Can You Heal Me?

The results appeared to be so convincing and clear-cut that, as National Geographic points out, even the researcher behind the findings was skeptical about their accuracy.

But in a brain study of mice, University of South Florida brain researcher Juan Sanchez-Ramos has found that the radiation from normal cell phone use may help to ward off Alzheimer's disease.

The findings run counter to what has been inferred from early cell phone studies, and about what has long been known about radiation and its effects. Sanchez-Ramos himself concedes as much — National Geographic conveys the neuroscientist's own initial dubiousness, quoting him as saying:

"It's such a dramatic and counterintuitive effect. I joked that the animals must have been mislabeled or that the power wasn't switched on."

But in his study of mice, he concludes that the low level of radiation emitted by cell phones is observed to protect against and perhaps even reverse the development of symptoms of Alzheimer's.

While the precise mechanism for why the use of cell phones might provide the apparent brain health benefit remains unclear. But as National Geographic points out, researchers have some theories that are currently being kicked around. Chief among them is that low level of radiation imposes similarly low levels of stress on the brain, and this stress serves as a catalyst for DNA repair processes that are located in the brain itself.

Photo courtesy of Dirkj, via Wikimedia Commons