EMFs Explained: The Invisible Stressor Affecting Your Health

Camping, Nature, and Forest Bathing 0:00

One of the comments I would make about you guys saying sort of take a vacation from these things, it always astounds me how good I feel when I go camping, right? I know. It makes no sense. I'm sleeping on the ground, there's rock pushing into my back, It's cold, I am sleeping in a bag. You don't camp right. Why would I fell that good? Well, I feel that good because there's no EMF around me and I'm rooted and near trees. My favorite thing to do on a hike is just go sit right up against a tree and just share that energy with the tree as weird as it sounds.

And the Japanese, you know, they call it forest bathing and it's real. We get the energy from those things that are alive like we are. and we're symbiotically recharging, right? I think that there's so much value in that to just, I know it oversimplifies it, but just say, bathe yourself in nature instead of in these artificial manmade experiences and your body will heal. Your health is shaped by more than symptoms. Through real stories and expert insights, we explore how your genetics, environment, and daily choices affect your wellbeing.

We uncover root causes and share practical tools to help you find the healing you need. Welcome to the Forum Health Integrative Medicine Podcast. The invisible stressor, you can't see it, but it's everywhere. EMFs. Welcome back to the Forum Health Integrative Medicine podcast. I'm your host, Amanda, and today I am joined by health coach Monica and Dr. Peterson. We're going to dive into how EMS can be silently impacting your health and what you Let's get started. I was listening to a podcast, but I didn't get through the whole thing by Ben Greenfield.

And I thought it was really interesting that he talked about EMFs and he talks about how they can cause DNA damage. But then he went on to say, to define what DNA damage was.

Introducing EMFs and DNA Damage Debate 1:57

This could probably be Dr. Peterson, a good podcast all in itself, but DNA Damage isn't any alteration to the chemical structure of DNA, such as broken strands, missing bases, or chemical adducts that deviates from the normal structure. And so it doesn't have to necessarily mean like, oh my gosh, I just damaged my DNA. But EMFs do. I don't know. When he said that, that is a cool word. That's a fun word or definition. If I asked you, Dr. Peterson, what kind of health risks or what health impacts can EMFS have on patients, would you be comfortable talking about DNA damage?

Sure, but DNA damage is one of the more controversial areas about EMF. I'll speak to it, I will answer the question, But I also say that the research, the evidence for it is not as strong as the theoretical likelihood. And that may be because we can't measure things as well as we'd like to, and it may because it's not damaging to the DNA as what we believe it to be. There's a lot more to EMf than is it damaging DNA. A lot of it has to do with the signals. Our body is electrical, and these are electrical fields.

And how much do they affect the signaling? So I don't think we have to be too hung up on the DNA damage being the major issue for EMF. It's the least well-supported in the research. But that, again, it's sort of like saying, because we haven't invented the microscope yet, we don' believe in bacteria. Well, just because if we can't see them doesn't mean they're not there. That might just be a good conversation for us to have in the podcast alone. Yeah, I mean, that's the conversation to Just because you don't understand the thing doesn't mean that you shouldn't be able to try and wrap your heads around how do things possibly work?

Because we definitely see impacts in certain patient populations and to deny that that is happening to them, I think is more absurd, more obtuse, and more intentionally naive than to say, yeah, we don' understand everything, all the ins and outs about this, but something is going on. I love it. Good stuff. Well, Monica, let's start simple. What are EMFs in plain English? EMS stands for electromagnetic fields. We do have some of those fields that are naturally formed. like around our hearts and our brain, we can actually measure those.

And we have some non-native, man-made EMF fields that are not recognized by our bodies. They are, not in harmony with our body. So that's what it stands for. Whenever we electricity flowing in one direction, it creates an electromagnetic bubble around it. So depending on how close we are to that flow of current, that's the distance at which electromagnetic fields can affect us. It's all about energy. And so we have our own energy that we emit and so do all of the things around us. Dr. Peterson, how would you describe EMFs to a patient?

Well, I guess I would also say that electromagnetic field and electromagnetic frequency or electromagnetic force are all terms that are used. How would I describe it to a patient? I usually say things to the patient like this. Your body is electrical. What identifies a cell, an individual living cell is that there's a bag that holds some stuff in and some out. And if you can keep the stuff out that's supposed to be kept in an out, you now have this basically this space that does one job. and what makes it do the job is actually the membrane of the cell creates a charge gradient.

