http://www.who.int/peh-emf/publications/facts/fs296/en/
This leads people to think that this means that no-one can be effected, whereas it could be that the self-diagnosed simply have a large false-positive (a high-proportion of people that while believing to, do not have any hypersensitivity).
It also doesn't help that there have been no proposed mechanism by which EMF could act on the CNS/body. It also doesn't help that usually the signals complained about are orders of magnitudes smaller to other signals that people might just not be aware of/think about, like TV/Radio transmissions.
You're right that it's not very easy being in the fringes, here's hoping you get better.
I haven't diagnosed myself with "EMF hypersensitivity", or hypersensitivity to anything else (I'm not a voluntary gluten-avoider, or heavy consumer of organic kale or chia seeds or any other faddish "superfoods").
I'm surrounded by EMF all day from the iPhone in my pocket, the Wi-Fi enabled laptop on my lap, and the Bluetooth sound system in my car, not to mention all the incidental EMF that you mention. And I don't have any belief that any of it is a major problem, any more than the full-gluten bread and pasta I eat, the red meat I enjoy, or the red wine and beer I drink - all in moderation of course.
Over the 10+ years I've been dealing with this illness, I've tried living with and without all of these and many other things, and have developed a very good sense of what my body tolerates well and what it doesn't.
One thing I know very well is that my sleep is of lower quality when I have a transmitting cellphone right beside my head all night.
And whilst I don't need lab studies to convince myself, for your benefit I can point to some studies [1] and a perfectly plausible mechanism for why this is the case, which is that the phone transmissions alter brain waves (i.e., Alpha, Beta, Theta, Delta), which play a significant role in sleep quality. (Speaking of which, I've personally had good success improving my sleep by entraining my brainwaves through the use of binaural beats [2] – indeed this is one of the very reasons I use the headphones while sleeping in the first place.)
Whether this will also be the case with Bluetooth, I don't know - I'm open-minded either way. As I've always done, at some point I'll experiment and go with what enables me to sleep and feel my best. But in the short term I'll stick with what has been working well for me up till now.
You're right that it's not very easy being in the fringes, here's hoping you get better.
Made all the more difficult when your conversations on the topic so often tend towards patronising misappropriations of science to dismiss your experiences.
But for what it's worth, my health (and sleep) is the best it's been in at least 5 years, and continuing to improve at an increasing rate, thanks.
[1] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mind-control-by-ce...
[2] https://www.stevens.edu/news/sound-asleep-student-uses-binau...
I wasn't trying to lump you into the group of people self-diagnosed with 'EM hypersensitivity', but explain why some people find it hard to believe when people profess to having issues with mobile phones/wifi etc. If there are a vocal majority of people who make claims that can't be backed up, the minority of people who have valid claims will suffer.
My original comment back up the chain was to a comment that looked logically inconsistent regarding bluetooth power output vs. a mobile phone overall. Yours was perfectly reasonable.
I had read about that mobile-phone/brainwave study before, and I'm sure that given time we'll understand more about how EMFs do interact (however subtly) with the body. It is worth noting that I think bluetooth power output is many orders of magnitudes lower than having your phone communicating with a tower.
Lastly, have you looked into getting a femtocell for your flat/house? Could help reduce the power output of your phone overall when you're at home.
The whole issue is very complex, that's for sure. The extent to which these kinds of "illnesses" or "sensitivities", in myself or others, are "all in the mind" or "imaginary" is something I've considered and researched very heavily, and found it to be applicable to a significant degree.
But to someone who is in distress/pain/fatigue, the retort - whether from a doctor, a well-intentioned layperson or an insensitive asshole - that "it's all in your mind" or a "placebo/nocebo", is unhelpful and simplistic, particularly if you accept that the mind and body are all one entity anyway.
And then there is the reality, that you acknowledge, that certain effects are too subtle to be observed with current measurement technologies and diagnostic methods, inevitably leading to both false positives and false negatives.
In my case, the key to getting well has been to address all aspects, including diet, environment, and mind/emotions - the latter of which has had the most significant effect. Which puts me in a position to say "yes, in fact it probably really is the placebo effect, and I've used it to recover from having really terrible health to having great health", to which the next standard response from curmudgeonly skeptics is "the placebo effect doesn't actually change anything about your health, it only makes you feel better" - as if feeling well and being well are independent phenomena.
So, in my case you chuckle to yourself as you realise you're having an unwinnable argument with people who are more interested in feeling smart that achieving any good, and get on with doing what works for you.
As for the "femtocell", thanks for the tip, I hadn't heard of it. But really, as I said in the previous comment, EMF in my environment is really not an issue I worry about, I only take care to avoid having a transmitting phone right next to my head as I sleep - given that good sleep is the most critical factor in overcoming fatigue.
Many thanks for the discussion.
You could take a cue from joncrocks' last comment for civility and kindness. See my reply to that comment for discussion of placebo/nocebo effects.
