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Dr. Jenny Pfleghaar is a double board certified physician in Emergency Medicine and Integrative Medicine. She graduated from Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine. She is the author of Eat. Sleep. Move. Breath. A Beginner's Guide to Living A Healthy Lifestyle. Dr. Jen is a board member for the Invisible... Read More
William Pawluk, MD, MSc, author of “Supercharge Your Health with PEMF therapy”, was recently a holistic doctor near Baltimore, MD. Previous academic positions at Johns Hopkins and University of Maryland. Training: acupuncture, homeopathy, hypnosis, energy medicine, nutrition and bodywork. Considered the foremost authority on the practical use of Pulsed Electromagnetic... Read More
- Learn how PEMFs differ from EMFs and enhance cellular repair without associated risks
- Understand the Cell Injury Model and how PEMFs therapy aids cellular recovery and reduces inflammation
- Discover PEMFs’ impact on stem cells, accelerating regeneration and recovery processes
- This video is part of the Peptide Summit
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
Hi, everyone! It’s doctor Jen. Welcome back to the Peptide Summit. Today we’re going to be talking to William Pawluk, MD, MSc. He’s a holistic doctor near Baltimore, Maryland. Previously held academic positions at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland. He has had training in acupuncture, nutrition, herbal and energy medicine, homeopathy, hypnosis, bodywork, and multiple other therapies. Considered the foremost authority on the use of Pulsed Electromagnetic Field, PEMF therapy in North America. He’s also interested in holistic pain management. Now I’m going to have him tell us about all of his adventures that he has been on in the past couple of decades. Now, I read in your bio that you were on the Doctor Oz Show. Tell us about that experience.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
The Doctor Oz Show was quite interesting. Unfortunately, Doctor Oz knows very little about PEMF therapies. His producers put on the show, and they had a list of questions and a list of answers, and they wanted me to read the answers, and I read the questions and the answers, and I said, “No, this is not right. It’s not going to work.” He was gracious enough, and he pulled me aside, and we sat down in the bleachers and rewrote the script.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
So interesting.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
That was worthwhile. It was a short list of questions, and there wasn’t a whole lot going on. Unfortunately, in the event, the producers put on the wrong equipment and the wrong representation of PEMFs. It was good enough. They did a tremendous amount of video and development, which was very good. It was very well done. It was right in many ways. We had a pretty decent discussion about PEMFS, but it was not enough. It was more for a 12-minute segment. They had to do what they had to do as producers for that, it was, but it was reasonable. It’s a very reasonable presentation. All things considered.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
But he was just trying to get the word out. That’s great. You’re also on many podcasts, such as Dave Astbury and Ben Greenfield. That’s amazing.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
Tons of various other summits, and podcasts as well. I’ve written three books, and a very extensive website with probably about 87 blogs on it. We do a lot of promotion and a lot of education. That’s what my mission is, to educate and disseminate technology to make people aware of it. and it’s been around for a long time. My first book was called Magnetic Therapy in Eastern Europe, a review of 30 years of research. that was written in the 1990s. That was 30 years of research at that time. The Eastern Europeans have been doing this for a very long time.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
Yes, you are an expert in this field. There’s no better place to learn than here with you. Can you explain to everyone out there listening how PEMF therapy works and what its benefits are?
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
That’s very important. It’s critical to anything you’re going to do with it. Once you understand that, you have a much better sense of the potential uses for it. The biggest problem is confusion between EMFs and PEMFs, and that’s the elephant in the room. EMFs, from my perspective, are Environmental Magnetic Fields that are present in the environment. They’re designed for other purposes. They’re designed for communication. Because they’re designed for a different purpose, the body is just incidental to EMFs. The main thing about EMFs that’s potentially risky for us is the exposure to microwaves. When you broadcast that cell phone signal, it’s broadcast into the environment, and it goes out into the air. That’s called an open loop. It just keeps on going. It’s mostly microwaves. That means it’s extremely short wavelengths, and extremely short wavelengths are absorbed by things. That’s the principle behind a microwave oven. Everything in the oven is going to absorb the microwaves and cook. It’s going to heat it. So when we have a cell phone in our ear, if you notice the ear after you take the cell phone off, even for as little as two to three minutes, you can see the ears are pretty red. The longer you have it on, the redder the ear. What you’re doing, essentially, is cooking your ear.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
That’s so scary. ?
