February 3, 2018
Podcast from: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/lifestyle-podcasts/dr-mercola-emf-recommendations/
[00:00] Introduction
[00:47] eHarmony/GAINSWave
[04:54] About Dr. Joseph Mercola
[06:46] Does Dr. Mercola Only Talk On His Smart Phone On A Selfie Stick?
[09:42] A Never-Heard-Of Test To Determine Mitochondrial Function
[15:11] A Multiple Day Water Fast & Some of the More Powerful Interventions That can Reverse the Damage of EMF
[25:50] Magnesium to Decrease Calcium Accumulation and Decrease Secondary Oxidative Stress
[29:55] The Facts About How Much EMF Has Increased Since 1917
[31:38] How the Bugs in the Gut Communicate the Same Way as the Bees and the Cows
[34:24] The Best Device to Measure EMF in Your Environment
[37:25] How to Get Rid of Excessive EMF on Solar Panel Inverters
[35:24] Thrive Market
[43:45] The Reason Dr. Mercola Sleeps in a Radiation-Blocking Sleeping Bag
[46:33] How to Use Hydrogen-rich Water to Mitigate the Damages from EMF
[57:15] The Best Meter to Measure EMF Exposure
[1:07:13] End of Podcast
Ben: Oh, hello. I almost didn’t see there. This is Ben Greenfield and I’m sipping coffee this morning so I may take a break as I’m introducing today’s guest to you.
This podcast is brought to you by an amazing superfood that I’ve now added to my, no I’m just kidding. I know you guys get tired of all the things you could put in your coffee. It gets dizzying. Speaking of getting dizzy, the number of things that you could do to reverse the damage from cellphone radiation and EMF, yup, we’re going to our thin foil hats, baby. We’re talking to Joe Mercola today and we delve into that and it’s scary/interesting/thought-provoking as usual as Dr. Mercola usually is.
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Alright, let’s go talk about how cellphones are basically destroying our lives.
In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show:
“There are solutions. There really are solutions. So if we don’t have to not avail ourselves to the value of the technology and still benefit from it and not be exposed to the dangerous EMF’s. Ninety five percent of the people believe that EMF in their home is coming from the outside in. It’s their damn neighbor’s WiFi’s, the cellphone tower. Well, it turns out 95% of it is coming from inside their house.” “You really, really preserve and conserve your lean muscle mass when you’re fasting. You’re not going to lose hardly anything and then you’ll actually get more swole when you refeed.”
Ben: Hey, folks. My guest on today’s show which promises to be yet another dozzy first appeared on the very popular episode called Killing Fat Cells, Fixing Mitochondria, Growing Superfoods and More. And then he came back as a guest which means he must have not sucked that much on an equally popular episode which is called High Fat Fudge Balls, The Best Fruits for Blood Sugar, Egg Allergies and More with the author of “Fat For Fuel”. Well, based on that and by the way “Fat for Fuel” is one of the most popular health books ever that came out several months ago and I’ll link to that in the show notes if you guys want to read along with the podcast that I just mentioned. But if you haven’t yet guessed my guest today is Dr. Joseph Mercola and in addition to being a very outside-the-box cutting edge thought leader, a man after my own heart and everything from freaking cancer to fat loss he also happens to be really living in the trenches when it comes to protecting himself and further how you can protect yourself against and mitigate the damages from non-native harmful electromagnetic fields or EMF. And I know, you probably heard the blah, blah, blah don’t hold yourself on up to your ear but this guy takes things to a whole new level and has spent some hardcore time in the trenches figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Everything that we talk about on the show you can find over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/emfspecial that’s bengreenfieldfitness.com/emfspecial.
So Dr. Mercola, first of all welcome back to the show and second of all, is it true that you actually talk on your cellphone only with a selfie stick?
Dr. Mercola: Well, I used to and if I have no other choices that would be a reasonable thing, but what I basically do now is I hardly ever use a cellphone. [laughs] You know, it’s a great way to save your cellphone battery and typically after 24 hours after my last recharging I still have about 91%-92% of my battery left because it’s in airplane mode almost the whole day without Bluetooth or WiFi enabled or location services.
Ben: Okay, so what about when you take a phone call? What are you using?
Dr. Mercola: Most of the time I’m at home so I use a voice over internet protocol phone which you can use. Goggle Hangouts has one for free so I use that. Or if I absolutely have to, I use my cellphone in speaker and lay it down somewhere as far away as I can be and still hear the person.
Ben: Okay, so you’ve been digging into this stuff for a long time. If I remember the last time we were hanging out you had like a meter that you were walking around with measuring things and you had a lot of really interesting ideas which kind of influenced and inspired me to want to get you on for this episode. But talk to me a little bit about why it is that you got so interested in EMF, like did something happen to you or is this just something that’s become like a personal passion of yours?
Dr. Mercola: Well, I became catalyzed through it through one of my mentors, my early mentors who worked for 20 years, Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt who’s been a real strong advocate of this and he treats a lot of seriously ill patients from all over the world and refuses to…
Ben: Was he like a medical physician or?
Dr. Mercola: He’s an MD, PHD. He’s based in Seattle and London. He’s really one of the veterans in the field and been learning from him for the last 20 years ‘cause some pretty outrageous ideas but he believes this so much that he’s into trenches to seeing patients and refuses to see them unless they are going to address EMF because he knows by experience they will not get better.
Ben: He won’t actually even treat a patient unless they’re going to address EMFs in their environment?
Dr. Mercola: Nope, because he knows that it won’t work. So that was part of it and I listened to a lecture by him early this year and he just really between the eyes not intentionally but I just finally saw the light like I did when I read Travis Christofferson’s “Tripping Over the Truth”.
Ben: Yeah, that’s what we talked about in the last episode about how cancer is a metabolic disease.
Dr. Mercola: Right, and then so I understood mitochondrial function in a far deeper level and I started to realize how EMF causes massive mitochondrial dysfunction which is really one of the key components of that. But since our last call and I think I intrigued you, I’ve learned of a test that virtually none of your listeners likely know of but it probably is the best simple assay to determine not only your mitochondrial function but if you’re going to die from cancer in the near future or how healthy you are. [laughs]
Ben: Really?
Dr. Mercola: It’s an easy test to do, yeah. No blood test required.
Ben: Well, don’t leave us hanging. What is it?
Dr. Mercola: It is called the phase angle. And the phase angle is a measurement that’s done through Bioimpedance Analyzer Technology called BIA for short which has been around for 20-25 years.
Ben: Oh yeah, that’s what you use normally to like measure body fat, right?
Dr. Mercola: Body composition, that’s correct and determine the lean body mass. So it does this by applying a small current through your body at less than a million and a half at about 50 kilohertz, and it measures the resistance to that current of the reactants. And the reactants measures the integrity that structural integrity of your cell membranes and the capacity to retain a charge that is generated from the mitochondria. So it’ll test if you have leaky membranes and that’s called reactants and then the phase angle is the ratio between the reactants and the resistance and you take the arch tangent of that and get a phase angle. Now you don’t have to [11:09] ______ math software takes care of all of that but it gives you a simple number called phase angle. They’ve used it in decimal points 3.5 but I’d like to round it off to 35 to 100. A hundred being a super athlete, under 35 you are probably dead. If your number is under 40, you’re close to death, and if you’re over 60, you’re probably not going to get cancer if that number doesn’t change.
