A Personal Journey Through Electromagnetic Sensitivities By Leigh Cook

Leigh Cook is now a personal friend of mine. She won't mind me saying that she is well into her eighties and has become a close, intuitive and guiding light in my life. I try to visit her often and we sit and chat with a cup of green tea while her dog Riley sleeps very quietly nearby. I have had the pleasure of Leigh's many life stories over the years and also shared the microphone with her on five occasions on local radio where we were invited to talk about EMF issues. She once asked me if she should write down her story about electrosensitivities, I said "Yes, most definitely, let's get it out there." So here it is. With Leigh's permission we share this writing to help others feel less alone and hopefully empowered with new information. We hope you enjoy this personal journey.

My hands shook, my body twitched. I gazed out of my kitchen window and watched the colourful birds swinging on our coconut shell and in the hanging basket beneath the bottle brush. It was difficult to understand that this beautiful scene was highly polluted with something that we couldn’t see, feel or hear, something that has now changed my life drastically, something I believe is effecting all of us without us even realising the danger.

My partner and I had just moved into our new home. The next morning I was standing by the kitchen bench watching the birds when suddenly my legs began to wobble and give way. I held on and leaned into the bench. My brain refused to function. I tried to speak. After what seemed an eternity, I managed one word. ‘WIFI’! My partner rushed to turned it off.

I put any worrying thoughts aside but often felt quite shaky in the early morning and seemed to lose a lot of energy after cooking in the kitchen. I was concerned about my weight which seemed to be steadily reducing. A visit to the doctor was a help but I was puzzled by the inconsistency of my symptoms. As time went by, I noticed a change in my metabolism. I began to feel different when I was close to my partner’s cellphone. Then as I dressed one morning my clothes fell off me to the floor. I panicked! What on earth was happening? Had I lost even more weight? Alas this marked what seemed to be the beginning of what was to be a very difficult journey through ill health.

For years I had found working on computers zapping and now I could feel the power emitting from any laptops around me. The power from my partner’s phone seemed to have become much stronger and I began to avoid phones in airports and crowded places if it was possible. Finally while using my old 3G cellphone I experienced the energy emitting from it, which travelled down through my body as it connected to the cell phone towers close by. It was extremely unpleasant and frightening. I cut down on the meagre use of my cellphone and stopped carrying it with me.

A friend in the health field recommended we get Andy Hooley from EMFShop, an expert in Electro Magnetic Fields (EMF’s) to check out the EMF footprint in our home.What he showed us was alarming.

The neighbours’ router 5 metres away, was emitting wireless radiation through the kitchen and living room. He detected high levels of Electro Magnetic Fields (EMF’s) in various parts of the house. This explained why I felt different in some areas, and not others. He informed us that our home appliances also produced the invisible EMF’s inside our house. Andy installed filters in many of our rooms and told us that EMF’s were coming from the Wifi computer systems such as computers and televisions, cellphones, tablets, cordless phones, smart meters, printers and the electric hob, not to mention the three cell phone towers 750m away. My health was being worn down by an overload of unnatural electromagnetic energies.

We changed our electric induction hob to gas, put in cables instead of using wifi with the television and turned switches off in the house when not in use.

My health improved noticeably. I even put an extra 5kg onto my 45kg frame. By now I was enjoying planting my own organic garden and eating only organic food. Life was easier -- for a while.

You may be wondering how I became so sensitized to electricity and EMFs, you may not have heard anything like this before. For many years I lived overseas and travelled by air a great deal. It was a stimulating and exciting time. No one was concerned about our carbon footprint then, but the heavy pollution I experienced in terms of radiation in planes, traffic fumes and chemicals took its toll. I was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and had developed sensitivities to many chemicals and foods.

Living in Asia for many years, I became strongly interested in healing with energy and finally committed to learning the Japanese art of bringing down Universal Energy in the form of Reiki. This was to help me dramatically in the years to come.

As time went on and I developed a growing intolerance to more and more electropollution, it was obvious I could spend less and less time around cellphones and computers and doing our weekly shopping in congested places was becoming problematic. I started to experience stabbing pains in my arms near cellphone towers and heart palpitations at night. Occasionally I could meet friends and family in a not too crowded cafe, but eventually that had to stop as well. I started to experience extreme fatigue, hot flushes, an inability to think clearly, then sinus and lung congestion the next day. The inability to think clearly, the ongoing and extreme fatigue were frustrating to say the least.