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
Inside, it goes deeper into the body and gets less and less as you move away from the skin. But even so, that’s enough exposure. If you do it over a long enough period and you do it often enough, then that creates a risk. In other words, it creates a cooking risk. It creates a heating risk to the tissues, which then creates DNA damage, which then creates breakdowns in molecules and membranes, protein destabilization, and all the negative things about EMFs. In this issue with the EMFs, the issue with the EMF is dose, and it’s the total dose. If you’re standing in front of a microwave oven or a microwave tower, you’re going to get blasted. As long as it’s broadcasting. If it’s not broadcasting. You’re not getting anything. The same thing happens with cell phones. When you have it to your ear, you are broadcasting. Therefore, you are emitting microwaves, and therefore you are creating a risk. The total dose is where the problem comes in more than it is individual doses. If you happen to pass a microwave tower, you’re going to get a bit more energy than if you happen to be sleeping next to your Wi-Fi at home. It’s very low level, and it’s not on all the time. It’s activated when a signal comes through and then turns on and then you get your effects from it. The problems with microwaves are that they’re sporadic, but mostly they’re negative because they’re not designed to help humans. They’re designed to help with communication.
PEMFs, on the other hand, are designed to help humans. They’re made in a very different way. A PEMF-Pulsed Electromagnetic Field is made by a wire-conducting current. My thumb is the wire conducting the current. I assume that’s the direction of the current in the wire. What happens then is that as that current passes through the wire, a magnetic field is produced that is perpendicular to the current flow. That’s the electrical field, and this is the magnetic field. They are hand-in-glove. You cannot separate them. Every time you have an electrical field, You have a magnetic field. that’s designed on purpose. Now you shield the wire so you don’t get exposed to the electrical field. But now you’re getting exposed to the magnetic field, and it goes through the covering of the wire. You don’t know direct contact, but that magnetic field then passes into the body. It goes out into the atmosphere, but every time it pulses, it goes out and then collapses back down again and goes out with every pulse that goes out and comes back, it goes up. That’s a closed loop. Microwaves go on forever. PEMFs are pulsing in and out, and it’s only when the current is flowing that you’re pulsing a field. You turn on the machine that you’re using, and then it produces a pulse at a rate that you want at an intensity that you want. Then we have discovered through decades of science. Now, in terms of what it does in the body, What does it do to a body? The most important thing is that the magnetic field to a body, a magnetic field does not exist; it’s air to a body. It’s the wind in the trees. You only know it’s there because the leaves are moving. Essentially, the same thing happens in the body. You only know that it’s there by the actions that it creates in the body. The actions it creates in the body. That magnetic field is passing through all the ions, the electrolytes, and all the charged molecules in the body. that creates a charge, that creates current. You start to generate current in the body. Most of the time, the current generation is not that strong and is not essentially harmful. The body creates the current, not the magnetic field, the magnetic field is the wind in the trees, where nothing but the tree gets in the way. So the body is in the way of the magnetic field. It’s passing on through regardless. But as it does, the magnetic field is jiggling things and creating charge. Then that charge is a natural biological charge. That charge is then used by the body. How efficient is the body at converting energy into work?
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
It’s pretty wasteful.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
It’s wasteful. It’s about 25% efficient, about the same as a car’s engine. The body is not very efficient in its processes. It’s relatively efficient. We live, and we do what we do. But you can improve that efficiency. What ends up happening then is that the magnetic field, as it passes through the body, improves the efficiency of the functioning of almost all processes in the body, including all the molecular actions of those processes. The acupuncture system is a process; circulation is processed. ATP production, or energy production in the body, is a process. The list goes on. There are about 27 different actions that I have identified and assigned scientific research to. I’ve found research that supports these different actions of magnetic fields in the body. For example, if you improve circulation, if you increase autophagy, if you increase repair and regeneration, if you increase stem cells, you increase collagen production. All these things are activated by the energy that the body now has available to it to do the work that it wants to do. Now, there are limits because the body has limits on how much energy it can produce, and you can produce more energy by producing much stronger magnetic fields. But then you get into the risk of unbalancing things. You have to find a happy medium between stimulating to get benefits and avoiding risk. Unfortunately, magnetic fields are extraordinarily safe. Have you heard of rTMS, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation? MRIs are powerful magnetic fields. 20,000, 40,050 thousand gauss. Very, powerful. They are extraordinarily safe. We do millions and millions of those,? They’re very safe rTMS is a relatively new technology that’s been around now for about 15 to 20 years and that’s used to treat treatment-resistant depression. It’s called transcranial magnetic stimulation. Those machines are about 20,000 gauss, the Earth’s magnetic field. Gauss is a term used for magnetic field intensity. The peak intensity on Earth is about half a gauss. The peak intensities of magnetic fields in the body are produced by the cells in the body, the brain, the heart, and all this electrical activity in the body—those peak magnetic fields are one billionth of a gauss. Extraordinarily tiny. We’re using magnitudes more energy with PEMFs in the body than we are with just generally earthing and other forms of stimulation in the body. Even moving your arms and hands creates increased current flows in the body, which then increases the energy the body produces. The movement of the body on a planet is very important. We generate charge in the body through movement. That’s why motion becomes so important and why we see causes that we see when people are atrophying when they’re not moving at all. Everything starts to atrophy.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
