my success story with CFS and depression

My battle, education, and success with chronic fatigue syndrome


The following explains where and how the health care system failed me, and how I overcame illness. Please read this short story of my 15yr battle to overcome chronic fatigue syndrome and see the relation to the public health problems we now face. I am writing this from Ontario Canada

The issue of public health and inadequate policies to protect it opens up a multitude of emotions within me and I feel compelled to tell my story of the environmental factors directly responsible for my contracting and overcoming chronic fatigue syndrome.

Presently the medical establish defines Chronic-Fatigue-Syndrome as a disease that is viral or biologically based without a cure available. There is currently research being done on Chronic-Fatigue-Syndrome and depression. That research and many others like seem to overlook or hide hi-tech factors of these epidemics. Today’s research seems to be looking toward "the biology” to develop drugs for a solution to this epidemic. Pharmaceutical drugs when designed correctly end up an extreme expense to taxpayers, and yes suppress symptoms but they eventually result in contributing too, and allowing the condition to worsen which historically never was, and in my opinion never will be a cure. Looking into the biology is just one important piece of a very overwhelming and complex puzzle

When searching for a specific cause for chronic fatigue, it has been my experience there is not one but many. Discovering and avoiding the environmental pollutants that were controlling my quality of life was the most important and effective information needed in controlling the mental and physical state of my health. Through signs, symptoms and messages from my body I have developed a conscious system that uses diet, supplements, electromagnetic radiation (EMF) avoidance and other techniques based on my biological individuality. I know what to avoid or what foods and or supplements to use to keep chronic fatigue at bay and the resulting depressed mental and physical state. After 15 years of research, trial, error, and many years of experiencing no control over my health, it is an amazing feeling to have solutions to overcome the daily fatigue and resulting depression.

For years now I have been researching electromagnetic fields (EMF's). Through experience I know I am very susceptible to many wireless devices and 50/60 Hz fields, depending on load and distance. I would like to share my thoughts on EMF's Depression and suicide. I have not read anything to date that has brought up the exact role EMF's have played in my life in regards to fatigue and depression. There has been a lot in the news lately in regards to linking depression, suicide, and the drugs for depression. I am not one to defend the pharmaceutical industry, I am not a scientist, have no formal education or vested interest in any related medical or scientific fields. Although at 41years old I have yet to find a health care professional as qualified as myself for dealing with and maintaining my avoidance of chronic fatigue and the resulting depression. Most likely no one with the authority in the C.M.A. To make necessary changes would believe or accept my story and that is a shame.


EMF avoidance is just one of many techniques I use. I would agree that EMF's alone are not alone responsible for a person to have CFS, a factor? I say yes! I can honestly tell you that avoidance of EMF's is one of many, but it is the single most effective tool I use in my life to manage chronic fatigue and the resulting depression.

By 1989 my health had hit a lifetime low. After explaining a multitude of symptoms to my conventional family doctor he prescribed several drugs for me to take, when I explained to him these only made me worse, he told me, after a battery of tests there was nothing wrong with me and referred me to a psychiatrist. This enraged me because at that time I didn’t know that when a doctor tells you there is nothing wrong with you it can also only mean a drug has not yet been designed to suppress your symptoms. So I decided to do something totally unconventional and at that time radical for me, because before that occurrence I had never doubted the conventional medical establishment. I went to see a naturopathic doctor which my family doctor said was a quack. In those days he was called a clinical ecologist. Through that appointment I learned I wasn’t crazy and he suggested my symptoms were environmental based and may be CFS. I never went back to my family doctor again.

The role I believe EMF's play in Depression and suicide is that certain types of EMF exposures cause an array of symptoms and for me they are severe versions of fatigue, body aches, brain fog, headaches and eventually circulatory problems. So when your life is at rock bottom and you go to a doctor who has no training to recognize environmental induced illness and explain those kinds of symptoms listed above and you're told there is nothing wrong with you, the resulting Depression and helplessness makes suicide
Seem like a viable option.

Having 2 children myself, a sister who as always suffered with depression, losing my mother to suicide when I was a kid and my father to leukemia helped me decide to work this problem and not give up on myself. I have never read about EMF’s playing this role in depression, though I have experienced it. I hope it will give you people insight if ever seeking answers about weird symptoms, depression, human biology, what influences biological change, and public health epidemics.

In the 15 years I have been studying all of the forms of environmental pollution and taking charge of my health, I am sure I do not need to wait probably another 20 or more years for Science combined with a lot of death and suffering like with big tobacco or toxic chemicals to prove to me the realities of our present day public, residential, and occupational hazards.

As a layperson this is how I sum up the thousands of pages of research I have reviewed, combined with the effects I have experienced over the last 15years. Since I do not have a medical or scientific career to advance in, or financial ties to the drug industry it's been easy for me to see the "common sense" in all this. At some point all cancer is caused by environmental exposures, beginning with everything your mother was exposed to when you were in the womb, then those exposures set the stage for how much strength, mental, & physical ability or weakness when dealing with environmental exposures throughout life.

