Let me be perfectly clear: You most likely have a real medical condition of some kind. I do not question or demean your experience in any way.

With that said... no one has ever shown actual EMR sensitivity in double-blinded trials. Never. Not even once. When you hide the devices behind a curtain people who claim EMR sensitivity can't tell if the thing is on or off. Trials have been done out in the woods, inside faraday cages, and under all kinds of crazy conditions. It never matters. We can definitively say medical science has ruled out EMR sensitivity as a real thing.

You may very well have a nerve degeneration condition. It is even possible that fish oil helps this condition. You may be sensitive to electronic whine from power transformers which is a purely audible phenomenon; plugging in the power brick without the PS2 drawing any power wouldn't induce the same whine.

You might also have a form of epilepsy or similar condition triggered by 3D graphics. It could also be a form of motion sickness that some people get (typically much worse with VR rigs).

Here's the thing: our bodies are evolutionarily tuned to be wary of anything that might be dangerous. Any ancestors without that instinct were killed off long ago. If you hear something better to imagine it is a ghost and run. If it's just the wind, no harm done. If it was a predator sneaking up on you then that reaction might save your life. If you've ever gotten the flu after eating a certain food then felt repulsed by that food for months or even years afterwards: that's the same mechanism at work. Your lizard brain just knows "that food == sick". You can understand all the rational arguments in the world but your lizard brain still says "nope, not taking any chances: barf time". For our ancestors living in the wild this is a sensible reaction. Maybe those berries are poisonous, maybe you just happened to pickup a virus around the same time. Better safe than sorry.

Because you had a bad experience you attributed to EMR (specifically the PS2) your brain now induces those symptoms when you are around a powered-up PS2 even though EMR itself isn't real. I stress again that this is a real physical condition that you have little control over. I have zero doubt that it feels absolutely real to you and causes you huge amounts of stress. Just know that there are therapists who can help. You can learn to overcome that reaction.

I know this will offend some people but we have to face the truth. Eyewitness testimony isn't reliable. Anecdotes aren't data. Just because someone honestly believes EMR is real doesn't mean it is.

Thanks for the preface :)

I've wanted to do the woods/faraday cage/etc thing for ages, because I want to concretely debunk/prove this whole thing. If I debunk it I can say "look, I have a condition, and there's no link", whereas if I can prove it, I can be one of the few non-kooky testcases :) (as I noted, I used to be crazy kooky myself - it seems that this condition attacks the nervous system itself, so suddenly you have the situation where the "all systems okay" infrastructure itself is being compromised, and pandemonium - paranoia, persecution complexes, etc - ensue.)

I am very very curious how I'd test for nerve degeneration issues.

The PSU idea you suggested is compelling, but, the slimine PS2 used an external brick, while the original used an integrated supply. For me to feel exactly the same using both indicates that I'm being exposed to something that is generating the exact same frequency profile. The likelihood that the brick and the original PS2's internal PSU use a design that spit out identical RF/EM profiles is... I won't rule it out, but I'd argue it's low. The slimline PS2 just needs 8.5V (IIRC), testing an alternative supply shouldn't be hard, but it's not on my priority list due to lack of budget :P

About the 3D graphics idea: The PS2 has an on/standby button on the front, and a mains switch on the back. If I put it in standby, I still feel drained; it's the moment I flick the switch at the back I go "WHEW". (And, for completeness, if the PS2 is on but the TV is off, I also feel drained.)

Two things about the evolutionary thing: one, that whole thing is insane; it's responsible for innumerable superstitions, haha. Secondly, your theory is interesting, and I have a very relevant subjective experience - except instead of perceiving my body as going "nope, fight/flight time", I perceive "SOS, this thing is causing you more distress than you have the ability to handle, RUN" - so essentially a 100% flight response, but not only that, it's a "flight with explanation" response, in the sense that I don't just think run, I know why I need to run. I can understand a "RUN AWAY" signal getting through from the lizard brain, but I find it novel that I perceive more than just a basic run signal.

I've tried using the PS2 on exactly one occasion several years after my first experience - incidentally, when I spied a slimline PS2 at a 2nd-hand shop and took it home to test. Different PS2, same response. I turned it off after about half an hour (I didn't try the original as well).

The huge problem I have is that, the whole time I used the first PS2 for a couple days, I could distinctly feel that something in my head was breaking apart or being worn down (????). Also, at some point (around day 2 or so), something hit some kind of threshold, and after that I began getting the same symptoms from my PS2 as from my computers, which was why I had to stop using them. I still feel exactly the same "everything's breaking apart" thing when I turned the 2nd PS2 on. So, yes, my refusal to do extensive testing does create a self-fulfilling prophecy here, BUT, unless a doctor/practitioner can give me something (a drug/device/alternative thing/whatever) to reverse any impact, I can't risk losing access to the computer again.

