SURPRISE - Things We Long Suspected May Not Be Good For Us Really Are NOT Good For Us!
Posted By Teeni on October 27, 2009
Have you ever suspected or just “felt” that something seemed wrong but you really had no way to logically express why that was. Have you then later found evidence to support your suspicions, thus making you feel justified in avoiding those things in the first place even though it made you look like a paranoid fool? This post highlights a few things that this has happened to me with recently, now that so much more information has become available. I realize that we can’t worry about every little thing, but I do think that awareness helps us make the best decisions we possibly can and I’d like to share with you.
Artificial Lighting
When I was young, I remember my mom taking us shopping to department stores and how I would always, always end up so unbearably tired and worn out from the excursions. It just didn’t seem justifiable. They weren’t long trips and sometimes we would get a treat so it wasn’t all bad but I remember always thinking that there was something about the lighting in the store that must have been what made me tired because I’d pep right back up again when we got home and I was allowed to play outside in the neighborhood. But what did I know? I was just a kid. Many years later, I find articles suggesting that the cool white fluorescent lights are really unhealthy. Of course it is these same lights that were in the department stores. Interesting. In this article, it is also worth noting that skin cancer seems to occur more in people who spend the most time under fluorescent lights and that leukemia rates in children dropped with the addition of sunlight into their rooms. There is also the mention of SAD and depression. This book also includes a lot of information on lighting being a source of fatigue. It’s amazing how so much can be affected by such seemingly trivial thing as lighting, but it all does seem to make a lot of logical sense when you do some research.
Even your dairy milk can lose vitamins and develop an off taste when exposed to fluorescent lighting just by being in the refrigerated case of your supermarket for a short amount of time. So I guess it really isn’t a surprise that those lights can be depleting those same vitamins in us.
You may think that those newer, more efficient, squiggly light bulbs (otherwise known as Compact Fluorescents or CFs) are the answer to energy bills but the truth is, those bulbs are potentially worse for the environment. They contain mercury (the same dangerous substance included in silver dental fillings and in some vaccinations) at dangerous levels, which is released when they are accidentally broken.
Cell Phones
This debate has been off and on and off and on again and again. Now, it appears to be indisputably on again with reports such as discussed about in this article. Even if they now come out and say it is safe again, I am just going to ignore it. It is a fact that cell phones emit radiation. That is enough for me. Some phones will emit more than others, some people will be on their phones longer than others, some people will leave their phones turned on and others will turn theirs off. This is all up to the individual and I won’t judge anyone else, although I will hope that they will make careful decisions, especially when it comes to their children. It’s a fact that faster growing cells are more susceptible to DNA damage from radiation and children have faster growing cells because they are still growing. For myself, I know that radiation damage is cumulative and I know it occurs naturally. So all I can do is limit what I CAN limit. I can’t limit the naturally occurring radiation, but I CAN limit my cell phone use and keep it as the emergency mode of communication that I originally purchased it for. So I will be going back to using it for that purpose only. People may think I’m paranoid but I’ve already been diagnosed with cancer and I have already received plenty of medical radiation, so I don’t feel I need to justify my decision beyond that.
Flu Shots
I won’t come out and say that flu shots are necessarily bad for you but I will say that the information surrounding them has been contradictory and confusing. There are some people they may benefit more than others and I totally support each person’s choice to get or not get vaccinated. The freedom of choice is what this country is all about. This article contains many facts about flu shots (click on the Swine Flu Data link at the top of page) that may be helpful in making personal choices.
Routine X-rays
It’s always kind of pissed me off how if you ask a doctor or dentist about the radiation you are about to receive for your x-ray, they just sort of poo-poo you and immediately say it is safe, and that the amount of radiation you are going to receive is like spending a day in the sun or some other such nonsense. Then, they may act like you are a paranoid lunatic for even asking about it. And they may be right on both counts, but it’s funny that they never ask you if you have already been exposed to a lot of medical radiation, or if you are a frequent flyer, or have some other reason for concern in asking about it.
