Maintain A Healthy Relationship With Your Phone

Introduction to EMFs and Phone Exposure 0:00

Hello and welcome back to Mastering Your Menopause Transition Summit. I'm your host Dr. Sharon Stills. I'm here today with a dear friend and colleague and one of our sponsors of our summit, which we are always so grateful for the companies that sponsor to help us help you. And as you probably know by now, I only work with companies that I can thoroughly stand behind. You know, I take my my referrals and who I associate with very seriously. And this is truly one of the most important topics. And I know you hear me say that a lot, but this is something that we're going to be talking about today with R Blank And yes,his name is R Letter R numerous times.

If that's really his name, then it is. And he's the CEO of Shield Your Body. And we're going to be talking about EMFs and specifically your phones and what you need to know about how they're affecting you. And then, most importantly, what you need to know about how you can mitigate the damage. So he has made his life's work about spreading the word, about the truth, about EMFs. He coauthored a bestselling book like This is His Jam, and that's why I wanted to bring him to you, to the summit, so that we can really get the lowdown on this.

Because I feel like often when you're listening to a lecture, it's just kind of thrown by, oh, man, you know, EMS are toxic, too, but we don't really stop and really think about it and really pay attention and really do something about it. And so that's why we are going to have this very important conversation today. So and and there I know often when we talk about toxicity or EMFs that can be like, oh my God, let me just go bury my head in the sand because this is there's nothing to do and it's overwhelming.

But there are solutions, too, so it's not just going to be Debbie Downer. So welcome R Thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Stills. It's great to be here. Yes. So as I was just saying in your introduction, and I'd love if you could just share, like how how did this become your jam? How did this become what you focus on and what you're passionate about? Sure. Yeah. Another great place to start. And also just just before we do, I want to thank you for for pointing out that the whole purpose of this is is is action based and somewhat optimistic.

It's meant to empower people. It's not meant to tear them down or just make them feel hopeless about the world around them, because there's certainly enough of that. So I appreciate you focusing on that because that's what we're going to get to. But in terms of how I got to where I am, my father was Dr. Martin Blank ,and he was one of the leading researchers. And and towards the end, activists and advocates into issues of EMF and in his particular case, human health. But but health in general. And it was now 11 years ago he had a contract to write a book.

And this book, which is what became overpowered, which is still one of the leading books on this topic and available on Amazon and at bookstores everywhere, unlike what he had traditionally written for this book was meant for regular people, not other no at all. Not other doctors like you, but for for regular people to understand what my father had learned in his 30 plus years of doing this research and and working with other people. And so he asked me, because of the audience, he asked me to help him write the book.

And at the time, I was a software engineer at a software engineering firm. But I'd I'd written a couple of books and I'd been teaching on the faculty at University of Southern California undergrad. Not, not again, not not know it all grad students. But and so I had I had a lot more of that kind of experience. So I jumped in and I co-wrote what ended up becoming overpowered with him and it was in the course of writing that book with him that I learned so much about this, this topic. And it was also in the course of writing that book that I came up with the idea for what became Shield Your Body, which is my my current company.

How R Blank Got Into EMF Research 4:47

Mm hmm. I love it. I love that you did it with your father. And I know I see that you have degrees from Columbia and UCLA yourself. So a little humble. Are we? Yeah. So let's let's just dove in and this kind of came because you had me on your podcast and we were talking about I'm always like, we need to divorce our phones. We need to we need to have some kind of relationship, you know, experience with our phone, if that's not so codependent and guilty, too. So no judgments here. And so and we were talking about just this this relationship.

And so I just have to say this, like a week ago, my phone screen died so I could hear my calls coming in, I could hear my texts coming in, but I couldn't do anything about it because the screen was totally black and it was such and I was going somewhere and I didn't have my phone. I couldn't sit, I didn't know where I was. It just was like this real. So it just made me think of it that we're going to talk about this. It was this real experience of like, Oh my God, I'm pretty lost without my phone.

I depend on my phone for everything. Yeah. And then when I got to the Apple store, they're like, Well, what's your Apple ID password? And I was like, I don't know. It's written in my notes, on my phone. And then I tried to log in to my iCloud and it was like, Oh, we're going to send you the code to your phone so you can so it really so we're not here to say that like, oh, you need to get rid of your phone, because I know this experience really showed me that like I need my phone and I couldn't answer question emails from my assistant.

