| Excerpt from the report: "About 70% of
withdrawn children have chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) with reduced blood flow to the
brain," says Kumamoto University Medical School Professor Teruhisa Miike regarding
his investigation of cerebral blood flow among children failing to attend school, which
showed reduced blood flow in 75% of the cases. He says that their failure to attend school
is not a "psychological problem," but a serious illness accompanied by disorders
in central nervous system function and immune function. "If you force them to go to
school, they risk having real psychological problems as a result," he says.
This chronic fatigue syndrome may be caused by electromagnetic waves according to a study
by Ryoichi Ogawa, a physician in Kobe, whose view that "Reduced cerebral blood flow
may possibly result from the influence of electromagnetic waves from IT equipment"
was introduced in the Sunday Mainichi weekly of May 4-11, 2004. An excerpt from this
article is given below.
Dr. Ogawa noted that about 80% of his CFS patients were frequent users on a daily basis of
cellular phones, personal computers, TV games and other IT devices, and decided to conduct
a clinical investigation into a possible cause-effect relationship of cellular phones and
desktop-style personal computers to CFS, a "poorly understood condition" in
which general clinical tests show no abnormalities.
The subjects were 40 young people, 20 male and 20 female, ranging in age from 12 to 32,
who had received treatment for CFS, and an additional 25 male and 25 female healthy family
members of the patients, ranging in age from 15 to 35, for a total of 90 people. The
investigation was performed using the "Super Doppler Method" to measure the
speed of blood flowing during a period of one second in the ophthalmic artery located in
the upper part of the eyelid. This artery branches off from the internal carotid artery,
which carries blood from the heart to the brain, and this method of testing was
established for clinical investigation of blockage of cerebral blood vessels.
The subjects were asked to use a cellular phone, holding it to their left ear for
30 seconds. Prior to use, all of the subjects showed normal blood flow of 10 cm/sec. in
the ophthalmic artery of both left and right eye, but after using the cellular phone, this
dropped to less than 5 cm/sec. in all of the subjects. When blood flow in this artery is
less than 5 cm/sec, it is considered a sign of reduced cerebral blood flow.
The subjects were also asked to use a personal computer, sitting within one meter
of the screen for 15 minutes of normal use. When measurements were made directly
afterward, it turned out that the blood flow was reduced to less than 5 cm/sec in both
eyes among all of the patients who had been treated for CFS. Even among the
healthy group, about 78% showed a reduction to less than 5 cm/sec in both eyes.
In addition, the subjects were tested again for speed of blood flow in the ophthalmic
artery 30 minutes after finishing their use of these devices. The results showed all of
the healthy subjects to have recovered normally to 10 cm/sec, so in their case it was
learned that the reduction in cerebral blood flow was temporary. Among the subjects who
had received treatment for CFS, however, only 60% had recovered normally. This
demonstrates a possibility of some kind of effect on cerebral blood flow by IT equipment,
and that these patients will need to take care regarding electromagnetic fields in their
daily lives after treatment.
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