February 17, 2018

Podcast from:  https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/biohacking-podcasts/how-pemf-works/

[00:00] Introduction

[00:25] Onnit/Organifi/Kion

[0:5:35] Why Ben Wore a PEMF FlexPulse on His Butt

[07:30] About Dr. William Pawluk

[10:04] What FlexPulse Can Accomplish with it’s Different Programs and Hertz Frequencies

[17:16] What NASA Research Found That Stimulates Stem Cells

[19:15] The Effects of Electric Fields on Circadian Rhythmicity and Jet Lag

[31:31] Program Three:  Dr Pawluk’s Go-to-Sleep Program

[35:19] The Reason Why the Earth Produces 7.8 Hertz is a Myth

[38:32] Thrive Market/Art of Charm

[49:22] Can Certain Body Functions, Cells or Organs Respond to Specific Frequencies?

[54:18] The Frequency That’s Best to Address Depression

[57:29] What Supplements Could Enhance the Effects of PEMF?

[01:02:02] The Biohacks & Other Modalities Dr. Pawluk Combines with PEMF

[1:11:41] End of Podcast

Ben:  Hey, have you ever got an acupuncture?  You hate needles?  All in today’s podcast is for you because you’ll learn about how you will get acupuncture without needles and also how to get a 400% increase in stem cell production.  Crazy.  I’ve been messing around with the stuff I talk about with my guest Dr. William Pawluk in today’s show.  It’s pretty cool.  You’re going to dig this episode and the show notes that go along who it which I will tell you or get later.

But right now, I want to tell you about this stuff I put on my salad.  Yes, on my salad.  It comes in three flavors: Herbs de Provence, (which makes me sound very sophisticated) French Onion & Ginger, my favorite.  And it’s MCT oil.  Its emulsified MCT oil made from 100% coconut oil.  And what emulsification means is that combines air and water makes fats disperse evenly through liquids, smart cookie.  And then you get absorbed or you don’t get absorbed.  Fats get absorbed.  The MCT medium chain triglycerides get absorbed ‘cause you can rely upon them as a quick and healthy source of readily available energy.  And this company Onnit now makes these emulsified MCT oils and the flavors that I was mentioning like ginger and herb.  It’s savory MCT oil.  It’s really cool so you can do everything from like put it in bone broth to over salads.  There’s a great recipe on their website for a cheesy herbed mash cauliflower.  You can do with this stuff.  Anyways, and you save 10% on it.  Go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/onnit bengreenfieldfitness.com/o-n-n-i-t you get 10% off of your own emulsified MCT oil when no Cheesy Herb Mash Cauliflower will ever be the same.

This podcast is also brought to you by something that I walked in on my wife yesterday using.  Yes, I walked in on her using this.  Very rare for me to find her using one of my supplements.  In this case she was taking this blend of cordyceps and beet root and pomegranate and all these amazing particularly the superfoods for building your blood and she was dipping truffles on them.  Chocolate truffles that she made.  She was making an Organifi Red Juice chocolate truffle.  Amazing.  The uses of these red juice and green juice and gold juice powders that my friend Drew Canole over at Organifi makes it.  It’s astounding.  It is mind-blowing and they taste really good and they don’t require you to go shopping for all these stuff.  They make a green juice.  They make a red juice.  Honestly, my favorite right now is gold juice.  It’s amazing.  And you get any of it for 20% off.  You go to Bengreenfieldfitness.com/organifi.  That’s Organifi with an I Bengreenfieldfitness.com/organifi discount code is there and it gets you 20% off of the green juice and Red Ben yes, as in Red Ben gets you 20% off of their red juice.  There you go.

And of course, each and every episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show is brought to you by my company Kion.  Kion makes amazing supplements that are hatched by the evil nefarious mind of yours truly.  I come up with formulations.  We design them at Kion.  We’ve got everything from colostrum to an amazing anti-aging skin serum.  One of the best joint sports compound known to man.  It’s like a shotgun of bio available nutrients for your joints.  We’re having fun over there making amazing products and there’s also coaching.  You can get coached by a Kion coach who’s trained by yours truly.  As well as books.  We’ve got our Gratitude Journal over there that I designed.  My book Beyond Training.  It’s all over at Kion k-i-o-n Ki, like prana, chakra, life force, energy.  That’s what Ki stands for and that’s how you pronounce it.  Go to getkion.com getkion.com. G-e-t-k-i-o-n dot com.  Instant coupon is over there.  Check it out.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show:

 “If my mind is going a mile a minute I have a hard time either falling asleep or staying asleep so I’ll just put it right under my neck and that usually helps to make me not care.  So you could actually put on a magnet under your pillow under Theta and have a microphone under your pillow listening to the Encyclopedia Britannica.  In other words, the frequency that we’re presented with the magnetic field goes right through the brain and it’s causing the brain to listen to the signal which is stronger than the energy produced by the brain itself.”

Ben:  Hey folks, it’s Ben Greenfield and last week I’ve got a little bit of an upper hamstring strain doing a single leg deadlift out in the garage actually of a previous podcast guest, Paul Chek.  And when I got home what I did was and I actually have this slapped literally, on my butt right now, there’s a good visual for you starting today’s podcast.  I hope you’re not sitting, drinking your morning cup of coffee with that visual.  But I’ve got strapped around my butt right now with this thing called a Pulsed Electromagnetic Field Therapy device.  That’s a mouthful.  PEMF device.  In this case something called a FlexPulse and I’ve experimented with a whole bunch of different forms of PEMF therapy but in this case it’s basically sending a signal of I believe although my guest expert today will be able to clarify with me a signal of about a hundred hertz or so into that area of my body literally to tune up these cells.  Which I know is a very plain Jane explanation of what PEMF is but don’t worry we’re going to delve deep into magnetic science today.

And I’m doing this because of the host of research that shows that PEMF can be used for soft tissue injuries, it can be used to heal up bones and fractures more quickly.  I probably have to be careful about anything else to say so the FDA doesn’t come knocking on my door.  But regardless, PEMF is pretty powerful stuff and a lot of people use it for and this is actually why I first started using PEMF was for sleep because it produces almost like a grounding or an earthing type of frequency similar to what you’d get generated by the planet earth.  It can also kind of lull you into like different brain wave frequencies.  Kind of like sending you a signal that tunes your brain twist to a certain extent.

Now I should probably shut up because the doctor I have on today’s show knows way more about PEMF than I do and may in fact be snickering at my layman’s explanation of it.  But he actually has held previous academic positions at Johns Hopkins University in University of Maryland.  He practices medicine near Baltimore, Maryland now and he does some very holistic things like acupuncture and homeopathy and hypnosis and body work but he’s also considered to be one of the world’s foremost authorities on the use of this PEMF therapy.  He’s even written a book on healing the body with magnetic fields called “Power Tools for Health” and in that book he goes over a whole bunch of different health conditions with literally hundreds of scientific references on PEMF.  So he’s one of the most authoritative guys out there when it comes to this stuff.  His name is Dr. William Pawluk.  You may have heard of him before Dr. William Pawluk P-a-w-l-u-k and to access the show notes for today’s show you can also go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/pawluk, that’s p-a-w-l-u-k where I’ll put links and resources to everything that Dr. Pawluk and I talk about.

So Dr. Pawluk that all being said, how are you doing this morning and do you also have PEMF attached to your butt like I do?

Dr. Pawluk:  Good Morning, Ben.  Thank you for inviting me to talk with you and your tribe, if you will.  Do I use PEMFs every day?

Ben:  Well, I was actually specifically asking you if you had it on your butt.  However, I’ll…

Dr. Pawluk:  I do sometimes.

Ben:  Okay.

Dr. Pawluk:  I do sometimes.

Ben:  Just checking.  So you use PEMF every day.  Give me some examples of ways that you would use PEMF every day.

Dr. Pawluk:  Well, in fact I actually use the FlexPulse device for sleep.  I put it under my pillow.  It’s right under my pillow, sometimes I actually have to put it under my neck not under the pillow but directly on my body.  So if my mind is going a mile a minute I have a hard time either falling asleep or staying  asleep so I’ll just put it right under my neck and that usually helps to make me not care.

