[Transcript] – Is Bluetooth Radiation Dangerous?

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Transcripts

Podcast from:  https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/lifestyle-podcasts/is-bluetooth-radiation-dangerous/

[00:00] Introduction

[02:29] Part One: Interview With Christian Smith

[06:07] The Tracking Device Christian Made

[08:35] What Christian Discovered When Producing This Device

[11:58] The Signals Bluetooth Devices Release

[17:05] Studies on Exposure to Bluetooth Radiation

[27:11] Measuring the Output of a Bluetooth Device

[29:35] Christian's Take On Wearables

[39:46] Part Two/Interview With Dr. Jack Kruse

[41:41] What Are We Dealing With When It Comes To Bluetooth Radiation

[50:28] The Bluetooth Transmitter Class In Wearables

[56:53] The Difference Between Power and Frequency

[1:07:04] When Do The Wearables Emit The Bluetooth Signal

[1:12:23] Bluetooth and Infertility

[1:15:41] Bluetooth Emissions

[1:25:38] End of Podcast

Ben:  Hey, folks.  Welcome to this two-part special edition of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.  I get so many questions about whether wearables and Bluetooth technologies and devices like the Fitbit and the Jawbone are actually healthy that I decided to dig a little bit for you.  Now the first interview that you're about to hear is with Christian Smith, who is with a company that uses Bluetooth technology, and you'll hear more about that during my interview with him.  And the second part of this podcast is with Dr. Jack Kruse, a neurosurgeon who specializes, among other things, in EMF and Bluetooth technology and their effects on the human body.

Now just a quick clarification before we jump in.  When I interviewed Christian, I hadn't actually planned on doing anything other than releasing my interview with Christian.  But because of a Facebook comment that I received from Jack in the days leading up to releasing the podcast with Christian, and you'll hear more about that in the podcast as well, I decided I wanted to give you a different perspective as well in this episode.  So listen in to part one and part two and be sure to leave your thoughts, your comments, and your feedback in the show notes at bengreenfieldfitness.com/bluetooth because not only do I have plenty of resources there, but I'm sure you may have some thoughts, some feedback, and some insight to bring to the table.  And when you leave your comment over there at bengreenfieldfitness.com/bluetooth, either myself, or Jack, or Christian will reply.  So thanks for listening and enjoy the episode.

Part I

Hey, folks.  It's Ben Greenfield.  And as a self-quantified biohacking nerd, or at least someone who's labeled as that by many folks, I think some people think that I walk around 24/7 constantly hooked up to wearable technology, self-quantifying everything I do from making coffee, to walking on the treadmill, to hugging my kids.  And that is not entirely the truth because there are things that myself and you need to think about when it comes to Bluetooth, and I get a lot of questions about electromagnetic frequencies, and cell phones, and wearables, and Bluetooth, and it seems like every day there are some new bracelet or piece of technology released that relies upon this technology of transmitting a signal.  So in today's podcast, myself and my guest, Christian Smith, are going to talk a little bit about his perspectives on the health of Bluetooth as the CEO of a company that relies quite a bit on Bluetooth technology and my perspectives and what I've found in my own search for that ultimate marriage between health, performance, and productivity.

So a little bit about Christian before I get in and ask him what he's found out so far in terms of what the FCC will allow in Bluetooth and what he's found out about the health of Bluetooth.  Christian is the founder at a company called Phone Halo, and I actually first met Christian at a barbecue event down in Santa Barbara where he told me about this special device that he had created that would allow you to find your valuable belongings, a tiny little tracker that you could put on things like cell phones, and keys, and pretty much anything else that you lose.  Or the Kindle that I recently left on an airplane, in which case I really wish that I had Christian's tracking device.  Anyways though, what Phone Halo does they publish mobile software that allows you to manage your valuable belongings by putting these, I believe they're GPS tracking devices on the actual objects that you want to track.  And Christian has a long history of working in communication and technology and the use of these Bluetooth low energy tags that allow you to tag and track certain objects.  So Christian will do a much better job, of course, explaining some of the more subtle nuances of what he does.  But Christian, thanks so much for coming on the call, man.

