Although there is no statistical proof that mobile phone usage causes tumors and the like, it has been discovered that there is certainly chemicals in the brain that are affected. Just fifty minutes on your cell phone causes an increase in brain glucose, or sugar, metabolism.
Glucose is the form of sugar that travels in your bloodstream to fuel the mitochondrial furnaces responsible for your brain power. Glucose is the only fuel normally used by brain cells. Because neurons cannot store glucose, they depend on the bloodstream to deliver a constant supply of this precious fuel.
This blood sugar is obtained from carbohydrates: the starches and sugars you eat in the form of grains and legumes, fruits and vegetables. Too much sugar or refined carbohydrates at one time, however, can actually deprive your brain of glucose, depleting its energy supply and compromising the brain’s power to concentrate, remember, and learn. Mental activity requires a lot of energy.
Dr. Nora D. Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, led a team who took 47 healthy people and scanned their brains while they held cell phones to their ears. They used PET imaging (positron emission tomography) to measure how their brains used glucose, which again, is the primary fuel used by brain cells. Only the areas of the brain closest to the phone’s antenna were activated, primarily the orbit frontal cortex and temporal pole.
Brain cells need two times more energy than the other cells in the body.
Neurons, the cells that communicate with each other, have a high demand for energy because they’re always in a state of metabolic activity. Even during sleep, neurons are still at work repairing and rebuilding their worn out structural components.
They are manufacturing enzymes and neurotransmitters that must be transported out to the very ends of their nerve branches, some that can be several inches, or feet, away.
Most demanding of a neuron’s energy, however, are the bioelectric signals responsible for communication throughout the nervous system. This nerve transmission consumes one-half of all the brain’s energy (nearly 10% of the whole body’s energy).
It isn’t clear that this increased brain activity is necessarily harmful in either the long or the short term. However, brain tumors use glucose to grow so an increase in glucose activity may not be good. In addition, cell phone use increases among kids, their smaller, still-developing brains may face an increased risk from the radio frequency emissions.
Aside, a Motorola sponsored study found cell phones give people a newfound personal power, enabling unprecedented mobility and allowing them to conduct their business on the go. Interesting enough, gender differences can be found in phone use. Women see their cell phone as a means of expression and social communication, while males tend to use it as an interactive toy. Some men view the cell phone as a status symbol, competing with other males for the most high tech toy and even using the cell phone to seduce the opposite sex.
The fact is that much more research needs to be done to truly examine cell phone impact on physiology.
Dr. Rolando F. Del Maestro of the Montreal Neurological Institute concludes:
“In people who are using cell phones a lot, this suggests to me you would be wise to use a hands-free system, if you possibly can. It just makes logical sense that if something is changing brain metabolism, you probably don’t want that near your ear.”
Source:
Written by Sy Kraft, B.A.