(14/7/19)

On the 16th of June we attended the general assembly for AREHS, an association that became a non profit organization in March 2019. The goal of this organization is to recognize electrohypersensitivity (EHS) as a disease. I, along with my spouse, joined the organization at the end of 2018 once we realized we were suffering from electrohypersensitivity. We immediately sold a house we had just bought and renovated in Namur since we could not live there anymore (there was a cell phone antenna near by and more than 30 WIFI signals entering the house).

We found an interim place in the same region but with several improvements such as the addition of a faraday cage so we could sleep. These, often expensive, improvements help reduce our exposure, but do not solve all the issues (1). We took the next 6 months to travel around Wallonia (within 10000km) to find a place to live. After much research we finally found a place and moved there in May 2019. Since our escape we have noticed a big difference in our  quality of life, despite the costs and all the worries we endured, it was necessary.

To flee effectively, you have to know what you are fleeing from, in other words you have to identify the danger.

We never thought we would be diagnosed with electrohypersensitivity. I never used a cell phone, I turned off the WIFI every night, I never noticed a cell phone antenna in my immediate environment, I did not have a cordless phone or a microwave. I had attended a long seminar back in 2013 and had realized some of the potential dangers of these technologies. I even remember chuckling at a lady in attendance that wore a piece of aluminum under her hat, I thought she was crazy. I had never made the connection between some of the discomforts I was experiencing and the seldom use of some of these technologies (such as bluetooth and WIFI), I thought they were all related to age and poor health. I did not know that antennas were placed under church steeples, that the WIFI and cordless phones from neighbors could seep through the walls and affect us. I associated the increase in heart palpitations to a cardiac problem confirmed by my cardiologist, the sleep troubles to a mattress that was too hard, the muscular pains to the lack of exercise and having a hard time focusing to a stroke. Then one day, I noticed that my spouse, who is younger and in better physical health than me, was complaining more and more of heart palpitations and sleep troubles.

It was getting harder and harder for us to walk around the city, eat out and go grocery shopping. Going on vacation and sleeping in hotels had become out of the question. The enemy was everywhere. Everyone seemed to have a cell phone attached to their wrist. I picked up hundreds of WIFI connections around the city center. Living in the city became impossible for us, so we had to flee. For a long time, I believed that it could not be true, that a country could not agree to use a technology that is so detrimental to our health, that doctors must be informed about the impact this technology has on our health. Unfortunately, I had to come to terms with the situation, our well being would be sacrificed in the name of wireless technology, a new industrial revolution for economic growth.

To Flee, but from whom and where ?

We identified the enemy and got to know it, my training in geobiology helped me a lot. First, we made sure that we got rid of all the radiation that surrounded us but we kept on finding new sources. The laptop that, even though it was connected with a cable, automatically started the WIFI and bluetooth every time we turned it on, the bluetooth in the car, etc. Once we fixed all of that, we started looking at exterior sources of radiation. We learned that some WIFI reach up to 100m from their source, we discovered that Belgium is like a Christmas tree built of cell phone towers with barely any blank spaces. We did lots of research, we fine-tuned the tools that can protect us, and we looked for a possible paradise (after buying a new car because we could not disconnect the bluetooth). We surfed the website « Immoweb » constantly in search of a new place to live in Wallonia, because we wanted to stay in Belgium and are not proficient in Flemmish. We aslo found tools that helped us locate antennas, as well as other tools that helped me measure the electromagnetic pollution of a specific place. After 6 months, we found 4 possible candidates, 3 in the Chimay region and 1 in the Lierneux region. We visited, measured and made offers when our criterias matched the electric, hygiene and overall state of the place. A few times the owners were too greedy or we got there too late. Furthermore, we had to find a place where my spouse could find work as a nurse. Finding a place with all those criteria wasn’t easy, but we also had to plan for possible city expansion and installation of new antennas.

Finally, we found a place and moved. No more heart palpitations, muscular pains and insomnia !

We are isolated at the end of a dead end, at 4km from the closest antenna and at 130 meters from our first neighbor. The area around us is considered « natural », non buildable and surrounded by areas that are « NATURA 2000 ». I would have loved to build a small apartment to temporarily welcome other EHS, but logistically it is not possible. I very much hope that the new techonological developments (5G by satelite, etc.) won’t come to us.

