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Ask HN: Am I the only one who gets temple pain during prolonged calls?

11 points by FirstTimePostin ↗ HN
I don't believe in the whole phones cause cancer thing, but I also cannot deny what I am experiencing. Here are some more details:

- I experience this during phone calls of duration > 25 minutes or so.

- I keep my phone maybe 10 cm away from my temple.

- I experience the discomfort on the side where I am listening at the very front of my forehead.

- The discomfort remains for some time after calling. I am still feeling it and I have ended the call more than 15 minutes ago.

- The discomfort feels like a sporadically pulsating vein and also similiar to when I get a headache from being dehydrated (could that be it?)

- I happens both with WIFI calling (VOIP?) and over LTE.

- I don't experience this while using WIFI or LTE data for prolonged hours.

- I experienced this throughout my whole life; throughout every generation of phone (I'm I millennial).

- I lived for many years in an apartment facing a phone antenna who was just 20 meters away at most, and I did no experience additional discomfort than usual.

- I don't get any discomfort from WIFI or radio signals. Except, ...

- If I turn on the microwave for a prolonged period of time and stay near the door, I do experience a shrinking/tightening of my whole head. I cannot recall if this happened with all microwaves I owned.

- I don't use Bluetooth ear plugs or other Bluetooth devices so I cannot comment on those.

- When I was a kid, we would be tens of boy scouts packed in a minivan and driven around and everyone (except me) would be playing with their Nokia (this is late '90s / early '00s) and I would experience a similiar headache. I later attributed this to possible CO/CO2 poisoning.

- This happens to me, without fail, even when I am very concentrated on the conversation and without any thought in this direction what so ever, so I don't think I am being hypochondriac.

Has anyone experienced anything similiar? What could be causing it? I know next to nothing about biology, so I cannot say myself. It's such a weird phenomenon. I am not even sure I am not imagining it, but, it usually happens that during the talk, I just get this sudden sharp localized pain, and it takes me by surprise.

15 comments

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anymouse2
Hmm , not sure . I recall a manual for an early Siemens flip phone and was somewhat surprised to read (similar) that ' of the 350 people ( of 600 ) whom tested positive for BRAIN CANCER , that the problem was not consider to be their phone because the BRAIN CANCER developed on the 'other side of their head' and was not associated with (their particular model) of cell phone . I have personally used the speaker phone at a distance since reading that Siemens flip phone manual , believe or not , your choice I guess , regards and good health .
ddingus
I use either speaker or earbud with mic for all my calls.

And for similar reasons.

It is super easy to eliminate that life risk.

FirstTimePostin
As I said, I don't believe in the whole brain cancer thing, because if there was merit to it, there should be more conclusive evidence by now. The symptoms would also not be so abrupt. If this is something it must be the heating of my brain/ear/head tissue irritating me somehow. I almost never used the speaker phone, but I will experiment with that.

All older phone manuals used to have warning about radiation, I believe, but this was just a precaution.

It is also worth mentioning that I get irritated and nauseous very easily. Being too long in the sun causes my ears to ache, for example, also giving me head aches.

codingdave
Sounds less like radiation or anything like that, and more like an odd muscle cramp from some ergonomic concerns with how you take calls.
FirstTimePostin
In that respect I would more readily believe that maybe the loudness of the call is causing my inner ear some pain. But it really does not feel like that.

I am trying to understand why I only get irritated by phone calls and (possibly) microwave ovens, when we are constantly swimming in microwave level radiation. Do phone calls use more energy or something? Can it be related to the transmitted energy? I know most microwaves I used are old so I would not be surprised that they leak a bit from their shielding.

seabass-labrax
Radio signal strength follows the inverse-square law with distance, so although a (cellular) phone uses relatively little power compared to other types of radio, your head would absorb more radiation in total with the phone so close.

Layman's idea of mine: if you want to test specifically for microwave radiation, you could locate a cellular phone station (they are easy to find with various online maps, and are usually located on the roofs of buildings or lamp posts) and stand by it. I think that should be a considerably higher amount of radiation at any distance less than a few metres or so compared to holding your phone to your ear. The station will be transmitting constantly in any built-up area because cellular phones communicate with the station periodically even when there are no calls taking place.

idontwantthis
I would try taking calls standing up with earbuds and see if that fixes it before I jumped to ideas about microwaves. Or speaker phone would be even better if your environment allows it.
Jtsummers
Have you investigated the possibility that it's the noise itself? Perhaps at a high or low frequency that you are less aware of. Especially given your notes about the microwave and car rides. Those are both noisy environments, and both can have a regular mechanical sound at frequencies that may irritate you but you may not be paying much attention to.

Try standing next to your AC unit or similar mechanical system when it's running and see if it also causes a headache.

kmos17
I get them too, that’s why I use headphones.
readyplayernull
I remember my cousin had an old desktop computer speaker and it would start buzzing 1-2 seconds before a nearby cellphone started ringing. I never investigated what caused that, but it seems there is some signal power rise.
seabass-labrax
This is a rather well-known phenomena, to the extent that I was once advised, when going back-stage in a theatre, not to bring my mobile phone lest it set the theatre's sound system buzzing.

It's caused by the periodic nature of the data frames in the original GSM protocol[1]. Judging by the existence of academic research from 2005 into mitigations[2], I'd venture a guess that it has been fixed in the more recent protocol revisions and so is no longer as common (which matches my own experience in any case).

[1]: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/39127/why-do...

[2]: https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:836430/FULLTEXT0...

ipaddr
Have you seen this study? No one has mentioned: transcranial magnetic stimulation, changes in cerebral blood flow

https://bmcneurol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-23...

"Experiments aimed at explaining these symptoms have shown changes in cerebral blood flow [6, 7], altered electroencephalogram (EEG) patterns [3, 5, 6], and changes in responses to transcranial magnetic stimulation [8] resulting from MP use..."

wruza
No headaches, but my talking ear burns after 20 minutes. May be simply physical (warm phone pushes on it).

I guess there’s no way to learn what happens except for controlled experiment. E.g. hold a turned off phone to your head. Or a cup of semi-hot water. Or use headphones when talking. Or when talking, use one headphone and put a phone to the other side of your head. Or play a youtube video in headphones and put your phone to your head as if you were listening.

bruce343434
Contact dermatitis? I don't know how clean your phone is... Or maybe you have a rare mild allergy for one of its materials, like how some people are allergic to their watches touching their wrists.
adamredwoods
Most microwaves are absorbed by your skin and bones, because it's too weak and large (wavelength) to penetrate through your body. If these waves could, we would use it for medical imaging! Instead, we use x-rays which are ionizing waves.

Microwave ovens work differently than cell phones (magnetron), so even though the frequency is the same they operate differently. Microwaves reflect off thick metal, so a quick test would be to put a copper pot or aluminum pan over that spot on your head (not touching it because it would cool your head, negating a non-biased test) and see if the microwave still bothers it.

Another test for your head-spot would be to see if microwaves are actually heating it up, so a spot thermometer might be able to detect it (but I'm doubtful).

FYI, cell phones have much less EM power than microwave ovens, and can't heat anything up. [1]

[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/oeuf-the-wall/