The acute effects caused by EMF’s, indoor & outdoor air pollution, prescription drugs, drug & alcohol abuse, pesticides, toxic additives to food, nutritionally void foods, toxins in water, result in severe stress & depression of the immune system allowing viruses and other offenders to proliferate from a weakened immune system which promotes chronic conditions of disability, disease, and eventually cancer. Meanwhile a lack of recognition of that cycle creates a nightmare for researchers to develop drugs or cures to stop the insanity as researchers and scientists are scrambling to do. What is definitely created from that "cycle" is a never-ending profit potential for big pharma. Further assisted by all forms of irresponsible environmental polluting and the polluting is promoted with a lack of public and physician education in environmental induced illness and avoidance techniques. The system is literally feeding itself and the only winners are the related shareholders. Living in a society where the funding body owns and controls which parts of the research data are released means proof on paper will be hard to come by if ever in my lifetime, this is a big reason why the problem will continue. People like me are the proof. Combine the control of research results with decades of a misinformed and uneducated public who are influenced with big pharma top notch marketing and the epidemics of today are not such a big surprise to me.

Being randomly exposed to the above in the womb in my opinion also causes defects in genetic code, setting up the stage for epidemics of disability and extreme sensitivity to environmental pollution throughout life. I have come to the conclusion that due to funding influences there is not one Canadian, but several international studies available to public officials for use to stop the needless and insane increasing EMF exposures in our society, it has gone up approx. 30 fold in the last 50yrs.

The ill effects and the resulting way I must live my life represent a devastating triumph of corporate financial success over public health. It is my opinion due do the economics of this, that for many years to come and most likely in my lifetime government policy will not be created to end this and the highest possible corporate profits will remain a priority over a necessary level of public health.

I have read several articles lately regarding, cancer, poverty, depression, junk food and their relationship to public health. I would like to address a common factor with all of those public health issues where the government has control. I feel the government's most recent attempt to address public health with a food tax provides an inability to properly prioritize public health problems. There are bigger and more important issues to address first to stabilize the growing public health hazards and epidemics in today’s society .government needs to take more responsibility by addressing many environmental factors that promote ill health and individuals need to take more responsibility of there own health as I have done for many years now.

Whether your choice of treatment is conventional or non, it makes so much more sense to avoid an offending environmental exposure as much as practical than to keep exposing yourself to it while treating with supplements or drugs, only in my experience a "practical" avoidance is getting harder and harder to achieve due to ever increasing EMF pollution everywhere I turn.


In today’s world of Science & medicine my views on treating illness would be termed a holistic approach or even phobia, but in my view it's just, "extremely" non-conventional. I personally see my view no less scientific than conventional medicine, but I do find it much more time consuming, without the arrogance and definitely not the profit potentials of conventional medicine. I do not want to leave out this other very important point regarding the economics of beating Chronic-Fatigue-Syndrome in Ontario.

All the drugs and conventional treatments available to me to treat all of the symptoms of CFS would cost at least $30,000 dollars per year in dr. Apt, therapies and drugs which are 100% covered and paid for by greenshield and ohip, all of which make my symptoms unbearable, so obviously I do not use them. The money I spend on organic food and supplements cost me an extra $7-10,000 per year over a standard non -organic diet without nutritional and herbal supplements.

This combination of nutrition and avoidance techniques keeps me an un-depressed, CFS free, healthy productive tax paying member of our society, so my reward from our government for taking responsibility of my ailments, and saving them those expenses is, I am not allowed to deduct my health care costs as health care expenses! I guess this is the penalty imposed on me for not allowing conventional medicine to make money off my environmental induced ailments, which a lack of government policy allows to occur in the first place. How dare I cheat big pharma out of some tax payer $$$$, even if it's at the expense of the quality of my life.

That is the reason, as a responsible father, I choose to take responsibility of my kids and my health by addressing the external factors that cause my ailments, not to mention the internal factors caused by external ones. If more regular working people like myself without a degree in Science or biology took the time to do research when free healthcare services fail them things could change sooner than, someday!

In regards to research being done, studies are not taking into account and tracking the cumulative effects of EMF’s and all other toxic environmental exposures, for any scientist or researcher that would be an extremely overwhelming task and most likely impossible. Can you blame the condition of CFS and depression, solely on viruses or the biology of brain chemistry without looking into environmental factors that adversely affect brain chemistry or the immune system? I don't think so, unless your motives are strictly for designing drugs to suppress specific symptoms.

I know as far as the "biology" of my brain and body are concerned my sensitivities to EMF’s and many other forms of indoor and outdoor environmental pollution is where the reason and solution are for my CFS and depression. So if research is showing CFS and depression are "biologically based”, or from a virus than the only logical reason I can think of in regards to my success in keeping CFS and depression at bay is that by lessening EMF’s and other toxic environmental exposures, combined with nutrition I have stopped the induced adverse biological effects in my brain and body and, or my immune system is now able to deal with the viruses. All the science is irrelevant to me because it is obvious that avoidance of the offending environmental factors combined with proper diet and supplements, for whatever scientific reason, is the only way to overcome that horrible debilitating environmental poisoning, which the medical establishment calls a "disease" in my body!.