You'll have calcium and magnesium, sodium and potassium. And when that charge occurs, that's the electricity of your body. Every fire of you muscle, every fire in your brain, and every of fire your skin cell is an electrical experience.

What EMFs Are and How They Affect the Body 6:18

When you experience an electromagnetic force, you've got electricity going up and down and magnetism going back and forth. that's an electromagnetic frequency or an electric magnetic field. That can affect the electrical charge on your cells as well. And if you are sensitive to that, you can feel worse. Simple examples of electromagnetic frequencies that cause harm to humans would be a sunburn, right? And so if I say that to a patient, they're like, oh, so you're not crazy if And if a doctor sort of dismisses the idea that an EMF could have any effect on them, yeah, but all of our dermatologists say don't get sunburns, right?

Basically, we've got ionizing radiation and non-ionizing and this gets really deep. And I talk to my patients exactly like this because I think the more they can say, okay, I heard the terms, I must not be crazy. My doctor validated the fact that this is real, but it's more complicated than me just saying electricity could be dangerous. Non-ionizing radiation is essentially the largest category that falls into electromagnetic fields and it can do us harm, right? Even like a sunburn. But then that's not usually what people are talking about.

They're not talking nuclear radiation and living near Chernobyl. That would be ionizing, by the way, or getting a sunburn that's non-ionizing. Both of them will, they have an electromagnetic force, at least the non ionising does. They'll do you harm. And that the point is cellularly, your cells aren't working well. But the things that people are talking about when patients are like, I think I'm sensitive to EMF. They're mostly talking about cell phones and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and that sort of thing.

And what are those frequencies doing to the frequencies of our body is the question. We'll get into more questions about just how things have changed over the course of time, because we certainly have a lot more than we have in the past, or at least we're exposed to a lots of different ones from our phones. The virtual reality glasses and things like that. Like there are cell phone glasses out there now that like you can wear glasses on your head all the time that have electricity that, like, you said, Monica, that doesn't match our body's frequencies.

So what is that doing to our bodies? Anyway. I think that's a really important thing to identify early on. EMF is not bad or good. EMF is something that's happening. We live in a, like the whole universe is based on energy. And when energy moves from one place to another, an electromagnetic field is created. Right? And so EMS isn't bad. The earth has an, and electromagnetic. That it creates and we're used to bathing in that. This sounds weird. When I say it to patients, you can sort of feel when somebody else comes in the room.

Right? Even in pitch blackness, total silence, you can feel when somebody else is there. Well, they have an electromagnetic force field, right? Like you feel that energy. And so there's lots of good EMF, just like there are lots bad EMS. You could say the same thing about bacteria. We shouldn't be afraid of bacteria, there is good bacteria and bad bacteria And they are technically not good or bad, they're just good and for us. I'm sure the not so friendly bacteria the things that make me sick, They're not walking around with some evil smile trying to make us sick.

They just, we don't get along well. Yeah, exactly. So our bodies, we already use electricity. How is our internal electricity different from what's in our environment, Monica? So the electricity that our body's emitting, it's a steady flow like a calm river in one direction, like the sunrise. It's just not turning on and off all the time. And now imagine a man-made electrical magnetic field is more like a strobe light, constantly blasting on and off. And if you have ever gone dancing and there's a strobe light there, you know you're going to get dizzy after a very short while.

So that's what man-made electrical magnetic fields do to us. There are blasting high intensity pulses that our body is constantly reading. And then there is a short break of not getting anything and then another blast. Depending on what kind of technology we work with, we're talking about different frequencies of those blasts, but they're very different than what our heart is making, what the electromagnetic field of the earth itself is producing, or our sun. At Forum Health, we uncover the why behind your symptoms.

With advanced lab testing, hormone optimization, and cutting-edge therapies, We help you heal and perform your best. And now, through shopforumhealth.com, you can access physician-grade supplements trusted by our providers, supporting everything from adrenal health to focus and longevity. Learn more at forumhealth.com and explore supplements at shopforumhealth dot com. You mentioned that natural and modern EMFs feel different to the body. So the ground versus our cell phones or the computers, even the wifi that you have on at your house constantly.