It was like it was like a lost day. And of course, I was at Apple. I stole, you know, the Apple phone store for 17 hours. And so it's really about, though, what I want to talk to you about is like, how do we how do we have a better relationship where we're not 100% dependent on it? And how do we protect ourselves? Because this this friendly phone has a lot of negative EMFs coming out of it. Yeah, you think so. I appreciate that introduction to that to the to this topic because as as you allude to, well, first off, phones have become not only incredibly important, just incredibly useful.

I mean, when you think about what you do on your phone every day or at least once a week, and you compare it to what that same thing took ten years ago or 20 years ago, some of it you couldn't even do, some of it took a lot more time, took a full computer to going to talk to other people, and now you can just do it instantly. I remember when I moved to Los Angeles back in 2000, the first thing you had to buy when you moved to Los Angeles at the time was something called a Thomas Guide. So anyone who lived in L.A.

before the era of cell phones will or smartphones will know this. It's this because L.A. is this huge, sprawling city, and it's it's this like this thick book, and it's all maps. And any time you had to go anywhere, you had to look in the Thomas guide where you were going and then plan your route and I'm not exaggerating. Everyone had a Thomas guy because L.A. is such a crazy big city, and now you just pull out your phone and you can go to just go. You told me about a trip you're planning soon to to to a foreign destination.

You can get to that destination now and just load up your phone and know exactly where you're going. In most cities, you could even just order an Uber using the same app that you would use at home. You can access all of your banks if you needed to transfer money, or you can do all your email. And just by when you land in a foreign city when when you traveled 20 years ago, you know, traveling. Right. It was a completely different experience. So these are incredibly valuable tools. And so it's very important that people and that's why I appreciate the way you introduced this, that people understand.

I am not advocating that people ditch their phones. I don't know anyone who is seriously advocating that, but also, as you touched on,

Why Phones Are Hard to Put Down 9:17

there are a lot of problems with these phones. They are very powerful devices. The devices themselves are largely engineered to facilitate addiction. And then the experiences that are written to run on these devices are often explicitly designed to foster addiction among people of all ages, but particularly the younger you are. That's what these notifications pings are. That's what gamification where you feel like you need to log back in to get your points back or to keep your streak going. And, you know, I have this on an app.

I have an app where it summarizes bestselling books in 15 minutes. And, you know, I thought that was a personal improvement. I mean, I still view it as a personal improvement app, but it it kind of penalizes you if you don't log in every day to keep your streak going of, you know, learning these bestsellers. And fortunately, I don't care. But that's just, again, an example of the way it tries to foster these deeper and deeper and relationships that consume more and more of your awareness. Now, there are a lot of these issues, and it's because these devices are so powerful, because of the way they're engineered and also because of how quickly they have become interwoven into our daily lives and into reality.

Right. If you think back ten years ago, this wasn't an issue and now it is. And, you know, it takes time for us as individuals and for us collectively as a society to learn how to use these things to balance our relationships with them and to have a healthier relationship with the technology. So there are a lot of these issues which are the types of issues that I like covering on on the podcast that that you kindly appeared on recently, the Healthier Tech Podcast. But as you also pointed out today, I'm here to speak specifically about the MF Radiation Side of this, right?

So as I just said, there are a lot of public health and personal health issues stemming from our relationships with phones. But one of them, the one on which I have focused the most effort over the past ten years, is the impact of being exposed to electromagnetic radiation from these devices. And just very quickly, for those who may not know what that is. Right, electromagnetic radiation also sometimes called EMF or electromagnetic fields. It is a type of energy that is created by the combined forces of electricity and magnetism.

So anything that runs on power, like like like a light bulb or like your refrigerator or like the blender in your kitchen. These are all emit EMF and anything that communicates wirelessly. So that would include cell phones and cordless phones and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. That is also EMF. And just based off of that description, right. Anything that runs on power and anything that communicates wirelessly, you can tell that there's a heck of a lot of this stuff around us now and more and more and more of it every year.

And while, you know, for a long time we've known about EMF for hundreds of years, but it's really only within the last hundred years. And then in particular within the last, let's say, 40 years, where we've really started to see strong evidence that this stuff is harmful to human health and in fact, to the health of all living things, including birds, bees and plants and trees. And so when we're now just to get back to sort of a focused point here, right? As I said, there's a lot of this stuff in the environment.