(About the "something hitting some kind of threshold" thing, that's the doom/gloom I mentioned in my first comment. That reminds me, the "impending thing" sense is huge. I don't know what the impending thing actually is, but it gets really bad.)

I will definitely note that my only exposure to 3D games has been from this PS2, with some minor exposure to things like Doom or Wolfenstein 3D when I was given some ancient DOS machines a few years ago. So I do have a very negative/depressed/pitiful perspective when I see gaming discussed, but that ties mostly into my circumstances (not being able to buy GPUs to test) rather than me seeing the PS2 as entirely at fault.

Another fun story from the 2009-2012 era: I found a Casio 9850GB+ graphing calculator in an op-shop a few years ago. (I since found a TI-83+ in a disposal store, and discovered I hated its interface compared to the Casio, lol.) This thing used a triple-layer dot-matrix LCD that could display three "hues": yellow, green and blue, I think because each film had a thin layer over it for that color. Anyway, after using this calculator one day, I happened to be staring at a wall and noticed all kinds of swirling patterns in front of my eyes. I blinked a few times to best weigh up what I was looking at, and concluded that there was something wrong with my eyes. It went away after a few minutes though.

That also reminds me - I used to have bipolar (I managed to find an alternative therapy product that nuked it completely, even after I stopped taking it) and exposure (if you could call it that) would tend to provoke bipolar manic phases (I had the minor/small kind, I forget what type it was). I don't know why; one theory is that my system would go "we need extra resources to cope with this" and trigger mania (why?!), another theory is that the nerve excitation itself would trigger it. I don't really know.

I suspect it's actually an audio frequency that's causing such effects. Some SMPS emit a rather annoying, and quite loud, squealing sound in normal use --- which some people find annoying, but I wouldn't be surprised if some people find it absolutely unbearable, even if it's not audible; e.g. the typical horizontal frequency of broadcast TV is around 16KHz, and many people can't hear it but still perceive that there is "something" when subjected to that sound.

I once saw a TV documentary several years ago that noted how wind farms were affecting people from resonation, with affected individuals getting headaches and crying fits.

These wind farms were absolutely massive (tens of feet wide), and installed on gigantic concrete bases. This served as a natural amplifier for the vibrations generated by the gearbox and motor.

None of this was audible, but it is still technically frequency-related.

As an aside, I've heard my computers make noises on a couple of occasions, and the only thing it's caused in my case is concern that the computer was okay :) - on one occasion I discovered if I held my head right that I could hear the whine of a CRT flyback transformer, and on another occasion I discovered (again if I held my head right) that if I ran a certain graphic demo program (the Xtacy linux screensaver) on a certain graphics card (a Matrix G450), a whine could be heard emanating from the PC tower. Someone I shared this with (I think on here) reckoned that this was due to overdriven power MOSFETs.

Have you looked into hyperacusis? I have it and there are many noises I can't deal with that most people don't hear at all. This includes pretty much every computer I've come across since developing the problem. Other noises like electric meters, electric mains, fan motors, wind noise, locations with lots of echoes, and strangly the noises crickets make. All these noises cause cognitive and attention issues as well as dizziness and nausea. Many noises are just plain painful even though they are far less than 80 decibels. I've seen countless neurologists and audiologists and have made a small amount of progress with tinnitus retraining therapy and clonazepam. A simple test to eliminate hyperacusis is to buy some cheap foam 33db earplugs and see if that helps you handle the situation better.

For the computer, have you tried putting it in a different room and running a long display cable and using Bluetooth keyboard and mouse? This setup allows me to use my computer for up to an hour compared to less than five minutes with it in the same room.

No, thanks for the new term to make a note of. I do have a very mild form of misophonia but I believe that's a psychological glitch, not a neurological breakdown, so there are no noises or frequencies I physically can't handle (and particularly not in the sense of the EMR issues). I do very occasionally use earmuffs and seriously appreciate the quiet, but it's more "yay no sounds I need to decode" more than anything else.

Ambulance/police sirens are merely annoying, but due to some ear issues from when I was younger I learned about how my ear canal works and somewhere along the way I figured out how to use the muscles near my ears to apply pressure to make sharp noises 0.1% less sharp, so that deals with that.

If you want to keep in touch (via throwaway or non-throwaway email), I'm gmail@asmqb7 (decipher as per obvious). I'm curious about frequency-based health issues in general, because I wonder whether everything has similar root causes and the solution(s) for one are widely applicable to the others. FWIW I'm absolutely tragic with email (backlog months (!) long :P) but occasional back and forth of news etc may be interesting.