Yes, I love how you brought up grounding. Grounding is stimulating this electromagnetic field.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
You’re referring to primarily electrical fields. The original acupuncture on the planet is lying with your bare skin against the soil, which has minerals in it. Those minerals create what are called dielectrics. They create differences in charge. Those differences in charge are what create the benefits of grounding. But grounding is extraordinarily weak. Acupuncture is essentially grounding. Electroacupuncture amplifies that grounding factor many times, ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times. It’s much more dynamic than just passive needles into the body. Well, magnetic field therapy stimulates the whole acupuncture system.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
You’re saying PEMF stimulates all of that.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
The whole system is stimulated with PEMF.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
Without the needles.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
Without the needles. One of the benefits of magnetic field therapy is balancing. That’s how I got started with magnetic field therapy. I was a family physician, and I knew about people—some people who had dramatic complications from Ibuprofen. One almost died, and I said, I got to find some new solutions to manage pain beyond pills and procedures. So I started acupuncture at the end of my acupuncture journey. People were born in 1990. They’ll say, What’s acupuncture? Nobody wanted to do acupuncture because it involved putting needles into people. Who wants needles? The ancient Chinese acupuncture used big, thick sewing needles, not these fine little hair needles. People didn’t want acupuncture. I said, Well, how do I do acupuncture without using needles? I discovered that in the Orient, they were using magnets on acupuncture points. As a result, I started working with magnets to discover what I could do with magnets without using needles. Lo and behold, magnets did a lot more than the needles did. They healed the tissues and worked at the cellular level. So I stopped doing acupuncture, and I only now do magnetic field therapy because it does so much more on the body.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
I love it. Yes. You went into your practice, and here you were doing acupuncture, and you switched over to using PEMF. How did that go, and how did you start doing that?
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
Well, I started using magnets on the body just in general. Someone had pain. I put a magnet on it. It would work. Instead of making a needle, I put a magnet on it. I had an example; I tell fairly frequently that I had a spider bite. I wasn’t even aware that I was bitten, and I had a quarter-sized lesion on my leg. To me, it looked like a spider bite, having seen hundreds of them over the years. So I put a magnet on it, and three hours later, it was gone.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
Wow. Now, when you talk about a magnet, what kind of magnets?
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
A fridge magnet, a round magnet. a thicker round magnet. It wasn’t just a little flat fridge-type magnet.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
That is conducting the electricity and current and stabilizing it in the area where you were putting the magnets.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
It’s more complicated. I wish it was that simple. The magnet interacts with the body like grounding is interacting with the body because the body is in motion. Everything in the cell is in motion. All the electrons are in motion. All the molecules are in motion. Blood flow, lymphatic flow, nerve conduction, fluids in the interstitial tissues, and fluids in the connective tissues—all of that’s in motion. That motion relative to the lack of motion from the magnet creates a charged difference. That charges differently and activates all kinds of processes in the body parts, the magnetic field is dynamic. A static magnet is just there. It’s just sitting there in the body and interacting with it. Whereas with a magnetic field, the past magnetic field is passing, is dynamic by itself, and it’s pulsing against the body, which then creates more dynamic action than just a static magnet by itself. I stopped working with static magnets after about two to three years and said magnet static methods don’t work anywhere near as well as pulse magnetic fields. So the rest, as they say, is history.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
Yes, absolutely. Now, when you talk about these microwaves, when you were talking about EMF earlier, this can be a cell phone tower, a 5G tower; all of that is in the same area.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
And Wi-Fi is broadcasting microwaves. It emits microwaves that are not as powerful as a cell tower, but the farther you are away from a cell tower, the more it’s going to be very weak. It may be as weak as Wi-Fi. But so the problem there is becoming not only the dose but also the total dose. The total dose is not just a single dose; it’s the dose divided over time. This is what medications do. They give you a dose, and then that dose acts over some time. then time-release medication, supplements, or whatever they are releasing over a period of time, constantly releasing over a period of time. They’re more dynamic over a period of time than single doses. That’s the difference between dose and magnetic fields. Magnetic fields are a dose applied at a specific time for a specific purpose. That’s what produces the benefits that we want and are looking for.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
Interestingly, I remember this patient. I had her mother notice that the patient just felt worse. She acted less, had less energy, and was more sluggish after they put up a 5G tower by the school. Would you just say, because you said, it’s the dose and the frequency if someone is living close to high power lines for, electricity, if they’re living next to a 5G tower that they should move, try to get further away?
