Does laptop, cell phone radiation cause brain tumour?
By Femi Kusa
Largely overshadowed by COVID-19, the number of brain tumour cases may be growing in Nigeria. Doctors have not said what exactly may be causing the upsurge. Medicine’s lay folks who comment on brain tumour occurences in other parts of the world suspect many culprits, including electro pollution especially from over use of laptops and cell phones.
The arguments are unending. While some people believe cell phone radiation is too weak to ionize or dismantle molecules in the brain, thereby causing genetic changes which may lead to brain tumours and even cancer, reference is made to a study in which the natural lifestyle of honey bees in a specific colony were altered by magnetic radiation in the environment. A medical doctor in Nigeria told me last year that a fruiting mango tree near his office became unfruitful after an internet service provider mounted a signal boosting dish nearby.
In Enugu, a medical facility reporting pediatric cases said an average of three patients were seen yearly between 2007 and 2014, but the number jumped to eight cases a year between 2014 and 2017 and, from there, to 54 by September 26 in 2018, the following year. Researchers at the department of pathology and forensic medicine and the department of oncology of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), published a study on January 9, 2015 in the Pan African Medical Journal (ISSN 1937-8086) titled spectrum of intra-cranial tumours in a territory healthcare facility. The researchers were Sunday Sokunle Soyemi and Olugbenga Olayide Oyewole. They discovered 56 cases of inter-cranial tumours in 12,610 biopsies involving patients of who average 36 years. The male-female ratio was close at ratio 1:1.1. The tumours did not spread to the brain. Astrocytomas, one of the three commonly sighted brain tumours was prevalent, corroborating patterns in many studies.
From Ibadan, a recent publication on pediatric tumour showed a six fold increase from 2.2 percent to 12.9 percent over 50 years. The publication said children accounted for 37percent of all “CMS neoplasms at our centre”. It added:”A similar trend can be inferred for other centres in Nigeria.” The researchers were Chika Ndubuisi, Wilfred Mezue, Martin Nzegwu and Samuel Ohaegbulam. John Richard OMA, commenting, said:
Studies seen in other parts of the country, showed age range between 33 to 50 years. The mean age for children was eight years and this is similar to that reported by Idowu et al. In this study, meningiomas accounted for the most frequent diagnosis for all intracranial tumours. At 41 percent followed by pituitary Adenomas 22 percent and gliomas at 20percent. The high prevalence of meningiomas in our study compare with the findings of Idowu et al , Ibebuike et al in Johannesburg, SouthAfrica, with both reported meningiomas as the most common brain tumour in their studies
Symptoms
According to www.mayo clinic.org, the symptoms include
“New onset or change in pattern of headaches, headaches that become more frequent and more severe, unexplained nausea or vomiting, vision problems such as blurred vision, double vision or loss of peripheral vision; graduation loss of sensation in an arm or leg, difficulty with balance, speech difficulties, confusion in everyday matters, personality or behaviour changes, seizures especially in someone who doesn’t have a history of seizures, hearing problems”
Science and medicine are still at their wits end about what causes brain cancer. But several studies have been suggesting some risk factors . Some brain cancers are more prevalent in certain races. Some sufferers were genetically predisposed. There are all sorts of genes in the body, including tumour suppressor genes. These suppressor genes may be functioning suboptimally or a good number of their population may have been wiped out or altered by DNA changes, which may occur for many reasons. Dangerous chemicals in the environment are suspected culprits as well. So is HIV disease. Ionising radiations are not left out. They damage and dismantle molecules. Well known examples were the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in the second world war (1939-45) and the Chernobyl radiation disaster in April 1986 which traversed some countries, contaminating water, vegetation, poultry, cattle and humans. Many farm animals and food crops were destroyed to avert human contamination. Outside ionizing radiations, CT scans, x rays, radiotherapy are suspected to be contributory factors. Nowadays, overweight and obesity are being evaluated for possible roles.
About two decades ago, medical investigations diagnosed some tumours in the brain of one of my high school class mates who had been complaining about persistent headaches. When the scalp was opened up, the surgeons found far more tumours than they thought their skills and equpment could cope with, and closed it up. He died soon after. That was soon after the cell phone arrived in Nigeria with all the controversy about whether over exposure to it was safe for the brain, eyes, ears and the nervous system. The controversy spins back and forth arguments. In such a situation where there is still no settled opinion, I like to pitch my tent on the side of caution. When Nigerian studies suggest that more children are developing brain tumours,I wondered if there was any correlation with the fact that many adults yield to the pressure of infants and children who also want to speak with Auntie A or Uncle Z. These infants and children hold the phone too close to the ear or directly on it. Yet the energy of the phone is microwaving. There have been many videos made of how the brain cells are “cooked” or “microwaved” and how they “struggle” to “heal” themselves after a phone conversation. What if the intervals between conversations are too short and they never really completely recover, losing a few cells now and then or suffering instalmental damage?
