ineffable500
Member
- Joined
- Nov 24, 2013
- Messages
- 12
In this post I am particularly hopeful that forum member Haidut will answer my "challenge" so-to-speak that the harmful effect of ionizing radiation is not as clear as Haidut and Peat and others believe. I think Haidut has said in the past that PUFA and ionizing radiation are clearly harmful, and that if anyone could demonstrate otherwise (beyond what he calls the intentional misinformation of government/nuclear advocates) that he would be interested.
In the past, I have personally experimented with radiation hormesis, but I cannot say whether my experience was helpful or not. Once, I harvested some uranium-bearing sands from western South Dakota, and second I harvested some dense thorium-bearing rocks from the border of Idaho and Montana. The main way I experimented with "hormesis" was to put a cup or so of sand into a gallon ziploc bag and to put a layer of bags below my futon mattress. This raised background gamma radiation to about 6 times above the average background level in most parts of the Earth. However...
I don't have a repository of scientific studies I can draw from, but I have looked into this topic reasonably closely. There are a number of websites devoted to radiation hormesis as well as scientific studies which pop up if "radiation hormesis" is searched on Google. There are the "radon health spas" in western Montana where folks, mainly ones with arthritis, may go once/year or so to take a radiation cure in which they spend, on average, 30 1-hour sessions in the radon-rich abandoned mines over 10 days. Some of these folks claim elimination of arthritis pain for up to a year or so after the treatment.
Most well-known among other medical users of radiation hormesis is Jay Guttierez of Nighthawk Minerals who sells radioactive stones and gives usage suggestions. Also, many famous therapeutic spas contain radon in significant quantities.
I have read Mary Mycio's book on Chernobyl: up to a point of elevated environmental gamma radioactivity of many hundreds or thousands of times background it is hard to notice much harm to plants or animals. At high levels such as this, perhaps animals have fewer babies per litter, and generic damage/change is detectable, but with absolutely no physically-noticeable mutations present, anywhere, due to Chernobyl. (Mutations for example in frogs are much more common from pesticides and organic chemicals.) People in naturally-radioactive parts of the world, such as Kerala, India or coastal areas of Brazil with thorium-containing black sands do not, from what I can recall reading, exhibit much notable epidemiologically across the broader population.
If biochemical effects occur which fact is certainly unquestionable but no consistent epidemiological results occur, how is it possible to determine in a holistic sense that isolated "damages" are cumulatively actually harmful? This feels like a philosophical question, perhaps, rather than a tangible health-based question. But, I think it is important to know the truth about this in either sense--healthwise, or philosophical-wise. We all get exposure to radiation: and I even recall reading about a study (done by Russians if I remember correctly) with plants grown in artificial light in an underground location in which the rock was naturally almost completely devoid of radionuclides. The plants did not grow properly, I cannot remember the details. (There is an even weirder perhaps-true, perhaps-fictional tale of Tesla claiming that radioactive elements only decay when exposed to "cosmic radiation." To test this, someone dropped a sample of ore and a Geiger counter on a cable into the deepest bore hole in the world, also in Russia I think. At a depth near what Tesla had predicted, the Geiger counter stopped beeping. Upon being retrieved to the surface, it took about 20 minutes to start beeping again.)
Medically-speaking, if we are afraid of x-rays and opt for MRI instead, the philosophical/medical question of radiation becomes important. And, on this topic, though it is yet another of my bizarre tales, I have heard that a single MRI can disrupt a person's intuition/psychic ability for many years. Are we really more friendly towards high-powered magnets to which life-forms are generally never exposed than we are to a bit of ionizing radiation with which life has been exposed since the dawn of life?
In the past, I have personally experimented with radiation hormesis, but I cannot say whether my experience was helpful or not. Once, I harvested some uranium-bearing sands from western South Dakota, and second I harvested some dense thorium-bearing rocks from the border of Idaho and Montana. The main way I experimented with "hormesis" was to put a cup or so of sand into a gallon ziploc bag and to put a layer of bags below my futon mattress. This raised background gamma radiation to about 6 times above the average background level in most parts of the Earth. However...
I don't have a repository of scientific studies I can draw from, but I have looked into this topic reasonably closely. There are a number of websites devoted to radiation hormesis as well as scientific studies which pop up if "radiation hormesis" is searched on Google. There are the "radon health spas" in western Montana where folks, mainly ones with arthritis, may go once/year or so to take a radiation cure in which they spend, on average, 30 1-hour sessions in the radon-rich abandoned mines over 10 days. Some of these folks claim elimination of arthritis pain for up to a year or so after the treatment.
Most well-known among other medical users of radiation hormesis is Jay Guttierez of Nighthawk Minerals who sells radioactive stones and gives usage suggestions. Also, many famous therapeutic spas contain radon in significant quantities.
I have read Mary Mycio's book on Chernobyl: up to a point of elevated environmental gamma radioactivity of many hundreds or thousands of times background it is hard to notice much harm to plants or animals. At high levels such as this, perhaps animals have fewer babies per litter, and generic damage/change is detectable, but with absolutely no physically-noticeable mutations present, anywhere, due to Chernobyl. (Mutations for example in frogs are much more common from pesticides and organic chemicals.) People in naturally-radioactive parts of the world, such as Kerala, India or coastal areas of Brazil with thorium-containing black sands do not, from what I can recall reading, exhibit much notable epidemiologically across the broader population.
If biochemical effects occur which fact is certainly unquestionable but no consistent epidemiological results occur, how is it possible to determine in a holistic sense that isolated "damages" are cumulatively actually harmful? This feels like a philosophical question, perhaps, rather than a tangible health-based question. But, I think it is important to know the truth about this in either sense--healthwise, or philosophical-wise. We all get exposure to radiation: and I even recall reading about a study (done by Russians if I remember correctly) with plants grown in artificial light in an underground location in which the rock was naturally almost completely devoid of radionuclides. The plants did not grow properly, I cannot remember the details. (There is an even weirder perhaps-true, perhaps-fictional tale of Tesla claiming that radioactive elements only decay when exposed to "cosmic radiation." To test this, someone dropped a sample of ore and a Geiger counter on a cable into the deepest bore hole in the world, also in Russia I think. At a depth near what Tesla had predicted, the Geiger counter stopped beeping. Upon being retrieved to the surface, it took about 20 minutes to start beeping again.)
Medically-speaking, if we are afraid of x-rays and opt for MRI instead, the philosophical/medical question of radiation becomes important. And, on this topic, though it is yet another of my bizarre tales, I have heard that a single MRI can disrupt a person's intuition/psychic ability for many years. Are we really more friendly towards high-powered magnets to which life-forms are generally never exposed than we are to a bit of ionizing radiation with which life has been exposed since the dawn of life?