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
Well, ideally, you should. It should be, and you should avoid it. But what happens, though, is that healthy people don’t have anywhere near as much of a problem. People who are not healthy and who don’t have the resilience and robustness of the body to respond. An analogy that I use is that if I tap myself on the shoulder, I push myself hard. Well, I have to. I’m going to react to get myself back into balance and into the position I’m trying to be in. I give myself a very small tap. There’s barely any reaction. If I belt myself, I’m going to fall over, most likely, or I have to work hard to pick up my backpack and my balance. That’s the dose. If you little tap over some time, you just get irritated by it. You’re not going to do a whole lot of harm to me. But if it’s a sharp little tap with a needle, that’s more likely to harm you than just a tap with my fingers. It depends on the stimulus and so on to what the level of those is. Thing is. But it’s better to remove yourself from it if you can, or you have to strengthen yourself. That’s the other option. PEMF therapy does that because it stimulates the repair processes in the body and generates responses that are healthy and rebalancing. So if you’re doing PEMF therapy regularly in a home setting, at least once or twice a day, then you’re, to some extent, undoing some of the potential negative effects of some of these other stimuli in the environment. But the higher the dose, the more reaction there’s going to be in the body and the greater the risk of accumulative reactions in the body over time. It’s better to remove yourself than to try to find a way to undo it.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
You said PEMF is way stronger than grounding. Grounding is better than nothing, but if you wanted to get into that cellular repair, you would want PEMF, correct?
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
Grounding works from an acupuncture perspective when you wear a copper bracelet. Think of it this way. When you wear a copper bracelet, what are you doing? The copper ions are the copper metal. Molecules interact with the sweat in the skin, and that’s sweat. That interaction with the sweat creates a current. Then it’s acupuncture. It creates an action in the body, a reaction in the body. It’s a very tiny amount of stimulus and a very tiny amount of current. Grounding essentially creates between the grounding material and your body creates a dielectric. That dielectric then goes into the system and charges it. But it’s an extremely weak charge. It’s very passive. Magnetic field therapy stimulates charge production in the body much more actively. It’s more active and beneficial for significant health issues because it acts better and faster. It’s a stronger stimulus. If you take five milligrams of aspirin, it’s not going to do a whole lot of good for you. Probably not. Unless you take a lot of it over some time, But if you take 250mg of aspirin, you’re going to get the dose benefit of that. That level of dosing. The same thing applies to magnetic field therapy: the amount of the dose determines the effects on the body that they have. That then determines the results that you’re going to get.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
Yes, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you. What about Bluetooth? Is that similar or not?
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
No, it’s still microwaves, but it’s a lot lower intensity. People who wear Bluetooth devices in their ears all day long are frying their brains. Not as strong as having the cell phone in your ear, but they’re still irritating. Stimulated the tissues. Do not wear Bluetooth all day. You’re better off with a little head and a little earpiece, and then even that creates a little bit of charge production in the tissues. The best way to communicate with a cell phone is through a speaker.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
Yes. Or in the car. Well, that’s Bluetooth in the car. What about. But that’s not on.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
It’s not in your ear.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
What about if someone just wore one piece in their ear instead of both?
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
The less stimulation you have, the better.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
That’s my compromise with my kids. I was going to the gym, and I was wearing a wired earpiece, but then
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
That’s the way you should do it.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
But then I was tucking my cell phone into my pants. then I’m, that’s probably worse. It’s so hard. I I wish we could all just put our phones on speakers. All the time. The Bluetooth is bad, better for for one ear wired though.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
And wired with air conduction is the best of all.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
I have those.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
But they are also the worst of all in terms of being able to hear the signal adequately.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
Yes.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
Especially in a noisy background environment.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
But if you can, and the dose makes the poison, as you were saying, people should not have both on. What’s in it now with the young kids is the headphones—the wireless ones that go over your ears. I’m, oh, that’s just bouncing everything back.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
The amount of stimulation from wireless has to be stronger because you’re receiving a signal and then amplifying that signal in your ears. It’s wireless, which is probably, in the long run, worse than having Bluetooth.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
Well, so. But are you saying that there’s hope? I have teenagers who I don’t want them to be depressed. I want them to have technology with their peers if I put them on a PEMF mat or give them PEMF therapy.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
Wired.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
Yes. Would that negate some of that, though? No. You’re saying.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
Wired.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
You can’t undo it. I can’t undo the AirPods.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
Either the speakerphone or wired.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
Yes. It’s a battle. Well, let’s talk about something different. What is the cell injury model? What does that exactly mean?