Ben:  Okay.  So I have one of these FlexPulse devices you sent it to me and it basically it’s like this tiny little thing that I can put in my bag and it has I believe six different settings on it.  Like they range from everything for like extremely high frequencies to extremely low frequencies.  Maybe to help people wrap their head around this, could you walk through using the FlexPulse as an example, not only what the FlexPulse is and how you designed it but also perhaps walk us through what each of those different programs does ‘cause I think that’d be a perfect way to explain what the different hertz frequencies of PEMF can actually accomplish from a cellular standpoint?

Dr. Pawluk:  Alright, frequency is how quickly and rapidly something repeats itself in a specific time frame.  So hertz is the typical term used to describe a frequency.  So hertz H-E-R-T-Z like the car company is cycles per second.  It’s the number of repetitions or a cycles per second.  Another way to image a frequency is the wave pattern in waves at a pond after you throw the rock in the pond.  So that’s what we’re doing with PEMF say’s we’re emitting a magnetic field that is pulse to specific frequencies.

Ben:  Okay.

Dr. Pawluk:  Life is full of frequency.  There is nothing that happens in life that is not a frequency and in fact there’s nothing that happens in life at all whether you’re a rock or a human that is not a magnetic field does not influence or a magnetic field is not involved.  So virtually everything has magnetic fields involved with it.  Down to the level of the atom.

Ben:  Right.  Not just cellphones.  Your own cells produce an electrical field that would be considered to be a native EMF whereas some of the things that are out there would be considered non-native EMFs right, like cell towers or microwave signals et cetera.

Dr. Pawluk:  Yeah, microwaves are not in fact totally manufactured because we actually have microwaves coming through the Polar Regions to the planet.  Sunlight is at an extremely high frequencies.  They’re not really quite microwave frequencies, microwaves are even higher than that in terms of the number of cycles per second.  But we are exposed to microwave-type frequencies regularly but they’re very low intensity so that’s why they don’t tend to bother us the same way as a cellphone would or sticking your head in a microwave oven.

Ben:  Right, the way that I understand it is the difference between like a native EMF or a therapeutic EMF such as one that would be generated by a PEMF device or such as what would be generated by a rock or a tree or the earth would be the exposure time in the wavelength and the frequency.  Correct?

Dr. Pawluk:  So all frequencies can essentially be useful for humans.  There are radio frequency waves which are essentially microwaves that are used to burn a nerve.  So for example, if something is pinching a nerve or a nerve is inflamed you can burn the nerve.  We use electrical stimulation of higher frequency to actually cauterize blood vessels when people are having surgeries.  So they are used across an entire range.  What we’re talking about here when we talk about PEMFs in the way we’re talking about or describing a FlexPulse is we’re talking about low magnetic fields.  Low frequency being less than let’s say, a hundred thousand hertz.

Ben:  Okay, and to put that into perspective, what would a cellphone generate if a PEMF device would generate a hundred thousand hertz?

Dr. Pawluk:  Gigahertz, megahertz.

Ben:  Okay.

Dr. Pawluk:  So millions and billions of hertz.

Ben:  Okay.

Dr. Pawluk:  Now the body, when you go back to the way the FlexPulse was designed, it was designed primarily to be able to provide frequencies to the body that are essentially resonant with the frequencies of the brain itself or the body itself, primarily.

Ben:  What’s that mean for something to be resonant with the signals from the brain or the body?

Dr. Pawluk:  That it is basically, if you have people singing in harmony that is resonant.  If I’m singing at a bass frequency or a base level that is resonant.  If I have two people singing at that same bass level if they’re in phased then they sound right if they’re out of phase they sound wrong.  So when you’re resonant then you’re basically in tuned with each other.  A good example actually is a radio.  An old analogue radio.  Not a digital.  Not a new radio system.  But where you actually have to turn a dial.  The radio waves from the radio stations are out in the atmosphere.  They’re all out there all the time.  When we tune in the dial, we’re taking the dial and putting it into a certain setting let’s say 110 on the FM dial.  When you put it on 110 then the radio waves in the atmosphere that resonate with 110 all of a sudden sort of lock in to 110 and you hear the station.  On that kind of dialing system, if you’re off by even just a small amount there’s a lot of fuzz.  You don’t hear it clearly.  And you jiggle the dial just a little bit one way or the other and all of a sudden you lock in the signal, that’s resonance.

Ben:  Okay.  Got it.  So when we’re using something like a PEMF what that’s doing as opposed to like a harmful EMF, is it’s actually generating a signal that vibrates or is at a frequency that’s very similar to whatever cellular function that we’re trying to target with that signal whether it’d be a brain wave frequency for sleep or whether it’d be a frequency associated with cellular healing et cetera.

Dr. Pawluk:  Perfect.  Exactly.  So when you were sleeping, depending on the phase of sleep that we’re in like when we go into a very deep sleep about an hour to two hours into sleep we go in to something called Delta or slow wave sleep.  Slow wave sleep is somewhere between one to four hertz.

Ben:  Okay.

Dr. Pawluk:  One to four cycles per second.  So if you’re having trouble sleeping then that means that the brain is actually out of that range and most of the night we actually spend in Theta which is between five and eight hertz.  So when we’re not able to sleep or we’re even aware of our dreams or aware of sounds around us even our own breathing then we have escaped that level of sleep.  That level of frequency, so we may be up at nine or ten hertz instead.

So when you present the body with a frequency, let’s say three hertz or even seven hertz you’re bringing the brain wave, you’re tuning the brain to tune down to that frequency.  In other words, the frequency that were presented with the magnetic field goes right through the brain and it’s causing the brain to listen to the signal which is stronger than the energy produced by the brain itself or the frequencies produced by the brain.  So that means the brain will quiet down.

Ben:  Okay, so which program would that be if I’m using the FlexPulse?  Is that program one?

Dr. Pawluk:  Alright, so let’s go through the programs.  Program one is 10 hertz.

Ben:  Okay.

Dr. Pawluk:  Program two is 10 hertz plus 100 hertz.

Ben:  Well, backing up just a second like the program one 10 hertz, what does 10 hertz do?  What would be the main things that one would use 10 hertz for?           

Dr. Pawluk:  Ten hertz is used first of all in terms of the brain, 10 hertz is Alpha rhythm.  It’s a relaxation, meditation, daydreaming watching the soaps, not interacting, that’s 10 hertz.  But also it’s been found in NASA research to stimulate stem cells.  But it also stimulates all kinds of processes in the body.

Ben:  What do you mean to stimulate stem cells?

Dr. Pawluk:  Well, they did a study at NASA where they took a stem cell culture of nerve stem cells and they grow these cultures and they have what they call controlled conditions so they have a culture that is growing on its own, naturally.  And then you have a culture that’s getting various kinds of stimulation.  So if you stimulate a stem cell culture with a 10 hertz square wave signal then all of a sudden you get a 400% increase in the production of stem cells in that culture.

Ben:  That’s amazing.  I’d no clue that research existed.  Do you think if you shot that over to me that I could imbed that in the show notes for today’s show?

Dr. Pawluk:  I sure can.

Ben:  Okay.  Cool.  I love to put little studies for people to discuss that are interesting like that.  So basically, these alpha brain nerves that’s programmed 10 hertz can stimulate stem cells, I believe you mentioned that it is the same frequency that is stimulating when one is watching the soaps?  Is that what you said?

Dr. Pawluk:  Yes, when you’re really not engaged.  You’re not excited.  You’re just watching.

Ben:  Okay. Good. We can tuck this one away for one watching the soaps.  I know a lot of our fans watch soap operas on TV?  Fantastic.  [Laughs]

Dr. Pawluk:  [Laughs] Right.

Ben:  [Laughs] Good.  We got that base covered.  Okay, so its alpha brain wave frequency is what this would promote.  We know it could help with stem cell production.  When else would someone use something like a 10 hertz frequency?

Dr. Pawluk:  Well, if you want to relax but you don’t want to go to sleep.