Laptops
The spur for this column is a post I received from a member of my chat group on Green Pasture Herbs. An avid reader of this column, and an unrelenting advocate of Alternative Medicine, Mr Rafiu Dotun Odunaye wrote…
“Most of your kids will be attending online classes and addicted to gadgets, please be very careful. I am writing about the current happening.
My very close, best friend’s younger sister son is studying
12th standard. A very bright student from his childhood,and only son to my friend’s sister.
His online classes starts daily at 10am so laptop is on by 9am. Due to peer school pressure with the online classes going on, he used to either be on laptop or mobile at least till 10 pm daily, No physical activity at all, no one to play due to COVID-19 fear and being a single child in their family.
On October 27, 2020, morning, he was saying he was not feeling well. Two days prior to that, he had mild pain on his left hand. No one took that seriously. On Tuesday, he was saying he did not want to attend on line classes and wanted to be with parents’. Parents were surprised and asked him to rest. He tried to sleep but was not able to, he asked his father not to go to the office. His father asked if we should go to hospital, child said everywhere there is corona which hospital to go, I will be alright after a good sleep. He asked his father to go to work. He said he was very hungry and asked his mother to feed him dosa. He again tried to sleep but could not, then around afternoon, he called his father to come home immediately and take him to hospital. His father came home within 15 minutes and the son came and hugged him and said ‘take me to hospital’.
By the time he started the car, child collapsed. They rushed to a hospital 4 km away and doctor checked for pulse. It was not there. They tried CPR and the heart started to function. They took all scans and found the child was brain dead.They tried all medication till Saturday, October31, 2020 morning ,and finally decided to remove the ventilator.
He is now no more.
A case of Brain death
Pathetic thing is that hospital has handed over the body to police since the child was unconscious when brought to hospital and in his teens. They will hand over the body only after postmortem and corona test. So not sure if they would get it on October 31, 2020, or November 1,2020.
Doctor said this is 20th such case during
The past 20 days, Heavy usage of gadgets, radiation has affected the brain and stopped the supply of oxygen.
Use gadgets sparingly, avoid earphone/headset to the maximum extent possible. Humble request to all parents and guardians. Please take care of your kids, teenage boys, girls, ask them to read only hard copy books and no gadgets except for honeybees.
According to Nashaat El Halabi, Gaby Abou Haidar and Roger Achkar of the American University of Science and Technology reporting in www.researchgate.net:
“As many other species, honeybees are becoming extinct in the world; this phenomenon is called the Colony Collapse Disorder. Many reasons have been proven to be behind this environmental disaster like climate changes, pesticides, fungal pathogens and others, in addition to radiations generated by mobile phones, especially, since in recent years wild life has been exposed to microwaves and radio frequency’s radiation signals from various sources, including wireless phones. Bees have a specific organ for sensing magnetic forces, enabling them to navigate using their own compass. The claim of the research is that radiations generated by mobile phones are disturbing the life cycle of honeybees and affecting their reproduction system and honey producing. The research involves testing the behaviour of honeybees away from mobile phones, with a mobile phone in its standby mode and active communication mode. The results of the experiments verified that mobile phone affect the honeybees’ life system.