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
That’s a very important aspect of chemotherapy. Anytime a cell is injured, Well, whether it’s heat or cold or trauma—getting hit, bruised, burned, whatever—that’s what creates an injury to the cell. The cell has to recover from that injury. The cell is now assaulted and insulted. It’s got to react. It’s now out of balance. It may have been an imbalance by itself. Hopefully, it was in balance before. Once you start that process, you create problems with ATP production. You create mitochondrial damage, inflammation, free radicals, and stress in the body. You decrease membranes, you change the DNA, and you change the repair processes of the cell. All of that is part of the cell injury process. What happens then is that the amount of cell injury can be recovered by the cell to a great extent. If it doesn’t accumulate to a sufficient point that it doesn’t recover, it can’t recover. There’s what we call the marginal line, the line of no return. Beyond that line, the cell is irrecoverable. You can’t repair it. Now we have 100 trillion cells in our bodies. Most of the time, a metaphor that I use is that your left little toe decides to get a hangnail. How many cells have to be damaged for you to notice that you have a hangover? Millions.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
Those are a pain.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
Those are a pain.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
They sneak up on you.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
Small pain. Very small pain.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
100 million.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
My point, then, is that it takes millions of cells to get damaged to the point where your nervous system now begins to sense that there’s a problem. What happens is that the cell injury process is going on, and all those cells are continuously damaged, so all those cells may be irreversibly damaged, but they have to have enough cells damaged in that tissue for you to even notice. If you’re doing magnetic field therapy regularly, you’re helping the system. You’re helping all of those cell injury processes to be recovered and rebalanced if they aren’t bad enough. They haven’t accumulated the dose; they haven’t accumulated enough, and you can recover them. Once it’s irrecoverable, then the cell has to die, and you get apoptosis or necrosis. The cell dies one way or another and has to be recycled. With necrosis, it’s very hard for cells to recycle. Cells recycle better with apoptosis, the natural death process of a cell. When you have a cell injury, you try to recover. If you can support the cell as it’s being injured before it reaches the line of no return, a point of no return, then you recover the cell. If you go out and you exercise, it’s good for us.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
To a point, you can overdo it.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
Exercise is good for us and bad for us. It’s both. But it may be good for us in the sense that we’re trying to grow muscle or we’re trying to stimulate the cardiovascular system. We have another benefit. But we are taking the risk of having a negative effect. Hopefully, what we do is balance the two. If you’re going out and exercising, delayed-onset muscle soreness has been studied with magnetic field therapy. When I used to go out and take down a tree in my yard the next morning, I’d wake up with aches in places I didn’t even know I had. If I do magnetic field therapy after I take out that tree, I wake up the next morning. Nada. Zero. No extra pain. Why? Because I’ve taken that cell injury process that happened with all that work that I was now doing that my muscles are not used to doing. Then they’re swollen, and they’re irritated and inflamed. I reduce that inflammation and the swelling that I feel immediately the next morning when I wake up. evidence of it. When athletes are working out after a workout, they should be doing magnetic field therapy, ideally every time. There’s a story about the US Olympics. A friend of mine, a colleague, worked with the U.S. Olympic teams, and he found that, back when the Soviet Union was still around, he discovered that the East German athletes were bouncing back after competitions and workouts the next morning; they were robots. It would take our athletes three days to recover. He said, This is not possible. What are they doing? That’s why it’s not illegal. You walk past their camp, and they are lying in magnetic tubes. They were taking advantage. If you do magnetic therapy before you exercise, you’re increasing the amount of ATP in the muscles. You’re increasing circulation in the muscles. You’re taking lazy cells, being lazy and not doing much, and energizing them. then when you do the workout now, they’ve got more energy to do a better workout. You can work longer, work harder, and recover faster. That’s what we’re doing with magnetic field therapy. We’re decreasing the cell injury process. that, by itself, just generally strengthens the body. He discovered that the Eastern Europeans because they’ve been working with magnetic fields for a long time and it’s not doping, it’s not illegal, naturally help the body recover. Not only do they perform better, but they recover better and recover faster.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
Are there any downsides? You explained before why it’s not because it doesn’t go continuously; it’s pulsed. But is there anyone who shouldn’t do this therapy?
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
Well, there were, but let me give you a warning that I give to everybody using magnetic field therapy. If you get the urge to put on a cape, it’s okay. You can wear it. You can wear as many capes as you want. But I tell people that if you get the urge to jump over something tall, call me first.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
Capes. You mean… Is EMF blocking capes?
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
No. Capes of Superman.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
That makes sense because you have that much energy.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
You may be surprised at how much energy you get. The thing is, you have to be careful what you do with that extra energy. The risks are fundamental. There’s only one true contraindication. In my research. That is a transplant. When you’ve transplanted a tissue, that tissue is normally under immune suppression. You can’t mess with immune suppression. You will damage the results of your transplant. That’s the absolute contraindication. Pregnancy is a relative thing, somebody, because we don’t have evidence to say it’s perfectly safe in pregnancy. Number two is implanted electronics. You do have to be careful with that. If your electronics are MRI compatible, if you have been told that your electronics can be, you can do an MRI with your electronics. You’re probably safe, but you probably should be talking about stuff you have implanted with electronics. It is probably better for you to talk to somebody who knows something about magnetic fields and knows something about devices to give you the best advice. Those are the only two. There are other cautions that you have to be careful with because magnetic field therapy stimulates the physiology. For example, you can stimulate thyroid hormone production. If you are on the edge of becoming hypothyroid or have a Grave disease, then you have to be very careful because you may produce more hormones than you want. You have to do it again. You can still do it, but you have to do it under proper guidance. that those are yes. In my books, Power Tools for Health and Supercharge Your Health, I give safety guidelines and contraindication guidelines. I have information on Doctor Polycom on my website as well about being careful, but what the risks are. But generally speaking, magnetic fields, because they pass completely through the body, and microwaves, because they pass completely through the body, are extraordinarily safe.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
What conditions have you been treating with PEMF?