It is a well-known fact that radiation damage is cumulative, so it is good to consider how much you are exposed to without becoming paranoid about it. When you work for a nuclear facility or with radiation for research, you most likely have a device that records your exposure. But nobody tracks that information for the rest of us everyday slobs. And while I agree wholeheartedly that x-rays are a fantastic diagnostic tool, I also think they should probably be used more sparingly rather than for routine care.
I’ve also always wondered about the machines being used and how often they are calibrated or inspected. It appears that recent articles like this one, expose the fact that some machines are giving you more than you bargained for. So again, there are definitely times and places for these tools, but nobody is going to advocate for you but yourself.
It’s quite possible that some professionals like to take x-rays annually purely for the money because insurance allows them to do it each year. I want my health professionals to be more interested in my health and not in my insurance plan’s pocketbook. I think if we all question things more rather than just accept the routine practices with open arms, that maybe we can at least get the doctors and dentists to consider each patient’s need for x-rays on a case-by-case basis. I highly doubt that an adult with a healthy mouth and little history of decay would need a full set of x-rays each year or year and a half and I definitely would not want to expose children to any unnecessary radiation and higher risks of cancer if it could at all be avoided.
Well, at least we don’t have these anymore! Hopefully I didn’t scare the pants off everyone. 
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What a great post Teeni! It always irks me that I have to get x-rays at the dentist every year. I am 35. What in the name of Sam would have changed since last year. Sweet nothing, that’s what. And the flouride too. Every flip flapping 6 months. ARe you kidding me? I am 35!
Whew. Sorry, kind of got on a tangent about dentists there.
You know where I stand on the flu shot. I am not sure I have decided about the CFC bulbs. I don’t like the mercury but I do like that they use so much less power. GAH.
You got me thinking, I love it, thanks!
Thanks, Kami! I guess I did what I meant to do then if the post got you thinking.
Thanks for reading!
Oh, the flu shot. Something I’ve wanted to write about for a long time, but don’t want to open the debate. You’re brave!
LOL. Well, I am not looking for debate here either - I just want people to make the most informed decisions they can. I bet the flu shot makes a lot of sense for some people. But when something is generating tons of income for some people (which does not include me, LOL), I have to try to look at it much more objectively.
i didn’t know that fact about fluorescent lamps!
and for the swine flu vaccine, we’re not having it. not now, not later.
i barely use my phone here, as we don’t have family and very few friends here. ^-^
i just had an x-ray though from my dental appointment here. yikes.
my aunt was recently diagnosed with cancer, just this weekend. i still couldn’t believe it. this is a first in our family.
First of all, I’m so sorry about your aunt, Odette. I hate that anyone gets cancer at all. X-rays are good diagnostic tools. I personally just don’ t think they should be used as a routine course and I think we should try to be aware of how much radiation we are exposed to in addition to the natural radiation that we cannot escape. Because these days we are exposed to it from so many things that never used to exist like smoke detectors, computer and television screens, cell phones, etc. I just want to help people make informed decisions about how these things are used.
Definitely some food for thought there, Teeni. If you are right about the artificial lighting, then NO WONDER I hated my job at the supermarket, which I had for 5 years while I was studying!! I always felt tired and fatigued and lethargic while I was there, and thought it was because the job SUCKED … but now I shall blame the lighting!
I write about vaccines for work, but I will NEVER get a flu shot. Not the swine flu vaccine, not any regular seasonal flu vaccine. Even after all the research I have had to do for work, and despite the fact that I am usually very “pro” immunisation, I don’t agree with the flu vaccine!
Hi Hannah! I keep thinking of other places that seem to “zap” the energy out of me and it seems like most of them - my high school and different offices I’ve worked in all had those fluorescent lights as well. I bet that some people would find it interesting that you don’t want the flu vaccine but I can totally understand it!
Well now I understand why this building I work in seems to suck the life out of me. LOL
I got flu shots when I was in the military but they were all because I was ordered to.
