Mobile Phone Use Disrupts Sleep, Causes Headaches and Confusion

Tuesday, August 05, 2008 by: David Gutierrez, staff writer
Tags: mobile phones, health news, Natural News

(NaturalNews) Extended exposure to the radiation of a mobile phone, even when not in use, can cause headaches and disrupt the body's ability to enter deep sleep, according to a study conducted by researchers from Wayne State University in the United States and the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, and published in the peer-reviewed online journal Progress in Electromagnetics Research Symposium.

Researchers conducted an experiment on 36 women and 35 men, of whom 22 and 16, respectively, had previously reported symptoms that they blamed on use of mobile phones. The remaining 33 participants had not reported any symptoms.

All participants were screened carefully by doctors to make sure that they had no underlying medical condition that might interfere with the results. They were all recruited specifically for the current study.

During two different sessions, the participants were exposed either to real or sham radiation for three hours, but were not told which they had been exposed to. The radiation was equivalent to that emitted by a mobile phone, giving an average exposure of 1.4 Watts per kilogram. It included simulations of a phone being both in use and inactive but still turned on. Researchers collected data on the participants before, during and after each exposure.

Upon questioning after the exposure, neither the radiation nor the control group was able to guess which group they were in any more accurately than by chance.

Participants took longer to reach stage 3 sleep when exposed to radiation than when exposed to sham radiation, and stayed in stage 4 sleep for a shorter time. These stages of deep sleep are believed to play an important role in helping the body recover from everyday stresses.

Participants who had not previously reported any symptoms were also more likely to report experiencing headaches while being exposed to real radiation than to sham radiation.