There is clear evidence that honeybees exposed to high or low energy fields or electro-magnetic radiations tend to suffer dramatic behavioral and physiological changes in both laboratory-and field-based experiments. Exposed honeybees showed increased aggressiveness, irritability and hyperactivity (Dalio, 2015; El Halabi et al., 2013; Kumar et al., 2011; Warnke, 1976), resulting in a premature swarming process (Favre, 2011). Cell phone radiations can alter even navigational skills of bees: numerous authors measured statistically significant decreases in the number of adult bees returning to their colonies under field conditions (Dalio, 2015; El Halabi et al., 2013 Ferrari, 2014; Sahib, 2011; Sharma and Kumar, 2010). …
… Exposed honeybees showed increased aggressiveness, irritability and hyperactivity (Dalio, 2015; El Halabi et al., 2013; Kumar et al., 2011; Warnke, 1976), resulting in a premature swarming process (Favre, 2011). Cell phone radiations can alter even navigational skills of bees: numerous authors measured statistically significant decreases in the number of adult bees returning to their colonies under field conditions (Dalio, 2015; El Halabi et al., 2013 Ferrari, 2014; Sahib, 2011; Sharma and Kumar, 2010). Several authors observed also that colonies exposed to electromagnetic pollution were subjected to a strong decline in their brood productivity with a reduction in egg laying rate of queen (Dalio, 2015; El Halabi et al., 2013 Sahib, 2011). …
… Cell phone radiations can alter even navigational skills of bees: numerous authors measured statistically significant decreases in the number of adult bees returning to their colonies under field conditions (Dalio, 2015; El Halabi et al., 2013 Ferrari, 2014; Sahib, 2011; Sharma and Kumar, 2010). Several authors observed also that colonies exposed to electromagnetic pollution were subjected to a strong decline in their brood productivity with a reduction in egg laying rate of queen (Dalio, 2015; El Halabi et al., 2013 Sahib, 2011). In addition, Kumar et al. (2011) and Kumar (2012) recorded a considerable increase in the concentration of biomolecules such as carbohydrates, proteins and lipids in the semen and a significant decrease in the activities of seminal enzymes in drones exposed to electromagnetic radiations from cell phones. …
… This research is a complementary process to a previous paper called ” The effect of cell phones radiations on the life cycle of honeybees ” , which has been published in July 2013 in proceeding of IEEE EUROCON 2013. It studies the effect of cell phones’ radiations on the life cycle of honeybees and demonstrates that mobile phones affect honeybees’ life system [3]. This project has great significance because honeybees are a very important part of the ecological system since they pollinate 80 percent of the flowering plants, which makes up the one third of what humans eat. …
… The first step in the study, described in the first paper written by the same authors [3], was to study the effect of mobile phones radiations on the life cycle of honey bees; the claim is that such radiations disturb honeybees’ life system and affect their reproduction and honey producing. In addition, a jammer was used to study the effect of mobile phones’ radiations of higher power. …
… The behaviour of bees was studied in three different settings: in their normal setting, which means without the presence of a mobile phone in the near vicinity, with the presence of a mobile phone operating in its standby mode, and finally in its active communication mode. Two hives were used, one as a reference hive which was not exposed to any mobile phones’ radiations, and the experimental hive that was exposed to these radiations [3]. The results of various experiments showed that honeybees in their normal case produced sounds at lower frequencies of around 450 Hz, and with lower intensity 0.3 normalised amplitude. …
… The sounds emitted by bees under the action of EMR were similar to those produced during swarming and nest abandonment (Favre, 2011); this indicates that bees perceive EMR as a danger or stress signal. Such changes in behaviour, and also the decline in queen fecundity and development of drone-only brood in irradiated colonies (Sharma and Kumar, 2010;Halabi et al., 2013) inevitably reduce the vitality and productivity of the honeybee colony. In some experiments (Kumar et al., 2011), both honey and beebread was completely absent in colonies by the end of EMR exposure”. …
Brain health
Like the heart, the brain hardly rests. In the process it produces dangerous substances called “free radicals” by products of its activities and is also hit by “free radicals” from inhailed air, food and water, and the waste products of germs and parasites which inhabit our bodies. Not only should we eliminate as many of these as possible, we should also eat for the health of our brain as we do for other organs such as the heart, kidneys, bowels, bones and joints, lungs the reproductive organs and even the skin, hair and nail. Many of us leave the brain out of our calculations. We also do not help our children who are overloaded with tasking unecessary education before their brains can adequately cope with it, especially in this generation of the laptop, cell phone and distance learning popularised by COVID-19 pandemic.
We cannot exhaust here the list of herbs or food supplies which energise the brain, make it function optimally , protect it against mishaps and rescue it from danger. I have not listened here in terms of proficiency but as I remember the ones which helped me out through about three decades of 18 hours of gruesome brain work everyday without brain or physical fatigue.
Magnesium is a gem. Insomniacs who have used it in cured form or in such supplements such as natural calm, perfect calm or ionic magnesium know its value for the brain and the nerves. Gotu Kola is reverred by Asians for longevity promoting qualities. It balances function of both the brain, a good value for not only restful peace and calm nerves but helpful in depression as well. Gingko biloba, like magnesium and gotu kola, reverses failing memory , empowers the brain to store more information, promotes blood circulation, like gotu , to the brain and within it, and to the eyes. It was originally called maiden hair because it made the hairs on the scalp of women grow long and well through support for blood circulation. Omega 3 fatty acid is indispensable for the brain, a fatty organ. It protects it against “rusting” and prevents cellular wall from penetration by unwholesome entities. Alpha Lpoic Acid (ALA), another antioxidant (“killer” of free radicals) is useful to the brain because it functions in both fluid and fat media, unlike some other antioxidants which work in one and not in the other. Grape Seed Extract easily crosses the blood-brain-barrier and is, therefore, more readily available than those antioxidants which cannot easily cross the buffer zone . LECITHIN is a purveyor of choline and inositol, two nutrients which keep brain cells on the go. That is not forgetting L-carnitine, mushrooms, vitamin D, vitamin A, C and E especially zinc, thealine and many more.