Ben:  Okay.  So you wouldn’t use this for sleep.  You would use it more for stress at work, that type of thing?

Dr. Pawluk:  Exactly.  There’s another program.  Program 4 that you could use for relaxation as well but 10 hertz is what we call Alpha rhythm and kids with ADD or ADHD, they love 10 hertz.  Their brains love 10 hertz.  So 10 hertz is less stabilizing frequency to the brain.  It’s kind of neutral.  Kind of neutral frequency for the brain.

Ben:  Okay.  Got it.  What about circadian rhythmicity in jet lag?  From what I understand 10 hertz may be helpful with that but I’m not sure if there’s any actual research out there.

Dr. Pawluk:  Oh, there’s actually some excellent research that was originally done in Germany in bunkers where they took people and eliminated the environment from them completely.  Temperature, pressures, circadian rhythm, light rhythms, and so on.  So they lived in these bunkers for months at a time and inside the bunkers they measured their circadian rhythms and discovered that when you black out the surrounding influences of the environment they became dysrhythmic.  That was their circadian rhythms went out of rhythm and they started having all kinds of health issues.  When they reintroduced all kinds of frequencies back into that environment they discovered 10 hertz stabilized and restored circadian rhythm.     

Ben:  Oh, wow.  Interesting.  So this is something that you would use, would you want it touching your head?  Let’s say if I were to fly, what’s my next flight? I’m going to Costa Rica.  When I arrive in Costa Rica, would I then wear it touching the body?  Would I use it on the plane?  When would be the best time to use that frequency do you think?

Dr. Pawluk:  Flying is good probably for most [0:20:31.3] ______ the end of a trip because your rhythms are changing continuously through that trip.

Ben:  Okay.

Dr. Pawluk:  So you kind of want to end up at the end of your trip ‘cause that’s where the major adjustment of the body has to happen it’s at the end of the trip.  You could use it during the trip, no problem with that either.

Ben:  Yeah, I actually have one device.  I interviewed these folks from a company called NesHealth and they have a device.  It’s kind of a mix of a PEMF and transcutaneous nerve stimulation and that one actually has a setting on called airplane mode that generates a frequency that helps to mitigate some of the more harmful EMFs generated when one is on a plane and you actually have that on while you’re on the plane.  I’d never thought about using like a 10 hertz frequency during the actual flight itself but I’ll be curious if that would make any difference.  But what you’re saying is that in a lot of these studies they’re using it after the body’s been exposed to the circadian disruption?

Dr. Pawluk:  Disruption.  Yeah.  But you can use it throughout, so either way.  In fact, I know many people who use it on a flight because they get back pain or if you’re flying trans-Atlantic I call it flying delta.  I actually use my battery-operated FlexPulse and put it at the back of my neck and I run it through the whole time that I’m flying.

Ben:  You mean, Delta brain waves not Delta the airline?

Dr. Pawluk:  [Laughs] That’s right.

Ben:  I see what you did there.  Okay.  Got it.  Okay, so 10 hertz we know that would be good for stem cell production for neuro stem cells.  We know it would be good for focus especially if you were in a stressed out state.  We know it would be good for jet lag after you’ve gotten to where you’re travelling, not necessarily for sleeping on the plane because for that you’d want to use the Delta brain wave frequency but for specifically helping out with circadian disruption.  And then we move on to program two on this thing.

And before we move on to program two, what I’m curious about is when I’m looking at these FlexPulse you know, it’s basically like this little hand-held device with the white square coming off it, what is it that’s happening when I’m using this little white square that I place somewhere on my body or near my body?  What’s happening with this white square thing?  And I’ll put a picture on the show notes for those of you guys who want to see it.

Dr. Pawluk:  The white square is what we call our coil.    

Ben:  Okay.

Dr. Pawluk:  So how does the magnetic field, how is it produced?  It’s produced by running current through a wire.  When you run current through a wire, when it’s going in one direction, an electric current will produce a magnetic field around it.  All wires running current have a magnetic field around it.  So that wire goes out to that coil and that coil spreads out the amount of copper wiring that’s moving in this specific direction and that produces an even more concentrated magnetic field.  So the coil itself is what emits the magnetic field that’s used for therapy.

Ben:  Okay.  Does it matter which ‘cause there’s two sides of this square.  Does it matter which side that you use or which side’s touching your body?

Dr. Pawluk:  There’s some debate about that and there are many people who make claims about north versus south but when it comes to pulse magnetic fields, it really doesn’t matter.  There’s some theoretical physics that suggest that maybe some difference, but practically speaking to the body it doesn’t make any difference which direction you put it.

Ben:  Okay.  Did you design this thing, this FlexPulse?

Dr. Pawluk:  I didn’t design it but I had input into the design and it’s being manufactured by German manufacturer.

Ben:  Okay, and from what I understand, the main unique thing about it is the ability to choose different programs, different hertz frequencies and in addition to the portability.

Dr. Pawluk:  Well, there’s several important aspects to the FlexPulse.  One is what you just said.  The second is that it’s portable.  Now there’s battery-operated and you can recharge the battery very quickly.  Also these are nickel metal hydride batteries so they don’t have the risks that you have with these ion batteries, lithium ion.

Ben:  What do you mean?  What risks?

Dr. Pawluk:  Well, you know the lithium ion batteries can explode.

Ben:  Oh, okay.  I got you.  Got to be unpleasant on an airplane.

Dr. Pawluk:  It’ll be very [0:24:36.9] ______ what not onto your body because they get extraordinarily hot so they could burn you absolutely.

Ben:  That could throw off that good nod of sleep you’re looking for.

Dr. Pawluk:  Totally.  For a long time.  So it’s got the portability, it’s got multiple programs built into it.  It’s got a high enough magnetic field intensity to do the job.  Very low intensity magnetic fields don’t do as good a job based on a law of Physics called Faraday’s Law.  The higher the intensity of the magnetic field interacting with the ions in the body the larger the amount of charge production in the body.  You need charge to change.  You need charge to be able to change the cells of the body to be able to rebalance themselves and to heal.  So it’s got all of those attributes that you want in a device and probably the most important thing really is that it’s portable.  You can wear it.  You can walk around with it.  You don’t have to sit there plugged in to the wall to do your treatment.

Ben:  Right, which is what I really like about it.  I’m on the go so much.  I don’t have time for these giant devices that I’ve got to sit in a chair and wrap around your whole body.  So this FlexPulse, we know that program one produces this 10 hertz frequency and then program two, correct me if I’m wrong, it’s a hundred hertz?

Dr. Pawluk: No, it is a hundred hertz but actually it’s alternating every minute it changes frequency.  So for one minute it does 10 hertz then it flips over to 100 hundred hertz for a minute then it flips back to 10 and so on.  It keeps alternating throughout the whole time that you’re using it.  The reason for the 100 hertz is a lot of physical musculoskeletal research on culture cells, muscle cells, muscle preparations where they stimulate muscles in an ionic bath, frog muscles et cetera.  They’ve discovered that the ions flowing in and out of the cells work better at 100 hertz.  So there’s more repair work happening at 100 hertz than just 10 hertz so when you combine the two you tend to get much better stimulation of musculoskeletal issues.

Ben:  Okay, so right now I’m actually running program two with the square thing on my butt.  I won’t put a picture of that in the show notes, by the way, you guys.  And what that’s doing is that’s actually assisting with the hamstring repair and recovery specifically by allowing flow of nutrients and blood in and out of that area?

Dr. Pawluk:  It’s doing multiple things.  So number one its improving circulation as you said which brings in more nutrients.  It brings in more oxygen but it’s also reducing inflammation.  It’s reducing swelling so any muscle that’s strained, any tissue that’s strained or even broken torn has a lot of swelling around it and that’s one of the reasons athletes use ice.  Ice is actually a pretty useless therapy but it does get swelling down.  Unfortunately, it can also damage cell so you’re kind of trying to accomplish one thing but fortunately causing other side effects.

Ben:  Are you talking about the lymph fluid backflow that can occur with ice that would damage the cells?

Dr. Pawluk:  That too, but it also suppresses nerve cell function so that’s one of the reasons you feel less pain with ice because the nerves are in a sense become deadened temporarily.

