Quote:
Originally Posted by Yourcat
Thanks for this nice lecture. One will discuss these things for years.
Mixing EM and allergies is pseudoscience. As we all know the digestive system is protected very good from EM and usually the source for allergies. Getting an allergy is just the result of the self-fulfilling prophecy told the people before the study. The EM effects are not that easy to spot.
Wifi with 0.1W vs 1kW microwave is indeed a big difference while some people wear their smartphone 12h a day.
Besides, what happens if a drop of water hits the floor? Can you see the stalagmite already?
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The digestive system is at body temperature. As such, it is saturated with thermal electromagnetic radiation, just like every other part of our bodies, inside and out.
As for allergies being associated with the digestive system, well, yes. That's because the mechanism of action of allergies is specifically an overreaction of mast cells, which sit in mucous membranes -- such as the digestive system -- specifically in order to kill off things arriving from the outside world before they can do harm.
There's been a lot of progress in this area of late. Allergies have long been mysterious: counter to what you learn in school, they are not caused by the immune system mistakenly assuming a bit of pollen is something disease-causing or something like that, and going into overdrive because pollen delivers such a large dose.
In the 90s it was discovered that nearly all antibodies cannot trigger allergic reactions: only one newly-discovered, rare subtype, immunoglobulin E, can do it, and for some time nobody knew what IgE was for: it couldn't just be for triggering allergic reactions! That's now been answered as well: it responds to eukaryotic parasites, mostly helminths (parasitic worms and flukes) but also things like P. falciparum. Where are parasitic worms found in nature? The intestinal tract (right up to the nose, horrifyingly) and the skin, just where the mast cells which detonate to cause allergic reactions are found. So we know why allergic reactions are so common: we don't get parasitic worms any more, and this component of our immune system gets hypersensitized and triggers on the wrong sort of multicellular eukaryote: pollen, rather than worms. This also explains why giving yourself tapeworms can often cure allergies, though frankly I prefer my pollen filter.
Even the specific symptoms of allergic reactions are explained by this hypothesis: why does an allergic reaction induce sneezing? Because it washes out parasitic worms in the nose, mouth, and airways. (I'm just glad evolution didn't go the whole hog and have allergic reactions give us diarrhoea as well. That's probably because sneezing isn't lethal, but diarrhoea often is: there's no point wiping out your parasitic worms if you die of dehydration and give your entire tribe cholera shortly afterwards.)
So, yes, allergies *are* associated with digestion, but because the digestive system is where you find tapeworms, not because it's a magic no-EM zone. (The Wikipedia article on immunoglobulin E has a lot of useful links on this subject.)