Ben: How do you actually measure this? Is this like something that you could buy off Amazon?
Dr. Mercola: No, you could buy a lot of things at Amazon but I don’t think you can buy these meters. Now there are a number of companies that do this test, that leader in the industry is RJL. Three letters and they have units and they only weigh about a pound or so, they’re highly portable. They’re too big to put into your pocket but they have four lids that come out of them and it only takes about five minutes to do. You have to lie down. You have to take off your shoe and sock and you put two lids on your one hand and two lids on the other and you just hit the start button, and it gives you this and actually types of instruments, one measures the phase and direct, the other actually just measures resistance to react and snip to put into the software to get the calculation.
Ben: So it’s called an RJL phase meter?
Dr. Mercola: Actually, bioimpedance meter.
Ben: Bioimpedance meter and for those values that you just talked about, are there tables somewhere that one could look at to see whether they’re in the good versus the bad zone?
Dr. Mercola: No, it does basically gave you most of the parameters and actually there are clinical variables that contribute to it and that would be inflammation and your muscle mass. So if you don’t have a lot of muscle mass you’re going to have a lower phase angle or if you have a lot of inflammation you’ll have a lower phase angle. So those are the two contributing factors. Actually, I learned about the phase angle from someone I think you admire and respect, Dr. Zach Bush.
Ben: Yeah.
Dr. Mercola: I was at his clinic in April and I had my measurement and I was disappointed and I came back six months later just a few weeks ago and it improved pretty dramatically from some of the things that I was doing. So it’s really…
Ben: Sounds like he has a lot of machines at his house ‘cause he told me he also has the one that will do acoustic soundwave therapy for your crotch.
Dr. Mercola: Well, those are about the only two major you see. He’s got some solid state therapy but he’s not as much as a biohacker and that’s why I love your community because they really get it. You know, your group and Dave Asprey’s gets the biohacking and that’s why both of you have to know about this phase angle. It is just massively important.
Ben: So once again if people get this, it measured the number you’d want to shoot for is what?
Dr. Mercola: Well, the higher the better. Anything over 60 is considered good, 70 is great, 80 you’re like a superstar.
Ben: Okay. You’ve got to measure me, man. We’re going to be hanging out in January.
Dr. Mercola: That’s what I told you. Yeah, I can’t wait to measure you. I just want to see what your value is. I suspect you might be in the 90’s. [laughs]
Ben: How quickly does it change though? Like for example, like I’m climbing Mount Kilimanjaro right before you and I see each other. I’ll be on an airplane, you know. I’ll have all these exposure to solar radiation, the EMF. Like how much does it fluctuate?
Dr. Mercola: Make sure you take some molecular hydrogen with that too when you’re travelling. We have to get you hooked up before you go ‘cause we don’t want you to get damaged. It changes actually relatively slowly. It’s really hard to move the dial on that. It doesn’t change acutely at all. It’s not like your blood sugar or your ketone levels, I mean this changes slowly over weeks and months.
Ben: Okay. Aright. I got you.
Dr. Mercola: You’ll be fine. I mean, it probably get down a little bit, I mean especially you’re at highest levels as I suspect you are.
Ben: Let’s say somebody’s listening in and they measure that and it’s low or they just know, right? They’ve been spending years on their cellphones or their WiFi and their Bluetooth and they’re kind of now just realizing that EMF’s probably aren’t that great of a deal. What are some of the more powerful interventions that can help to reverse the damage?
Dr. Mercola: Well, that goes into some of the other things that I want to talk about.
Ben: Okay.
Dr. Mercola: And really one of the aspects of writing the book that I didn’t fully appreciate until after it was published, this book “Fat for Fuel” which is a good book. One of the best health books published this year but by no means one of the health books ever.
Ben: [Laughs] If you don’t say so yourself.
Dr. Mercola: [Laughs] Yeah. But no, ‘cause I interviewed a lot of the authors and I know how to rank them so, I mean I don’t read as many books as you. You are a massive inspiration. I can’t.
Ben: I finally got defeated last night though by a book of Tim Ferris, his “Tribe of Mentors” and it’s like 700 pages long so I took it out because that was going to be my book for the day. I made it to page 380 something and then I fell asleep. Occasionally, I book winds up that I just can’t do in one fail swoop but yeah, your book did well. It was a top seller by a huge margin, I believe.
Dr. Mercola: Well, yeah it was a number one book solely in the entire country for a week or so. I never had that before. But anyway, one of the things I learned after in answer to your previous question is how do you improve this, is the most powerful intermetabolic intervention I know of and didn’t fully appreciate until earlier this year and that is multiple day water fast.
Ben: A multiple day water fast meaning that you’re fasting on nothing but water?
Dr. Mercola: But water and maybe some mineral supplements and some salt. It’s important to have a good source of sodium so that you don’t get intractable muscle cramps at night. But the two primary reasons that it’s such a powerful tool that can radically improve your health is it helps remove something called senescent cells. And senescent cells is sort of a derivative of the word senile. These are old and aged cells that are damaged so much they don’t reproduce and multiply. And this could be due to the fact that they’re just senile and old or they could have excessive oxidative stress from things like exposure from EMF’s. So normally, your body’s going to be able to get rid there’s a process called autophagy self-feeding but that process is impaired in many people and the simple way to radically accelerate it and remove these cells with their clogging up your system impairing your health and really increasing inflammation quite dramatically is through a multiple day water fast.
Ben: Interesting.
Dr. Mercola: And the other thing it does is it radically up regulates your body’s ability to get stem cells and you know stem cell transplants are becoming more and more popular in the biohacking community. But they’re expensive, tens of thousands of dollars typically and you can do it for less than free. And why do I say that? Because fasting will produce similar benefits as a stem cell transplant and it’s less than free because you don’t pay for food. You don’t have to waste time eating. [laughs]
Ben: Right.
Dr. Mercola: You don’t have to prepare the food or clean up the food. So you’re saving money.
Ben: Jesus and Gandhi weren’t doing stem cell injections last time I checked and they seem to do okay.
Dr. Mercola: Yeah.
Ben: Now you mentioned minerals and I interviewed Dr. Jason Fung who wrote “The Complete Guide To Fasting” and we talked about all sorts of things. You know, from like a modified bone broth fast and minerals that you mentioned. There are two things a lot of people are using during this longer fast, I’m curious if you can still get the drop off in senescent cells with these strategies. What about the use of either amino acids or ketones when you’re fasting? Would those reverse a lot of the beneficial effects?
Dr. Mercola: Yeah, I’m glad you asked. Those are two excellent questions but before I address that let me just [0:19:09.8] ______ Jason’s book ‘The Complete Guide to Fasting’ is probably the single best resource anyone could have on this.
Ben: Yeah.
Dr. Mercola: The only addition I would add is that if you’re going to do a five-day water fast and you could say, “well, I can’t do a five-day, I couldn’t even do a one-day or two-day” you know, well, you’re not going to get the benefits, the massive benefits we discussed until about day three. Day four and five is when you reap the benefits. But there’s so much fear around this and that’s the biggest thing. People are afraid they’re going to go into starvation mode or they’re going to be hungry but if you’re doing a 20-hour daily intermittent fast and you do that for a month, ‘cause I’ve done five-day fast for a number of times now. I’m going to start my third one right after Thanksgiving and my experience is, and I do 20-hour daily intermittent fast only eating in the four-hour window typically, sometimes five hours but there’s no hunger on day two which is when most people get hunger. So the hunger is just absent. So addressing your question about supplemental amino acids and ketones and I know you’re a big fan of using essential amino acids and I suspect this because you want to preserve your lean body mass but if you discuss this…
Ben: I want to stay swole, baby.
