Health Tips

I had gone to an office about two weeks ago and there was this nice enthusiastic young female attendant; as bright as a button. She was attending to customers enquiries with the kind of commitment that is rare these days. I however, noticed that she had her mobile phone tucked in her trousers at the left side of her hip. I guess this was in order to have her two hands free to do her work while she would not miss any of her call at the same time. At first, I did not say anything. After a while, my conscience got the better of me and I called her and advice her against putting her mobile phone there, especially since it was so close to her ovary. She thanked me and removed it promptly.

Radiation from different kinds of equipment can affect us if we are exposed to them constantly. While these gadgets have become part of our every day modern life, it is importantly that we use them wisely in order to prevent unnecessary damage to our health.

Today, we are looking at mobile phone radiation with regards to fertility. What is the myth and what is the truth? The incident I described above reminded me of an e-mail that I received from a diplomat friend sometime in February this year. It is as entitled:

MUST READ! THIS COULD BE TRUE!

Where Do You Keep Your Hand Phone Normally?

This morning I heard a true and sad story from a colleague of mine. She told me one of her friends is always having miscarriages. When the baby gets to be 2-3 months old she loses it. This happened several times over. The couple went to check with many doctors and at last one of the doctors examined the dead baby and founds that the baby’s body cells kept dying as the baby was growing in the womb until he/she could not survive. This was because her uterus was affected by handset radiation. The doctor told her she now had no chance to give birth to a healthy baby because the radiation had affected her uterus. So the major portion in her uterus has already died. This happened because she has been keeping her hand phone in her working jacket so that the phone rested against the right spot of the uterus (she had been wearing it like this for a few years).

Please beware of this and take note if you don’t want what has happened to this woman to happen to you guys.

Please do not keep your hand phone near to the kidney position and pants pocket as this will damage your genital area and affect your ability to father a baby.

Fertility is important, especially in the traditional African setting where procreation is a cardinal part of life. Community get more westernized, we adopt ways of life that may exposed us to reduced forcibility.

There are many lifestyle factors which may affect fertility. But mobile phones are clearly one as well.

WOMEN: It is being said that cell phone usage causes sterility in women and might be the reason for birth defects and damaging the growth of embryos. A study of researchers in Switzerland on over 10,000 women

between 18 and 25 confirmed tests already made on animals. On the other hand, in experiments at Nottingham University, female nematode laboratory worms produced more eggs when exposed to the sort of radiation that comes from cell phones. This led some people to postulate that mobile phone radiation increases fertility in worms and may question the assumption that they reduce fertility in humans. It is, however, obvious that the radiation marks the cells behave different from normal and it is better to err on the side of caution.

Men: Animal studies have shown that sperm-making cells in the tests are particularly vulnerable to low-level radiation from exposure to cell phones, which was previously thought to be harmless. Non-ionizing cell phones radiation overheats cells, affecting their growth and normal developments. A new study release by the reproductive Research Center at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio suggest an alarming increase in infertility among men who frequently use cell phones. In each of the fur criteria singled out in the study – sperm count, motility, viability and appearance – those who used cell phones more than four hours per day fared the worst in each category.

The study, led by Professor Ashok Agarwal, divided over 360 men into three categories: those who never used a cell phone, those who used a cell phone less than two hours per day and the final group of men, who used their cell phones at least four hours each day. Men, especially those of child-bearing age, are encouraged to take steps to reduce their exposure to cell phone radiation as much as possible. Never carry a cell phone on the belt or in a pocket near the groin, where it can raise the temperature in this sensitive area high enough to cause permanent cell damage.

It has been said that, it cannot be ignored or passed off as coincidence that while the use of cell phones has soared in the past 10 years, male fertility in industrialized countries has suffered. I, however, believe that situation such as “the great British Sperm Disaster” is probably multi-factorial and not due to mobile phones alone.