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Does Wifi affect your sleep?

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888

Member
So before I begin to describe my experience that is only an isolated home test, I would like to say why I decided to try this. I was reading about the long term effects of Cell Phone use. I stumbled onto a page that also covered some wireless effects on sleep. I thought that it was a ridiculous to even think that my router was bothering my sleep. My Wife is always complaining about getting decent sleep and she snores a lot. I have always been an OK sleeper but I never really have dreams that I remember.

Test: I have a Netgear Nighthawk on the outside of one of my Bedroom walls. I set it to turn off WiFi at 10:30 PM and turn it on at 6:30 AM. Now I had zero expectations of this changing anything but I figured why not, it is easy enough to try. I also removed anything else from the bedroom that was 2.4ghz such as the cordless phone etc. My Cell phone I tossed into Airplane mode.

Unscientific results: I woke up the next morning like usual, my Wife who didn't know what I was doing, said her throat didn't hurt and she slept really well. Over the few weeks she stopped snoring and wasn't complaining about being able to stay asleep. I myself started to dream, weird ones at that. I felt refreshed and just left the schedule for the Wifi to turn off.

One night my Wife stayed up late and the wireless turned off, I killed the schedule so she could keep watching Netflix. That night she was snoring again and had for the following month and I stopped dreaming. I turned the wireless off again last night and this morning she felt great and I had a dream I was Daredevil and Chris Pratt was my Brother and we were protecting a baby from a group of villains that use electricity on the floors, weird right?

Could be just a placebo effect but the fact that my Wife had no idea I was turning it off until she wasn't able to use Netflix and I didn't have to listen to her snore or complain makes me think there is some credibility to the theory. I am not going to go overboard but there were no other changes that we made lifestyle wise, I was already eating healthy and working out so it wasn't that.

What are your thoughts? I usually laugh this stuff off but I think I may be a little more open minded towards some of these theory's.
 

moggio

Banned
No. No, it doesn't.

The sort of people who believe that wifi signals have some negative health effect are also the sort of people who believe Morgellons are real.
 
ustv-better-call-saul-episode-4-02.jpg
 

shem935

Banned
Maybe decreased technology use before going to sleep could be a bigger factor here because you have the wifi off. Sounds like your wife found a sleeping position where she doesn't snore.
 
Well psychic abilities are just wifi for the brain. Maybe your wifi is tapping into your psychic wifi and sending signals directly to your brain.

Gaf is in your head.
 
Wifi interferes with the beta waves your brain produces, bending them to make you more restless at night. That doesn't mean it affects everybody, but those more sensitive to neuron pathway disruption may wake up intermittently. It's not significantly harmful, however if you're within 5 meters of a particularly powerful WiFi transceiver then you're stimulating the growth of certain cancerous cells.

Yes I made this up. No, OP, WiFi doesn't affect your sleep.
 
What are your thoughts? I usually laugh this stuff off but I think I may be a little more open minded towards some of these theory's.

A classic case of confirmation bias. You could have just as easily had a terrible nights sleep with it on than off. You've made a connection between the time it's off and sleeping better, this connection is almost undoubtedly erroneous. There is no evidence to suggest wifi disturbs sleep.
 

jacobeid

Banned
On my drive into work this morning I was behind a big, beat up van with a bumper sticker that read "Autism is caused by ULTRASOUNDS!"

I wondered what type of person could even possibly begin to believe something like that, but now we have wifi affecting sleep lol.

I had a dream I was Daredevil and Chris Pratt was my Brother and we were protecting a baby from a group of villains that use electricity on the floors, weird right?

This got me though.
 

888

Member
Maybe decreased technology use before going to sleep could be a bigger factor here because you have the wifi off. Sounds like your wife found a sleeping position where she doesn't snore.

She rolls around all over the place and doesn't really have a set position. Usually while I am reading I can hear her start snoring and the only time she would stop was when I would wake her up but she would start again. I haven't didn't do that once during those few weeks of consistent schedule of the wifi being off. She was snoring with a vengeance the other night and last night was not a single bit of it. I may set an app to listen for snoring, maybe I am just sleeping deeper and not noticing it, she doesn't complain about her throat hurting when I run this test tho.
 
Wifi interferes with the beta waves your brain produces, bending them to make you more restless at night. That doesn't mean it affects everybody, but those more sensitive to neuron pathway disruption may wake up intermittently. It's not significantly harmful, however if you're within 5 meters of a particularly powerful WiFi transceiver then you're stimulating the growth of certain cancerous cells.

Yes I made this up. No, OP, WiFi doesn't affect your sleep.

This post will be quoted in a wikipedia article within 5 minutes
 
T

Transhuman

Unconfirmed Member
I work in tech support and I had a customer at work a month or two ago telling me that WiFi signals gave her husband cancer.

What are your thoughts? I usually laugh this stuff off but I think I may be a little more open minded towards some of these theory's.

Open-minded is a synonym for guilible.
 

ugly

Member
Hard to know, really. The human brain is incredibly, inifinitely complex. Those that say simply 'no' aren't really qualified to decide, and at this stage I think nobody in humanity could offer conclusive evidence for or against the theory. Wifi signals are literally whizzing by your head 24/7. I think mindpower must play a large role... or at least the adaptability of humans suggests that perhaps we can cope, but who knows the extent of effect that has slowly crept into society at the same speed as technology - even if those things are as simple as slight sleep interference? Sure we're all coping fine, but really your question raises a dozen more, OP! Fascinating, really.
 