Dr. Mercola: I know. But if you discuss this with Jason I think that might be counter- productive. He is far more experienced than this. He’s really the expert in this area but from my reading and like studying researches like Valter Longo and Satchin Panda. If you give yourself these amino acids you’re going to activate mTor somewhat. And there really isn’t a need for because what you’re trying to do is upregulate autophagy and you wanted to clear out these damaged senescent cells.
Ben: Yeah.
Dr. Mercola: And there’s no need to do that. You really, really preserve and conserve your lean muscle mass when you’re fasting. You’re not going to lose hardly anything and you’ll actually get more swole when you refeed because as Valter Longo says, “the magic of fasting is in the refeed.”
Ben: Yeah.
Dr. Mercola: He’s got this fasting mimicking diet which I’m not a big fan of it all. I’ll actually interview him next week on Onnit. But he is an expert on the value of fasting and for longevity. He’s done a lot of good science.
Ben: Now, just in my defense. One thing I do not use is branched chain amino acids because of leucine and…
Dr. Mercola: No, I know.
Ben: Leucine that’s a pretty potent activator of mTor signaling. That’s the one I’m pretty careful with. But yeah, I would agree that you’re probably are losing out on a little bit of the downregulation of the mTor signaling if you use an amino acid. For me it’s basically, like what an athlete would do in fasting, right just to maintain a little bit of a decrease in muscle catabolism.
Dr. Mercola: And my guess is there’s a great chance you’re right because it just depends on what you’re specific circumstances are and you as a competitive athlete and wanting to be really careful of not losing the muscle mass and maybe the optimal strategy. I just don’t know. But if your strategy is for health, I think it is.
Ben: Yeah.
Dr. Mercola: If you just take the essential amino acids. I think you’d better.
Ben: What about ketones?
Dr. Mercola: Ketones unless you’re going to compete, I don’t think it’s necessary. Actually, the first time I did this, my ketone to glucose ratio index that Dr. Siegfried talks about went down to 0.5 so my ketones were 8 and my blood sugar was 40. So that was pretty good.
Ben: I got you.
Dr. Mercola: Which is actually like 2 millimolars or actually 5 millimolars.
Ben: Okay. Now, so you’ve got a five-day water fast as one thing that will be particularly helpful or even for people for whom that seems overwhelming, I mean even just fasting in general. An intermittent fast or for me personally, what’s doable for me is a weekly 24-hour fast and in many cases ‘cause I travel so much I just choose the day. Like my wife and I are flying to New York we’ll have Thanksgiving dinner about 3pm for example and this podcast will likely come out after Thanksgiving but you know at 4pm after Thanksgiving meal on Thursday, I’ll just fast until I get to New York at like 6 or 7pm the next day, right? And so for me that’s easy I’m in an airplane and I’m not lifting weights or like sprinting on a treadmill so it’s not that difficult. So ultimately, yeah for those of you listening in, I mean start somewhere but that’s a really fasting I hadn’t thought about the effects of damage reversal by doing something as simple as just the basic.
Dr. Mercola: [Laughs] And it’s less than free.
Ben: Now, what else? What are some other remediation strategies for EMF exposure?
Dr. Mercola: Well, EMF is one of the primary sources of oxidative damage and I really appreciate you having Anthony DiClementi on your previous podcast.
Ben: Did you listen to that show?
Dr. Mercola: Oh, I actually did. He’s another Italian.
Ben: What do you think?
Dr. Mercola: He’s another Italian from Chicago. Bright guy and really did a good a job of giving an overview. This is one minor issue that I’d like to review with the oxidative stress. He accurately described what Martin Pall did who is the pioneer in research in this and you can look up his last name P-A-L-L and type in EMF on Youtube and you will find a lot of good lectures that really to go into great detail about the mechanism of how it works but briefly you can summarize. Anthony was a little bit mixed up on one thing but essentially these EMF signals go and hit these voltage-gated calcium channels that are imbedded in all the cell membranes and the highest density is in your brain and in the nervous tissue in your heart, your pacemaker. So if anyone has an arrhythmia, they’ve got to look at this issue. You know, the answer is not to take an anti-arrhythmia. The answer is to address EMFs. The cause or reason most of the time.
So these receptors are literally and Pall has done it. He’s also a biophysicist. Has a degree in either I think from Stanford or Cal. I think Stanford or Caltech and he came up with a mechanism and showed through his calculations that these voltage-gated calcium channels are 7 million times more sensitive to EMF than the charged particles inside and outside the cells. Why is that important because the safety standards are based on these charged particles and that vibrate when they’re exposed to these microwaves and cellphone signal is a microwave signal and they assessed thermal damage from that. Well, their base need on the physics that is off by a factor of 7 million. 7 million so the safety standards are only off by 7 million. And here’s the other thing, so what happens when these voltage-gated calcium channels are activated? Well, it allows calcium to go into the cell and then it’s not the excess calcium that causes damage. The second death are triggers ‘cause calcium intercellular calcium is a very important biological signaling molecule.
Ben: Right.
Dr. Mercola: And when that is released in high doses it causes excess nitric oxide which combines with peroxynitrate and then that forms hydroxyl free radicals which is like one of the most damaging free radicals. Essential…
Ben: That would be an excess of calcium, that would cause that?
Dr. Mercola: Yes.
Ben: But you don’t want to. I don’t want to totally derail your line of thought here so I’ll let you get back to that, but the trick is not to prevent the influx of calcium in the cells ‘cause I know you’re talking about a arrhythmia, right? The influx of calcium in the myocardial cells for example and I know that’s…
Dr. Mercola: Oh yeah. It’s important.
Ben: That prevents the contraction of the heart muscle fibers.
Dr. Mercola: You have to regulate.
Ben: If you prevent that.
Dr. Mercola: The way that Pall discovered this is he basically complied two dozen studies on animals and in vitro studies that used calcium channel blockers and examined the effects of EMF on those tissue cultures of the animals and they radically diminished the side effects. So calcium channel blockers mitigated the damage of EMF.
Ben: Interesting. Just a basic calcium channel blocker that would normally be prescribed for say, for example like high blood pressure or an arrhythmia.
Dr. Mercola: Yeah, let’s talk about some remediation strategies and then I want to jump in to why we need to be concerned about this.
So what is a natural calcium channel blocker ‘cause you don’t want to take a drug if you can avoid it?
Ben: A natural calcium channel blocker?
Dr. Mercola: Yeah.
Ben: Aahhh, pooh. Is it.
Dr. Mercola: It’s a mineral. Some mineral.
Ben: I was going to say strophanthus which is the one I was [0:27:33.2] ______ doctor.
Dr. Mercola: Strophanthus isn’t, no. That’s a drug with Dr. Pall.
Ben: Okay.
Dr. Mercola: Which has uses but no this is natural normal and everyone needs it and most people are deficient of. I would say 85% of your listeners are deficient in this mineral.