Can you explain that in a way that people can picture? Have you ever taken a video on your phone of an indoor scene, especially in an environment where there's a lot of fluorescent lights. And you then look at your video and you see a light blinking on that video, but your eye is not perceiving that. So the camera was able to capture that constant blinking of that EMF light. Now, not only your nervous system has to process that constant on and off, but also this constant, on-and-off and blast of that electromagnetic field at

Natural vs Man-Made EMFs and Calcium Channels 13:00

a certain frequency penetrates your entire body and speaks to yourselves, just like Dr. Peterson was telling us. And that creates a signal, that create a command for your body to do something. And one of the ways EMFs are having a negative effect on our bodies is they are commanding to that membrane of cell that Dr. Peterson was picturing for us, there is a voltage-gated calcium channel there that opens up to invite some of calcium inside the cell to signal and command some processes inside our cells.

Now imagine that gate being open, the channel being opened all the time, just like you leave your door open. Absolutely. All the mosquitoes will come in the house, especially if you have a light on and then all of a sudden you're like, what's going on? This is insane. I cannot work like that. So that's what happening to our bodies as well. When we are exposed to constant signal that our body's are not built to interpret and harmonize with. So we have calcium channels in our cell membranes that open and close to allow calcium in, ingredients in to create signals to the body.

When we exposure to EMFs that our body is not resonating with that opens the calcium channels and allows all this stuff to flood in. Flood gates are open and just uncontrolled calcium channel. Dr. Peterson, what kind of symptoms or effects could that have on a patient having these calcium panels open like this due to this exposure? The signaling in your body is going to, at the level of the cell, you could have some ion imbalances and now the sell won't do whatever it was supposed to do correctly, right?

The muscles won' t fire quite like they should. And so maybe you get cramps or your heart's a little skittish. You get PVCs or if it's severe, it gets, Afib. It's firing when it shouldn't or it' s not firing quite in synchrony. nerve cells, you could say, man, I just don't feel like I can think all that well. And it's not because every nerve cell in your brain is not firing optimally, but it sort of like the timing of the dance is off a little bit, right? With those cells and how they all work together.

That's just individual cells. How the calcium channel, calcium gated channels would mess up the way an individual cell works. But then it gets more significant than that. Our cells are trying to communicate with each other, right? And so now my immune response or my autonomic nervous system or capacity to digest is being negatively affected, which then has downstream implications for tomorrow, so I might have immediate symptoms for today. If I'm particularly sensitive to EMFs, And I go someplace where they have a lot of wifi boosters or I'm just an ordinary person, not more sensitive than everybody else, but they put in a, you know, 5g tower near my house and now I am being exposed to more of these post blasts.

my signaling to coordinate how my cells work together might not work so good as it did before that. Does that answer the question? It does, it does. I think, so as I was doing some research looking into EMFs, I Was reading that, you know, while non-ionizing radiation Energy is a type of radiation. That's what we're talking about. That would be from phones, WiFi, cell phone towers, our devices, or technology. My Kindle is connected to WiFi. The oral rings that we wear, the garments that wear. All those are Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, all those things.

So, non-ionizing radiation. technically is too weak to directly damage DNA, but some studies are starting to link high chronic exposure to potential health risks like oxidative stress, sleep disturbances, headaches, and possible but unestablished right now that links to things like childhood leukemia. And that's a wild claim, but those are some of the links that are people are saying. So although you might not feel the effects of your cell phone while you're talking or anything like that, we have so much more low level, constant exposure.

And what we're seeing it. in studies now for potential long-term low-level exposure includes neurological issues like headaches, memory, dizziness, cognitive dysfunction. I think for myself, I can think back to times where I have felt dizzy or I had a headache earlier today too. We get these constant low level exposure, systemic oxidative stress, sleep disturbances, if you're on your phone at night and stuff, like there's that blue light, but there is also the impact of the EMFs and cardiovascular.

And so they're starting to see all of these, all this research come out on health impacts with EMS. I think we're seeing more and more because there are more low level exposure. We're not reducing our tech stacks anymore, we're increasing it. There are glasses coming out from cell phone companies now that you can wear on your head all the time, virtual reality stuff. I was seeing some other influencers talking about EMFs and like the Ray-Bans that are out now, that our virtual realities and they're cautioning people One, maybe don't get it, or two, do not use it often, and when you do use, use for less than two hours.

Do not go past two-hours of usage in a session, because you're getting past this low level to a higher level of risk with all this technology coming out.

Health Effects, Chronic Exposure, and Modern Tech 19:30

I don't know exactly where I was going with that question. Well, sure, but I'd love to comment on it. I think one of the things you pointed out is the amount of electromagnetic frequency that we're now bathing in, right? And it's exponentially more with each passing year. Right? Like, I don't know. We give Ben Franklin credit because he flew a kite in a thunderstorm. I dunno who, you know, maybe probably Nikola Tesla should deserve a lot more credit. But here we are in America trying to give credit to Ben Franklin.

