A friend of mine sometimes drains a watch battery in less than a
month. (It could even be less, since she wears her watch very loose to
prevent watch battery drainage.) It might take a day or a week if she
wore here watch tightly against her skin.  this is not necessarily a
constant, it might come and go with different levels of intensity.

She has epilepsy. This is probably related.  Does she have some x-men
ability?
What is this called? Is there a group for this or place for more
information?

What kind of experiments could I do to test her level of
electrokenesis? (Is this a word?) or something? use a volt meter?

---

Request for Question Clarification by alienintelligence-ga on 02 Jan 2003 22:13 PST

Hi markp,

I knew I saw a similar question previously...
[ http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=55978 ]

-ai

---

Clarification of Question by markp-ga on 03 Jan 2003 12:18 PST

accidentally posted this as a comment below.

Pinkfreud - From what I can tell, most of the claims seem very
unsubstantiated and very subjective. As well as many are told from
hearsey, like my dead grandmother had this...etc... I lean towards
acidic sweat and and bathing with the watch, and overactive
imaginations.  Although I did notice something interesting in the
other similar article. Someone mentioned an "aura"? spelled right? My
friend said my dog went nuts just before she had a seizure, and later
said that dogs like golden retriever, etc can be trained to recognize
an aura just before a seizure, thus warning the person, to sit down or
something, to prevent injury.  She even said, though I dont know if
this is true or how accurate, that these dogs are trained, and then
can be taken anywhere, such as a seeing eye dog.
 
Does anyone know anything about this? seeing eye dog / seizure warning
trained dog ?
 
I thought that could be really cool to have my dog "trained" in
recognizing a seizure before it occurred, and being able to take my
dog on the airplane, the mall, a restaurant, etc, just like a seeing
eye dog.
 
future google search terms for people to find this: Dog Lovers,
canine, german shepard, blind people, blindness, dog training,
obedience,
aka cheese / bait / honeypot

---

Clarification of Question by markp-ga on 24 Jan 2003 18:19 PST

Thank you!

There is even a yahoo group called seizure alert dogs, which could be
a good source of info, and you could actually email people who have
these trained dogs.

Note: a seizure alert dog is not a "pet".  They need to be a "helper?"
or something official.  They should be professionaly trained at home
by owner or by seeing eye / dog trainer.  But you dont have to proove
it to anyone, and you dont get any papers as far as I know. and there
is no test to take.  You can download a wallet sized pdf of your
rights and responsibilities as an owner of a helper dog. it lists the
laws protecting your rights. Many of these dogs have some official
looking backpack or sweater to more easily identify them.

and the watch battery thing: She regularly showers with the watch, and
she admits the waterproof seal is broken, it gets condensation / foggy
on the inside if she takes a bath with it.

The incident has not reoccurred, but I would like to have her actually
wear it tightly on her wrist for a month and see what happens.

---

Clarification of Question by markp-ga on 31 Jan 2003 15:10 PST

Can someone modify the title to include "seizure alert dog"

I'm not going to attempt an answer to your question, since I am a
skeptic regarding most matters relating to parapsychology.

Here are a few links that you may find interesting:

http://www.professionaljeweler.com/archives/articles/1999/jul99/0799te2.html

http://www.healthboards.com/ubb/Forum51/HTML/001358.html

http://www.mindspring.com/~scottr/nde/watches.html

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&safe=off&th=2c13303c541925a5&rnum=5

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&safe=off&th=1a3d93e2eb86acbe&rnum=1

Thank you.  I have reviewed all the links you have provided up to this
point.  According to 1 or 2 of the links, One theory is that the sweat
could be acidic.

Also I dont think this is "parapsycology" as you described.  I think
it is simply something unique about her and other people, that they
dont have the "normal" body chemical or electrical makeup.  You
probably are a believer that some people, more than others, turn a
silver watch green, or their skin gets green, or their ring finger
gets green underneath the ring, as a result of oxidation or whatever
chemical process is at work on the silver.  The concensus is that it's
probably caused by acidic sweat.

From reading your suggested links, this is the first time I have seen
the watch phonomenon linked with epilepsy.

She does also have a easily / large static electricity buildup.  I
think more than most. I havent seen her shoot lightening or anything,
but I have been zapped by her VERY frequently, seemingly more than
normal.