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
The list is very long. As I mentioned, there are 27 different mechanisms or actions of magnetic fields. All those mechanisms and actions are available every time you do magnetic field therapy. If you have an autoimmune disease, what’s happening with autoimmune diseases is inflammation and then tissue destruction, and then you have to have a cell injury. You have damaged tissues that are not functioning because of circulation problems. The list goes out. There’s a long. There’s an injury or risk. An injury or risk is perhaps not safe. There are some things that you have to be careful with, but generally speaking, they’re very safe. So sometimes, for example, thyroiditis is very common. Magnetic field therapy can help with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis because it decreases inflammation. One of the most important things magnetic fields do in the body, besides decreasing pain naturally, is decrease inflammation. Chronic inflammation is what leads to a huge amount of damage in the body. Virtually every health condition that humans deal with has inflammation. Living and breathing cause inflammation. Aging is an inflammatory process. It’s called inflammation. Magnetic field therapy decreases inflammation. If you decrease inflammation, then you recover the body’s ability to repair and regenerate itself. Inflammation reduction is probably one of the most important things. The important thing about inflammation reduction is that you need a strong enough magnetic field to do that. It has to be about 15 gauss. That’s 15 gauss at the target tissue. That means if you’re treating across a brain to decrease traumatic brain injury, encephalitis, stroke, Parkinson’s, or MS, you need to treat across a brain. That means if you put 50 to deliver 15 gauss across the brain, the other side, this coil, and this side have to be strong enough to reach all the way across to deliver 15 gauss. That’s going to require about 4000 gauss. My warning to everybody is to always ask whoever is trying to solve your machine: What is the magnetic field intensity? If they won’t tell you what the magnetic field intensity is, then would you buy a car? If the salesperson wouldn’t tell you what horsepower is?
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
No.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
What’s it going to do if you don’t know what horsepower is? Same thing with magnetic field therapy. You don’t know what it’s going to be able to do for you. If you don’t know the intensity and huge percentage of people who are selling PEMF devices these days, particularly in the multi-level marketing world, they don’t know, hey, they don’t know, and they don’t want to talk about it. If they say don’t go, then I would. I would advise you not to get it because then you don’t know what it’s going to do for you.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
Are those even doing anything or not?
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
They’re barely doing anything. But they are. At the very least, they’re stimulating the acupuncture system, and they’re improving circulation superficially in the skin primarily. But you can’t improve circulation deep in the brain, deep in a kidney, deep in the lungs, deep in a heart, or deep in a joint because the magnetic field is not strong enough to go that far. If it’s only half a gauss or one gauss already at its maximum, then it’s just about zero. I tell people that ten times zero is still zero, and 100 times zero is still zero. You have to know the magnetic field intensity to adequately treat inflammation.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
That makes a lot of sense. How do PEMF therapy and peptides complement each other in a holistic approach to health and wellness?
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
It goes back to the question: What are peptides? Peptides are pieces of protein. All the tissues of the bodywork and function because of proteins. So different pieces of protein have different actions in the body. They’re used in medicine therapeutically as well. Insulin, for example, is a peptide. Insulin is used to help deal with and manage sugar. There are lots of peptides that are not being used for health purposes. They are used to help support the body’s functions. If you’re using peptides, but if you’re using antioxidants or if you’re using natural anti-inflammatory agents, you’re relying on them to be able to do the job of managing whatever the inflammation is or whatever the cause of that inflammation is. If you have ten milligrams of, again, a peptide, but you need 1000. 10mg, it’s still going to give you a benefit, but it’s not going to give you enough benefit to take care of the other 900mg that it needs. This is why we combine things. Everything that you’re going to do is combine and work synergistically with magnetic field therapy. The magnetic field therapy will take the peptides and make them work better. Now we don’t know whether it’s going to be a factor of one time more, five times more, or a thousand times more. These things are what we call multiplicative. They’re adaptive. So you have to figure out for whatever you’re doing, whether what you’re doing is enough with the peptides or you enough with the supplements, the other supplements that you’re taking, and then how you need to add things together to get the best results for yourself.