This whole concept of how we harness energy is relatively new for humans, right? We weren't harnessing energy this way, not that many centuries ago. You know, we're doing this podcast over zoom in three different states, and I've got a cool microphone and my cell phone sit my desk. And I'm not going to give those things up, but I think like other things in life, We should be cautious and take appropriate care to say, don't use anything too much. Right? So, I don't know. I've never used any virtual reality eye things because my son-in-law has a pair.

And when he comes over, my boys want to use it. and I just don' feel like taking a turn because you know, you sort of look goofy. Everybody's looking at you like, why are you stumbling around as you're playing this game? And I didn't want make a fool of myself and fall over. Yeah. But I can see the value in certain things. Right. So I think we can go to real extremes and say, We should eliminate all of this stuff. And that's silly, but it's equally silly if not more silly to put our heads in the sand and imagine that these things don't cause harm.

I think that where we are is that because we don' understand all the harm and because can't explain all mechanisms that we want to just pretend like nothing bad could happen. That just seems so willfully naive. So the people that are like, these don''t have any effect. No, that's not true. Just because we can't explain it yet doesn't mean they don't have any effect. It would be like saying gravity has no effect just because, you know, we couldn't wrap our arms around how the fabric of space was being pushed out of the way by the earth.

Once we started to be able to explain things we said, oh that is real. Well, this is still real and we should still pay attention to it. And as a clinician I would say what bothers me the most is when other physicians marginalize or gaslight patients because they say, I can't go to such and such place. I get such bad headaches. And they said, no, that's all in your head. Oh yeah. Absolutely not all in your head. It's physiology and it's electrophysiology and we're simply not as smart as we pretend to be as doctors.

I agree. it is an invisible stressor that is very easy to ignore because it so hard to sometimes put these things down. That being said, I think that we want our patients to take a perspective of resilience and not fear. We don't want to give up our Wi-Fi or phone or Zoom calls like I love working remote. So I need this stuff to function, right? But we do need to have people understand the vulnerable populations and the areas that they can do to protect themselves and become resilient because EMFs are not going away.

They're here and you should know about them and to your point, it's not something to ignore. And hopefully we'll learn more about it and then we will be able to say, oh, I think we went too far here. Let's back off a little bit. I mean, we've certainly seen that with the industrial revolution and chemicals, right? We used to spray more harmful chemicals than we spray now. What's it called? Paris green, which was a mixture of, I believe, mercury and arsenic or something like that. And it was, it wasn't great at, you know, killing.

only made everybody lose their minds, right? And so they said, oh, maybe we should, let's use something safer. And, so we started using something safe. Well, now, and the things that we are concerned about now. To be fair, they're probably safer than the chemicals we were using in the late 1800s, but we still have to keep making progress and saying, Oh, this one's not safe enough. I don't think we're going to go back to being cavemen and stop using chemicals at all or stop electricity at. But I think as we know more, we can make changes.

I'm not a big fan of regulation being overly aggressive. I really like speed limits because it keeps us from driving like maniacs. So some level of regulation is necessary. We have governments to help each other and protect each, just a matter of that pendulum swing. And so we shouldn't wait till we know everything to take action. Well, we really can't because even the World Health Organization right now, they don't have any consistent, like, bumpers or boundaries. we're trying to figure it out.

We're seeing the research come out, but there are not any boundaries right now or regulations really on what is a safe level of EMF. So we still have a lot of work to get there. But today, if you can feel the effects, If you're a vulnerable population, then there're things that you could do. Yeah. And if your not, than still don't buy the house right under the high power lines. If you're just an ordinary, healthy person, still try to not hold your phone up to your head for three hours a day, right?

Get the cords. Yeah. Put your your, uh, phone at least three feet away from you while it's charging at night. Right? Like they're, Monica, why don't you talk about that as a coach? What do you tell people? How do they protect it? Do you say, Hey, do this because it just makes sense. I don' care how vulnerable or resilient you are. First of all, I mentioned proximity earlier in this interview or this podcast, and that's one of the biggest things we can do. And what I invite patients to do is carve out time outdoors away from electronics.