I dont have a textbook difinition for epilepsy, but I am told that it
is a problem with electricity mis-firing nerve endings or something,
probably mostly inside the brain, that causes seizures / fainting.  So
there is your proof that she has some electrical issue in her body. 
Perhaps these other people have a very mild form of epilepsy or
similar, without any symptoms, that contributes to watch batteries not
lasting as long as they should.  She is not claiming to permanently
destroy watches, just drain the battery early.  I am also not saying
all people with epilepsy exhibit this ability.

I can also garantee you that IBM and other top research institutes are
working on developing PAN technology. Pan or "Personal Area
Networking" uses the tiny electrical current, already present in your
body, to transmit data, when you touch something or someone else. 
This is useful for all sorts of things, such as exchanging busines
cards by just shaking hands.

One of the reasons I am interested in learning more about this, is
that she might be useful in developing this or similar technology. 
Not too many people can make a genuine claim about this behavoir.

Please contact me if you are working on PAN technology, and would like
to discuss testing / PAN research.

Mark,

I did not mean to be insulting or demeaning in my reference to
parapsychology. Since the phenomenon of human "watch-stoppers" seems
to be something that has not been explained by mainstream science,
information on this subject is mostly anecdotal, and many of the sites
that discuss it tend to fall into the parapsychology category.

I am sorry if my remark sounded like a put-down. That was not my
intent.

~Pink

Pinkfreud - From what I can tell, most of the claims seem very
unsubstantiated and very subjective. As well as many are told from
hearsey, like my dead grandmother had this...etc... I lean towards
acidic sweat and and bathing with the watch, and overactive
imaginations.  Although I did notice something interesting in the
other similar article. Someone mentioned an "aura"? spelled right? My
friend said my dog went nuts just before she had a seizure, and later
said that dogs like golden retriever, etc can be trained to recognize
an aura just before a seizure, thus warning the person, to sit down or
something, to prevent injury.  She even said, though I dont know if
this is true or how accurate, that these dogs are trained, and then
can be taken anywhere, such as a seeing eye dog.

Does anyone know anything about this? seeing eye dog / seizure warning
trained dog ?

I thought that could be really cool to have my dog "trained" in
recognizing a seizure before it occurred, and being able to take my
dog on the airplane, the mall, a restaurant, etc, just like a seeing
eye dog.

future google search terms for people to find this: Dog Lovers,
canine, german shepard, blind people, blindness, dog training,
obedience,
aka cheese / bait / honeypot

Mark,

Regarding the matter of dogs who sense their owners' impending
seizures, I recall seeing a television documentary that discussed this
phenomenon. It was on the Discovery Channel, I believe, or possibly
The Learning Channel. The theory given was that the dogs' extremely
sensitive noses were able to detect certain chemical changes in their
masters' bodily odors which the dogs recognized as having accompanied
previous incidents of illness. Several of the dogs' owners were
interviewed, and they credited their pets with having saved their
lives.

I will see whether I can find any more data online about this
documentary.

About the show I mentioned earlier which interviewed people whose dogs
could detect oncoming seizures: the more I consider it, the more I
think that these interviews may have been part of a show entitled "Big
Dogs, Little Dogs" that aired on A&E a while back.

Many results on this subject can be obtained from a Google search
using the key phrase "seizure alert dog":

://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22seizure+alert+dog

Here are some articles that may interest you:

http://www.deltasociety.org/alertv06n04c.htm

http://www.docguide.com/news/content.nsf/news/8525697700573E1885256C2F006960B7?opendocument&wf=yes

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2001/07/19/stories/08190007.htm

http://ocean.otr.usm.edu/~aott/sd.html

My Grandmother has something similar to this: for most of her life she
could not wear watches next to her skin because they would stop, speed
up or slow -not unwind though. The phenomenon does NOT seem to occur
with quartz watches only wind-up ones, so maybe the phenomenon is tied
to static electricity? She got into the habit of wearing a layer of
clothing between her skin and her watch to avoid replacing it all the
time. If you're interested, I can ask her some more specific questions
about it -she still has all her marbles even though she's in her
eighties. And no, she does not have epilepsy, only type II diabetes
[adult-onset] which I doubt is relavant. From what I understand this
is quite a common phenomenon, although since it remains unexplained in
this scientific age many people don't seem to wish to talk about it to
avoid being stigmatized as 'crazy' or a 'crackpot'. I hope you find
the information you seek, good luck!