Peptides help with tissue function. they use for healing. They’re used for stimulating repair and regeneration. They are used for symptom management. they’re used to develop collagen to improve collagen production and improve collagen production too. As a result, working with the peptides to produce collagen adds to the benefits of collagen. With the natural stimulation that you’re getting from magnetic field therapy because it works through a different mechanism, and because you’re working through different mechanisms, you have different actions going on to produce the collagen that you need. Magnetic field therapy works synergistically with peptides. Almost any peptide that you’re going to use will be helped by magnetic field therapy. How do you figure out what you need? Maybe you start with your peptides, because this is a peptide discussion. You start with your peptides and see what they’ve done for you. And then you evaluate over time to see whether that’s good enough or if you have to increase your dosage or increase how often you do it. or you add another technology, and we can add other technologies to the therapy to hyperbaric, IV therapies, IV vitamin C, IV ALA, etc. You can add red light therapies and you can add infrared therapies. All these therapies work together. Magnetic field therapy works synergistically with almost virtually every other therapy except maybe homeopathy.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
Interesting. Why not homeopathy?
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
Well, homeopathy is based on resonance, and homeopathy is also based on the low dose, or what we call hormesis. So because you’re doing a low dose, you can’t have any other conflicting influences at the same time. It’s frequently said that when you’re doing homeopathy, don’t do coffee or don’t use spearmint; don’t use other toothpaste that has strong flavors to them, because the resonances of those flavors and those other substances bounce or counteract the effects of the homeopathy. Magnetic field therapy is, in its way, resonance therapy. You shouldn’t do it at the same time. You can do homeopathy and magnetic therapy, but you should do magnetic therapy first and then homeopathy. You don’t have the magnetic therapy eraser bump or homeopathy.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
That makes a lot of sense. What does PEMF look like? Could you explain to us what someone would expect if they were getting it done correctly?
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
That’s a PEMF. When you go to drpawluk.com, we have a product comparison guide. All kinds of machines and devices. From big boxes that are the size of a big suitcase down to machines that are this size, and in fact, I have one behind me, if you don’t mind. This is a device called an X bouncer. This little machine’s battery is a nine-volt battery. It works continuously as long as the battery is there. That machine is designed for sleep. It’s designed with these coils that are put on the pillow, and the control unit is put under the pillow. then you put that where your head would rest. that helps to induce sleep. This is a portable battery-operated machine for a specific purpose. But as I said, some boxes are machines that are much bigger and more powerful. This is another example of a machine’s size configuration. This is a much stronger magnetic field. It’s probably about 300 to 400 gauss. That little one is a maximum of about 100. Then we have machines that are about the same level as an MRI. That can be upwards of 10,000–20,000 gauss. The bigger the area of the body you’re treating, the deeper the magnetic field has to go, and the stronger the magnetic field has to be to produce a change in the body. Again, when treating across a brain, you’re going to need a 4000-gauss magnetic field to treat across the brain. same thing going into the heart or the lungs or into the liver. In my book, Supercharge Your Health, I have a table that shows you the magnetic field intensity you need at different depths in the body to decrease inflammation. There’s also a blog on my website about adenosine. Then adenosine is the molecule that we’re aiming to stimulate to deal with inflammation, and the adenosine receptors on it are in every white blood cell. Adenosine receptors are throughout the whole body. Again, if you’re trying to treat inflammation long-haul syndrome, if you’re trying to treat long-haul problems in the lungs, then you need a big enough magnetic field that’s going to deliver 15 gauss deep into that lung front to back, and so on. The book Supercharge Your Health gives you protocols and advice on the kinds of machines that you’re likely to need and how you probably should use them. There are over 80 different conditions in that book where I give some relatively specific advice about how to use it, which machine to get, and how to use it. Then on drpawluk.com, we offer free consultations for people who have cancer, who have MS, Parkinson’s, and who have pretty significant and fairly serious health conditions because they often need advice to get the equipment because, again, there are so many people selling machines out there that they think those machines are good for anything. As we know, in health care, there’s no such thing as one size fits all.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
Yes.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
That part is very helpful.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
Yes. That part can probably get confusing. And I’m sure you’ve noticed that a lot of these tools in medicine are being scooped up by just business people, who don’t know as much about the science and don’t have decades of expertise treating these conditions. You just bring so much value to PEMFs. I learned a lot, too, because I didn’t know you should ask, What is the intensity? I love that. It’s so important to have your wisdom. Can you share with us any favorite patient stories that you have had using PEMF?