Ben:  Now I’ve actually used that to my advantage before, not to bring us down too deep of a rabbit hole.  I’ve used electrical muscle stimulation which is different from PEMF and also 10’s which is more nerve stimulation.  And I’ve actually take those electrodes and I learned this from a Tour D’ France physician.  He would put something like a topical magnesium on an area so the signal from the electrodes drove the magnesium deeper into the tissue and then he would cover it up with ice to allow for the nerves to be deadened so that the higher frequency could be delivered.  Being kind of using that deadening of nerves to his advantage.  What’s your take on a strategy like that?

Dr. Pawluk:  Magnetic fields trump that.

Ben:  Okay, so you just say use magnetic fields instead of using the ice plus the EMFs?

Dr. Pawluk:  Right, because magnetic fields automatically decrease the irritability of nerves.

Ben:  Oh, really?

Dr. Pawluk:  Right away.  Yes.  So you have all these other multiple actions happening simultaneously with the magnetic field so you really don’t need any other therapy.  I’ll give you a story.

My wife broke her little toe.  The toe was angled out from her foot.  I knew as a doctor, I knew it was broken.  I’ve seen that many times and she refused to have an x-ray so okay, fine.  Let’s treat it as a broken toe.  So we body taped it, put her in what we call a platform shoe, a flat shoe so she couldn’t bend her toes.  She started the magnetic therapy the FlexPulse 24/7 so this happened around noon, the next morning she woke up no swelling, no bruising and no pain.

Ben:  Holy cow.

Dr. Pawluk:  She continued it for another 24 hours and the following morning of course, there was no swelling, no bruising et cetera, she walked a mile in tennis shoes.  Did it for another 24 hours and walked three miles in tennis shoes.  And that was basically the end of the story.      

Ben:  Now, I know that some people are going to kind of like have an eyebrow raised because you operate a website that sells PEMF devices, and so I’m just going to jump in there and play devil’s advocate.  Is there some kind of like third party independent website, I mean I know there’s PubMed obviously and I’m going to link to some research in the show notes but the kind that keeps track of a lot of these research that’s been done on PEMFs in addition to case studies that you’ve just outlined which are helpful.  Is there like good peer-reviewed independent research on this stuff?

Dr. Pawluk:  Oh, there’s actually tons and most of it unfortunately, is in textbooks which are very difficult to access and very expensive.  There is a website that is in Germany, I’d have to find it for you.  I think it’s called Achen, A-C-H-E-N.

Ben:  Okay.  I’ll find it.  I’m a good detective.  I can sleuth it down and put it.  I just like to give people independent research as well but that’s fascinating about your wife. That makes me want to keep this thing on my butt all day long.  For at least 24 hours.  And so that’s pulsing between 10 hertz and 100 hertz and that’s primarily for muscle repair and for tissue healing.  For the athletes listening in, that’s kind of like the money program to use.

Dr. Pawluk:  For masculoskeletal, yes.  Now, virtually any program that you use is going to help, regardless. 

Ben:  Yeah, but if you were falling asleep you wouldn’t want to use like a thousand hertz frequency, would you?

Dr. Pawluk:  A thousand hertz probably is not bad but what wouldn’t probably be a good idea would be to use program five which is the alerting program.

Ben:  Okay, we’ll get to that one on a second but let’s not jump over three and four.  What would be three be used for?

Dr. Pawluk:  So program three is my go-to sleep program.  It’s Delta.

Ben:  And what hertz frequency is that?

Dr. Pawluk:  Three hertz.

Ben:  Okay.

Dr. Pawluk:  Now we decided not to put ranges of frequencies into this system.  And the reason for that is my own experience with sound light machines over the years and other kinds of devices where the machine is actually trying to cause your body to do what body might normally do.  The problem is the timing of what your body would do and what the machine is doing may not actually coincide.  So to me trying to do this for the body is basically a bit like training wheels.  You know, you start off with training wheels but you don’t want to keep using them but what do you give up on training wheels?  Instead, if you supply the body with one frequency it will do what it wants to around that frequency.  It will ramp down as fast as it wants to or as slow as it wants to.  It’ll ramp back up again as the light comes in the room.  The light coming in the room may defeat the suppressing stimulation to the brain by the magnetic fields.  So giving one hertz makes it simple for the body.

Ben:  Okay.  This is just the three hertz.  Now in addition to sleep would there be anything else that one would use three hertz for or that you’ve seen research that would show to be beneficial for?

Dr. Pawluk:  Primarily, for sleep but again anything that slows any process down.  So if you have a lot of really significant irritability from muscle pain or nerve pain and it’s making you very irritable let’s say a sharp aching pain, you might want to use three hertz, ‘cause that would again slow everything down from a frequency perspective in the body.

Ben:  Okay.

Dr. Pawluk:  You don’t have to but you might find that three hertz may actually, for a while for some period of time may work better than say, seven hertz or 10 hertz.

Ben:  Got it.  And you put this under your pillow or else you ensure that square piece is actually touching your head?

Dr. Pawluk:  Usually, I put it under my pillow but if I’m really struggling even with that to sleep, I will just put it under my head.

Ben:  Okay, got it.  Perfect.  Okay, cool.  This is really helpful to walk through this because I’ve always kind of been curious about which frequencies do what, so.  Number four.  What would number four be?

Dr. Pawluk:  So program four is what we call the Schumann Resonance.

Ben:  Okay, that relates to like the earthing and the grounding that I talked about earlier, right?  Isn’t that the frequency emitted by the planet Earth?

Dr. Pawluk:  Well, and that’s a misconception as well.  So yes, that’s considered the average resonance of the planet but it isn’t even the planet, so there’s a distinction between the planet and the environment of the planet, if you will.  There is a magnetic field produced by the planet itself which is a stationary magnetic field and that’s about a half a gauss on average.  So that’s to be a static field.  It doesn’t move, it doesn’t change a whole lot.  But there are other frequencies that are in the ionosphere that are generated by lightning storms around the planet.  The ionosphere is basically a cavity.  In a sense, you could imagine that the frequencies produced by lightning anywhere in the planet ends up reverberating in that chamber.  In that ionosphere cavity.  And because the frequencies are so low, a three hertz frequency is thousands of miles long.

Ben:  Oh, wow.

Dr. Pawluk: So a lightning storm in Sri Lanka is actually going to be felt in North America within seconds.

Ben:  That’s amazing.  And that’s all based off the hertz frequency that’s produced by the lightning storm?

Dr. Pawluk:  Exactly.

Ben:  And that hertz frequency is one single hertz, like 7.8 hertz you’re talking about or range?

Dr. Pawluk:  So there you go.  That’s the key question when you talk about the earth’s frequencies.  7.8 hertz is considered to be the average Schumann resonance but actually there’s about six different Schumann resonance spikes.

Ben:  Okay.

Dr. Pawluk:  Alright, so the brain is tuned to… so here is the connection between the brain and the Schumann resonances or the ionospheric resonance patterns.  They’re all generally within the frequency pattern of the brain so the ionospheric frequencies are what actually tunes the brain to function the way it is.  So Biology, if you imagine this that Biology on this planet depending on one’s perspectives biblically, the Biology on the planet has been here for hundreds of millions of years, billions of years.  It’s evolved with all of that electromagnetic stimulation.  So our brains actually evolved because of that cavity and the effects of the atmosphere in that cavity.  If we leave the planet and go to Mars we’re no longer in the atmosphere of the earth.  We can become significantly dysregulated because we no longer have those kinds of frequencies that are naturally part of our Biology.

Ben:  I got you.  Interesting.  Now would this be the same thing as what is referred to as geomagnetic fields when we’re talking about the different magnetic fields produced by the planet?

Dr. Pawluk:  This is one of the geomagnetic fields, correct.

Ben:  Okay.  Alright.  Got it.  Now what do you think about these earthing mats or grounding mats that people use?    

Dr. Pawluk:  I think they work very well.  I think the body definitely needs stimulation of different kinds.  I think our biology again going back millions of years or even more recently, a hundred thousand years is used to us sleeping on the ground basically.  So that we’re closer to the actual earth itself.