Can you go to a park for 10 minutes? Can you take your shoes off and actually put your feet straight on the ground? How about we create distance and time away from electronics and protect that bubble? What would be considered that protective time would not be charging your phone at night? Can we take care of it during the day? So at least when you sleep and repair at nights, you are away. So we will be looking at ways to be more strategic about timing when we are using electronics, especially not using them while they're charging.

That includes electric cars. I would talk to patients about possibly getting themselves one of those Christmas light timers. and plug your router to that and set it to turn it off at night. You don't even have to think about it. That's one layer of exposure less. I do that right now, actually. We have our timer set at 10 p.m. And this gets me though, when we do time changes, remember to change your timechanges, because we had a time change and ours is like at six or seven o'clock in the morning.

Sometimes I log on early. So we have a a change, and I could not log onto the internet. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how... Yes, there's other things we can do. Let's say you're working from home. Fantastic. Turn off the overhead light. and open up the window to get some sunlight in. Can we do that? If not, let's figure out something else. Maybe we can get the old style Edison light bulb versus LEDs. maybe you can use a wired mouse instead of wireless. You can change your phone settings, your data settings from 5G down to 4G or LTE.

Perhaps you can, what else we can do? When you are working on a laptop and it's charging all the time, get yourself one of those charging cords that has three prongs. It's grounded charging cord instead of two prong only.

Reducing Exposure and Practical Protection Tips 28:00

There are many other ways we can do, there are shielding materials we use for very sensitive populations. But the first and foremost thing I do with patients is ask them, hey, how much time can we carve out for you to be outdoors, closer to nature, so you can actually get a break? Not only that, you get exposure to full-spectrum sunlight. and the electromagnetic field of the earth so yes so you can like actually reset your body so it's not just the distance that you're taking away getting outside is going to help reset you your system as well i'll say this too for getting out side and stuff because i had that too and i noticed I was on a walk the other day.

I intentionally leave my phone at home when I'm outside of working hours. If I am in working-hours, I take my own with me. But if I can, or if forgot to, if accidentally took my home with, put it on airplane mode. Don't sleep with your phone in your room. Grab an old-fashioned alarm clock if you can. They still exist. You can't, but I don't have an alarm, so I do sleep on my on the other side of the room, but I still put it on airplane mode also. Turning off your Bluetooth also, because Bluetooth, it's not just like your phone.

The Bluetooth is also amidst those things too. It's just the WiFi, the Bluetooth. I thought the 5G down to 3G, down the LTE, that's such a smart recommendation too, and I was interviewing My doctor, I think it was two or three years ago, about the smart technology and the devices that you wear all the time too, like the aura rings. And they're so great to collect information, but you are constantly having something on it. He was saying something about like, the calcium channels right there. They're constantly open, so your aura ring.

I've been actually taking a break the last like two-ish three weeks from wearable devices that collect all of my data because I didn't want to and honestly I did feel I felt a difference but I was also on vacation so I mean I Felt a different because it was all so turned off in so many other ways I Think part of what you're saying is reduce exposure when you when it makes sense you don't need the data from your oar ring every day for the next 10 years continuously. You can get that data and then you can take it off for a while and say, I'm going to do them pretty good.

I want to coast. Don't have to have the date. My sleep habits are good, and I can tell when my stress is happening or when it's not happening. Had a whoop device for about three years. And I thought it was great. It really helped. But at some point I could tell. And I was like, oh, I'm sure today, if I look at it, it's going to tell me today is not an exercise day. And sure enough, look, and I can tell. But now it has been long enough that I've used it that it would probably be useful for me to retrain and say, OK, get familiar again with your body so that you're getting this intuitively.

One of the comments I would make about you guys saying sort of take a vacation from these things, It always astounds me how good I feel when I go camping. I know. It makes no sense. I'm sleeping on the ground. There's rock pushing into my back. it's cold. i'm iIm sleeping in a bag. You don't camp, right? Why would I feel that good? Well, I'd feel good because there's no EMF around me and I am grounded and near trees. My favorite thing to do on a hike is just go sit right up against a tree and just share that energy with the tree as weird as it sounds.

And the Japanese, you know, they call it forest bathing and it's real. We get the energy from those things that are alive like we are, and we're symbiotically recharging. Right. I think that there's so much value in that to just, I know it oversimplifies it, but just say, bathe yourself in nature instead of in these artificial manmade experiences and your body will heal. It will recharge in a way that it can't otherwise. Yes, I totally agree. If you are curious, if you're a person who likes to measure things, there are apps and there things out there that you can actually measure the EMFs from your apps, from you phone, and from the different technology around you.

