said he had expected cell phone exposure to increase the effects of dementia.
This is how science is SUPPOSED to work! But don't get your hopes up...
Many treatments that have shown promise in mice have had little effect on humans.
I wonder if this affects the non-Alzheimer's "senior moments" as my mother calls them? I wish they'd had cell phones when I was young! Now where'd I put that damned phone???
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I propose that scientists start working on making people more like mice.
Why not, politicians have already turned us into sheep. Most of us, anyway.
Fixing Forgetfull Grandma... (Score:5, Funny)
Duct Tape, check
Cell phones, check
So we should go buy a bunch of those pre-paid cell phones and duct tape them to grandma's head and hope to heck her memory gets better.
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Re:Fixing Forgetfull Grandma... (Score:5, Funny)
Now try keeping the mice warm (Score:2)
Maybe it was just the heat. Now try keeping the mice in warmer cages. If their autonomic systems tend to cool the brain, try drugs that tend to increase the temperature of the mouse. Maybe it's just the warm brain that does this. Tell gramps to wear a hat when he goes out. Tinfoil optional.
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tinfoil optional, but heat reflecting foil infused with mylar film is mandatory!
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Re:Now try keeping the mice warm (Score:4, Informative)
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Will scientists ever break out of the paywall system? Do they want to?
OT -- congratulations (Score:2, Insightful)
For all intents and purposes you have today's most annoying sig. Although I agree that "whom" shoud be deprecated.
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Well then! (Score:2)
Strapping the phones to my head as we speak, with each one set to forward to the next. I look forward to your calls.
scary (Score:5, Interesting)
This proves that cellphone radiation actually interacts with matter in the brain... which is something to be afraid of, in my opinion.
Re:scary (Score:5, Insightful)
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Nono, this is GOOD effects, not bad ones. Cellphone radiation has no bad effects, none whatsoever, but it has lots of beneficial effects. While we're on the subject, I highly recommend the Revigator [orau.org] for greater health.
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I have some questions. First, the nasty one: Who funded this study? Telecoms companies?
Next, assuming that radiation helps, why does it help? Could it be vibration? Would getting a massaging bed work as well? Thinking its more like the way blue and UV light helps against acne.
Re:scary (Score:5, Insightful)
Studies show that mouse heads are much smaller than human heads, therefore they are getting a much larger dose to their brain, for a given external exposure.
Re:scary (Score:5, Funny)
[Citation needed]
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Yeah, when I went to Disney, those mouse heads were huge!
How's that for anecdotal evidence?
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Does alzheimers affect one specific, more central part of the brain? Do most brain cancers spring up more from some regions of the brain than others?
Meningiomas are brain cancers from the meninges, the covering of the brain, so I'd assume that if cell phone radiation could penetrate through the skull and -if- it did lead to increased risk of cancer, meningiomas are one it could cause. On the other hand, my understanding of adult neuron production is that they come from deeper in the brain, by the ventricl
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"It heats water molecules very well, even at the center of an object like a potato."
Here's a fun experiment. Go get a microwave bean burrito, gas station varieties are the best. Come on, I'll wait. Got it? Put it in the microwave and cook it for however long it says to on the package. Pull it out. Touch the center, odds are it's literally ice cold. Best results if you go 10-15s under the time recommended, then you can get some nice ice crystals in the middle of your warm gas station bean burrito.
Microwaves
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From Wikipedia:
A common misconception is that microwave ovens cook food from the "inside out". In reality, microwaves are absorbed in the outer layers of food in a manner somewhat similar to heat from other methods. The misconception arises because microwaves penetrate dry non-conductive substances at the surfaces of many common foods, and thus often induce initial heat more deeply than other methods. Depending on water content, the depth of initial heat deposition may be several centimetres or more with mi
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As far as the Faraday cage experiment goes, (a) I'll bet you have not actually tried this, and (b) the cell phone can work
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We've have known for years that non-ionizing radiation can affect biochemical processes (e.g., enzyme kinetics), and can have physiological effects (e.g., suppression of melatonin production, possibly via the same mechanism).
I think sometimes people with physics or engineering backgrounds make the assumption that we understand all the rules and therefore can say with authority "X can't happen". That's rarely true. Being unable to explain a phenomenon may be cause for dismissing it as spurious in some fiel
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This proves that cellphone radiation actually interacts with matter in the brain
So does learning. The question is whether the interaction is helpful, harmful, or neutral.
Easily explained (Score:3, Insightful)
Most people who die at 50 didn't have alzheimers.
Re:Easily explained (Score:5, Insightful)
That's an interesting point. As we conquer the lower hanging medical fruit, and prevent the things that used to kill people younger (disease, malnutrition, gum disease, accidents etc), a higher proportion of the people that DO die will be dying because of old age, or of diseases which only tend to affect older people.
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I think we're already seeing that. The average life expectancy is much longer than it used to be. Go way back and I'd assume infectious diseases, wars, and animal attacks would be the primary causes of death. Today it's heart disease, automobile accidents, and cancer.
I'm guessing if we cure cancer and heart disease, we'll be seeing a lot more neurological diseases though. I'd expect there's some natural upper limit to how old your brain can be before it's toast, and I'd expect that we aren't really livi
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FWIW, you're already seeing this. We've gotten good at treating heart disease. Still the #1 or 2 killer but we're pushing deaths into the 70's-90's instead of the 50-60 age level. Cancer, not so much, but still some progress in certain cancers.