Since living in a healthier environment my overall health has greatly improved.  It seems like the too full glass is starting to empty itself and that my body is able to regenerate itself without having to constantly fight to maintain homeostasis. Admittedly, the first few weeks were hard, the external artificial stimuli were no longer there, but now, I am finally able to concentrate to write, my nights are restful, and my sleep is finally regenerative. On the other hand, my contact with external stimuli has to be short. By going to the city to go grocery shopping, it feels like my symptoms multiply by ten. Our home has become the heart of our lives which we cannot leave for very long.

We want to help the EHS

Our thoughts go to all the EHS and the future ones and we hope that they can find solutions that help them live in better conditions. EHS leads to exclusions from many things as well as incomprehension. Furthermore, we do not all agree on the steps we need to take to become more or less protected. We are working on sharing a maximum of information with the AREHS (information and political awareness) and another group of people with EHS (legal procedures, tools) for them to find practical solutions to better their daily life.

We meet monthly and share our findings from our experiences. From the legal steps that must be taken for EHS to be recognized to the lending of tools to measure and test certain materials. It is also a place for sharing where you can be heard and mourn the past while benefitting from other people’s experiences and advice.

We have decided to focus our energy on helping people suffering from EHS, by sharing with them temporary locations where they can heal some, step back from the invisible enemy and find the energy to fight it better.

My EHS diagnosis, I see it as an opportunity…

…because it allows me to know where the environment is harmful to me. My cells react and I listen to my body which is telling me it is dangerous here. Okay, there are a lot of inconveniences, but it has allowed me to reconnect with my environment, to relearn to listen to my body and to compel myself to a hygiene that is conencted to nature. Sadly, it is not available to all and I am priviledged. Many EHS loose their work, families get divorced due to an incomprehension and like rats in a lab they cannot escape. They are the modern refugee of technology.

We often hear that everything is happening in our head and that our symptoms are psycholigcal in origin. This reasoning tends to isolate the EHS even more, seen as people that do not want the world to grow and progress. Whenever I ask others to turn off their cell phones or turn off their WIFI at night, I get few favorable answers. People that do not feel the danger, think they are safe. That it is not their problem. However, I have been asked lots of questions when one or someone they know is affected.

 

The influence of lobbyists, the states’ advantage and hypnotisation of the masses

Beyond considering people’s physical and emotional well being, this phenomom highlights again the influence of lobbyists and the hypnotisation and manipulation of the masses. I always laugh discretely when I hear a provider say that new products are created because the clients demand them. Who is artificially creating these demands ? Who is putting the rat in the cage ?

Sadly, I don’t have any hopes that wireless technology will be better regulated because they represent current and future financial gains that are more important than we can imagine.  This technology benefits the states by selling licences (recently some were sold for 6 million euros to Germany to the 4 providers). It represents a financial windfall for future manufacturers, all the current phones will become obsolete and need to be replace because they won’t be compatible with 5G, as well as create all the other objects that are connected (scale, fridge, oven, TV, car, landmower, etc.).

I am still in enough control of my destiny to know that I don’t need all the gadgets. I have other things to do than watch TV shows and to play stupid and violent games throughout the day. We are in the middle of making mankind stupid, and what to think of a technology that affects millions just to be able to operate on a sick person « remotely » ?

Listening to your own body and nature

 

To have been diagnosed with EHS, is an opportunity for me to reconnect to my life, to listen to my body and to the nature that gave me life. I am not opposed to accepting the darwinian maxim that says : « adapt or disappear » (2). Neither am I a Don Quixote ready to fight the windmills and to rebel.  It is rare for such a phenomenon to need so much writing, recommendations, study, documentaries and warning. Politicians do not react or if they do it is only reluctantly when elections are approaching. Doctors (although not all of them, like the ones that started « Hippocrates Electrosmog Appeal Belgium ») (3), either send you to see a psychologist or give you Xanax.

I do not know the mechanism created by nature and our physiology to explain how EHS happens. I am just thankful to my body for making me realize how dangerous our environment is. I am not sick, I am just reacting negatively to the ever new and rapidly developed technologies without any precautions.