The most difficult places were supermarkets. Surrounded by freezers, refrigerators, computers, music, cellphones and even TV screens. The LED and fluorescent lighting glared in my eyes. If I spent too much time by the freezers or began talking to someone, I would lose concentration and forget to move away. My eyes would sting and my voice would become husky. I began to wear peaked caps, blue light glasses as light protection and shungite* around my neck to absorb the electro magnetic fields. Unfortunately the day after, the effect of such environmental pollution was always worse. I sometimes spent up to 3 hours clearing my congested lungs and sinuses. My ears rang with tinnitus and remained blocked while the dermatitis in them made me itch badly. During Covid lockdown, I read a lot at night with an LED bulb and watched more TV than usual. The screen was digital, pulsed and LED. Even the blue light glasses were not enough to protect me. My eyes began to itch and hurt in the corners before swelling and redness appeared. The lubrication in my eyes had dried up and infection was developing.

My nervous system began to jerk involuntarily more often. After working in the kitchen under warm coloured LEDs with my blue light glasses I would wake the next morning with stabbing pains in the back of my neck chest and arms. The intensity depended on the time I had spent there.

Eventually travelling in and out of the city became a nightmare. I could almost guarantee that every car had at least one working cell phone in it. The EMF’s put out by the phones bounce around the inside of cars as they connect to the towers through the windows. I could feel the signals from the newly installed cell phone towers on the motorway hit my partner’s phone in his pocket and beam out toward me. My worst nightmare happened when our plane arrived back late and we became gridlocked for an hour in the middle of the city. I began to feel irritable and unable to sit still, until I felt the pressure in my head almost exploding. My brain was foggy. I had difficulty deciding what to do. Slowly my hands went to both sides of my head and immediately the Reiki energy released the pressure.

I was sick again the next day.

My doctor issued me a certificate to use as medical proof to say I was sensitive to radiation.

Driving home one day from my weekly grocery shop, I experienced a burning sensation down inside my oesophagus, stomach and gut. Reaching home I took off my shoes which seemed so tight to discover inflammation around my toes. On further investigation the backs of my hands were also inflamed, the knuckles white and stiff. I had two issues here. One was arthritis and the other didn’t bear thinking about, I found it so frightening. What was happening inside my body?

I tried not to feel dejected. I began to notice people working and serving in shops had also developed white knuckles and heard stories about sore hands more and more often.

I had monitored my symptoms for some time and invested in some acupuncture to strengthen my body. I also used a QRS magnetic mat each day to keep problems at a minimum and avoided rooms in the house (if possible) that were troublesome. Taking things day by day and resting helped as well. I kept a positive attitude and sure enough relief was near.

Andy raced through the door waving a book “I’ve found the key!” he said. That became apparent as I read the brilliant book, ‘The Body’s Many Cries for Water’ by Dr Batmanghelidj. The doctors concern was that a high percentage of our population is dehydrated, leading to serious diseases including immuno suppression and inflammation. I increased my water intake to 2 litres a day almost immediately. (This of course was not without its own problems)!

The inflammation and stiffness disappeared until I ventured out into high EMFs again. Gradually my chest congestion and sinus loosened enabling me to breathe more easily. The ringing in my ears disappeared. I now drink up to 3 litres of water a day and have had no more burning symptoms and very few arthritic pains. The key had become apparent. I believe the most insidious and dangerous affect of being in man made wireless radiation is ‘dehydration’. So many of us suffer day to day from dehydration without realising it. The constant barrage of EMFs has already created a huge struggle for people like myself. There are well over 3,000,000 people worldwide who are sensitive to electricity.*

It’s very difficult for any of us to move out of the range of constantly emitting cell phone towers which seem to be looming up everywhere. I’ve now invested in some shielding clothing, have started to wire in a strong earthing device, plus paint the office with graphite paint giving me an electro magnetic free room to work and relax in. I look forward to travelling in a car or on public transport and speaking to my friends and family on the landline without congested lungs and dizziness. I dream about cooking in the kitchen and washing in the laundry, without the pressure of a short time frame. I’ll be able to visit friends. Perhaps I’ll be able to listen to music again on the radio, play at gigs again with my guitar or watch our beautiful birds outside the kitchen window without the painful and debilitating symptoms, which have made my life so very difficult.

* The quote, so aptly put by Dr Joseph Mercola, bestselling author for the New York Times comes to mind...“So here we all are unaware of what is happening... in this massive experiment upon mankind waiting for the next huge step, The Untested 5G.”