Ben: This magnesium?
Dr. Mercola: That’s magnesium that’s what it is. Yup. The natural calcium channel blocker. So I like to recommend that you take as much as you can basically just short of disaster pants and then you’re there.
Ben: And so basically what you’re doing is you’re decreasing intracellular calcium and mitigating the secondary oxidative stress that would occur from that?
Dr. Mercola: Well, yeah, a little more accurately you’re diminishing the ability of the voltage-gated calcium channels to respond to those signals so it’s a secondary result of that that you’ll have less calcium coming in but ultimately that’s correct that you decrease intracellular calcium.
Ben: Okay. Is there any form of magnesium that you particularly like for that effect in general like citrate or glycinate or threonate or does it matter?
Dr. Mercola: I like malate. It tastes really good and plus it’s a Kreb citric acid cycle TCA, tricarboxylic acid intermediate. So I like that but I use a bunch. I use magnesium threonate and about three others that I use.
Figure this out, I use Epsom salt. I make a super saturate solution. I’d heat up about eight ounces of water and I put in like eight tablespoons of magnesium or Epsom salts magnesium sulfate and I apply topically and then I put a little aloe vera on top of this ‘cause you won’t get any loose stools as a result of that when you get a transdermal. I like that better than magnesium…
Ben: Magnesium citrate?
Dr. Mercola: That’s a citrate, some others use topically. Magnesium oils. Magnesium ahhh… I’ll come up with it, forget what the name is.
Ben: Okay, so magnesium is in addition to water fasting, a couple of things that you could do. What else?
Dr. Mercola: Well, let’s back track a little bit and ask you a question and first of all I want to applaud you for your pioneering efforts and you were actually head of the curb on this one that mitigating against the EMF and you know, you really have been one of the leaders out there for helping people understand this issue for a long time, so thank you for that. But the reason why it’s such an issue, let’s go back a hundred years in 1917 end of World War I. There was a certain native level of EMF at microwave frequency range say 105 gigahertz. So take that level from a hundred years ago and compare it to the level today 2017. How much has that level increased and I’ve spoken to thousands of people and no one has ever even come close to understanding the correct answer. So [laughs] let me give you that as a warning.
Ben: Okay, so basically how much has EMF increased since 1917 in what units? Like this is a percentage?
Dr. Mercola: It’s a percentage. Like ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times.
Ben: Oh, gosh. I mean, think about like cellphone towers and microwave radiation and WiFi and maybe the goggle balloons that are going up there. I’m going to say a thousand times greater than what we had in 1917?
Dr. Mercola: You are very close. Would you be as shocked if it was a billion times?
Ben: A billion’s not close to a thousand. Really, a billion times?
Dr. Mercola: No, it’s not. It’s a billion billionth. It’s one of ten with eighteen zeros after it.
Ben: How do you know?
Dr. Mercola: I can show you the studies. They’ve measured it.
Ben: Gosh.
Dr. Mercola: Ten with eighteen zeros. So one of the strategies that we both highly recommend is to replicate our ancestral practices and clearly our ancestors from as little as a hundred years ago were never exposed to these frequencies. And you know, what we know from Pall’s words that it has biological effects through the increase in intercellular calcium so why would we want to be exposed to that level of radiation? So that’s why I believe and I’ve become passionate about teaching people about this and helping them learn how to mitigate against it.
Ben: That’s crazy. Okay, so a billion, billion times greater. That’s really scary not just for us but for the freaking [crosstalk] cows, the bees.
Dr. Mercola: Absolutely, it’s the insects and it’s also the plants and it’s also the bugs in your gut which you know are radically important for improving your health.
Ben: What do you mean the bugs in the gut?
Dr. Mercola: How do you think they communicate? They communicate through similar mechanisms. It’s absolutely impairing your gut by our microbiome.
Ben: You mean they communicate in similar mechanisms as do like bees and cows?
Dr. Mercola: Yes, they have similar mechanisms.
Ben: Okay, please do explain.
Dr. Mercola: [Laughs] Well, I mean I was surprised too. I just learned about this recently but it makes perfect sense. How are these bacteria going to communicate? And it’s not just bacteria, it’s your whole microbiome. Your virus is your fungi in there and they’re all designed to operate efficiently in the way they communicate which is through these similar EMF signals. This EMF has been around since life began, I mean nature uses it for purposes in Biology and one of them was intracellular communication. So you impair that when you’re exposing them to these frequencies.
Ben: That’s interesting. You know, one of the things that I’m kind of looking into right now because I’m doing all these stories on men’s sexual health and sperm and semen quality and testosterone levels and all these things. It’s kind of interesting that it turns out that more of these more native PEMF devices like pulse electromagnetic field devices those seem to actually reverse some of the damage that EMF can do.
Dr. Mercola: Absolutely.
Ben: In those particular cells like the leydig cells and the testes.
Dr. Mercola: Yeah, there’s no question they can be useful. EMF is not intrinsically bad it just depends on the type and most of the ones we’re exposed to are dangerous.
Ben: Does that fall into the category of a mitigation strategy that you would use for exposure to EMF like sleeping with one of these pulse electromagnetic field devices or having one in your house?
Dr. Mercola: Ahh, I’m not a big fan. You know, I’ve tried the Del sleep and it didn’t work for me but there are some beneficial uses, no question about it. I think that there’s better strategies ‘cause you essentially want to lower it. So the only way you’re going to lower it is to know what you’re being exposed to. And this is why EMF is so dangerous because you can’t see, you feel or hear it. There’s a small minority of the population maybe as high as 5% or 10% who are electromagnetically hypersensitive and it can have symptoms. Most of us don’t. Now the interesting thing is just because you don’t have symptoms as you marked being damaged. We’re both being damaged just as badly only we can’t feel it, so what made it real for me is having meters where I can measure it. Now, Anthony had mentioned to me that he uses Cornet and a number of new people into this use that. It’s okay but it’s relatively, it’s under $200.
Ben: Anthony DiClemente the guy who you recommended measuring with the Cornet?
Dr. Mercola: I would not recommend the Cornet. Most of all the meters out there and there are better ones to measure than that.
Ben: What about this TriField meter? A lot of people use that.
Dr. Mercola: Oh no. TriField is a good screen for magnetic fields. You see, there’s three types of fields. There’s radio frequency fields which is the WiFi signals. There’s magnetic which is that TriField, does a decent job of doing and then there’s electrical fields. And the experts, and you can put a link in your show notes on this if you’re seriously concerned about this and now’s the time to do it because after I write my book next year or 2019, there’s only 300 in the country and you will not be able to book them for like years. But their building biologists and I’ll give you the link for them, and you can find one higher than them and they have tens of thousands of dollars of equipment to help you remediate ‘cause it really depends, there’s a lot of different variables. Now we’re on your show half hour of which was to talk about this is not enough to go into the details to help people understand this fully.
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Ben: I’ve got somebody actually coming to my house. I’ve a building biologist coming to my house next month because even though I live in a relatively protected area I do have for example, solar panels, right? There’s some evidence that like the inverter solar panels can produce a lot of EMF.