So you actually can measure how much EMFS are in your surroundings if your curious. There are also physical shielding technology. I actually wear a brand called Lambs, I think it's lamb or lambs. And it is a, brand of clothing that can protect you from like when I go flying, when i used to travel a lot more. I used travel to our clinics, you know, once a week and I was on a plane three to four times. a month. So I would wear, my husband has the EMF blocking boxers and I have the emf blocking shirt.

Yes, I know. While you're traveling, because another travel hack too, if you are somebody who travels, you don't have to go through that if don t want to. You don' t have t walk through. That you can just say, Hey, don''t want t go though this big thing and get exposed to this radiation. Y ou can go just through the other little metal detector thing. So you can, and then another area that I've heard people be talking about is doing supplements, grounding, spices, lifestyle stuff to reduce oxidative damage.

Because at the end of the day, the EMFs are inducing oxidated stress and damage in the body. So magnesium, glutathione, things that you could do to combat oxidate of stress. even in your cooking spices like cinnamon and clove and ginger and rosemary and turmeric for that some of those potential protective effects and they make your food taste delicious at the same time. So there's a lot of things that you can do to measure offset and reduce your exposure, which we should all be looking into, I would say.

I agree. Vulnerable populations, who are people that might be impacted by EMFs more than other populations? My clinical experience is if you are exceptionally sensitive to EMf, you're more likely to have mold toxicity than not. That's not to say that the Lyme population is not sensitive to EMF, but if I see somebody that they can't even come into my office because of the fluorescent lights, 100% of time they're going to have mold toxicity. There'll be other problems. One of good things is as you clean this up, as detoxify from mold, you become more resilient.

Yeah, now they can tolerate EMFs. They don't have to continue to live inside of a Faraday cage being, you know, totally protected from these EMFS all the time. I think that's probably important for people to understand and realize while these are part of the negative impact on our cells for oxidative reasons or for voltage gated channel, you know, sort of issues, these electrical field, this little tiny oscillating fields, all of those are real. But you'll notice it less. You'll feel less bad as you get better from the Lyme, from Epstein-Barr, the dysbiosis, and the mold toxicity.

To answer your question, I think mold toxin patients are the ones that are most sensitive to this. Yeah, their resilience is already low. Their nervous system's already taxed. Sprinkle a little bit on. That's going to just... I think it's that their nervous systems are so hyper reactive. And so a change just makes their symptoms like MCAS symptoms or POTS symptoms get so much worse. So they're so more sensitive to it. it's not good for any of us, but it may not be harmful either, right? Like we can handle a certain amount of the exposure without any real negative impact, as long as it is not constant exposure.

Vulnerable Populations and Sensitivity to EMFs 36:30

So clinically vulnerable patients would be one population that might experience exposure to EMFs at a higher level. They're not exposed to more EMS, they're just more sensitive when they are exposed. One thing I would comment on this, there are some devices, I'm not advocating for these devices but Somovetic makes some EMF blocking or drowned out devices. Blue Shield. my wife's personal experience, we got a Somavetic device and put it in the bedroom and her headaches improved. Right, just practically overnight.

That was the sort of thing I had to do to be, I don't know, somewhat more encouraging of saying, Hey, can we get the cell phones out of the let's turn off the Wi-Fi, that sort of thing. But I'm not very much of a zealot. And the next thing you know, I, not my wife, installed some thermostats that are smart meters. So now I can't turn on my Wi Fi anymore, else the house won't stay hot. You really, every night when our Wi fi goes off, so does our heat. Yeah. What am I going to do? It's fine. So, you know, I think it's just this constant like tug back into technology and then resist it again.

Do your best, live your life. But those blocking devices, this is purely an anecdote. This is not science, but my wife's headaches improved dramatically. Yes. I also heard that some interesting research about melanin, the pigment in our skin, once people that have melanine can interact with electromagnetic fields in a protective way. So people who are indoors all the time, they are not able to build up the tan in the healthy way, day the research would suggest. In a healthy way. Absolutely. And it's absolutely possible to build it up.