There's more and more of it every year. And when people like because I have a lot of experience communicating these issues to people, when people start to learn about this, they can get sort of, well, there's two reactions. One is they can just ignore it and say, no, that's not true. I don't I refuse to accept it. The other is, oh, that sounds like there's something serious there. Let me freak out, because it's everywhere. And that's obviously not a practical approach. It's not healthy. And so what I like to try to help people to do is to realize that it is actually the relationship with the phone that is a huge source of people's individual exposure to to EMF radiation.

And that is because these phones have so much power and we can get into some of the reasons why that is. But they have so much power. They're designed to communicate over miles and miles, and we're holding them in our pockets and and it's pardon me. So it's because they have they have so much power the way in which we use them and the fact that they are with us all of the time. So even though, you know, when you turn on your laptop in your apartment and you might see there's 20 Wi-Fi networks that you can see, and when you look out the window and you see there's five cell towers that I can see, even given all of that, it is often the way in which people are relating to and using their phones.

That is a huge source of their EMF radiation and it is one over which we tend to exert the most control. Right. There's nothing I can do about that cell tower that's three blocks away. But there is a lot that I can do with how I use my phone. But let's let's jump into it. So we talk about what you should do and then what you should do. However you want to approach it. But, you know, for me, I cringe every time I see someone with their phone up to their ear. I'm like, I just want to walk up to strangers and be like, Stop it, stop it.

It's bad for you. Yeah. So I can get right into the solutions and then we can talk about, you know, why this is so important, but because the solutions are so simple. So, like you said, never hold these phones up to your head. In fact, a lot of people might be surprised to to learn and to realize that you're not supposed to hold these devices directly against your head. A lot of them. At any rate, if you read the manuals, for instance, the iPhone manual, there's there's fine print in there saying that there needs to be a minimum distance of separation between the device and your body, such that the phone does not exceed federal radiation emissions exposure regulations.

Wait, wait a second. Wait a second. Because first of all, who reads their iPhone pamphlet? I just toss it out as I'm. But are you saying that they're saying if you put your phone to your ear, you're exceeding what they say is safe? Yes. What they say is legal. Okay. So. Yeah. And let's just make this a little more surreal. Let me just restate what you're saying, which is are are they saying that if you use the device the way it's designed to be used, that that it will exceed it can't exceed legal limits.

And the answer is yes. So they designed this device to be held right up against your head. But if you hold it up against your head, you're actually doing what the manual says not to do.

Cell Phone Radiation Risks and Safety Limits 16:58

There are actually more extreme examples. I mean, we're talking about cell phones here, but there's a Dell laptop manual, again, laptop that says you need to maintain eight inches of distance between the laptop and your lap in order to stay under these these federal radiation exposure limits. Now, also, let's be clear, these limits are vastly inadequate to protect our human health. That is, you know, the government says a self you're allowed to be exposed, you're allowed to be exposed to a certain amount of radiation from a cell phone.

And science says yes, but exposures even much, much, much lower than that are harmful to your health. So these limit, when I point out these limits, it's because it's because of the absurdity of the whole thing that they're designing these devices that they can't even that if you use them the way they're designed to be used, you can't even stay within federal limits. But also to be clear, these federal limits are vastly insufficient to protect our health. So getting back to the solutions here and by the way, everything I'm saying you can find documented on online and on my website.

I just need a minute. Yeah. Because I didn't know that and that's Yeah. Mind blowing like that just seems so criminal to me. And yeah, no one reads the manuals. I tossed that right into the recycling as well. It gets worse than that, right? Because when I said, you know, Apple says if you hold it right up against your head, you can get more of this radiation than the government says should be allowed. Now, who actually tests the iPhone to make sure that Apple is telling the truth? And the answer is Apple, right?

All of these when people hear that, you know, in the United States, it's a little different. Agencies in different countries do this right. But in the United States, it's an entity called the FCC or Federal Communications Commission. And and that's who determines these these radiation regulations. When people hear that there's a government agency that regulates cell phone radiation, they sort of they don't think it through, but they implicitly imagine, well, that means the government is testing this stuff and it isn't right.

The way the laws are written is it's up to these manufacturers to test these devices themselves and then report the results to the government. And so that ends up in the United States. It's rarely second guessed, but a few years back there, the government actually did test about in France about 300 cell phone models and 90% of them emitted more radiation than the manufacturers claim to. They did. And several models actually exceeded the radiation limits and had to be recalled from the market. Right. So with all of these things, you know, just caveat emptor is sort of the whole just here the the the the the regulations are written to a level that barely I mean, it's good that those limits exist.