Dr. Mercola: No, there’s lots of evidence. They actually produce what’s called dirty electricity at this voltage spikes because and this tragedy of it is it doesn’t have to be that way ‘cause almost all the inverters do that. It’s the solar inverters that’s doing it’s nothing to do with the DC electric panels that you have. It’s the conversion from DC to AC that does it. I’ve actually in the project site three inverters myself they get about 15 kilowatts of panels and it definitely causes dirty electricity which you can remediate with filters but it’s still it’s best to remediate the source and the best way to do that is put this high frequency capacitive filter inside the inverter. I’ve got the instructions from Dave Stetzer who’s a really profoundly good electrical engineer and he actually wrote a paper in one of the electrical journals on how to remediate this. So that’s the way to do it. And my guess is your building biologist won’t know how to do that. They’ll still…
Ben: You should send that information to me. I know we have some listeners who have solar panels as well so we could put it in the show notes for people.
Dr. Mercola: Oh, absolutely and you should find a really good electrician who understands this and can put it into your solar panel inverter. Each one. Each inverter needs one of these signals. Probably only about a hundred bucks in parts maybe a little bit more for labor to install it.
Ben: Okay.
Dr. Mercola: But while you’re at your electrical panel the building biologists I’ve interviewed a number of them, two pieces of information that’s really important to share: one is that almost every one day evaluate, this is all they day full time. They consistently say 95% of the people believe that EMF in their home is coming from the outside in. It’s their damn neighbor’s WiFi, it’s a cellphone tower. Oh, woe is me there’s nothing I can do. It’s my neighbor’s I’ve no control. Well, it turns out 95% of it is coming from inside the house. 95%.
Ben: Coming from inside the house?
Dr. Mercola: Inside the house.
Ben: Where would that be coming from primarily?
Dr. Mercola: Well, we’ll talk about that a minute. I’ll tell you what the most important one. The most important one is, this is a surprise. I think you’re doing it though. I don’t know. But what do you think the most important exposure is?
Ben: Your WiFi router.
Dr. Mercola: Ah, no. I don’t think so.
Ben: Okay.
Dr. Mercola: It’s the electricity. This is what the building biologist say, tell me. It’s the electricity that’s on inside your bedroom when you’re sleeping. Why, because sleep is probably the most important biological function you can do. Probably, is equally if not more important than eating and exercise. Sleep, you have to optimize sleep and the best way to optimize sleep is to not expose your body to electrical fields. WiFi would be like from your WiFi router would definitely be an issue but the electric fields that could generate from the wires inside your house can really cause impairment of your body’s ability to go into deep sleep which you of course, can measure with the Oura Ring and also impair your body’s ability to produce melatonin. It’s well documented.
Ben: Very interesting. I mean, when we built our house, I don’t know if you saw that book that I wrote about this but I literally had this thing like wired with metal shielded cables. Every single room has a kill switch so as soon as you go to bed you can kill everything in the bedroom.
Dr. Mercola: Perfect. You are ahead of the curb, Ben there’s no question about it.
Ben: It’s a dead home. It’s also a little inconvenient ‘cause we don’t have like the Amazon Echo or the Alexa and no…
Dr. Mercola: That’s fine. You can live without it.
Ben: We don’t have the Amazon buttons to remind us to order milk. None of that.
Dr. Mercola: [Laughs] Here’s a thing too. Now we know that if you see something being advertised as no sugar or diet that’s a code name, right for artificial sweeteners. Well, do you know what smart has a code word for?
Ben: Smart? I don’t know.
Dr. Mercola: On a device. It’s a code word for wireless.
Ben: Oh, yeah. Exactly.
Dr. Mercola: Right? Smart TV. Here’s one that I didn’t know about that I found as I was mitigating my own house. I know you don’t watch TV hardly at all.
Ben: Yeah, I’ll occasionally get like exercise DVD’s people send me to reveal and stuff like that. We have ATV and it’s on like once every couple of weeks.
Dr. Mercola: [Laughs] Well, it’s not an issue for you. For most people it is. Most people will watch TV far more than anything and there’s no way you would read that many books if you’re watching TV, but the issue is that almost new TV’s are smart TV’s. What does that mean? That means, that unlike your computer, your notebook, or your desktop which you can put in airplane mode, you cannot put your smart TV into airplane mode. So every time you turn it on you’re raiding yourself with WiFi. It’s the nature of the game.
Ben: What do you do when you travel because let’s say two days ago my boys now are coming back from San Francisco and we’re walking through the airport and there was like you know, there’s TV’s at every gate. They’re all smart TV’s and there’s obviously EMF all over the place, like what kind of strategies do you use when you’re travelling? When you don’t have control over your personal environment?
Dr. Mercola: Great, great question. In some ways you’re a little bit better from an electric and magnetic perspective because the building code for commercial buildings requires that all the electrical wires be put in metal conduit just for safety reasons and fires and things. It’s the sequence of that and virtually no one understands the biological implications of that but they essentially neutralizes the electric fields coming out of those wires. So unlike Chicago or New York where they trade unions conspire to force that code on residences that show which increases the cost of residential installations but has the beneficial consequences of lowering the electric fields while they sleep at night. Here’s the problem though, so if you live in Chicago, New York or you’re in a hotel room like you are frequently, all you have to do to essentially eliminate and I’ve tested this in about half a dozen different hotels now, all you have to do to eliminate the electric fields and measure it with very sensitive equipment is to pull out the plug. So pull out anything that’s plug in to the wall because the moment you plug something in, that field comes in to the room.
Ben: Uhm.
Dr. Mercola: So if the only electric wires are in the conduit then you’re probably okay.
Ben: Okay.
Dr. Mercola: At least it’s almost every hotel.
Ben: So in hotel rooms you just basically unplug just about anything. Are you wearing anything kind of like? I know you do crazy stuff like are you’re wearing kind of like shields or clothing?
Dr. Mercola: Oh, yes. Actually, my building biologist lead me to a German manufacturer who makes this silver shielding. A hundred percent silver fabric and you can ground this fabric so it knocks out everything and I basically created a sleeping bag that I travel with so I completely enclosed this.
Ben: You’ve created a sleeping bag that you travel with?
Dr. Mercola: Yeah. It only weighs like a few ounces. It’s pretty light.
Ben: How’s that work?
Dr. Mercola: I just wrap myself in it and inside that is I have a grounding pad that I sleep on and the grounding pad grounds me so the material touches me and then actually if there were any electric fields that neutralizes me ‘cause they cannot go through a grounded faraday cage.
Ben: So basically sleeping on a faraday cage?
Dr. Mercola: Yes. I sleep in a faraday cage at home but it’s hard to do that while you travel but that’s why we made the sleeping bag.
Ben: You actually have this bag. You can buy it on your website?
Dr. Mercola: No, we’re developing it and hope to launch it next year.
Ben: Oh, okay.
Dr. Mercola: Our team just came back from China to find the best manufacturers in the world to do this because the German stuff is so pricey. So we want to get it down to under $200.
Ben: So you just sent your people to China and told them, ”Hey, find me a radiation-blocking sleeping bag?’’
Dr. Mercola: Oh, it’s more complex than that. They have trade shows there for companies that make yarns and fabricators and they’ve big trade shows there. That’s what we do. So we sent our staff there and we really want to offer solutions for people but later this year we’ll have something.
Ben: Wow, amazing.
Dr. Mercola: And you need one. I’ll get you a beta purse when we come out with one.
Ben: Now when I said I was flying you also talked about molecular hydrogen.