MrChom

Member
There are no scientifically proven effects of WiFi and similar emissions on others. Those who claim hypersensitivity were put in double blind scientific trials and suffered a reverse placebo or "nocebo" effect.

You're hit by so much radiation and background galactic noise every single second that being bothered by WiFi would be like trying to pick out a cough during a hearty round of applause at the Maracana.

I'm not saying you're not feeling some effect but it's probably more linked to state of mind, tech usage, weather, and any other number of environmental factors.
 

888

Member
I work in tech support and I had a customer at work a month or two ago telling me that WiFi signals gave her husband cancer.



Open-minded is a synonym for guilible.

I have worked in IT for 13 years. I had one lady that would stick those silver stickers on all of her equipment to reduce SARS or something, she was nuts.

I am not advocating going crazy about it. Just thought it was an interesting test to run at home on my unknowing family, that sounds creepy.
 

Burli

Pringo
Welp I reckon..

Turning the WiFi off at 10:30 meant neither of you were using screens too late at night before sleeping, screens emit light in a colour spectrum that stimulates our brains into thinking it's daytime and thus puts them into 'awake mode'. Your wife staying up using screens too late made her snore and sleep badly and her snoring effects how deeply you sleep thus negating your ability to dream.

Something like that.

I'm not gonna say that WiFi doesn't effect your sleep or health because I'm not a scientist and I haven't studied it, I just hope someone else is just in case.
 

ugly

Member
You're hit by so much radiation and background galactic noise every single second that being bothered by WiFi would be like trying to pick out a cough during a hearty round of applause at the Maracana.

This makes sense.
 

888

Member
There are no scientifically proven effects of WiFi and similar emissions on others. Those who claim hypersensitivity were put in double blind scientific trials and suffered a reverse placebo or "nocebo" effect.

You're hit by so much radiation and background galactic noise every single second that being bothered by WiFi would be like trying to pick out a cough during a hearty round of applause at the Maracana.

I'm not saying you're not feeling some effect but it's probably more linked to state of mind, tech usage, weather, and any other number of environmental factors.

I almost wonder if it is because the Nighthawk is so close to where I sleep. It is blasting 2.4 and 5 Ghz broadcasts about 10 feet from my head. I don't believe I have an hypersensitivity to Wifi or anything in general though.
 

FyreWulff

Member
there was still radio signals hitting you from the TV station, radio stations, the police radios, outer space, and/or any nearby storms.

What your actual problem is your wife may have sleep apnea, causing snoring, causing you to interrupt your sleep enough that you're not getting a full rest.
 

888

Member
Why would wifi effect you any differently from any of the myriad of other radio waves you are being bombarded with RIGHT NOW?

I only tried to remove Wifi while sleeping to do the test, the theory that I read was EVERYTHING that emits a signal but I wasn't going that far.
 

Shai-Tan

Banned
I'd believe a potential negative effect on health maybe if you had the wifi router within a foot of your head while you're sleeping but even then xmit power is low. There is some evidence of negative effects from using cell phones but that's from having the device directly next to the body (see the inverse square law) I'd be open to health effects being discovered in the future but an effect on conscious experience or snoring which is directly caused by a narrowed airflow seems rather unlikely. You can't just attribute a feeling to an effect without evidence because there are a lot of more plausible alternative explanations you would have to rule out first. After this therefore because of this, or subtract this therefore because of this isn't sufficient evidence. Hence the posting of pictures of Chuck from Better Call Saul. He was certain he was suffering from a hypersensitivity from wireless radiation but didn't have the supposed experience when he was unaware of those devices being present i.e. he may be experiencing some health problem but there isn't proof it's caused by wireless radiation
 

888

Member
there was still radio signals hitting you from the TV station, radio stations, the police radios, outer space, and/or any nearby storms.

What your actual problem is your wife may have sleep apnea, causing snoring, causing you to interrupt your sleep enough that you're not getting a full rest.

This is possible.
 

Bradach

Member
I don't know about your area but my computer is currently picking up 7 WiFi signals from neighbours.
Even if I wanted to try a no WiFi night it would be impossible for me.
 
Hard to know, really. The human brain is incredibly, inifinitely complex. Those that say simply 'no' aren't really qualified to decide, and at this stage I think nobody in humanity could offer conclusive evidence for or against the theory. Wifi signals are literally whizzing by your head 24/7. I think mindpower must play a large role... or at least the adaptability of humans suggests that perhaps we can cope, but who knows the extent of effect that has slowly crept into society at the same speed as technology - even if those things are as simple as slight sleep interference? Sure we're all coping fine, but really your question raises a dozen more, OP! Fascinating, really.

I love when posts like this imply that a dichotomy is equally likely because we don't know conclusively if something causes harm. Of course we don't 'know', but the available evidence suggests that there is no harm caused by wifi signals. In fact there is no known mechanism by which they could actually cause harm, which means that the likelihood that they do is incredibly small as to be nearly non-existant. The bottom line is the wifi causes cancer/harm whatever proposition is not a logical position to hold, as it doesn't have any (decent) evidence to support it.
 
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