Yes, I want to go live in a cave in the mountains now. LOL
I hear you. And I sometimes want to go live in a cave too. This is why I sometimes think the old fashioned ways of doing things were sometimes better.
I think we just need to go back to living in caves, eating root vegetables and washing our clothes in the stream with rocks. Just kidding:)
LOL. Sometimes I’m not really sure we ever lived in caves, though. I mean look at Paris Hilton - can you even picture it?
Hmmm lights and x-rays are not bad for us! That is how you become a superhero- you get irradiated enough and that’s when you get special powers. I have many special powers now… like right now I am using the powers of telekinesis to rob a bank in Minnesota. Speedcat is my accomplice and yet I am typing this in Wisconsin. See powerful stuff!
LOL! Oh yeah, I forgot about the super powers!
Many moons ago, I actually had (and received) one of Al Gore’s books on my Christmas list. I started using CFLs before it was the “in” thing to do. So, if I develop skin cancer, I’m suing Al Gore!
Incandescent bulbs are banned now; or rather, they will be in a couple of years when the law takes effect. It’s stupid, really. They are safer. They don’t have mercury. And, on top of that, LED bulbs are going to be the wave of the future anyway. They last longer than CFLs, are safer than CFLs, and use less energy than CFLs. Plus, they can be used in enclosed fixtures, where some CFLs cannot. Seriously, it was really stupid to ban incandescent bulbs and force people to use CFLs when LED bulbs are going to start being more readily available.
I agree that the ban is worthless. I’m kind of tired of things being banned that really aren’t so terrible - if they only start making other types of bulbs then what is the need for a ban anyway? I’m keeping my eyes on those LEDs too and I really love the buildings that are using more skylights for natural lighting as much as they can.
If the way we raise animals for food isn’t the most important problem in the world right now, it’s arguably the No. 1 cause of global warming: The United Nations reports the livestock business generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined.
It’s the No. 1 cause of animal suffering, a decisive factor in the creation of zoonotic diseases like bird and swine flu, and the list goes on. It is the problem with the most deafening silence surrounding it.
Even the most political people, the most thoughtful and engaged, tend not to “go there.” And for good reason. Going there can be extremely uncomfortable. Food is not just what we put in our mouths to fill up; it is culture and identity. Reason plays some role in our decisions about food, but it’s rarely driving the car.
We need a better way to talk about eating animals, a way that doesn’t ignore or even just shruggingly accept things like habits, cravings, family and history but rather incorporates them into the conversation. The more they are allowed in, the more able we will be to follow our best instincts. And although there are many respectable ways to think about meat, there is not a person on Earth whose best instincts would lead him or her to factory farming
Why aren’t more people aware of, and angry about, the rates of avoidable food-borne illness? Perhaps it doesn’t seem obvious that something is amiss simply because anything that happens all the time — like meat, especially poultry, becoming infected by pathogens — tends to fade into the background.
Whatever the case, if you know what to look for, the pathogen problem comes into terrifying focus. For example, the next time a friend has a sudden “flu” — what folks sometimes misdescribe as “the stomach flu” — ask a few questions. Was your friend’s illness one of those “24-hour flus” that come and go quickly: retch or crap, then relief? The diagnosis isn’t quite so simple, but if the answer to this question is yes, your friend probably didn’t have the flu at all.
He or she was probably suffering from one of the 76 million cases of food-borne illness the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated happen in America each year. Your friend didn’t “catch a bug” so much as eat a bug. And in all likelihood, that bug was created by factory farming.
Beyond the sheer number of illnesses linked to factory farming, we know that factory farms are contributing to the growth of antimicrobial-resistant pathogens simply because these farms consume so many antimicrobials.
We have to go to a doctor to obtain antibiotics and other antimicrobials as a public-health measure to limit the number of such drugs being taken by humans. We accept this inconvenience because of its medical importance. Microbes eventually adapt to antimicrobials, and we want to make sure it is the truly sick who benefit from the finite number of uses any antimicrobial will have before the microbes learn how to survive it.