Go to a nursing home, any nursing home. There are two broad reasons why people are there - neurologic insult of various flavors (stroke, the various dementi
If you give a mouse a cell phone, (Score:5, Funny)
He's going to ask for a Bluetooth headset.
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When he drinks the latte, the caffeine will make his heartbeat clearly audible. The thumping sound will remind him that he needs to burn a new rap CD for the car.
This sounds like a Simpson's parody (Score:2)
My girlfriend (Score:2)
Quick! (Score:4, Funny)
Everyone mail their old cell phones to Sir Terry Pratchett, stat!
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With that much radiation, maybe he'll develop magical powers and finally get in to Unseen University.
A thought that crossed my mind about EM radiation (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A thought that crossed my mind about EM radiati (Score:5, Insightful)
Why accept this, but not the original arguments regarding microwave radiation?
Because this is based on a scientific, reproducible study that shows an actual effect, whereas, the claims that there were negative effects were contradicted by all of the scientific, reproducible experiments that were run to test them.
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And seemingly the biggest problem compared to other EM-radiation is that your body simply cannot recognise the "new kinds" of radiation it's exposed to.
You mean the "new kinds" which have existed since the dawn of time? You realize we are pummeled with various wavelengths of EM radiation from all over the universe, not the least of which come from our own Sun, right? The Earth's magnetic field keeps out the nastiest high-frequency stuff for the most part, but the lower level stuff gets through. That's how radio telescopes work - they grab the sub-visible EM radiation from all over the galaxy that hits the planet and inundates us with EM radiation.
Hey gu
Re:A thought that crossed my mind about EM radiati (Score:5, Interesting)
The argument, as I understand it, is that cancer is caused by mutated DNA, and DNA cannot be mutated by radiation that's too weak to break chemical bonds. Since cell phone radiation doesn't break bonds, it doesn't cause cancer. If Alzheimer's is caused by something other than mutated DNA, the argument doesn't apply.
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As someone who doubts cellphones cause statistically significant brain damage, I also doubt it causes statistically significant improvements. Naturally, the science will speak for itself either way.
Certainly similar radiation at much higher doses will have an effect. Also, keep in mind mice have much smaller heads. A cellphone would have a much stronger effect on a mouse as the radiation will far more easily penetrate the skull and brain. In humans, much of the strength is lost before the signal makes it to
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Re:A thought that crossed my mind about EM radiati (Score:5, Informative)
Why accept this, but not the original arguments regarding microwave radiation?
Because there isn't any evidence that cellphone use is harmful. Conjecture is useless until tested.
So, if you're over 60... (Score:2)
...spend a few minutes each day with your head in the microwave.
Several ways radiation is helpfull (Score:2)
So in effect, our cells have evolved to suicide if they dectect mutations. Tumers and many other problems are caused when
Oh Yes! (Score:3, Funny)
Unlimited minutes... (Score:2)
Ironic (Score:5, Funny)
So, cell phones protect from alzheimers? The condition that (among other effects) causes people to forget things ? I find that quite ironic, considering that it seems 99% of people forget how to drive when they're on one.
P.S. At least I think that's irony. Every time I think I've got it down, someone shows me a new rule for what is or isn't irony. My apologies to the grammar Nazis in advance if I have it wrong.
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By yr 0wn l0g1c, praps 1 shud p0st l13k th15 - lulz!!
Then again, perhaps I should stick to using proper spelling and grammar. That way it will be easy for you to work out what I mean.
Those of us who sometimes feel compelled to point out errors are only doing so because we love our language. I have no objection whatsoever to the constant evolution of language, but aberrations such as "irregardless" make me wince. When a word is used to mean the exact opposite of what it says, this can only cause confusion. I
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Fundamentally, I see nothing wrong with your string of l33t-speak (or text-speak as the kids are calling it now) as long as its meaning is unambiguous.
I see nothing fundamentally wrong with it either, providing it's used in a context where it's understood and therefore accepted. Someone texting their friends using it is fair enough (using "proper" language might even be frowned upon by one's peers). Using it on your resumé just means you're unlikely to get a job.
You could spell every other word in your post wrong, and I would probably still understand it, but it might take me rather longer and my opinion of you would be consequentially lower. If it w
MRI effect? (Score:3, Interesting)
When my wife got an MRI when as part of the process to determine if she had Alzheimer's Disease, which turned out to be the case, she experienced a clearing of her mind during the MRI which lasted for about a day. When I reported this to the neurologist, she frowned upon it. I wonder if anybody has reported this effect, or whether it is even a real effect.
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Yes, but if you modulate the frequency of the photons and reverse the polarity of the Neutron flow you can design the wave to only affect the plaques that build up in the brains Alzheimer patients. Either that or turn your forgetful grandfather into a mutant that looks like a Dalek when he goes in for his Alzheimer treatment.
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I know you are joking but there's actually something called photobiomodulation [wikipedia.org] that has been shown to prevent blinding by methanol poisoning and speed up healing (I believe at the same vibration rate as a cat purring).
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The OP is a MOUSE you insensitive clod!
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Exactly, which is how the cell phone protects you from Alzheimer's. You die in a horrific car crash at 18.
SCIENCE!!!!
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But once you have it, Parkinson's increases the chances of your being burned by the latte.
Easy call (Score:4, Funny)
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In what way?