I'm fascinated that you have zero issues with RF (Bluetooth). How long can you use a tablet (= fanless thing with a screen in it)? Try seeing if your computer has Wi-Di (Wi-Fi Display) - it's a low-latency Wi-Fi-based display solution built into newer Intel chips. I don't have a new PC so I have no idea how it works, but if you have it it'd likely be the simplest way to solve the "can't watch YouTube over VNC/RDP" problem.

Thank you for sharing your story. If you want to dig deeper into the "why" I would recommend researching spectrum analyzers and how to use them to characterize electromagnetic interference. Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctynv2klT6Q You could ask a friend to generate plots for you of the emissions of your laptop, PS2, and the DVD player then figure out if there are specific frequencies that may be causing you problems.

If you are feeling brave you could purchase an RF signal generator and a wideband antenna, and generate pure signals at different frequencies and see which ones cause you problems. A regular function generator may be a cheaper method too as I'm inclined to believe any fields that may be affecting you would be under 1MHz.

It would also be interesting to investigate whether alternating electric fields or magnetic fields affect you more.

I've actually wanted to do this for a very long time, and have been keeping an eye out for anybody with access to an RF chamber.

I know that FCC testing requires both measurement and exposure, so there are many facilities that both sense and generate EM/RF fields. These facilities would quite possibly have access to the kind of things made by eg https://www.gauss-instruments.com/en/, and could produce some really interesting results.

The reason why I've wanted to use pro lab equipment to test this is because I'd be able to hold up the results as scientific proof. That would be awesome, both because it would validate the condition (which is recognized in Germany but not the rest of the world), and also because many of the people who have this are pathologically affected, and seem like they're bonkers as a result. Between '08-12 I was ridiculously paranoid, for example I refused to go to the local shopping center just because I could see cell towers nearby. Unfortunately the most vocal sufferers of this issue are going to have that level of paranoia. Now that I can be a bit more reasonable (because I don't feel like I'm dying :P) that makes it a bit more constructive.

And yeah, I am very curious whether it's the electrical or magnetic field that does more damage.

That's actually an extremely fascinating experience. I only have two comments, both of which you've probably already considered:

1. Become a freelance web developer

2. If fish oil helped you, then avoid consuming vegetable oil (which is sadly used for 99% of takeaway/restaurant meals) and eat lots of salmon. It's possible that chronic inflammation and Omega 3/6 are related. I wouldn't be saying this if fish oil didn't help -- the fact that it helped says a lot.

Hmm, interesting.

The problem with being a web/app developer are

- I'm on disability support (for high-functioning autism), which means that...

- Working is tricky (income cap), and as a result...

- I'm on 10 year old hardware that doesn't like Chrome too much. (I also have insufficient disk space to do anything useful. While scrambling to move some stuff around I hit 800KB free on / and I had to SIGSTOP chromium so it wouldn't crash. xD)

I've learned a lot about the benefits of designing stuff on older hardware from the get-go, but nobody really does that sadly.

Along with the autism are some cognitive and attention-span issues that mean that, while I try to emphasize as much on practically implementable ideas, I'm a lot better at starting stuff than finishing it - and most of the ideas I do have are limited by my hardware.

--

Regarding vegetable oil, I completely agree - but in my case, because I'm a blood-type O, my body can break down canola (!) oil really well, so taking into account the quality levels used by at-scale manufacturing, provided the oil is properly extracted/stored/used/etc, I can actually use (break down) stuff made with canola oil quite well.

I can agree with eating tons of salmon (which is also okay for blood type O), but actually finding good quality sources of fish in general is quite hard: I don't know about salmon in particular, but I've heard that deep-sea fish are generally healthier. I'm not sure if this is because less toxins sink to lower depths, because the toxns can't survive at those depths, or what.

Farmed fisheries are tricky, both because of rampant inbreeding†, and also because of the food made artificially available to the fish in the farm may be... interesting.

(† Cheetahs had some kind of major event many thousands of years ago that wiped almost all of them out. They rebounded, but if you take any two cheetahs from anywhere in the world, they're so identical it's almost confusing.)

It's not about breaking down oil.

Omega3 and Omega6 oils bind to the same receptors and compete for the same processes, with the optimal ratio (supposedly) 1:1, but western diet closer to 1:10; Canola oil, as almost any seed or vegetable oil, is almost pure Omega6.

Fish oil is mostly Omega3 in the most readily available form; Flax oil is mostly Omega3 in a less available form; Almost every other oil (including rapeseed, aka canola) is mostly Omega6.

Ah, I get it - it's about bioavailability. Thanks for the TIL.