Cell phone radiation is good for you?

Yay! Maybe cell phones aren’t going to kill us after all.

In fact, the opposite may be true: Florida researchers say that experiments performed on mice indicate that cell phone radiation may actually have a beneficial effect on the brain, protecting subjects from Alzheimer’s.

Well, in mice, anyway.

The mice in the experiment were genetically altered to develop the brain plaques indicative of Alzheimer’s. They were then exposed to cell phone radiation for two hours per day over a period of up to nine months.

After that, the mice were put through tests designed to measure if they were suffering from dementia. And unlike Alzheimer’s mice which weren’t exposed to the cell phone radiation, they didn’t. If the mice were exposed to the cell phone radiation while they were young and before they developed the symptoms of dementia, they never displayed them. If they were exposed to the radiation after they had already begun to show signs of dementia, the symptoms went away after the exposure began. In both cases, cell phone radiation appears to have protected the mice from additional brain damage.

The researchers say they’ve seen cellular radiation improve memory performance not just in Alzheimer’s-affected mice but in normal mice, as well.

Now don’t get too excited about the study’s applicability to human subjects: Since mouse brains are so much smaller, a similar effect in humans could take years to produce instead of months, but it could indicate that exposure to the type of radiation found in cell phones could ultimately become a treatment for Alzheimer’s in humans.

Up next is research into specific frequencies that best generate the protective effect in the brain. Cell phones operate on a variety of so-called “high frequency” waves, but “low frequency” waves, such as those created as a by-product of power line transmissions, have generated some concern as increasing the risk of Alzheimer’s in some studies. Is there a magic electromagnetic frequency that could save the brain from dementia? Check back in a few years… if you can remember, that is.

Tags: Alzheimer, applicability, beneficial effect, brain, brain cell, brain damage, brain plaques, cell, cell phone radiation, cellular radiation, dementia, Florida, florida researchers, frequency waves, high frequency, human subjects, low frequency, memory performance, mouse brains, phone, radiation, signs of dementia, suffering from dementia, symptoms of dementia, true florida, wikipedia

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 30th, 2010 at 1:28 pm and is filed under Tech, Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.