Don't get me wrong, that these federal radiation regulations exist at all is definitely good. But those limits are insufficient to protect us. And then there's no one. It's the fox guarding the hen house. Right. It's all of these manufacturers get to test this stuff for themselves and then kind of self-report. It's all on the honor system. So with all of it and even given all of that, you have companies saying, well, you know, don't hold it right against your head or don't put it right in your pocket, because if you do, you're going to exceed these rather conservative regular radiation regulations anyway.

So the first thing we talked about, right, was not holding the phone directly against your head. The second for the same exact reason is never to carry your phone in your pocket or your bra, which I see many women doing particularly seems particularly to happen at the gym, but not only at the gym. And it's the same reason that when you're holding it against your head, it's a little bit worse because a you know, there's some important stuff up there. And so he don't want to, you know, that it's stuff that you'd want to protect more than maybe some other parts of your body, but to also because when you're holding it up against your head, odds are you're actively on a call.

And when you're actively on a call, your phone is generally emitting more radiation than when it's more or less on standby when it's waiting for a call. So can we just. I just want to stop you for a second. Sure. No, because we haven't really talked about it. And I know we're talking about solutions which are important, but we haven't talked about for the ladies. Like why this? What is it doing? Because you're talking about menopause and there's a reason we're having this conversation. So could you.

Because I think it's sometimes shocking all the implications that EMFs have on the health front. So I appreciate I appreciate you wrangling that in a bit. Yeah. So okay, so this is how before I speak directly to to your audience, this is how I tend to explain this when when asked a question like this, which is the picture that science is painting for us, is that EMF exposure, that is exposure to the type of radiation from a cell phone, even at levels far below that, what are legally allowed appears to impact almost every single biological system or mechanism where we investigate.

So what that means is we see I mean, what gets a lot of coverage because it's I mean, understandably because it's it's terrifying is brain tumors, but it's not just, oh, by the way, a lot of people don't realize this in Italy. It is now a legal precedent upheld by multiple courts that cell phones cause brain tumors. And we're seeing it move through the courts in other countries as well. But it's not just right brain tumors. It's it's any kind of tumor. So we see growing data for for for thyroid cancer.

There's lymphoma, leukemia, increasing signs of color, links to colorectal cancer, which is particularly relevant when we're talking about carrying your phone in your pocket. But it's, again, not just tumors. It also gets into endocrine system function, which is something I do want to talk to, to you and your audience about. But, you know, one that that's very well examined at this point is is melatonin production, which impacts our circadian rhythm, which impacts our sleep quality,

Health Effects: Hormones, Sleep, and Bone Density 24:18

which then has cascading effects throughout our our our, our health. We see it with neural links to neuro neurodegenerative diseases, neurological disorders, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. We see increasing links to anxiety and depression. We see links to formation of birth defects which which when people hear birth defects, you know, it conjures certain images. But I'm talking about even in rates of asthma in in in teens who were exposed in utero when their mothers were pregnant with them. Right.

So and that again, these are just some of the examples I'm kind of cherry picking to to show how wide ranging the impacts are that science is demonstrating. But again, I don't want to focus on this one part too much. But just to reiterate, all everything I just said was with humans, right? We see similar sorts of outcomes and impacts when we're looking at impacts on on wildlife, including birds, insects, there are strong indications of links to colony collapse disorder among bees. Any species that uses magneto ception for navigation, that is that relies on the Earth's own magnetic field in order to know how to navigate is quite significantly disrupted by these forces.

We see just on seed germination and the ability for seeds to be able to grow into adult plants is is impacted by exposure to radiation from a Wi-Fi router. So we see all of these and more impacts on human health now when it comes to the proximity and and I want to be clear, what I was just talking about is all, you know, all sorts of EMF. So that would be cell phones would be wi fi, it'd be power lines, it'd be microwave ovens. It would be all of this sort of EMF. And we're talking about the dangers of cell phones in particular.

There are certain areas of disease that that I prefer to focus on. So one of them, like I just mentioned, was melatonin production. Again, because sleep is, well, a because this is this is very well studied at this point. In fact, I mean, blue light is a form of EMF and it is essentially universally accepted now that blue light exposure disrupts your circadian rhythm. And the reason that this is so damaging is you need to sleep just for your body to deal with the world as it is. It needs you need to regenerate, you need to re-energise, you need to revitalize.