Dr. Mercola: Yes.
Ben: Just to interrupt you real quick at the time that this podcast comes out, I think I will have released an interview that I did with this guy named Tyler LaBaron about this hydrogen-rich water. Same thing?
Dr. Mercola: Yeah, Tyler is the expert. I’ve known Tyler for a few years. I think I’m the one who recommended him to you. I love that man. I may be reviewing him in a few weeks myself when I go back to Chicago but he’s such a nice guy. He’s an athletic stud, too. I don’t know if you guys talked about it in your interview but…
Ben: Yeah, we did but for people who don’t know about molecular hydrogen or hydrogen-rich water, how exactly would that work to assist with the mitigation for EMF damage?
Dr. Mercola: You know, I meant to shoot Tyler an email because I don’t think the mega hydrate that Anthony discussed is the same. I don’t know that that’s molecular hydrogen. I may be. I might just be confused but I don’t believe it is.
So molecular hydrogen works because it’s a selective anti-oxidant. That’s the key term here. It doesn’t indiscriminately suppress all free radicals because some free radicals are beneficial. As you well know, you need free radicals if you want to get the benefits from exercise and if you suppress them indiscriminately you’re going to blunt that beneficial response. So molecular hydrogen is the one to take when you’re exercising to make sure you don’t get excessive damage in or blunt the beneficial free radicals. I don’t think anyone knows for sure Tyler is the best guy to answer the question but I think the thinking has shifted and it doesn’t directly neutralize the hydroxyl free radicals but it does it through a pathway called the NRF2 pathways which essentially allows your body to hormetically control it and have some feedback influence so that it’s generating the right amount of levels and you’re not causing any damage. I think it’s a really potent stimulator than NRF2 and you can lookup NRF2 pathway just type that in and type Martin Posey. He wrote a brilliant paper that was like 15-20 pages that goes in to the mechanisms and really goes in to a lot of other strategies in so far.
Ben: Yeah, right. The idea being a reactive oxygen species they’re produced after specially a high intensity bout of exercise and those service messengers you know, speaking of cellular communication to regulate adaptation to exercise and then they lead to cascade of events like satellite self-proliferation and muscle adaptation, all these things that help you to get more fit and the idea is that excessive intake of anti-oxidants appears to blunt that response.
So yeah, that hydrogen-rich water helps to quell inflammation without blunting that same response. Apparently, as you just alluded to also helps to control the inflammation that might be generated from EMF. And you know what, I was reading about last night, you’d be interested in this that I was just reading the National Journal of the Strength Conditioning Association last night. Very interesting article in there that goes into the research that I just mentioned on reduction of oxidative stress and how you don’t want to do that but then they looked at acute consumption of what are called the polyphenol-containing supplements.
Dr. Mercola: Uhm.
Ben: And in this case they were looking at things like tart cherry juice at pomegranate juice at quercetin and at the epigallocatechin gallate that you get from like green tea and green tea extracts. And they found that those specific polyphenol anti-oxidants do not blunt the ergogenic effect of exercise in this case heavy and intense strength training. So it turns out that some anti-oxidants, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen research like this that shows that there are some things that you could take right after workout. Such as green tea and it wouldn’t blunt that same oxidative stress. Isn’t that interesting?
Dr. Mercola: That’s good to know. I think the ECGG improves the NRF2 pathway. I’m pretty sure that’s one of that. Once it enters into polyphenols, of course. So yeah, it’s good to know.
Ben: Anyways though, a total rabbit hole but you brought up magnesium. You brought up the hydrogen-rich water as well as shielding yourself.
Dr. Mercola: Before we leave magnesium hydrogen-rich water, people will want to be taking it of course, and unfortunately at the time of this interview there’s not really good products out there, they don’t exist. And I don’t know if Tyler reviewed the importance of cycling it as you want to do with the nutrients you just mentioned the supplements, the anti-oxidants. Even though they may not blunt the response from exercise, I don’t think it’s a good idea to take those things every day. Everything I know suggests that’s not a good strategy. Take two days a week off. You pick the day.
Ben: Same thing with the hydrogen-rich water?
Dr. Mercola: No, hydrogen-rich water is a little bit different. I think you can take that. I might be wrong here. I don’t think you need to cycle it. I will have to discuss it. That’s a good point. But I don’t think you need to. I take it pretty much every day but there’s a whole wide variety of them out there and it’s not a cheap supplement. Almost all of the ones that are currently available are not grass at all. We’re actually in the process of dealing with this. This guy’s [crosstalk].
Ben: Not grass so not generally recognized as safe?
Dr. Mercola: They’re not. No, so we’ll have the first tablet out next year but it’s going to take another three months to do the grass studies to get it certified. But the key thing is there’s just came out like in the last week or two which is the high concentration hydrogen water. You want like nine parts per million or milligrams per liter ‘cause most of them was out there like two or three. There’s a few that are five and the key thing is you want to pulse it. Did Tyler go in to the pulsing?
Ben: No.
Dr. Mercola: Okay, so you don’t want to drink it continuously ‘cause these alkaline water systems probably had done nothing to do with the benefits, had nothing to do with the pH in the water but have everything to do with their ability to make molecular hydrogen gas. But they have those generators even if they put out high amounts and there’s a few that do. They claim three or four maybe even five but most of them are closer to one or even below. And even if you had five, you’re drinking it all day long you don’t get the benefits. You want to pulse it because if you take it continuously you don’t get the same reaction, so I cycle mine two or three times a day. I take it before I go out in the sun. I do my hour, two-hour walk in the sun. I take it before I exercise. I take it like almost every hour if I’m travelling [laughs] and have very high EMF environment which is almost always the case.
We’re going to make underwear out of this too. This shielding to protect our heart and our gonads. And you have mentioned the infertility, you know, infertility in men has gone down by 50% and there’s a lot of reasons for that but EMF is probably a primary variable for that.
Ben: Now, that’s kind of cool you’re going to do underwear. One of my buddies tried to do that a while ago. I don’t know if he’s still in business it was called Raparo, R-A-P-A-R-O Clothing. I think he pivoted he got on like the block chain or bitcoin or something like that but for a while. I have a pair somewhere around here. He had like boxers that shield against EMF.
Dr. Mercola: Here’s interesting, in China the standard of care is pregnant women are wearing these shields around their bellies to protect their infants. That is that you get them everywhere. It’s just common knowledge. That’s what you do in China.
Ben: Yeah, while in America the mom’s are playing Candy Crush with their phone on top of their belly so.
Dr. Mercola: [Laughs] And even worse there are kids, there are teenagers, they’re 6, 7, 8, 9 year olds are sleeping with their phone on under their pillow at night.
Ben: Yeah. So (crosstalk) my kids have an iTouch and as I do with my own children I never told them not to do anything unless they’re about to step out in front of a semi- truck, but the iTouch, all I tell them they are well aware, more aware than most adults of the damaging effects of WiFi and Bluetooth on cellular function and the concept of the body as a human battery et cetera. And so they simply know when they have their iTouch on that they put it in airplane mode. I was actually speaking of us on the airplane and my son was sitting next to me on the airplane two days ago coming back from San Francisco and all of a sudden he goes, “oh!” And I said, “what’s wrong?” And he’s looking at the iPhone and it’s kind of like sitting there on the seat in between his legs and he points at it and the WiFi was on and he’s like, “oh my goodness, I didn’t realize that. Do you think I’m going to be okay?” I was like, yeah, you’ll be.
