Tuesday, November 03, 2009

EP Woo: Electrohypersensitivity Syndrome

Do you have headaches, difficulty concentrating, insomnia, heart irregularities and headaches, fatigue, poor short-term memory, difficulty sleeping, skin problems, tinnitus, nausea, and dizziness? You might have electrohypersensitivity syndrome, a variant of "cell-tower blues!"

Yep, conclusive data gleaned from a study of twenty-five whole patients out of 100 to be studied has discovered at least one example of a "DECT" (aka Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications in the 1.9-2.4GHz band) cell phone causing increased heart rate and irregularities!

Never mind that actual signals are not included in the data, but only a graph of "R-R intervals."

(Um, in case you were wondering, noise will cause variations in surface EKG signals and shortening of RR intervals.)

But don't pay attention to details. It is now clear that electrohypersensitivity syndrome clearly affects a significant proportion of America's teenagers...

-Wes

3 comments:

Jay said...

I hope all your readers recognize your sarcasm.

This looks like a load of crap dressed up in a pseudoscientific fashion.

I'm afraid that this could get some traction with the lay press as it is going out on the Reuters wire. To the untrained eye, it may look plausible. I'd love to see the ECG data.

Wouldn't it be great to go to the conference in Golden, Colorado this weekend and pick this apart? This would be a fun crowd to check out. Wear your tin foil hat.

Jay

DrWes said...

Jay-

Wouldn't it be great to go to the conference in Golden, Colorado this weekend and pick this apart?

I'll save my money, thank you.

Anonymous said...

Aw, too bad this syndrome isn't real. I have insomnia, SVT, tinnitus, eczema, and seborrheic dermatitis; if electrohypersensitivity syndrome were real, I could cure all these things by ditching my cell phone.