More About the Brain and Electromagnetic Fields

Following up on the article I wrote about electromagnetic field treatment of the deadliest brain cancer the FDA has now approved the device, manufactured by Novocure, for treatment. This is just one element in the growing science delineating biological impacts and therapeutic possibilities of electromagnetic fields. As modern humans we are bathed in these fields largely created by our own technology. Denying the possibility of health effects has been a dangerous, anti-scientific intellectual “disease”. I wrote more about this in BETTER THAN MEDICINES, as well as the following blog posts (What You Can’t See, Electromagnetic Radiation and Asthma) A prominent physician I know recently told his story about suddenly developing a disabling sensitivity to electromagnetic fields. Given the biases in medicine about crazy people wearing tinfoil hats, etc., he was courageous to do so. We have learned that birds can apparently see/perceive latitude and the earth’s electromagnetic fields. (See Jennifer Ackerman’s The Genius of Birds). Is it unthinkable that some of us are affected, even harmed by electromagnetism? First, consider the fundamentals. Thinking is an electrochemical process. As chemistry is the elder and more easily understood science, those aspects of brain function have garnered the lion’s share of investigator’s attentions. However measuring patterns of electrical activity in the brain is another way to investigate brain processes. One important tool, the EEG machine (ElectroEncephaloGraph) has been vitally important to clinicians in the process of diagnosing and managing seizure activity for over one hundred years. As we grow in our understanding of the electromagnetic activities of our brains, it isn’t much of a leap to consider using electricity to alter brain function. Sounds great. Then Frankenstein’s monster jolts into my mind. As Shakespeare wrote: “Within the infant rind of this small flower, poison hath residence and medicine power”. Treatments always carry risk as well as benefit. How do we go about it? Precisely how we can safely and effectively administer electromagnetic energy to a brain is a great mystery fraught with dangerous possibilities as well as healing potentials. A very interesting study of electromagnetic pulses got some decent media coverage earlier this year. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania discovered that electromagnetic pulses could either improve or impair memory functions. When the pulses were administered during times patients’ brains were functioning well, their memory abilities dropped. Conversely, when the pulses came during poor functioning times, brain function improved. This might not sound like much, as the best result was no better than the subjects brains were already functioning at good times. It didn’t...

Be Wary of Experts

A medical news headline the other day about the long term impacts of lead contained a couple of meanings for me. The obvious one was that minimal lead exposures in childhood had life-long impacts, specifically impairing intellectual ability. We now know that lead exposures that were considered safe long ago were not at all safe, and continuing to this very day, those long ago lead exposures still influence those people. The experts who created the standards way back then were flat out wrong. Herbert Needleman, MD, who thought more carefully and critically, endured decades of criticism from industry as well as academic colleagues. He was right. They were wrong. The less obvious meaning is just as important, but in a much broader way. That lesson is be wary of experts. When I was an overweight 13 year old running down the road I thought I was doing something for my health. I was, but I was also accidentally learning the most important lesson of my medical career and one you need to absorb yourself. That was before the big running boom, so as an oddity, my teachers were the people driving by. They honked, hooted, laughed and shouted out all sorts of comments. None of them were encouraging, and few of them were anywhere near as funny as they seemed to think. The lesson was that even when a lot of people think you are wrong, you might be right. You need to ignore their pressures to “toe the line” of conformity, and find out for yourself instead. Sure, I was stubborn/determined to start with, or I wouldn’t have persisted. However, my experience confirmed that ignorance abounds. It was a fundamental lesson for me to learn. My professional experience since then taught me that the most dangerous founts of ignorance are people who are supposed to know more than the rest of us, “experts”, in another word. I started working in the hospital as a 17 year old in 1972. Every day since then I’ve witnessed a bipolar melange of wonderful human caring, determination and great science lumped together with so much ridiculously obvious wrong-headedness. “Expertise” in the form of arrogant overconfidence is often to blame. Certainty creates and perpetuates ignorance. When you think you know-it-all, why would you second guess yourself? A bit more humility and common sense would fix most of the mistakes. There is a great deal of talk about the death of expertise. Physicians howled for years about patients asking questions after reading something on the internet. The howls...

EMF and Cancer

Electromagnetic fields (EMF) are controversial. Some believe that EMFs can cause health problems, even serious ones. Others don’t think so. We can’t see them and most of us don’t believe we can sense them. So, could this be an example of “what you can’t see can’t hurt you” wishful thinking? The glioblastoma form of brain cancer is one of the most rapidly fatal cancers around. It does not respond well to treatment. A study recently appeared showing a dramatic improvement in survival when patients were treated with alternating electric fields in addition to conventional chemotherapy. This latest study of electromagnetic fields(EMF) and brain cancer is both heartening and worrisome. Improving glioblastoma survival from 4 months to 7 is statistically meaningful and important for those patients, but still disappointing. Three more months is positive, but far less than anyone would hope for. More concerning to me is the inevitable conclusion that if EMFs influence cell growth, doesn’t that mean that EMFs can cause cancers? Anything that can help can also harm just by changing the timing, intensity or other circumstances of the exposure. “Within the infant rind of this small flower, poison hath residence and medicine, power” Shakespeare from Romeo and Juliette With so many electric and electronic devices, we live out our lives in an EMF soup. This study adds to concerns that EMF exposure is not benign. I love my electrical and electronic devices, but I love my health as well.   (Image Andrew Rich E+ Getty...

It’s Not About the Rocket Fuel (only) - Dietary Diversity

This article might appear to be about thallium and rocket fuel in your food, but it really isn’t. We all agree that it is important to be careful about what we eat. The most important reason to be careful is not because of what we know. More important is what we don’t know. Many people think they have a healthy, or even excellent diet because they eat organically, avoid gluten or maybe because they are vegan. Those can be good ideas for some, but a healthy diet is too slippery to grasp quite so easily. Concerned about the quality of food, organic food has become very common. This is a welcome and dramatic change from when I first joined an organic food co-op 45 years ago just to get my hands (and teeth) on such rare produce. Although folks are wisely cautious about pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers and GMOs, very few people consider the water that went into their food. That’s a big mistake. In my book, Better Than Medicines, I recounted a study that revealed this problem nearly 20 years ago. Over 80% of the organic greens sold in the San Francisco Bay Area were found to contain rocket fuel! How could that be? It turned out that the storage tanks at Edwards Air Force base were leaking the fuel into the regional ground water. As I also recounted in Better Than Medicines, there have been incidents of deadly e coli (stool bacteria) spread to organic crops in water run-off from neighboring cattle ranches owned by the same conglomerate. “Organic” used to mean small family farms with fastidious attention to the crops. It is an entirely different world today. The quality of water applied to crops is a gaping wide and serious blind spot in our knowledge about the safety of foods we consume. It’s a big deal, but it’s still just one element of our ignorance. Your food is a product of the environment in which it is grown. Here is another example: Just about every patient I see believes that the best thing they do (or should do) to make their diet perfect is to consume huge quantities of dark leafy green veggies. In my official role as a troublemaker, I have to shatter that illusion. Although I value the rich vitamin, mineral, polyphenol and alkaloid content of those earthy greens, that rich intensity also leads to problems. First, many think of plants as a wonderfully gentle form of life here to provide humans with nutrients. This rainbows and sunshine...