Dr. Mercola: That is so good.
Ben: You’ll be alright, let’s go ahead and switch it off.
Dr. Mercola: It’s oh, very fine a parent doing that.
Ben: Yeah. But again like I don’t tell them, “oh, you know, shut that off right now.” Instead, I just basically inform them and they’ll occasionally turn it on. I think he had it on ‘cause he was trying to see if the airplane could feed like entertainment or something into the iTouch. Anyways, yeah it’s crazy now. Oh, go ahead.
Dr. Mercola: And there’s some suggestion that intermittent exposure, if you’re relative exposure overall is really low like yours and your family appears to be may actually be hormetically beneficial. It may actually [crosstalk]
Ben: Right, it’s like a lot of these areas on the planet Earth that are like geomagnetic fields that generate like say, a thousand hertz for a lot of people think all the earth does is it emits this natural magnetic frequency of 7.83 hertz, this Schumann resonance but in fact, you find everything from 3 hertz up to several thousand hertz generated by the earth’s natural geomagnetic fields. And so it makes sense that exposure to slightly higher amounts, I interviewed a guy named Dr. William Pollack about this. We had discussion about EMFs, geomagnetic fields. I’m not sure if that will come out at the time that folks are listening in to this but either way, it’s not like you’re not supposed to get exposed occasionally to slightly higher hertz frequencies than you might experience when you’re sleeping or when you’re say using like a grounding on earthing device but the idea is just like sunlight, right? It’s that constant exposure like cold thermogenesis. I have one client who I coached and he’s probably listening he knows who is. He keeps on sending me these emails, he’s like, “can I do three of the cold baths each day?” He’s in these ice baths for like and I’m like, no you get to a certain point where you’re stressing yourself out too much.
Dr. Mercola: Right.
Ben: Or you have too much hormesis if that’s even something you can do. So anyways, yeah, I’m completely on board with you that I talk on my phone. I get exposed to some of these frequencies sometimes but the important thing is to use some of the remediation strategies that you’re talking about. Have you filled me in on everything that you would do for remediation ‘cause you talked about magnesium and the hydrogen and the shielding?
Dr. Mercola: Well, we talked about the meter and I think it’s a really important probably the most important thing that people can do is get a meter that they can measure this and the professional meters that the building biologists use and they’ll cost a few thousand dollars each. But you can get one. I bought about a dozen of the different ones out there, so [0:56:39.8] ______ experience and I actually own the professional ones too so I can compare it to ‘em and there’s two meters that I would recommend actually both made by the same manufacturer.
The first one is from a really hard to find website called Amazon. And the name of the meter is called Acoustimeter2 and it measures radio frequencies. And I think you saw me use it when we were down with Pompa’s and that was an Acoustimeter2. It has an audible signal that is actually able to reflect the… because it’s an analogue signal it will tell you what type of signal it is coming in. Is it a WiFi signal, is it a cellphone but the more exposed you are the louder it gets and the higher up it goes to this flashing red, you know. So that one, you could go into your house and it will help you find other hidden sources.
The other meter is called the PF5 and that is and it’s called Safe Living Technologies but they used the initials SLT.co not .com and you can just look it up there. This website also has the remote cut-off switch that you can use that you have installed in your house and maybe a different brand but this is from Gigahertz Solutions which is a really high quality German manufacturer. And you [0:57:53.5] ______ then you can put the remote cut-off if you’re committed to turning off your electricity at night which I think you should be. But then if you did that then you need the PF5 which measures the electric fields and the magnetic fields and it doesn’t vary accurately. It’s a digital one, it’s not an analogue like the TriField but it will tell you the right numbers. This is spot on. TriField can be off on a number of circumstances but if you have one it’s good screen for magnetic and I found it to be fairly reliable. I just wouldn’t tag it for being accurate. It’s a $2,000 meter by Gigahertz.
Ben: Or you just basically get connected with like a good building biologist who could come up with these equipment.
Dr. Mercola: Building biologist. Yes.
Ben: Okay. Is there like a directory of good building biologists that you’re familiar with?
Dr. Mercola: Yes. There’s a link. I’ll send you the link. So that you can have.
Ben: Okay. Great.
Dr. Mercola: So those are the meters that are key. And speaking of links I can also send you a link ‘cause I think we can get your listeners a discount on if they are interested ‘cause you have health professionals who would definitely like to get their phase angle. They have two versions one that measures the phase angle directly the other that requires a software one’s like 2,000 but I think you can get them about 10%-15% discount.
Ben: That would be interesting if there’s some kind of algorithm that could correlate the data that you get from one of these normal bioelectrical impedance devices that you just hold on to at a gym. I like the Withings scale that measures bioelectrical impedance and somehow give you a phase angle based on that. I don’t know if any kind of algorithm…
Dr. Mercola: Yeah, they’re really specific about measuring the standardized positions so you have to be lying down for a few minutes and so everything is standardized and calibrated ‘cause if you’re standing up the meter’s going to be a little bit coz you have different body water concentration. It is going to shift a little bit.
Ben: Yeah.
Dr. Mercola: But nothing is more powerful than measure over total body health is as I understand right now. It’s incredible.
Ben: Fascinating. Is there anything else that you want to delve into when it comes to EMF that you’ve learned lately or that you think people should know about?
Dr. Mercola: Yeah, let me tell you some of the other hidden sources. We talked about the smart TV which is what people know about but most people when they’re using a keyboard or a mouse or a trackball, they’re wireless. That’s going to definitely be an issue. Now you may have this issue like I did. You’re hooked up to the internet, right? through your ethernet cord, but did you check your computer to make sure that it was in airplane mode? Your desktop computer?
Ben: You mean that the WiFi’s off?
Dr. Mercola: Yeah. ‘Cause it’s still…
Ben: Of course, yeah.
Dr. Mercola: Okay, so you’ve got to do that.
Ben: Yeah, you can’t just plug it in otherwise it’s still constantly searching for a WiFi signal. It’s the same thing with the new IOS on the newer iPhones for example, you can’t just swipe up and disable WiFi and Bluetooth. That does not disable them. You still have to go to settings and manually disable the WiFi and the Bluetooth otherwise it stays on even if you use that shortcut to disable it. Yeah, these devices are tricky. They’re smart. I even have one in my house that annoys me, there’s no way to disable the WiFi on a treadmill. I have my treadmill on my garage but there is no option. A treadmill is always a big source of electrical pollution anyways which is why the one that I use in my office is a manual treadmill. It’s called TrueForm, not a mechanical treadmill for the same reason that my stand-up desk is a manual hand-crank stand-up desk not a push button stand-up desk ‘cause I just try to keep it as little electricity in my office as possible. But the one out in the garage is just freaking, anytime I’m out there it’s just got a big old WiFi signal no matter how I try there’s no way to disable it.
Dr. Mercola: Well, let me tell you, yesterday I got my delivery and instructions from Peter with the Vasper which you’ve been exposed to. I think you even interviewed him but he was at my house yesterday. He’s actually at Tony Robbin’s house today installing one, of course I measured the EMF and I was shocked to find with this really good Gigahertz meter that it had 200 volts per meter on the chair and even when I wasn’t plugged in and it’s still a mystery to me why it’s so high. But I got this silver fabric, right that I talked about earlier, we put it over there and grounded it and it went down to like 4 volts or even below 4 volts. I mean it was crazy.