You need to have good sleep in order to have a chance at decent health. And these exposures are negatively impacting our sleep. And there is what is increasingly recognized as an epidemic of poor sleep in our society. But I also wanted to mention that because that is just one example of EMFs impact on the endocrine system, which I believe is very relevant to to the message of your summit and to the interests of your audience. Right. Because the the endocrine system is what produces and regulates hormone levels in, in, in, in the body.

And it's responsible for things. I mean, I feel a little silly telling you any of this, but, you know, for for our metabolism and for our anxiety and depression levels and for our sexual health and for so many other things. And we are seeing links between EMF exposure and multiple functions of the endocrine system and thus multiple hormonal levels of hormones, different types of hormones in our body and, and the EMF is, is, is just throwing a lot of this stuff off. And again, when there's one area of, of, of one aspect of EMF, which I talk about a lot, but I didn't talk about here.

But I do want to say quickly, the reason that that phone in your pocket or the phone against your head is so important to worry about as opposed to that cell tower down the block or a mile away or your neighbors. WI fi is because the power of EMF radiation diminishes exponentially with distance. And so what that means is if you have a phone like I have here and you have it one inch away from your body, and then you double that right now it's two inches away from your body. The power of your exposure to that radiation has been cut by 75%.

And then if you go to four inches, you cut it by another 75% and so on and so on. Now, conversely, when it is right up against your body as it would be when you're holding it against your head or it's in your pocket or in your bra, you are getting the maximum possible dose of radiation that this device can possibly give you. And that's why it is the phone in the pocket, the bra or against the head. That is an area where it's like the number one thing that I tell people is, is keep the phones away from you as far away from you as possible, but definitely not on your not on your person.

Right. So that was we hormones were one what another one that that might be of interest to your audience and I'm going to guess that you might not know this either. I didn't know this until recently. We didn't cover it in Overpowered, but I was being interviewed on a podcast recently by a women's health physical trainer and she asked if I knew anything about EMF cell phones and bone density, and I said, no, actually I didn't. So I went out afterwards. I went in and did a little research on it, got back in touch with her.

It turns out that there are some pretty strong connections between EMF exposure and bone density. So on the one hand there are certain physical therapies that use EMF in order to stimulate bone density, right? So that means there are these EMF pulsed EMF treatments that's used also in other forms of physical therapy, but there are certain ones that are calibrated very precisely that have been shown to result in increased bone density, improved bone density. So you might be thinking, well, I do want to improve bone density.

Maybe I should carry the phone in my pocket. But the the catch there is that those are very precisely calibrated doses. And what that shows is there is definitely a cause and effect relationship between EMF and bone density because you can't you can't have the MF treatment work if there's no correlation there. So what happens then? If you have you don't have a precisely calibrated dose, but you have water effectively erratic, randomize doses. Could that harm bone density? And there are multiple studies now that show that, in fact, yes, these these on calibrated EMF exposures can have a significant, statistically significant negative impact on bone density.

So right off the bat, before you even get to things like, well, brain tumors really worry me and there's all these other things that, that, that, that are just said that that kind of worry me before we even get to that whole kind of hot a whole collection of health concerns around EMF. There are those two right hormone endocrine system function and hormone levels and bone density are, I think, directly relevant to to the subject matter of the summit that you're running. Yeah. I mean, the whole idea, ladies, is just that this is a time to kind of take stock of everything and and our hormones are affected not only by what we eat or how we poop or don't poop, but they're affected by a lot of unseen forces and EMF, which we love.

EMF, that's a very good therapy. But EMFs are I always talk about them as we're talking about our toxic loads and we talk about mercury and pesticides, but there's the unseen. And so EMFs, we don't we don't see them. We just see our phone with beautiful pictures of our family or Facebook feeds. We don't see the EMFs that are coming at us. And as you just heard our say, they're they're doing damage from bones to melatonin imbalances to the endocrine system as a whole towards I mean, if you're putting your phone in your breasts, which are filled with lymphatic tissue and what what's happening there, you're stowing down the flow, you could potentially be contributing to a tumor development.

So there's just so many factors and we're giving you a little sampling of them. And if you just want to take from this. Okay, I need to know what I need to do and take it at that. That's great. And you could go off and do a ton of research. You can look at our as podcast and stuff and read the book and really dove in and blow your mind even more so. So I think we've clearly made the connection and specifically about the phone, and that is kind of crazy as you're saying, that I'm like pushing my phone back, that I'm like, Get away, I get away.