Christian:  Yeah.  Thanks so much, Ben, for having me.  It's a fun thing to talk about.  And like you said, I've misplaced so many things.  It was just time to make a really simple app that was able to be there when our brains weren't.  So we got that scenario of leaving something behind, something we loved to help people, especially travelers…

Ben:  The lost car key app, right?

Christian:  Yeah.  Lost car keys.  We recently just started doing bicycles.  So we can attach a little tracker to the bottom of a bicycle seat.  And if it should get stolen or misplaced, we have crowd GPS network.  So we have about five million people that would help you find that lost thing when it stolen.  And all someone has to do is walk within about 100 feet of your stolen bike, and then you get a GPS update of where the bike is.

Ben:  Wow.  That's amazing.  So in terms of this technology, these tracking devices, they're pretty small, right?

Christian:  Yeah.  It's not much larger than the size of two quarters stacked on top of each other.

Ben:  Right.  And so you could theoretically attach this not only to a bicycle, but also to something like car keys, or a cell phone, or I suppose even like a child, right?

Christian:  Yeah.  We typically recommend that people track things without legs, because when you drop them then it's easy to go back and find them there.  Most things with legs can run off afterwards and it's a lot harder to really get the benefit, but it could slip into a wallet.  It's so thin.  Or you can use a little sticker that it comes with to attach it to a computer, or the back of a Kindle, or a remote control.

Ben:  What's the strangest thing that you've ever seen one of these used for?

Christian:  Someone tethered them to their glasses, their reading glasses because they constantly misplace them.

Ben:  Well, I have these blue light blocker glasses that I wear that a lot of folks who are probably listening in heard of before, where you block the blue light and it keeps melatonin from getting suppressed before you go to bed at night.  So I'll wear these blue light blockers.  But it seems like once a week, I'm wandering around the house, shouting downstairs to my I wife, “Where are my glasses?”  So I can actually see that as being a useful use for this thing.  So the actual device is called “the Trackr”, right?  T-R-A-C-K-R?

Christian:  Yes.  That's correct.  Space R.  And our site if people want to check it out is thetrackr.com.

Ben:  Okay.  Got it.  So obviously we're talking a little bit more about the health of these things and the health of Bluetooth technology in general in our chat today.  And I'm curious for you, as the CEO of a company that relies upon Bluetooth technology as obviously a pretty integral part of its functioning and the use of Bluetooth technology in close proximity to the human body, what kind of things did you have to do and what kind of things did you learn from a health standpoint as a company utilizing Bluetooth technology?  Were there regulations?  Were people checking up on you to see what the signal that was being transmitted by your technology was releasing in relation to its effects on human health?  What kind of things did you discover?

Christian:  Yeah.  So it was a really fascinating process.  I mean my co-founder and I started the company in 2009.  So we've been at this for quite some time and we've been able to really do a lot of really great engineering and iterations.  And through that whole process, we would come up with the design, have it manufactured in China, and then import it into the US for people to use.  So during that process, we got to know a little bit about some of the FCC regulations.  The FCC is the governing body of our government, the US government, that makes sure that all of these wireless gadgets are playing nicely with each other because it'd be a real tragic thing to have your Bluetooth interfere with your TV and just start having your WiFi changing the channel when you're not [0:09:46] ______.  Or maybe you know interfering with, maybe if you're on a call, like a household wireless phone call, to have those two you fight each other, those two frequencies…

Ben:  Right.  Those two frequencies fight each other.  Okay.  Yeah, that makes sense.

Christian:  So they do a really great job of governing that.  And before you can import product, a Bluetooth product, you have to qualify that with the FCC.  And one thing that the FCC governs is the output power of the devices.  They're not going to basically let you import a microwave and then give it to consumers, something that could damage them.  The guidance that the FCC has set is around what's called a specific absorption rate.  And they have, the units there, just to kind of give the audience, it's a watts/kilogram, is the units there.  So it's an amount of power coming through an amount of weight.  So it's about 1.6 watts per kilogram is the most that any cell phone or WiFi device can broadcast.  And these Bluetooth devices are actually about a thousand times less than the specific absorption rate for a cell phone or a WiFi router.