When exposed to the required amount of offending environmental exposure, I can assure anyone that in my case there will never be a “drug” to “cure” those adverse biological effects, at least not in my lifetime. In the last 15 yrs I have painstakingly learned over and over again the cure is and always will be for me “avoidance techniques” combined with diet and supplements. I cannot see how this would not be a favorable technique for other people with similar conditions or symptoms. But I can see the economic implications of my techniques if incorporated into our society would be a financial nightmare for power companies and bad for the pharmaceutical & medical research shareholders. As far as myself I never chose this path of self discovery, it chose me.

For several years it has occupied all of my time outside of parenting and working. It has taught me so much about my body and our society and I’m glad it did. I just feel that I pay a level of taxes that are supposed to include free healthcare, yet I pay for the healthcare I do not use as well as what I do use.

It has been about one year now since I purchased a gauss meter to measure EMF's. I used this device to re-arrange the sleeping and living arrangements in my home for minimal electromagnetic exposure. The most profound benefit from reducing EMF's for me is mental clarity and energy. I try as much as possible to keep my 110/220 volt exposures of 50/60 Hz. Below 1milliguass because at 1.5mg and above I experience unpleasant effects. In regards to the take out food issue, it is an issue that needs to be addressed, but follow me on this which points out why it is not the more important health issue in my case. I want to point out that in my kitchen in my apartment the EMF's are never lower than 5mg, usually 7mg, which means if I want to live free of chronic fatigue and depression I have to spend a limited amount of time in there each day.

I try not to spend more than 20 minutes in the kitchen 2 times per day. So take out food is important for me to use to avoid too much EMF's so I can remain CFS free, which keeps me an employed, tax-paying member of society. Street corners, intersections, sidewalks, especially the ones under power lines that carry several stacked rows of high voltage wire create debilitating electrosmog for me. I stay away! The other thing experience has taught me about a measurement of gauss, which is a measurement of EMF's is that the higher the voltage the more damaging the EMF's are per gauss measurement. I do as much driving as possible on the 401 in this area, almost no EMF's there.

I want to move my kids and myself out of the apt we live in and buy a house with a much lower EMF exposure, and there are many available in this area. When you drive around the GTA you see almost an equal mix of housing areas, some infested with high EMF exposures and others with no readings at all- 0 gauss! Of coarse those 0 level areas seem to always be the more expensive ones. Each day when people are in their home, at work, or out for a walk they are exposed from zero to all different levels and types of EMF's and it's a roll of the dice depending on where you are, the state of your health, which makes tracking illnesses, effects, and exposures impossible on a public health level. The only person capable of monitoring this is the individual. Even though I earn more than $60,000 per year, which should be enough to own a house I do not!

I spend almost no money on myself for social activities, unless high-speed internet counts, but I use that for health research anyway, and I can not afford to buy a house. After all the monthly expenses of me and my 2 kids, health care costs, and income taxes the $980.00 a month rent is hard to pay. Now if my healthcare was tax deductible, or covered like it is supposed to be in Ontario I could own a home, without a toxic level of EMF's in the kitchen and dining room.

Another extremely relevant and important fact regarding EMF's is I have greatly reduced my exposures for the last year and the result of that is I have noticed my ability to handle acute exposures has increased, so the effects are definitely cumulative. I know for a fact, at least in my case the chronic fatigue and depression I have experienced it is not the disease as labeled by the medical profession. It is my body being overwhelmed by all forms of pollution working synergistically. I must be correct in that assessment due to the fact I know how and what to expose myself too for CFS to appear and what to do to make it disappear.

EMF's are definitely for me at this time, the worst of all offenders, mostly due to living in this apartment because almost everywhere is over 1mg. The bathroom is the only place in this apartment with readings below 1mg. My symptoms provoked me on what to research, and the research led me to the logic and common sense behind those symptoms. The single most profound difference I can say about the benefits of EMF avoidance is no more of that intense brain fog, that is a sensation that at times makes you feel you are brain dead, and wish you were dead!. I sincerely believe that if 15 years ago I would have gone with my conventional doctors pharmaceutical modalities, today I would be diseased, depressed, disabled and suicidal if not already dead.

Even though that unfair aspect of this whole thing makes me angry, I feel blessed to have avoided that "hell on earth" and to be healthy, working, and CFS free than sick depressed and on disability. I will keep paying my healthcare, and searching for a way to afford a residence for me and my 2 kids with lower EMF's. I also believe that if our government continues to ignore the biological effects and increase the amount of pollution in society and continue to fund healthcare without teaching physicians to recognize environmental induced illness they will soon be looking for funding to double the number of doctors in Ontario, which won't help anyone except recent medical grad's & shareholders from the company of the drugs prescribed.

If you have any suggestions on help with my health care expenses, who in government to contact, or want more clarification on any of these subjects, supplements used, or specifics on my techniques to avoid CFS & depression please contact me. Thank you for taking the time to read this and hope you want to use it.
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