On a typical factory farm, drugs are fed to animals with every meal. In poultry factory farms, they almost have to be. It’s a perfect storm: The animals have been bred to such extremes that sickness is inevitable, and the living conditions promote illness.
Industry saw this problem from the beginning, but rather than accept less-productive animals, it compensated for the animals’ compromised immunity with drugs. As a result, farmed animals are fed antibiotics nontherapeutically: that is, before they get sick.
In the United States, about 3 million pounds of antibiotics are given to humans each year, but a whopping 17.8 million pounds are fed to livestock — at least, that is what the industry claims
The group calculated that 24.6 million pounds of antibiotics were fed to chickens, pigs and other farmed animals, counting only nontherapeutic uses. And that was in 2001. In other words, for every dose of antibiotics taken by a sick human, eight doses are given to a “healthy” animal.
The implications for creating drug-resistant pathogens are quite straightforward. Study after study has shown that antimicrobial resistance follows quickly on the heels of the introduction of new drugs on factory farms.
Today, the factory farm-pandemic link couldn’t be more lucid. The primary ancestor of the recent H1N1 swine flu outbreak originated at a hog factory farm in America’s most hog-factory-rich state, North Carolina, and then quickly spread throughout the Americas.
It was in these factory farms that scientists saw, for the first time, viruses that combined genetic material from bird, pig and human viruses. Scientists at Columbia and Princeton Universities have actually been able to trace six of the eight genetic segments of the most feared virus in the world directly to U.S. factory farms.
Perhaps in the back of our minds we already understand, without all the science, that something terribly wrong is happening. We know that it cannot possibly be healthy to raise such grotesque animals in such grossly unnatural conditions. We know that if someone offers to show us a film on how our meat is produced, it will be a horror film.
We perhaps know more than we care to admit, keeping it down in the dark places of our memory — disavowed. When we eat factory-farmed meat, we live on tortured flesh. Increasingly, those sick animals are making us sick.
Thanks for this wonderful comment. I couldn’t agree with you any more! It is one of the reasons that I became a vegetarian and am now following a plant-based diet. There is just so much wrong with factory farming and the effects are so far-reaching that I can only hope people become more aware and make more responsible decisions.
Great post! I’m living proof that fluorescent lights are BAD … at least they are for me. I have an acute sensitivity to them, including a rash, impaired vision, and ear ringing. Sometimes the lights at work are so bad I wind up wearing tinted glasses because of eye pain and strain. The energy efficiency lights are even worse. I’ve been stashing incandescent light bulbs away for quite a while.
With regard to the flu shots, whether people get them or go without, I hope everybody remembers to (1) WASH YOUR HANDS WITH SOAP AND WATER. (2) SNEEZE INTO YOUR ELBOW. (3) STAY HOME IF YOU HAVE A FEVER.
A little bit of common sense goes a long way.
Thank you, Sue! I wholeheartedly agree that a little bit of common senses goes a long way. And ditto about the hand holding. Now just wait - we will probably also soon find that sneezing into the elbow is bad though. LOL. I am so sorry about your sensitivity but I know of others who have it as well. Many years ago, I worked with a woman who claimed that her computer monitor made her face burn and feel rash-like. A lot of people doubted her and I admit, I was one of them, but the company got her a filter for her screen anyway. I’ll never doubt such a thing again. I’ve learned lots in life and I’m still learning all the time.
I had to laugh at your storing incandescent bulbs for some time. I wish I had thought to do that too!
The cell phone one is not true. My Dad who worked in Nuclear Defense actually has one of them RAD testers. We tested it out on a Cell phone and the amount of Radiation emitted from the cell phone was nothing compared to the sunlight coming through the window. That was just one of them Urban Legends started with some guy who got a Brain Tumor and the guy was some Office Exec that had a cell to his ear all day long.
Eye opener on the whole x-ray thing though. There was a year I had 4 or 5 x-rays done in a short period of time and not once did they ask me if I have been exposed to x-rays or any other type of radiation.