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
After 30 years of using magnetic field therapies, it’s hard to come up with; there are too many stories. But one of my favorites is a three-year-old girl who cut off the end of her thumb in a doorjamb. The sharp edge of the door jamb just sliced it off. So then, fortunately, the father called me before the plastic surgeons had at it, and I said, Well, we could probably do something with this. You don’t necessarily have to do surgery. If we did it to do surgery, but just put the piece back on again, sewing it back on is a bandage by itself. Let the body deal with it. If we’re lucky, then the body will repair itself. Well, what we did was we did a machine just like this, but with the same intensity. Is this about a hundred gauss? She worked an hour and a half to three hours a day. I have taken pictures over time. In my book, Power Tools for Health, I have copies of the pictures about the progression of her healing over 12 weeks. What do you think would normally happen to that thumb?
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
For those, if it’s just the tip in the ER, we just let them heal by secondary intention. If it’s a big enough area, sometimes they can do microvascular surgery. not good outcomes with these, though not with fingertip amputations.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
It’s not a fingertip. It’s below and below the knees below.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
Well, even those sorts of amputations don’t always do. Well, they don’t.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
This little girl, 12 weeks later, is regrowing her nails. Now. I have the sequential pictures of black avascular. They started to get pink. Eventually, she’s regrowing. Now, 12 weeks later, she’s regrowing her nails.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
Amazing.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
How often have you seen that happen? That’s why I tell that story. Yes. I also had a guy who was diabetic and was told by vascular surgeons that he had to have bilateral below-knee amputations. I saw him. He had no capillary return. It was black—almost black. It’s purple, but not quite black. I said I don’t want to take care of you because you’re going to knock out your kidneys while we’re trying to do something with this. They insisted. Fine, we’re going to follow you every week. We could do magnetic field therapy; we’re going to do nutrition. We’re going to stop. You’re smoking, we’re going to stop your alcohol, and you should start to do all the other things that you should be doing lifestyle-wise. I saw him a week later, with a tinge of capillary return. I followed him weekly. Long story short, three months later, he goes back to vascular surgery and says, We don’t need to amputate.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
It’s amazing. That’s crazy.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
That’s the ability of therapy to regenerate. Now you still have to do your job. You still have to do your part of this. You can’t keep throwing gasoline on the fire and expect to put the fire out. That’s another amazing story. But we see stories like this all the time. It’s pretty routine. Pain management is very good because magnetic field therapy helps the tissues repair the cause of the pain. Putting a Band-Aid on or taking a narcotic or taking ibuprofen is not going to heal,? But magnetic field therapy has the opportunity to not only reduce the pain but also heal the tissue so the pain doesn’t come back. that’s routine. But you see that all the time. Tissue healing is very common. But for Lyme disease cancer, we have done tons of research. I’ve done a bunch of webinars. On my website, you can go and see a bunch of webinars that I did on Parkinson’s, MS, sleep, and so on. Hypertension, on what the effects of PEMS could be in those conditions. Even in cancer, we see some pretty spectacular improvements. We can do bone healing as well. You can combine magnetic field therapy with chemotherapy with radiation. If you want to do those, you can combine them. If you do magnetic field therapy early enough in the process, you could prevent metastases 10 or 15 years later if you keep doing magnetic field therapy. It’s not a one-time thing. You can just take the dose for a week, and then you’re done. One of our huge misconceptions in medicine is that we can go ahead and do a series of chemotreatments or radiation treatments, and then we cross our fingers. I have learned over 50 years of practicing medicine that you can lead a horse to water. Then you start an IV. But I discovered magnetic field therapy. I don’t have to worry about starting IVs as much.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
That’s amazing. Well, I feel I could talk to you for hours, and maybe I’ll have to talk to you again sometime and do another interview. But thank you so much, Doctor Pawluk. You mentioned your website. It’s super easy to find. It’s drpawluk.com.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
Then the books again; the two books are there, and they’re on the website as well. There’s a huge amount of information, a lot of blogs, and a lot of videos. You’ll find a lot of information. If you get confused, then you have a fairly serious health condition. If you’re willing to spend $25 on a treatment. Don’t bother asking for a consultation. I want what? I don’t even want to do that; my time is valuable, and they’re free. If you’re going to get a consultation, then you have to be motivated and ready to spend what you need to spend to get the equipment to help with your problem.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
Yes, and that’s a great point. Sometimes people don’t realize that to get the treatment or see the practitioner or people with the expertise, the machine, sometimes you have to spend a little more, but if you spend less and you get lower quality, then you’re going to have to go back and spend more later. It just doesn’t work. We know this.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
Yes, we do know it. One of my expressions as a result of what I’ve learned over the years is that you can pay me now or you can pay me later, but if you pay me later, you won’t pay the interest.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
Yes, that’s a good one. I love it, and I say that with health. Either pay now or pay later. Invest in your health now. That’s what we got to do. This summit talks a lot about prevention wellness and longevity. Hopefully, PEMF is part of everyone’s plan now.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
Along with peptides and all the other good things that you’re supposed to be doing.
Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM
Thank you so much. I appreciate your time today.
William Pawluk, MD, MSc
My pleasure. Jen.
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