It's actually very healthy for us. We can talk about diet next time and how to work a tan in a health way, melanin is a very important compound that we have in our bodies that is responsible for so much more than just getting a glorious brown tan. I love that you bring that up, Monica, because people are afraid of the sun now. And then they become defenseless, like you're pointing out, Because if you slowly get exposed to the Sun over the, you know, as springtime shows up and you are getting more sun, then you will have protection against the damaging effects.

but not just the damaging effects of the sun. The damaging affects of all sorts of electromagnetic frequencies, right? UV radiation is just on the higher energy edge of spectrum where radio like, I don't know, AM, FM radio is at the lower end energy-wise. But all of those different forms of light are in that spectrum and they're all affecting us. And that just happens to be the same spectrum of energy that we're using for all these new technologies like communication. Yeah, we should definitely all go get a tan and not be worried that it's going to cause us to have melanoma, but we also shouldn't, you know, get sunburns because sun burns are the problem.

That's when you had the damage. But getting a hand didn't cause the damaged, But instead, because we've now made people afraid of the sun, they're using self tanners, which are destroying their hormones. I wanted to point out one other vulnerable population, which I think is very important to note for our listeners. Children and developing brains and bodies are considered more susceptible to EMF exposure. And so I would keep that in mind also. Just being able to reduce some of that exposure around the house or what, what children are exposed to.

I mean, that's important. To note. Yeah, especially with how close to the body children hold the devices, specially little kids. Yeah. It's very important to pay attention to timing of their exposure and be very mindful of that. So, EMFs, their electricity, our bodies are electricity. Low levels of EMFS. We're not going to throw our phones away, or iPads, it's going be here, but there are things that you can do to reduce your chronic exposure, because that's really where the issues come in, is the chronic low-level exposure.

How can you give yourself and your body a break? Because it's hard to find a brake in today's world. You're not going to get a brak if you don't turn your Wi-Fi off at night, right? Or if your sleep with your phone next to your bed. If you're glued to you phone all the time, you are not gonna give your self a Brake unless you turn on airplane Bluetooth off. So this is a really, really helpful conversation. I appreciate it. Both of you, I wanted to end with some rapid fire slash myth busters. Monica, my first one is for you.

Would you do AirPods or wired headphones? Wired headphones. Perfect. Why? Wired headphones have less EMFs, AirPods, constant blasting of that Bluetooth right around your head. And there are some studies showing how intense that spike of electromagnetic field is. Even better, you can get air tubes, that will be even better.

Myth Busting and Key Takeaways 42:00

Air tubes are headphones that do not connect wire directly to the little speaker in your ear. There is an empty tube that a membrane is vibrating and vibrating air to transfer sound to your ears, so there is no direct connection between the wire and the speaker in your ear. The speaker is a little lower away from your body and it's vibrating a certain membrane. And just like you're using Sustetoscope, it works the same. Cool. Awesome. Dr. Pearson, is grounding legit or overhyped? It may still be over hyped.

That's not an and or. It is probably both. I mean, it is legit. We do create electricity in our bodies and it can't leave. Anytime anybody's touched a doorknob in the dry of winter and they got a shock, that was because they weren't grounded, right? So yeah, and we're spending all of our time living in houses up on piers, right? And plastic, you know, carpet and, rubber-soled shoes. And so we are not discharging this free electricity out of your body. I would argue that that's pretty, it's significantly different than EMF, but it is an important electrical aspect of physiology.

If you can discharge that excess electricity, then you will be better off. There's no question. For our listeners, if someone is listening and feeling just a little overwhelmed, which can happen, what's one small change that they should start with today, Monica? Put your phone on airplane mode when you're going to sleep. Let's start there. And if you have a bit of anxiety about it, come to us, especially to a health coach. I'll help you figure out a way to do it in a that does not spike that anxiety and work around you being available to your family if need to.

Awesome. Any advice from you, Dr. Peterson, as a takeaway for our listeners today? I guess I'm thinking of it from the perspective of my patients that are very sensitive. If none of this makes any sense to you don't gaslight your loved ones who are sensitive to these things. if none, of these makes sense, to that's okay. Physics is hard. It doesn't make sense. To very many of us. And so you won't have to understand it for it to still be real. I appreciate that. The reality is none. Of us understand that very well.

Even the experts are trying to wrap their heads around why this is a thing, and yet we're electrical beings. So inherently, it makes sense. That's a beautiful way to end it. Well, I appreciate you guys joining us today and talking about EMFs, talking It is an invisible stressor and it can affect your health. So find us at formhealth.com, hook up with one of our health coaches, find one our providers and get started with your care today. We'll see you on the next episode. Thank you for joining us on the Forum Health Integrative Medicine podcast.

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