I'm allergic to modern life: Mother claims she is so sensitive to electric gadgets her NEIGHBOURS can't have Wi-Fi - The Daily Mail
A mother of two is so allergic to modern technology even her neighbours cannot have wireless internet.
Janice Tunnicliffe won't use a electric kettle, keeps her washing machine in a concrete outhouse and spends every night playing board games by candlelight with her husband.
She says she has a rare condition called electrosensitivity (ES) that means she can't bear to be near any man-made electromagnetic fields.
As a result, she cannot watch TV, listen to the radio, talk on a mobile phone and has been left completely isolated from the modern world by her condition.
Janice, 55, said she was struck down with the illness after receiving chemotherapy for bowel cancer three years ago.
Since then she has suffered constant headaches, chest pains, nausea and tingling in her arms and legs whenever she is near electrical devices or items that emit a signal.
Her only relief in this time was when her village, near Mansfield in rural Nottinghamshire, suffered a temporary power cut. However, she found doctors to be unsympathetic.
She said: 'Different things give me different feelings but it's mostly headaches and nausea. iPhones make feel really sick within about 20 minutes of being near one so even though I might not realise someone has one straightaway, I soon find out.
'Wi-Fi makes me feel like I have a clamp at the back of my head which is squeezing the life out of me. It's completely draining and a home hub can totally immobilise me - I'm left unable to move my arms and legs.
The above article does not mention the fact that many health experts believe it is a mental problem, not a physical one, so here is a link to an article from last year that does cover that aspect:
Victims of electrosensitivity syndrome say EMFs cause symptoms - The LA Times
Alarming, yes, but such symptoms may not have much to do with electromagnetic fields. Even David Carpenter, a professor of environmental health sciences and biomedical sciences at the University at Albany, State University of New York, who often warns against the dangers of EMFs, isn't convinced that low-level radiation can cause such a wide range of symptoms. He believes that EMFs can cause cancer and possibly neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's and Lou Gehrig's disease, but there's no good evidence that cellphones can cause headaches and other vague complaints, he says. "I'm not sure electrosensitivity is real."
Many researchers have looked for a connection between EMFs and EMF sensitivity syndrome, but so far they've mostly come up empty. In one recent example, an English study of 48 self-described "electrosensitive" people and 132 "non-sensitive" people published online in January in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives found that all of the subjects had pretty much the same reaction to microwave radiation, which is to say no obvious reaction at all. The researchersspeculated that a fear of EMFs -- and not any physical issues -- might be the root cause of electrosensitivity.
A 2005 report from the World Health Organization -- Brundtland's former agency -- stated that people who believe they're sensitive to EMFs don't seem to have any special abilities to actually detect the fields. The report suggested that anxiety about EMFs could be the root cause of all of the symptoms.