Maybe with all this radiation, I’ll develop super powers and I will be able to wear a cape and save people from their own stupidity.
‘
Have no fear! I AM HERE!
LOL. You are funny, Mac! Or should I call you Super-Mac? Unfortunately, the latest reports disagree with you about the cell phone radiation though. But maybe you had a well-shielded one? They don’t all emit the same amount. Anyway, I’d love to see your superhero costume!!!!
If you want to know how much radiation your phone emits or if you are in the market for a new one and this is an important factor, look here: http://reviews.cnet.com/cell-phone-radiation-levels/
Thanks, honey! Love you!
I just saw Michelle drive off with a trunk full of “something” …. HA HAAAAAAAAA !! (( I saw that ))
Me? I just saw my MEEZ and it scared the tar out ole Speedy. YIKES! And if cell phones radiate, I guess I been rdiated but good. No wonder my cranberries are now raisins.
HE HE HEEEEEEE
/ hug and smootches
Hey Eric! I gotta keep an eye on that Michelle! LOL. Oh, good - I’m glad the Meez is doing his job of spooking people.
Oops - sorry about the raisins but maybe you could reconstitute them by soaking them in water? 
Heehee! Hugs and smooches right back atcha! 
I am wary of flu shots, but just for myself. I figure if every medication I take has a side effect, why wouldn’t the shot give me the flu?
Having once worked near where x-rays were taken, I am unhappy to tell you all of my co-workers had their gall bladders taken out. All except me because I did not work there much longer after hearing that. I had an ER doctor try to talk me out of a stress test because of the possibility of it giving me brest cancer. She thought my heart promlem wasn’t serious and didn’t want to do the test ’cause it was shift change. She was wrong about my heart, but I bet you she was telling me the truth about the radiation.
Hi GFTG! Hope you are well. Yikes! I had never heard about the gall bladder thing - that is scary. See the thing with radiation is I think they just don’t know enough about it. X-rays can be great to determine when something is wrong, but years ago it was used as a therapy and many people who received x-ray therapy ended up getting bone cancers so I just think we know enough to be dangerous.
As far as the flu shot, I would wonder that myself if I were in your shoes. You certainly do NOT need any more side effects to deal with! Have a nice Halloween! 
I have a wonderful family doctor, a GP, who refuses to entertain any nonsense from his patients. His formula is simple. Treat the symptoms of any illness to ease the discomfort but let nature take care of the healing process. He knows enough however to direct the patient to a specialist if it is anything serious. During the flu season, if someone goes to him, he says,” if I give you medicine, you will become alright in seven days. If I don’t, you will in a week. What do you want to do?”
Wow! I love your family doctor - he is so wise. LOL. We need more of these doctors.
The lighting one was interesting to me. I’ve noticed that about shopping malls and department stores in particular, that something about them always made me feel fatigued. I also have fluorescent lights at work, but I expect to feel tired after grooming dogs all day. Sue up there mentioned ear ringing… I have very bad tinnitus and I wonder if that could be worsened by lighting, especially from my computer, since I spend so much time on it! Hmmm…
I don’t know anything about tinnitus or what causes it but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that something like lighting could make the symptoms worse. After all, sunshine can make you feel like you need to sneeze so it can affect sinuses, right? But I’ve always suspected something about those fluorescent lights and have only recently begun finding this information out about them. It’s all rather interesting and at least makes me feel like I wasn’t totally crazy.
Well said !!!
I have had hunches about ‘things’ and been thought of as a loon, only to find out I am not a loon.
We all need to follow our instinct a bit more !!!
Well said. Those inner voices should be listened to.
Luckily we have to fight even to get a necessary x-ray in this country (though apparently in the dim and distant past schoolchildren would get their feet routinely e-rayed in shoe shops as part of the fitting! aaaargh!)
Agreed re lighting-fatigue. Can’t stand low energy bulbs for the same reason - they give me low energy!!!
I hate how scientists have to waste so much of our money discovering what we could have told them years ago though.