Home wifi / exhaustion, memory loss and depression

[Unicornplaster]

We live in a complete rural backwater with a normal internet system that is slower than dial up on a good day. A local village group has set up a wifi mast that households can subscribe to - a large mast with a dish is attached to the side of the house and we get better wifi. So far so great.

So 6 months ago we subscribed and had the mast set up on our house. Within a couple of days, I noticed vertigo and headaches that I can only describe as 'head cramp'. I ignored it, but over the months, even though those first symptoms have lessened, I can't help but feel these are a direct result of the wifi being beamed into our house.

Now I still feel achy in weird places and my short term memory is completely defunct. I feel depressed more and more and absolutely knackered - tired beyond belief. Really really tired. My kids also say they are tired - even after a goodnights sleep. I can't help but feel I am ruining them.

Has anyone else experienced these sort of symptoms with wifi, or at least wifi that is beyond a normal sky/bt/talktalk etc subscription?

I want to get the mast taken down. My husband thinks I'm bonkers and as we've subscribed for 2 years (contract says that is the minimum term) it's a costly package to just junk. We are a household embroiled in the internet through work, mobile phones and apple TV, so to take the mast down sends us back to the dark ages (until 6 months ago, streaming is what fish do, and buffering was used in every sentence).

Our local pub hosts the local mast which is then beamed into our house. Recently we ate at the pub for lunch - i left with a headache and feeling 'electric' - a bit like restless legs bot the whole body.

Am I mad? Has anyone else thought these thoughts about wifi?

There isn't any possible mechanism for wifi to be causing the things you claim. Elecro-magnetic sensitivity has been pretty debunked.

This is interesting though: www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-morford/is-your-wifi-making-you-s_b_3315685.html

Have you checked for carbon monoxide?

www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/wellbeing/11589857/Is-Wi-Fi-making-your-child-ill.html?fb_ref=Default

hi - thanks for the link to the huff post article. I read all these with interest, and am fully aware of the effects of 'expecting' symptoms. But i have tried to give it the benefit of the doubt and take each 'symptom' as it comes. the top link is on that appeared in my Facebook feed over the weekend which really got me thinking.

i also see my children aged 3 and 5 - looking absolutely drained with black rings around heir eyes and saying they are tired (in the mornings when before they would be normally bouncing off the walls). Tonight my daughter couldn't remember the name for chocolate milk - she is 5 and it just seemed so odd considering she has been saying it many times a day for over 3 years!

Was about to ask re carbon monoxide.

Where I used to live they also used to test for raydon / radon? (Sp)

Yes - have checked for carbon monoxide - got test cards all over the house and they all register as normal.

You're looking for something to blame. You've decided it's the wifi so your head is making it fit.

I read the telegraph article with alarm - and am not a hypochondriac / anti-technology type at all. Quite the opposite in fact. I can't quite help but wonder if on 50 years people will look back and be baffled that we beamed all this stuff around our homes with no real assurance it wasn't damaging us.

OP - you sound like a sane, balanced person to me. Not like someone looking for symptoms. I wonder is there any way to get the levels measured in the house? Could you turn off the router at night. I've started turning all iPads etc to airplane / no wifi at night.

Do you have the same symptoms when away from the house? Or do they clear up then? Might be worth going away for a few days to test your theory.

Hmm - i know that is the easy answer.
I can't think what else it could be that would make all 3 of us so unnaturally tired and forgetful - suggestions?
We eat well - square meals with vegetable and fruit - so I can't see it's anaemia. We sleep well. We generally a well-rounded family. It all started at the same time that the mast was fitted.

A family up the road - who also got the mast fitted - suddenly found their children were waking with nightmares at night. After they decided to turn their wifi off at night, the nightmares stopped- the same night. Yes I'm sceptical as my husband says there are stronger radiation waves all around us. But I can't help but feel a correlation.

I would be interested to hear from anyone else who has actually felt some electro magnetic sensitivity.

In October and over Easter we went away for a weeks holiday - on our return I really noticed the vertigo sensation - like falling sideways. It was much more noticeable in October than April, but still there. I feel my body may be trying to 'normalise' the symptoms - hence the lessening of the effects over time.

Other weird things that have happened are joint aches - big toe joint mainly, bladder and arm pit pains (yup, arm pits).

Thanks for the sanity check Haggis. Not an easy list of symptoms to present to the GP....

Read the article Winter linked to above. I was about to link to a different article signposting the same research (See below)

Don't misunderstand. The symptoms you experience are real, you are not making it up, nor are you mentally ill. However, it is not the wifi that is causing this, nor any form of electromagnetic radiation. there is no shame in having been affected by this "nocebo" effect, just like there would be no shame at having been one of the people who report having an improvement of symptoms when given the placebo pills in a drugs trial. It's OK to have experienced this but don't look to the wifi as the reason for it.

In one incident in South Africa, residents threatened to take a wireless broadband provider to court over health complaints from 40 people in response to a new base station. It only later emerged that during the period the health complaints were received, the tower had never actually been switched on!

You could actually go and get tested yourself for anything by the gp? To rule out symptoms for you.

Water is ok? How long have you lived there? My husband got in a twist about lead pipes and got them tested. It was ok.

Have you tested for carbon monoxide?

Something is causing this to happen to you (it reads like you are all being poisoned) and its not the wifi.

Test cards re carbon monoxide are not sensitive enough, you need an audible alarm one. You also need to all be properly examined by the hospital and have blood and breath tests done.

I would also get an engineer in asap to check all the gas appliances to ensure that they are all working correctly. There may well be a blocked flue somewhere.

Also fuels such as wood and coal can also produce CO.

www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Carbon-monoxide-poisoning/Pages/Symptoms.aspx

There isn't any possible mechanism for wifi to be causing the things you claim.

And such studies as there are match all the characteristics for pseudoscience. Most importantly, the more carefully conducted, the smaller the effect.

If you have access to a university library, this is an hilarious paper:

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166432812007437#

and shows the sort of junk science being done in the field. A group of researchers claim that exposure to WiFi potentially reduces the symptoms of Alzheimers, but in fact it's garbage. They perform a load of tests, ignore the ones that aren't significant, and then shout "aha!" when one or two of them are significant. XKCD have a cartoon for that.

There's astoundingly bogus research done on electrosensitivity. One paper had subject's heart rates doubling on exposure to GSM, and then immediately dropping back to normal when the GSM signal was removed, without the subjects noticing. If your heart rate doubles, you notice, and a recovery time of less than, say, 30s would be the hallmark of a world-class athlete. Oddly enough, it turned out to be instrumentation error (the heart rate monitor they used was documented to double the recorded rate in the presence of EM fields) but not before assorted obsessives had claimed it meant something.