So, so where do you carry your phone? Talk about airplane mode, talk about best practices. How can we best interact with our cell phones? So where do I carry my phone? Well, okay, so if I'm just talking to to somebody and I say, don't carry your phone in your pocket or your brain, they say, well, where am I going to carry it? Then I say, okay, well then put it into airplane mode if you are going to care, right? So when you put your phone into airplane mode, as long as you're fully putting it into airplane mode, right?

Because your phone and this is also it's a little bit in the weeds, but it is important for everyone to understand your phone isn't just one source of MF, your phone is multiple sources of MF. There's the cell phone, there's the wi fi, there's the Bluetooth, there's the NFC near field communication. That's what they use for Apple Pay and Google Pay. There's depending on your phone there, there might be others. And so, for instance, it's possible to turn off the phone, but keep wi fi on where it's possible to turn off wi fi, but have Bluetooth on.

But if you turn it fully into airplane mode, then it is effectively eliminated. All of the MF emissions from the device. And I'm very careful to say effectively because there's still going to be some very, very small levels coming just from the fact that the battery is running. But it is so minuscule compared to what we're talking about from from the cell phone connection or from the wi fi card or any of this stuff. So put it into airplane mode. Now, that means you won't be able to get calls or texts or any of those other notifications, but there are things that will still work.

So for instance, if you have a alarm set, those will work. If you have calendar reminders, those will still work. If you have podcasts downloaded to your phone, you can still play those. There's there's a whole bunch of things that will still work, but you won't be able to get calls or messages while you're in airplane mode. Similarly, never hold the phone up against your head. So what do you do instead? You either use speaker phone or you use a wired headset. Not not these AirPods or similar Bluetooth headphones because those are the those are effectively the same as wi fi radiation.

And, you know, right in both ear canals, right near the brain.

Best Practices for Safer Phone Use 36:38

Now, you ask me how I carry my phone, I use my my own products. So I have now a lot of the time I'll I'll use airplane mode. But there are times where, you know, and a lot of my customers are the same way where they can't just keep their phone in airplane mode all day because they they need to be able to get the call or whatever, whatever other dependent dependents they have. And so that's where my pouches and bags come into play. So I have the phone pouch, the pouch deluxe, the sling bag, and actually there's a whole bunch I don't need to name them all.

My favorite is the sling bag, but there's a whole bunch of products that I make that are designed to make it safer to carry your phone. And with these uses, EMF, radiation shielding and the back of and I guess I forgot I always forget to have one. It's, it's in the other room. I always forget to have my visual aids when I, when I'm being interviewed. But the back of the product. Right. So the part that sits between you and your phone that has radiation shielding, but the front doesn't. Right? So I put my phone in the sling bag and I throw the sling bag around my back and I just start walking.

And so because the part between the phone and my body is shielded it's deflecting radiation away from my body. But because the other side isn't shielded, the phone can still send and receive signals. Now, I want to be clear. The best solution is not is to keep it in airplane mode or just not have it anywhere near your body. And my products kind of fill in that gap for yeah, we know what that that's the best solution. But I still need to carry my phone. It still needs to be on. So that's where products like mine come, come into play.

So when you're talking on your phone, if you have it on speaker, how far away for? Well, with all of these things, you want to be as far away as possible. But as I was pointing out, as I was. Putting my phone on speaker and I'm like, is that far enough away or is that still. You know, so at this point, you're getting a little bit into a theological debate, and it really depends on who you ask. My answer to these types of questions is, you know, holding it here is way better than holding it here, which is way better than holding it here.

So, you know, the further you're you can do it, you know, the further you're comfortable holding it, the better off you'll be. But even getting it to here is way better than than than here. Right? So, so any I mean, as I was telling you before, right. If you move from one inch to two inch, the difference you're making is massive. The you know, they sent you. So, for instance, another we didn't get into this because we're limited on time. But another thing that I advise people is not to sleep with their phones in their bedrooms.

And so what. About on airplane mode? Well, airplane mode, yes. So airplane mode is fine. But then people, you know, ask me, well, what's I need to keep my phone on at night for for work or for whatever, you know, emergency calls. So how far away should I keep it? And to my understanding, the sort of consensus answer to that is at least six feet away from your body. So that that when it comes to sleeping at night, you want to keep it at least six feet away from your body. But my approach to this, when I'm kind of advocate creating a when I'm when I'm making these suggestions to people, is, do you know, as just create more distance?