Ben:  Uhm.

Dr. Pawluk:  Don’t forget the soils themselves are emitting all kinds of frequencies because of all the minerals in them.

Ben:  Yeah.  Well, even the human body from what I understand, we have certain amounts of the mineral, I believe it’s called magnetite in the human body that also helps to transmit frequency throughout the body.

Dr. Pawluk:  Absolutely, we have probably a billion magnetite particles per gram of brain.

Ben:  Oh, wow.

Dr. Pawluk:  So the brain itself then is a huge receiver transmitter.

Ben:  Interesting.

Dr. Pawluk: Because of the magnetite… so the magnetite is basically like crystals.  It’s like the radio crystals.  Crystals in a radio set?

Ben:  But do we need to consume magnetite or can our bodies produce that based on a wide range of minerals that we just consume ourselves?

Dr. Pawluk:  Oh, the body naturally produces it right from birth.

Ben:  Okay.  I got you.  So you’re body actually produces.

Dr. Pawluk:  Once it’s made it’s made.

Ben:  Got it.  So you can’t leach it.  You can’t like sweat out magnetite or leach it as you could other minerals?

Dr. Pawluk:  No, you can’t.

Ben:  Interesting.

Dr. Pawluk:  It’s actually a complex mineral.

Ben:  Interesting.  Yeah, a lot of people aren’t aware of that specific mineral being so prevalent in the human body.

[Music Plays]

Ben:  Hey, I want to interrupt today’s show to tell you about Thrive.  This podcast is actually brought to you by Thrive Market and I’m weird but I’ve been actually dumping their coconut flake cereal into my smoothie each morning so that I can sit there with a big goofy smile on my face like I’m a child eating cereal but with none of the guilt effects of Coco Pebbles or Peanut Butter Captain Crunch which is what I used to eat and then I’d sip up that sugary milky mess that remained afterwards in the bowl.  Thrive Market also makes the coconut wraps that I use.  These amazing sprouted nuts, I especially like their Macadamia nuts.  They’re amazing.  They keep you going for very long periods of times.  They’ve got spirulina.  They’ve got chlorella.  They’ve got everything you’d ever want in terms of like superfoods, pantry foods, healthy foods.  It’s all there at Thrive Market.  It’s like Costco for everything healthy except you don’t have to buy a giant ass piece of pizza as you’re walking out the door nor is nobody there to check your receipt to make sure you’re not stealing anything like they have at Costco.  With the giant highlighter.  They don’t have that.  But they have everything else.  Paleo, gluten-free, vegan, raw, non-GMO, organic even fair trade.  It’s all over at Thrive Market and you get sixty bucks of free organic groceries now.  How?  Easy.  Just go to thrivemarket.com/ben.  You’ll never have to pay full price for healthy food again, thrive market.com/ben.

Also, very quick note here, you may be familiar with The Art of Charm Podcast, my friend Jordan Harbinger actually was a host of that podcast and I’ve had him on this show before.  Amazing wealth of knowledge and he’s been podcasting for almost a dozen years.  He’s like one of the OGs of podcasting and he has a lot of very interesting tips and tricks and experiences.  He’s done a thousand interviews.  He’s learned five languages.  He’s gotten arrested in a country that doesn’t even exists anymore.  His name is Jordan.  Jordan Harbinger.  Now The Art of Charm podcast is what he was doing and that show he’s no longer doing.  He has a new show called The Jordan Harbinger Show.  He’s my friend.  I wanted to give his show a shout out, it’s called The Jordan Harbinger Show.  He teaches like what to do in a crisis and how to cultivate resilience and grit.  And how to handle uncertainty and instability and how to protect your mind set so you’re always performing.  At the top of your game.  Lots of practicals.  Lots of practicals.  I like his stuff.  He’s a good guy.  So anyways, how do you get access to his fantastic show?  You just search for The Jordan Harbinger Show.  H-a-r-b-i-n-g-e-r, Jordan Harbinger, find him in Apple podcast.  Goggle him.  Goggle The Jordan Harbinger Show.  Find him on Podcast One app.  Anywhere find podcast are found.  The Jordan Harbinger show.  Check it out.  That is kind of like the replacement for that Art of Charm podcast.  Alright, back to the show.

Ben:  So ultimately, coming full circle. The average of the environmental frequencies that are produced around us come out to about this 7.8 or 7.83 hertz and from what I understand that specific hertz frequency rather than being associated with the delta produced by program, three which should be three hertz, this specifically is associated with more of a theta brain wave frequency which should be more like from what I understand what you’d use for learning, for focus, for memory, for creativity et cetera?                                   

Dr. Pawluk:  Your Theta is the primary frequency that we are in when we fall asleep.

Ben:  But isn’t it also something that you come across like I know a lot of infants and young children when they’re awake they’re mostly in theta and for what I understand like theta actually is a brain wave that you’re in trying to put massive amounts of information into the brain as well.  Is that correct?

Dr. Pawluk:  When you try to put massive amounts of information in the brain you’re not actively learning.  You’re passively learning.

Ben:  Okay, so what you’re saying is well, I’m confused now.  Would you actually have this device in delta program three while asleep for relaxation?  Or in theta program four so that you get all of the learning benefits that passively occur while you’re asleep because we know that memory formation and some neural healing occurs during sleep?

Dr. Pawluk:  So you’re right.  Why we chose this specific frequency like three hertz is because the brain even maximum stimulation to the brain at three hertz does not create three hertz throughout the entire brain.  Different parts of the brain are functioning at various frequencies.  So you might only have say maybe 10% of your brain at three hertz and other parts of the brain are at whatever frequencies they happen to be at.  There are parts of your brain when you’re sleeping that are 23 hertz.  There are parts of the brain that are at seven hertz.  There are parts that are 10 hertz but you try to do is to increase the general amount by a certain percentage but even a 5% or a 10% increase in the amount of delta in the brain is going to influence the brain in the direction of delta but it doesn’t eliminate theta and it doesn’t certainly eliminate all theta.

Ben:  Okay.  I got you.

Dr. Pawluk:  So you still have theta prevalent.

Ben:  So you would probably have it in delta frequency then if you were asleep?

Dr. Pawluk:  That’s what I use and that’s what I call anchoring the brain.

Ben:  What would be a time that you’d use program four then?

Dr. Pawluk:  So program four can be used because it’s theta, it can be used as you said for learning purposes when you try to do a brain dump.  You’re listening into a lecture and you’re not trying to pay attention.  Trying to listen to a lecture which is high density information.  So the best thing to do when it’s that way, when the information is just thatyou’re drowning in the information…

Ben:  Uhm.

Dr. Pawluk:  Go, which is theta meditation and you’re completely assimilating that information and it’s going deep into your subconscious, and studies research has shown that people learn under theta.  So you could actually put on a magnet under your pillow on under theta and have a microphone under your pillow listening to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Ben:  Okay.  Interesting.  Cool.

Dr. Pawluk:  When you do questionnaires the next day, when you do a study or ask questions the next day based on the information you give them, they won’t remember the specific details but they will remember the concepts and they can answer conceptual questions about the information they receive but not the detail.  This is what happens in childhood that’s why most of us can’t remember much beyond about age five because as you said we’re mostly in theta.  So we’re receiving all these information, we’re learning, we’re reacting, we’re growing mentally, cognitively, psychologically, emotionally but at the same time we have a hard time remembering the detail of what happened to us.         

Ben:  Okay.  Interesting.

Dr. Pawluk:  So once you get to about age seven or eight then you start to flip over into more and more beta when you’re alert and awake.  And less and less theta.

Ben:  Okay.  Got it.  So we’ve got program one which would basically be that 10 hertz frequency that would be useful for the Alpha brainwave zone.  We’ve got program two which fluctuates between 10 and 100 hertz for muscle healing.  Program three which is three hertz for the delta frequency.  Program four 7.8 hertz for the Schumann resonance or for learning acquisition or for theta and then what is program five?

Dr. Pawluk:  Okay, sorry look, let me back up and make one more point about program four.

