A letter by Dr Andrew Tressider, January 2017
To my Medical Colleagues, GPs, Psychiatrists, Neurologists and others:
Electrosensitivity – an Environmental illness, an Authentic Diagnosis, not a Delusional Disorder
Summary:
Electrosensitivity is the symptomatic sensitivity to Electric or Magnetic Fields of any frequency, including RadioFrequency (RF or Microwave) transmissions. As a symptomatic condition, it is becoming common due to the increasing environmental pressure on human biology. The source is pollution from wireless and other EM fields. Doctors as yet rarely recognize it due to educational issues. Safety always lags technological advance. There are barriers to recognition of harms. Current UK Advisory Safety Limits are based upon the outdated and disproven myth that Non-Thermal means Non-Harmful. Society and organizations have yet to fully travel the road from ‘there isn’t a problem’, ‘there might be a problem but it’s very small’ to ‘there is a problem’. Society does not recognize humans as electromagnetic beings, as well as physical bodies needing careful nutrition to maintain health. Meanwhile, increasing numbers of people suffer, often ignored or dismissed because society doesn’t yet appreciate the issue, and doctors have no answers. Electrosensitivity is soundly supported by both biology and physics.
You may be being consulted by a person who has this under-recognised condition.Thank you for reading this. It provides information that you may not easily find elsewhere. Electrosensitivity (ES) is a condition first described in 1932, and is when a person’s physiology is affected by external Electromagnetic (EM) fields, giving rise to a typical spectrum of symptoms, often neurological. It is therefore an illness caused by environmental agents – essentially an environmental toxic pollutant. Electrophobia is a fear of EM fields, and is a nocebo driven response. Symptoms of fear or paranoia about any agent, circumstances, person or issues can be part of a psychiatric condition, and may be part of a delusional state which will have other features. ES is completely separate from any delusional condition and from Electrophobia. ES is a condition that can arise due to continued exposure to an environment polluted by man-made EM and RF (radio-frequency) wireless signals at levels at orders of magnitude below heating effects, and is well understood in Russia. Symptoms include headaches, fatigue, disturbed sleep, tingling, pains in limbs, head or face, stabbing pains, brain-fog and impaired cognitive function, dizziness, tinnitus, nosebleeds, palpitations and others.
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, (now known to be partially a failure of mitochondrial function) was initially difficult to diagnose and indeed dismissed by some as psychological illnesses. I have written this briefing sheet to summarise my understanding of ES in case you wish to consider it in your differential diagnosis.
My qualifications for this are as follows: I trained at Guy’s Hospital, and have been a GP since 1989, seeing a wide range of Primary Care Practice. I have a special interest in Health and Well Being, both physical, psychological and emotional, and have studied this whilst working with my patients. I seek to give the best of orthodox diagnoses and treatment, and also recognise other factors that contribute to and may maintain ill health, in order to eliminate them if possible. I have a wide-ranging interest in factors that affect health. I work for NHS Somerset CCG as a GP Patient Safety Lead, where I have done a number of Investigations into Root Causes, for the University of Bristol as an Examiner and Educator and former Somerset Academy GP Lead, and am approved under the Mental Health Act as a Section 12 Doctor. I teach Doctors on Health and Self-Care on behaIf of the BMA and in Somerset Hospitals and wider afield.
I am also a trustee of the charity ES-UK, which post has given me access to more information and research about the condition than many clinical colleagues, and in this I have consulted scores of people (at no charge) with electrosensitivity, severe enough to impact badly upon their lives.
My Experience: As a Section 12 Approved Doctor under the Mental Health Act, I have been involved in at least 400 Mental Health Act Assessments over ten years, and have good relationships with our excellent Somerset Psychiatrists. In all of the assessments I have done, though I have seen many patients with paranoia or delusional states including reference and being watched from the television and the like, I have never seen anyone with ES during an MHAA.
I have however, separately (i.e. not in Mental Health Act Assessment settings) seen patients whose symptoms are reliably caused by exposure to Electromagnetic fields, especially RF (Radiofrequency) transmitting technology, but also by EM Fields and by Dirty Electricity (for an explanation see below). It is only too easy, as I know from my medical career, to make a diagnosis only from the choices within the medical framework that we have learnt about, often years ago, especially when faced with a condition whose aetiology we cannot explain. See link for more:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5tb34c3rC9SYk5qYndxNENfODg/view