So whatever you're comfortable doing as long as it's further away, right? So create as much distance as you are comfortable doing for your lifestyle and you'll be doing yourself a favor. Don't stress like, oh, it's only five and a half feet away, not six feet away. Right? That at that point you're not doing yourself any favors. So the more distance you are comfortable creating the, the lower your exposure will be and thus the lower your cumulative health risk will be from all of sources. Keeping in mind, right, you're not going to hit there is no way to hit a zero EMF lifestyle, just like if you're participating in society, there's essentially no way to avoid air pollution and there's increasingly no way to avoid microplastics.

And increasingly, you know, avoiding all of these things that we know are toxic and we should avoid. But. Right. So the goal isn't to get to zero EMF. The goal is to have less EMF. And and it's your relationship with your phone that is one where you can have the biggest impact because of how much radiation you're exposed to from it and because of how much you control that relationship. Even though maybe Apple and Facebook don't want you to realize that. So I know we're running out of time and I'm like, shoot, I need to talk to you for like 8 hours. Yeah.

I do. So, all right. So quit your phone. Hopefully, I put my phone in airplane mode every night. So it's on my nightstand. But it's an airplane mode because I figure, you know what, if I'm sleeping, then I don't need to know who's calling or texting or. Exactly right. I'll, I'll find out when I wake up. But so and then speaking with it on speaker. Or wired headset or. Wired headset use. What do you mean by wired headset. Is that something. That. Yeah, it's another thing I should have had here handy.

So buy a wired headset. I'm talking about any like a headset that you plug into your phone like it works off of wires. Not the wireless headsets like the AirPods, but, you know, these these actually when iPhones first came out, these were standard, right? They came with every. Dollar that was kind of give you radiation to. Like, oh, okay. So yes, they do. But it is so, so, so much less than by holding the phone up to your head that I still encourage people to to use them. But in response to your point, that's why we make anti-radiation headsets often called air tubes.

And so shield your body has air tubes and those are those cut off the radiation from flowing from your phone to your head. But even if you don't invest in air two SYP air tubes or anything like it, it's still way safer to use a wired headset than to hold a phone up to your head or to then by using Bluetooth headsets. Well, I'm going to say you have to invest in the air tubes or use it on speaker, because personally I used to only wear headset. I just knew I shouldn't be holding this thing up to my head.

But I would. And I am on my phone a lot with work and so forth. And I used to have this chronic swelling, lymphatic congestion, ear pain. And one day I was in the shower and I just got this intuitive hit, Oh my God, this is from your headset. So I took off the headset and within 48 hours it all went away and it never came back. Wow. That's definitely a strong indicator. Yeah. So air to air tubes or I'm a huge fan of speaker and and now I'm going to play with how far away can I have my phone? And still people hear me and I hear them and yeah, maybe like the air tubes.

So when I go into a store, if I'm talking to someone, I'm like, got to go. I'm in the store. I don't want to be rude. Call you later because I won't put the phone to my head. But maybe if I had a pair of those tubes, I could try that. But I want to ask because another big place, we have a relationship with our phone is in our car. And if you could just speak to some best practices there, because it's my unfortunate understanding that you're getting like super duper radiated when you're talking in your car.

Yeah, well, unfortunately, it's not just when you're talking. And I mean, it all depends on what kind of car you have. I have a okay. So there are a few issues there. One is whenever you're moving late, so let's say you're not in a car, you're in a bus, you're in a train, your phone is going to be emitting more radiation just to maintain the signal because it's constantly having to find new towers to communicate with. Right. So whenever you're moving and I don't mean walking, but whenever you're moving in a vehicle, your phone to maintain a connection would be emitting more radiation.

There's a whole lot of reasons why you shouldn't be on your phone, in your car. This is just one of them now. But when when you start talking about actual EMF exposure considerations in cars, I don't have very positive or uplifting news for you. This is one of because this is one of those areas of life that is essentially entirely, entirely unregulated from an EMF perspective. So I challenge you or any of your listeners go out, go out and find me the law that tells me how much radiation I'm allowed to be exposed to by my new Tesla because as far as I have been able to tell from years of looking into it, that law does not exist.

And increasingly with with these cars and you know, Tesla's in some sense, it's an easy punching bag because of just how much technology is in that car. But I rented a Buick last year, not electric Buick. And it the levels were crazy. And it's because it has Bluetooth, it has wi fi, it has all of these things going off the sides, too, for collision detection.