Ben:  Okay.

Dr. Pawluk:  Theta is also used for meditation.  Most people who do a lot of meditation go into theta.  New meditators novice meditators who don’t meditate very often are more likely to be in alpha, low alpha than they are in theta.  But really good people do a lot of meditation usually dip into theta.

Ben:  Got it.  So this would be something else.  I could for example, have and it doesn’t have to be touching my body, right?  It could just be near my body while I am meditating or while I am you know, if I were doing like a transcendental session or something like that, I could just literally have it near my body somewhere.

Dr. Pawluk:  Preferably, as close to your body as possible.

Ben:  Okay.  Got it.  Alright, how about program five.  What’s this one do?

Dr. Pawluk:  So program five is 23 hertz.  23 hertz is beta.  So beta is anywhere between 13 hertz and probably around 50 or 60 hertz.  So in Europe 23 hertz was designed to be harmonic with electro smog which is primarily around 50 hertz in Europe.  So we chose it for that reason because of the electro smog balancing effect or counteracting effect but the primary value of the 23 hertz is that it’s beta.  So beta as alert consciousness.  Right now, you are in beta.  I’m in beta.  Most of the people who are listening are going to be in beta if they’re actively listening, if they’re actively learning.  So beta is alertness.

Ben:  Okay.

Dr. Pawluk:  So this is a program that you’re using if you want to do a paper.  If you’re studying.  If you want to do some long distance driving and you’ve got to stay awake.  Then that’s a good program to use.  It’s a good program to use, program one and program five are good programs to use for people who are really depressed or really slowed down by say, pain is causing them to be just dopey.

Ben:  Now I would imagine if you tend to be anxious or irritable or even like before bedtime you probably wouldn’t use this frequency.

Dr. Pawluk:  You should not.  I don’t recommend it although I know people who do fall asleep even with program five but still yes, my general recommendation is you don’t want to wake the brain up, you want to slow the brain down.

Ben:  Now if you we’re getting ready for athletic performance or for a workout, would you rather go with this or would you rather go with something more Alpha brainwave related?

Dr. Pawluk:  That’s going to be a matter of trial and error.  So every physiology is going to react differently so some people need to really focus.  Like for example, if you’re shooting a rifle or arrows then you might want to use beta.

Ben:  I do a lot of shooting so this would be something I could use before my bow shooting sessions.

Dr. Pawluk:  So you could do that?  Otherwise, yes program one would be actually be very good alpha.  Allows you to relax and be more focused without having the brain be as distracted.

Ben:  Okay.  Got it.  Interesting.  Okay, so this one would be basically beta stimulation and what’s the hertz frequency again for beta stimulation?

Dr. Pawluk:  This one happens to be 23 hertz.

Ben:  23 hertz, okay.  Alright.  Cool.  Now before we move on to the next program, I did have another kind of question for you just based on PEMF in general.  Is it true that you can target specific cells or organs with specific frequencies, like we’ve been talking about body effects but what about let’s say, I’m just going throw this highly medical term out there, a sluggish liver, right?  Like some people they don’t produce enough gallbladder bile or they tend to need a liver detoxification or some people need more let’s say, peristalsis in the gut because they are constipated or some people might for example, want to target cardiovascular tissue for example.  Is there any evidence that certain PEMF frequencies can literally affect different cells and different organs?

Dr. Pawluk:  That’s really a really important and good question.  So the most important aspect of answering that question is what’s the target? In other words, what are you trying to accomplish?  Every cell in the body has 2,000 biochemical processes happening every second all over the body.  A hundred trillion cells have 2,000 chemical processes happening every second.  Every one of those chemical processes has minerals and other metabolites that are constantly in motion.  Every metabolite in a sense has its own frequency.  So what I found as I reviewed the literature, the magnetic field literature and specifically in treating specific tissues or specific conditions is all over the place.  And there is no such thing as a map of every tissue, every molecule and the magnetic fields are the best for it.  For example, there’s a concept called Ion Cyclotron Resonance.  As some magnetic therapy devices have been developed and are FD approved for healing bone using that concept.  But they found that for stimulating calcium ions there are at least five or six frequencies that do that and there may well be more because the research is limited in how many comparisons can be made.  And then on top of that engineering device from one engineering department or facility to another one will produce a different result ‘cause it does not produce exactly the same using the same minerals, using the same base components that you’re going to have a different machine, fundamentally.  So making comparisons across machines and frequencies and tissues becomes almost impossible.

Ben:  Okay.

Dr. Pawluk:  So anybody who makes a claim that you use this frequency for this organ and that’s the only thing you ever need to do, it hasn’t read the signs.

Ben:  Sounds to me like if the geomagnetic fields and environmental fields generate based off what you’ve just said not just one frequency but a whole host of natural frequencies that one of the best things someone could do would be to spend a lot of time outside hiking, climbing up trees, hanging out on rocks, walking barefoot on a variety of different surfaces and getting exposed to as many different frequencies as possible.

Dr. Pawluk:  Absolutely, and this is where the concept of if you don’t use it, you lose it comes in.  People who lay in bed all day long atrophy.

Ben:  Yeah, or even just people who sit in an office all day long without ever getting outside.  Sometimes when I ask people, when was the last time you actually were barefoot on the planet?  Many people don’t even remember especially people who don’t live on coastal areas or is on the beach where you might be walking around with your shoes off, you know, for me out in Spokane, Washington in the winter, I have to make it a point and I do make it a point like one of the things I try to do every day is touch the earth.  Which can be kind of uncomfortable when it’s snowing outside but at the same time like I think it’s a great goal to go through every single day trying to get in touch with a tree or a rock as woo-woo and hippie as that sounds you know, there actually is probably a frequency effect that you’re getting as well.

Dr. Pawluk:  Or a combination of frequencies.

Ben:  Yeah, exactly, a combination of frequencies is exactly which is what I was getting at, you know what, expose yourself to as many different frequencies as possible if there are native frequencies, ideally.

There’s a good movie about this.  I think it’s called the Grounding Effect or the Earthing Effect where they go into this specific city.  I think it was up in Alaska or something like that where there’s a whole bunch of people that were sick and that were injured and one of the first things they started doing was just getting people to like sleep outside and walk outside and I believe there’s some anecdotes there about like burying yourself in the dirt or the sand for therapy.  I’ll try and hunt it down and put it in the show notes for folks but yeah, there’s definitely something to be said for getting outdoors, too.  You don’t just have to purchase fancy biohacking devices.  No what about, speaking of fancy biohacking devices, program six on this thing?  From what I understand, that thing is just like an enormously high frequency.  Is that correct?

Dr. Pawluk:  So that was designed into the machine because of a study done in Boston, one of the Harvard University hospitals.  They discovered when they were doing magnetic [0:54:29.9] ______ studies on the brain that people with depression all of a sudden felt better and this is not really an MRI but it is magnetic resonance and as a result of that experience they designed a device to treat what they called acute depression.  When you have depression and you get put on medication for depression it can take anywhere between two to six weeks for the depression to be improved by the medication, if it even works.  What happens though, is that during that six weeks you’re very vulnerable to suicide.  So they did this study with this particular system which was 1,000 hertz and discovered that there was…

Ben:  A thousand hertz?

Dr. Pawluk:  1,000 hertz.  1,000 hertz seemed to help acute depression.  So a new onset depression not a depression that’s sort of been there for a long time or that has undergone all kinds of medical therapies and which didn’t work.  So this is really for somebody who acutely became depressed so you could consider or conceive that it could be helpful for people who are going through grief.  Someone who just lost somebody recently.  That it could be very helpful for grief.

Ben:  What about for that again, kind of a rabbit hole, what about for pets?  Like one of my dogs just died and the other dog Comet, he seems kind of sad, kind of down, I’m curious if there’s been any research on PEMF on pets?  Like if I could hang the FlexPulse and set at a hundred or a thousand hertz frequency around his neck for a little while.

Dr. Pawluk:  So what you could do is to actually experiment a little bit and try different frequencies.  A thousand hertz could be the right frequency for the dog but also 10 hertz may actually be better or seven hertz may actually be better.  Again, depression is probably more likely to respond better to 23 hertz program five.