Ben: But you put it underneath?
Dr. Mercola: I put it underneath, right and you could do the same thing. When you take one of these meters you find where the source is and then you can remediate it with the silver cloth.
Ben: Fascinating.
Dr. Mercola: Yeah, there are solutions. There really are solutions. So we don’t have to not avail ourselves to the value of the technology. We can still benefit from them and not be exposed to the dangerous EMF.
Ben: Yeah, I think that’s the big takeaway for people from this episode is that the goal is not to become a Leadite necessarily even though I do know some people who are healthy and successful who still have landlines and don’t use the internet that much and there are also people however, who unlike say like you, Dr. Mercola or me don’t make their living on the internet or make their living by travelling frequently so we’re kind of fighting an uphill battle. But ultimately, my wife is a perfect example, right she spends all day long out in the garden and outside. She flips on her computer maybe once every couple of days. If you try to call her or message her on her phone you’re rarely going to get through ‘cause she just never pays attention to it. As a result she goes to sleep at night and she doesn’t use any sleep devices. She just closes her eyes and falls asleep and she’s super healthy. I’ve tested her blood and it’s flawless and I’m sure a big, big part of that is because of that lifestyle.
Dr. Mercola: Love to see her phase angle. [laughs]
Ben: Yeah, exactly. I know it’s probably a lot better than mine. Like I mentioned for those of you listening in, I’ve also been taking notes as we talk and I’m putting links to everything that we talked about when it comes to these meters and Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt everything.
Dr. Mercola: Yeah, just two more items.
Ben: Yeah, let’s go over. Let me give people the URL real quick and we’ll keep going. It’s bengreenfieldfitness.com/emfspecial. Okay, go ahead.
Dr. Mercola: Yeah, as I said many people may be using it and not be aware of the danger and I’m sure you’re not one of them. An electric shaver, even that’s a battery it’s still is or your electric toothbrush. Both of those things you know, you want to have your magnetic fields below one milligauss ideally even .1, but these things put up like thousands of milligauss, thousands, but it’s not that much of a problem though because you’re only putting it next to your brain. [laughs]
Ben: Okay. Got it. So electric toothbrush and electric razor. Yeah, they’re both like in your mouth and up by your head. Yeah.
Dr. Mercola: So you will definitely want to go manual on those.
Ben: Okay. Got it. And what was the other thing?
Dr. Mercola: The both of those.
Ben: Are those the two main cases. So the shaver and the toothbrush, alright. We’ll fortunately I’m pretty old school on both of those. So I should be good.
Dr. Mercola: Yeah, I know. I said you got it covered. You’re really one of the rare health guys out there who understood this. You’re an early adaptor and you really figured out and I know your audience appreciates it too.
Ben: I figured it a lot. You can’t bench press your way out of an unhealthy lifestyle.
Dr. Mercola: No.
Ben: As much as I thought that when I was foolish as you.
Dr. Mercola: [Laughs]
Ben: No matter how good you look in Spandex.
Dr. Mercola. Yeah, it’s always a pleasure talking and I really look forward to connecting with you at CalJam, and so I’m measuring your phase angle.
Ben: That’s going to be good. I can’t wait to hang out and measure phase angles together.
Dr. Mercola: Just be careful. Don’t get injured over at Mount Kilimanjaro, man. We want you back and healthy. [laughs]
Ben: Yeah, that’s right. I’m doing all these stuff and it sucks to get my leg trapped under a boulder and die in a mountain.
Dr. Mercola: Yeah.
Ben: Well, at least I would do so without the EMF cancer that everyone just learned about.
Dr. Mercola: [Laughs]
Ben: So again folks, go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/emfspecial to access the show notes, my previous two episodes with Dr. Mercola, everything that we talked about today and to leave your comments, your questions, your feedback, any other tips that you might personally have discovered. Leave it all there bengreenfieldfitness.com/emfspecial.
Thanks for listening in and until next time. I’m Ben Greenfield and Dr. Joseph Mercola signing out from bengreenfieldfitness.com. Have an amazing week.
My guest on this show first appeared on the very popular episode: “Killing Fat Cells, Fixing Mitochondria, Growing Superfoods & More: The Official, Much-Anticipated, Mind-Blowing, Geeked-Out Podcast” and then again on the equally popular episode “High-Fat Fudge Balls, The Best Fruits For Blood Sugar, Egg Allergies & More With “Fat For Fuel”. If you hadn’t yet guessed, his name is Dr. Joseph Mercola, and – in addition to being an outside-the-box, cutting-edge thought leader on everything from cancer to fat loss – he also happens to be living in the trenches when it comes to protecting yourself against and mitigating the damages from non-native, harmful electromagnetic fields, “EMF”.
During this episode, you’ll discover:
-If it’s true that Dr. Mercola only talks on his smart phone on a selfie stick…[6:45]
-The most important test (that you’ve probably never heard of) to determine mitochondrial function…[10:10]
-The value of a five day water fast for reversing the damage from EMF…[16:40]
-How you can use magnesium to decrease calcium accumulation and decrease secondary oxidative stress…[25:50]
-Eliminate fatigue and unlock the secrets of low-carb success. Find out how in The Low Carb Athlete – 100% Free.
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–The shocking facts about how much EMF has increased since 1917 (you’ll be floored)…[29:55]
-How the bugs in your gut communicate in the same way as the bees and the cows…[31:38]
-The best device to measure EMF in your environment…[34:24] -How to get rid of excessive EMF on solar panel inverters…[37:25]
-The reason Dr. Mercola sleeps in a radiation-blocking sleeping bag…[43:55]
-How to use hydrogen-rich water to mitigate the damages from EMF…[46:15]
-The best meter to measure EMF exposure…[57:15]
-And much more!
Resources from this episode:
-Fat for Fuel: A Revolutionary Diet to Combat Cancer, Boost Brain Power, and Increase Your Energy
–Ben’s “How To Biohack The Ultimate Healthy Home” book
–My podcast with Jason Fung about the “Complete Guide To Fasting”
–My podcast with Anthony DiClementi
–Martin Pall’s EMF YouTube videos
–Dr. Dietrich Klinghart
–RJL Bioimpedance Meter
–The essential amino acids Ben uses
–Magnesium malate
–The PEMF device that Ben uses
–The Acoustimeter 2
–The Safe Living Technologies website
–How to remove EMF from your solar inverter
–Building Biologists link we discuss
–SLT site to purchase remote shutoff and PF5
–A guide to phase angle measurement Show Sponsors: -eHarmony
– Come see how eHarmony can change your life. Go to eHarmony.com and get started. Enter my code GREEN at checkout to get a FREE month with every 3-month subscription.
-GAINSWave – To learn more go to GAINSWave.com/Ben and find a provider near you. Don’t forget to mention you heard about GAINSWave through Ben Greenfield and you’ll get 30% off your FIRST treatment.
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Read more at: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/lifestyle-podcasts/dr-mercola-emf-recommendations/
Hey Ben,
What peer-reviewed studies do you and/or your guest have to support the claims you made in this podcast in regards to low-EMF exposure risks associated with cell phone use? Thanks.