Car Exposure, Resources, and Final Takeaways 46:38

And this to me was very enlightening because I was like, well, I've never had this kind of experience in a car before. I'm going to try this Bluetooth connection and see if it helps me with because that was a rental. I was in a foreign city. I was like, Let me navigate with it and so forth. And it forced the wi fi on, on my phone just I was connecting over Bluetooth and it took control of my phone and activated wi fi. And I looked into it's because it gets better performance if it has both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi working.

But it didn't ask me. It just did it. And so this is increasingly how this stuff is engineered. Now, there's there's almost no way that you can protect yourself from those sources because the shielding without going to just take with it because the explanation would take a very long time. Just take my unfortunately, take my word for it, which is it's very, very, almost impossible to actually protect yourself against EMF exposure from a car that is exposing you to this stuff. And so the solution there, at least from my perspective, is to get as low tech a car as you can and to not use your phone while you are driving.

And I know that that's maybe not quite as satisfactory as some of the useful, actionable tips I had on the cell should be. And it should even be an airplane mode, right? Like it shouldn't be on. It should be an airplane mode when you're driving. Yeah. I mean and I mean, the only reason I would say it shouldn't be is if you're actually using it for navigation. And, you know, I'll do that too. I'll try. I'll keep the phone on the, you know, the passenger seat or whatever it is and just have it speak directions at me because I have a super low tech car.

I don't have it. It can't touch I don't have navigation. And it's not an old car. I just got a really low tech car and it in fact, it had it had one it had a Bluetooth radio and it was broken into and someone stole the radio. And I just didn't replace it because it was the one piece of EMF. You know, like keep it. Yeah. So this is where I so, you know, moment of truth from the doctor here. I that's where I have to work on it because I, I'm like, I get in my phone, my car, and I'm like, oh, let me catch up with friends.

And I call and I'm always on the phone in my car. And so that's my next step because we can't always do everything all at once. We forget it. Sometimes change. Yeah, exactly. Do little and keep doing it. And so, you know. That's the right approach. Airplane And now I'm like, okay, I got a I got to stop talking to people while I'm driving. So, so well, I could talk to you all day about this, but we are we are way out of time. So we will we will bring more to you, because this conversation is just beginning.

And it's a really important one. We're laughing and giggling a little, but it's a really important one. It's something that I'm really passionate about that as you're going through your hormonal journey and as we know, menopause is just this transition, not a disease. And it's the second sacred act. And I plan on you having a third one, too. So we've got a lot of life left in us and we want to do all that we can. Just like our said, we're not going to get rid of every single exposure we're alive.

And so it's a matter of learning how to dance, how to relate, how to reduce what we can we can't control, say what's going on in our neighbor's house, but what can we control in our own? What can we reduce and how? So even if I start by you know, if I take a half hour drive every day and I only talk for 10 minutes and the other 20, you know, wean myself down, but what can we do that we have control over? So so I really appreciate you and all that you offer. Where can people learn more and find out about these wonderful products?

Yeah, no, thank you. So the website is shieldyourbody.com that shield your body all one word. And we also have a guide that I wrote that that your your summit attendees can can download right through the summit portal and it's all about the to the topic we were talking about today which is carrying your phone, the science behind it. And a lot of this studies which you know, I say in passing, oh, it's linked to this, it's linked to that. The guide not only explains all of this, but it has links to the citations and studies and so forth.

And it includes a coupon. Good for my entire catalog. So get the guide. The Where do you carry your phone guide and visit us at shieldyourbody.com. Awesome. That was like selfish for me. I'm like, I want to read the guide. Yes, make that guide. We are like, I'm going to be reading it with you ladies because this is really important stuff. And it's it's something I think when we read it and we see a study and then it sticks with us rather than, Oh, here's their bad, and then we really need some more details around this.

So I so appreciate you. I so appreciate the work you're doing. Same. Thank you so much. The next year. Yeah. From you. And thank you so much for being a part of the summit because part of why I host the menopause summit is to bring in all these pieces. No one says, Oh, I'm going through menopause. What am I ever going to do about my EMF exposure? But that's the conversation I want to be having. So I really appreciate you making the space for that. I really do. That's super important. Important thing to be thinking about.

So thanks everyone for being here. So pick one thing, one thing and commit to it. Now that we talked about and that alone is going to just start you on your journey of reducing your EMF. So thank you for being here and to be continued and we'll be back soon.