Ben:  I thought you just said a thousand hertz was better for depression?

Dr. Pawluk:  Well, I said for that particular study they showed that a thousand hertz was effective for acute depression in that particular study.

Ben:  Okay.

Dr. Pawluk:  So you have to sort of understand how people were chosen for this study and you know, and so on so how it might affect individuals.  The most important thing about PEMFs in my mind is use it.  And see what works best for you.  It’s very hard to go wrong except for the rules we just discussed.  It’s probably not a good idea to use program five at night.  It’s probably not a good idea to be using program three when you’re driving.

Ben:  Yeah, good points.  We don’t want all of our tractor drivers and semi-truck drivers listening in to fall asleep on the road or to over stimulate themselves.  That could also be dangerous.

Dr. Pawluk:  Yeah, you don’t want them to be in theta.

Ben:  Right, exactly.  No semi-truck drivers should be in theta.  So how about when we’re talking about PEMF and I guess, what you’d say would be like conjunctive therapies with things that could be done hand in hand.  We talked about minerals for example, the body has magnetite in it but what about anything else from like a supplementation standpoint whether it be magnesium to assist with cellular activity or electrolytes to enhance the ability of the cells to maintain their normal electrochemical gradient, I mean, are there certain things that you like from a supplementation standpoint that could enhance the effects of PEMF?

Dr. Pawluk:  Well, most of the effects of PEMFs probably a large percentage of the effects of PEMFs work through calcium.   

Ben:  Okay.

Dr. Pawluk:  The calcium channels inside the cell.  And calcium rides along with magnesium.  And you have to have the right balance between calcium and magnesium.  People usually have enough calcium but many people often don’t have enough magnesium.  So if there’s a supplement that could be added and be very helpful it would be magnesium.

Ben:  Now, would there be any effect like I just described earlier of actually using like a topical magnesium and placing the PEMF device over the topical magnesium?  To like drive it more deeply into the tissue.

Dr. Pawluk:  That applies to that concept.  It’s an excellent concept and that applies to virtually anything you want to have absorbed into the body.

Ben:  Okay.

Dr. Pawluk:  So whether it’s a cream including a steroid cream it could be MSM.  It could be almost any nutrients.  It could be [0:58:53.5] ______ the oil. 

Ben:  Okay.  Interesting.

Dr. Pawluk:  Because magnetic therapy increases circulation in the tissues that you’re stimulating when you increase circulation, you increase self-permeability and that means you do get better access of nutrients into the tissues.  Magnetic field therapy has also been discovered to actually stimulate collagen production.

Ben:  Interesting.  So you’re saying that you could use something like this for example, in areas of cellulite or scar tissue?

Dr. Pawluk:  Yes, scar tissue especially.  Cellulite is different because it’s primarily fat and water that’s kind of localized in certain parts of the body.

Ben:  Generally, poor areas of collagen formation too because you tend to have weak areas of skin in the areas of cellulite.

Dr. Pawluk:  So all of those factors then become impacted by the PEMFs and again the results were varied based on the person and how far they have to go to get back in the balance.

Ben:  Okay.  Got it.

Dr. Pawluk:  Probably the most important thing that you can do to improve the ability of this, you see, the goal of PEMFs is to increase charge in tissue.  Charge is energy.  PEMFs increase ATP in the cell.  But as important as increasing ATP which a lot of therapies don’t do, they increase ATP but they don’t what we call hydrolyze the ATP.  They don’t turn the ATP into energy.  ATP by itself is not energy.  It’s a source of energy.  If you don’t have enough ATP you can’t produce enough energy but even if you have enough ATP you have to convert it to energy.  PEMFs do that because they activate the enzymes that break down the ATP into energy.  And PEMFs also help the enzymes that rebuild the ATP from ADP back into ATP.  So it recycles your ATP constantly.  Which is why muscles work better, longer and harder with magnetic field therapy.

Ben:  And any frequency can do that?

Dr. Pawluk:  Virtually any.    

Ben:  Very cool.  I was not aware of that.  That’s really interesting.  So ATP regeneration is something that can actually occur when you’re exposing the body to these biomagnetic fields.

Dr. Pawluk:  So hydration is one of the most important things you could do because hydration then determines the amount of charge you could produce in.

Ben:  Yeah, hydrating with like good mineral-rich water like, you know, I use not that I structure my water but I add lots of electrolytes and minerals to it so that that goes hand in hand with PEMF.

Dr. Pawluk:  And PEMFs as you said restructure water.

Ben:  I like it.  It’s all about getting back to nature, right?  So get outside.  Get out in the sunshine.  Get exposed to infrared rays from the sun.  Drink some good water while you’re out there.  Touch the planet but if you’re wanting to biohack things too, use like a PEMF device and drink structured water and ensure that you’re staying grounded even if when you’re living like a modern lifestyle.  So basically what all we’re doing is we’re trying to tap in to like ancestral wisdom by using some of this modern science.

Dr. Pawluk:  And it’s doing it in a stronger fashion than you can normally get.

Ben:  Now, what about complementary therapies?  Like are there any of the therapies that you as a physician like to use in conjunction with PEMF to enhance the results?

Dr. Pawluk:  Well, my own journey with magnetic field therapy started off with acupuncture.  As a physician, as a doctor I had a number of patients who had severe reactions to Ibuprofen.  They almost died from it.  And I said, this is crazy medicine.  So I said, I’ve got to do something different and I learned acupuncture at the UCLA School for physicians for professionals.  And after I learned acupuncture, I realized at that time in 1990 it’s very hard to get people then to do acupuncture.  So I found out about magnets at that time then that’s when I started using magnetics.  But I discovered as I was using the magnetics is the magnetics actually does acupuncture without putting needles into the body.

Ben:  What do you mean?

Dr. Pawluk:  Well, the acupuncture meridian system and acupuncture points are actually electrical points.  They’re electrically active points.  The meridian system, the acupuncture meridian system is a DC current system.  It’s electrical current DC.  And anytime you have a current and you have a magnetic field they interact.  So magnetic fields, PEMFs amplify and activate and energize and increase the flow of chi in the acupuncture meridians.  So you’re doing acupuncture every time you’re doing magnetic.

Ben:  So this is acupuncture without needles.  Now, do you need to actually target on specific meridians?  Meaning, when you go to an acupuncturist they’re placing those needles across specific meridians.  I actually, now that you’re saying this, this is sounding familiar because I interviewed again those same folks who make that device that I use on airplanes sometimes.  It comes with like a body scanner. That scans the areas of your body that it would be best to put that device up against for this kind of acupuncture without needles.  Do you have a way of deciding which meridians or which areas you’re going to place something like the FlexPulse over to get this acupuncture effect?

Dr. Pawluk:  The meridian system is a 24-hour system.  Any place on the body like right now you have the coil on your butt.  The magnetic field from that coil is large.  It’s about the size of a beach ball.  So even though you have the coil in one specific area which is probably about an inch and a half wide square, the magnetic field is a beach ball.

Ben:  So I’m hitting a lot more areas than just my upper hamstring.

Dr. Pawluk:  Just the specific area you’re targeting.  Correct.  That means you’re hitting all the meridians in that area at the same time.  So you don’t have to kind of worry about this point or that point.  If you’re doing magnetic therapy regularly you’re essentially stimulating the entire meridian system constantly.  And if you’re using a whole body magnetic system then you really truly are stimulating all of the meridians.

Ben:  What’s a whole body magnetic system?

Dr. Pawluk:  The one that I recommend is called the BioBalance.

Ben:  Is that also on your website along with the FlexPulse?

Dr. Pawluk:  Correct.

Ben:  Okay.  Cool.  And by the way, for those of you listening in, in just a minute I’ll give you a cool discount code that you can use on the FlexPulse.  The BioBalance I see that on your website.  It’s like a $2500 device and it’s like a mat that you lay down on?

Dr. Pawluk:  It’s got a pillow applicator, a smaller applicator and a whole body pad.

Ben:  So that’s how you would like whole body acupuncture without needles.

Dr. Pawluk:  That’s correct. And this device was designed to compete with other $5,000, $6,000, $7,000 whole body systems.

Ben:  Like what?

Dr. Pawluk:  Which are actually weaker than this one.  Do you want me to name names?

Ben:  Yeah, I don’t care.

Dr. Pawluk:  Alright, Bemer, IMRS, QRS those are like the three major ones that are out there in a big way.

Ben:  So these things are like $5,000 and this one does the same thing at half the cost? 

Dr. Pawluk:  A third of the cost.

Ben:  Oh, wow.  Cool.

Dr. Pawluk:  It’s actually five to ten times stronger.

Ben:  I like it.  I might look at these things up.

Dr. Pawluk:  And it has other utilities that the others don’t as well.  You can run it all night long.  It has a sleep setting like we do with the FlexPulse.

Ben:  Cool.  Very interesting.  And it’s safe to use?

Dr. Pawluk:  I use it all night long myself.

Ben:  ‘Till like lay down all night long?

Dr. Pawluk:  Absolutely.

Ben:  Interesting.  Is there any research, by the way on the safety of lying on a PEMF device all night long?

Dr. Pawluk:  Not directly.  There had been studies done with apes that have been exposed to magnetic fields relatively low intensity but higher intensity than the BioBalance for 24 hours a day for weeks without any side effects.

Ben:  Okay.

Dr. Pawluk:  There are safety studies with extremely high intensity magnetic fields.  At tens of thousands of pulses with Tesla level fields to the brain for days on end.  With no problems.

Ben:  Interesting.

Dr. Pawluk:  Electromagnetic field therapies are extraordinarily safe.

Ben:  Yeah, well for are the same therapies that are produced in the environment and people camp outside all night long,  I would imagine that this would not be an issue but for me personally…

Dr. Pawluk:  But these are stronger.

Ben:  I always test my sleep cycles.  These one’s that you get when you’re lying in the BioBalance are stronger?

Dr. Pawluk:  Yes.

Ben: You mean, it’s producing like the 1,000 hertz frequencies?

Dr. Pawluk:  That one, yes.  That one does have a thousand hertz.

Ben:  But couldn’t you just use it at the lower frequency levels if you wanted to play safe.

Dr. Pawluk:  Oh yeah.  There’s a sleep program.  There’s a recovery program.

Ben:  Okay.

Dr. Pawluk:  With the recovery program it’s like 10 hertz.

Ben:  Got it.  Okay.  Interesting.

Dr. Pawluk:  But it’s stronger than the earth’s magnetic field.

Ben:  Okay.

Dr. Pawluk:  The earth’s magnetic field is about half a gauss.

Ben:  Is there a way to measure whether or not something like this or non-native EMF is indeed creating cellular damage.  Is there a test that you can take or would you just measure inflammation or something like that.

Dr. Pawluk:  There really is no easy test for that.  And a lot of it again depends on the target you’re measuring.  Are you measuring calcium flows?  Are you measuring inflammation?  Are you measuring circulation?  What exactly are you measuring?  But most of the research that has been done with these things shows virtually no side effects.  The FDA considers magnetic therapy devices wellness devices for the most part.

Ben:  Okay.  Got it.

Dr. Pawluk:  That’s why most of them don’t have FDA approval.

Ben:  Okay.  Alright.  So if people want to see what this FlexPulse actually looks like, what I’ll do is I’ll link over to Dr. Pawluk’s website in the show notes.  You can also see this BioBalance device which I find intriguing.  I may have to try that one out.

Dr. Pawluk:  Yeah, that program has not been designed for the BioBalance so I imagine if people hold on and we can let you know.  You can let your listeners know when something becomes available.  It may not be as good a discount as the FlexPulse.

Ben:  Okay.  Alright.  Got it.

Dr. Pawluk:  We’ll let you know.

Ben:  Okay.  For now, you guys you can at least get a $200 discount on the FlexPulse and the code that you use on Dr. Pawluk’s website is Greenfield and I’ll put all that in the show notes.  I’ll also link to some of these studies that we talked about as well as any other studies that Dr. Pawluk sends me and I’ll put all those up at bengreenfieldfitness.com/pawluk P-a-w-l-u-k.

So it’s been very interesting.  We learned about the myths about grounding and acupuncture without needles and how to increase your stem cells and whole bunch more.  Very, very cool stuff, Dr. Pawluk.  Thanks for coming on the show and sharing all these stuff with us, man.

Dr. Pawluk:  It’s my pleasure.  I love talking about it as you can see.

Ben:  Yeah.  As I can hear.  Well, cool and I’ll just keep this thing running in my booty all day long.  Sounds like you’ve helped your wife out with her broken bones.  Maybe it’ll help me out with my hamy.

So and in the meantime, for those of you listening in bengreenfieldfitness.com/pawluk is where you can get the show notes that’s bengreenfieldfitness.com/p-a-w-l-u-k.  Until next time, I’m Ben Greenfield along with Dr. William Pawluk signing out from bengreenfieldfitness.com.  Have an amazing week.

 

 

Having healthy cells is not a passive process. Active, regular tuning-up of our cells is not only feasible, but also necessary to slow aging and reduce the risk of cell dysfunction. We are, after all, only as healthy as our cells. Imperceptible cell dysfunction that is not corrected early can lead to disease.

Some claim that fine-tuning of the cells can be done daily in only minutes, using something called “pulsed electromagnetic fields (PEMFs)”. So I figured I’d turn to an expert to find out whether or not this is really true.

Dr. William Pawluk, MD, MSc, my guest on today’s show, is a holistic doctor near Baltimore, MD. Previous academic positions at Johns Hopkins and University of Maryland. He is trained in acupuncture, homeopathy, hypnosis, and bodywork. He is considered the foremost authority on the use of Pulsed Electromagnetic Field (PEMF) therapy in North America, and has just completed a comprehensive book on healing with magnetic fields called “Power Tools for Health”.

This book describes what magnetic fields are, over 25 actions of magnetic fields in the body, how they work for over 50 health conditions, how to get one and how to use it. This is supported by over 500 scientific references and is the most authoritative, yet readable, book on the topic available to date. To help promote this healing concept, he has well over 50 radio, podcast, magazine and TV interviews combined. He has also been a co-host of a 2-hour holistic health radio show in Baltimore for 10 years.

During our discussion, you’ll discover:

-Why Ben wore a PEMF called the “Flexpulse” on his butt during the whole podcast… [00:05:55]

-The difference between harmful EMF and beneficial PEMF… [00:11:32] G

–NASA discovered about a 400% increase in neural stem cells and turned on about 160 genes that control growth and regeneration… [00:17:14]

–The fascinating effects of electric fields on circadian rhythmicity and jet lag (and which frequency you would want to use)… [00:19:18]

-Which PEMF frequency is best for increasing circulation and decreasing inflammation… [00:24:24]

-Dr. Pawluk’s favorite frequency for rapidly inducing sleep… [00:31:38]

-Why it’s a myth that the earth produces a frequency of 7.8Hz… [00:36:57]

-Whether it is true that certain body functions, cells or organs respond to specific frequencies… [00:49:30]

-Which frequency is best for depression… [00:54:20]

-Why you may want to consider using calcium and magnesium if you are doing PEMF… [00:57:18]

–What kind of “biohacks” or other modalities Dr. Pawluk likes to combine with PEMF… [01:02:02]

-And much more!

Resources from this episode:

-The Flexpulse (discount coupon worth $200 for the show – “greenfield”)

–The research on the use of PEMF for stem cells

–The effects of electric fields on circadian rhythmicity and jet lag

–Topical magnesium lotion

–The “NES” device Ben discusses

Sponsors for this episode:

-Thrive Market – Go to thrivemarket.com/ben to get $60 of free organic groceries now!

-Organifi – Visit organifi.com and use discount code “BEN” to receive 20% off your order!!

-Onnit – Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/ONNIT and save 10% on your purchase. The discount is built into the link.

-Bear Mattress – go to www.bearmattress.com today and use promo code POD50 for $50 off your purchase.