Ben:  So we're talking about a level of radiation that's far less than a cell phone.  I'm curious in terms of the transmission.  So a cell phone does obviously constantly release a signal.  I'm curious if a Bluetooth constantly releases a signal as well.

Christian:  So a Bluetooth signal is, it's kind of like imagine if we had a tin can stretched between our houses, and I'm talking on one side and you're talking on the other.  WiFi or cell tower, they have a much higher data rate.  So you're going to get a much bigger, thicker string to get the clarity between our two tin cans, where Bluetooth is just a very thin string.  There isn't much data that needs to be passed back and forth.

Ben:  Right.  Got it.  Okay.  So there's not really a huge amount of data, there's not a huge amount of voice communication.  So that frequency is lower in terms of the actual frequency spectrum that's used by Bluetooth?

Christian:  So the frequency spectrum that's used by Bluetooth is the same as WiFi.  So Bluetooth is at 2.4 gigahertz.  It's a very high frequency, which is, it's a better, more optimal frequency for the human body rather than having something much lower.

Ben:  Okay.  Gotcha.  So we got some amount of radiation getting emitted by Bluetooth devices.  And to my understanding, they actually classify the radiation that's emitted by Bluetooth into different classes.  Are you familiar with or did you come across those classes at all in any of the research that you were doing on Bluetooth?

Christian:  Sure.  Yeah, that's a good point to bring up is to make sure that the radiation that is happening at Fukushima or at Chernobyl.  That's very different than the radiation that's emitted by an electromagnetic device.

Ben:  Got it.  I know there's the class one, and that's like the really powerful high level Bluetooth radiation.  And those transmit, I believe, a football field or so and have a power of like 100 milliwatts.  And then class two is less powerful.  I think that transmits like 10 meters around there, 10 meters, 10 yards, and that's about two and a half milliwatts.  And then class three is less than 10 meters, and I believe that's what a lot of these wearables are.  And those are a transmission power of like one milliwatt.  And I think that when you talk about those watts/kilogram, most of the Bluetooth devices that you're wearing, like in or around your ear, are somewhere in the range of like 0.2, 0.3 watts per kilogram.  So there's a huge variety of actual radiation that's emitted by these things depending on whether they're class one, class two, or class three.  When you were developing the devices that you were developing, did you have to go into anything in terms of like looking at the actual transmission class of a tracker versus a wearable that you'd, well like a tracking bracelet that's tracking activity and calories versus a tracking device you'd put on your bike or your glasses?

Christian:  Yeah.  There's a big difference between classes of Bluetooth.  So a Bluetooth class two radio would be something that would be for streaming audio.  It's the Bluetooth that would be used for primarily audio streaming.  I can't think of really any other mass consumer applications that are using that Bluetooth class two radio.  But most of the wearables are using that class three radio, that lowest power version.  And a lot of times, what we saw is that it's really important to have the lowest power on the device side, which just makes the transmission frequency that you're communicating from the cell phone to the device even less.

Ben:  Okay.  Gotcha.  Now have you looked at all in two any studies that have been done on exposure to Bluetooth radiation with regards to health and any standards that are out there as far as FCC standards or anything like that?

Christian:  Yeah.  Because the power on that is so low, there really isn't much that scientists have been able to study.  There have been some studies on cell phones, but beyond that, yeah, there really hasn't been much I've seen on Bluetooth.

Ben:  I was only able to find one that specifically looked at the frequencies that would be similar to what you'd get from even a Bluetooth device that fits around your ear, which I believe is a class three transmitter.  In that case, with the class three transmitters, I believe they're releasing 0.2, 0.3 watts/kilogram.  And in this study what they did is they took rats and they subjected rats to several different frequencies, and some of the frequencies were anywhere from 10 to 100 times lower than that 0.2, 3 watts/kilogram.  They were like 0.012 to 0.002 watts/kilogram, really low frequencies.  I know that in that study they did find what's called leakage of the blood-brain barrier at those really low frequencies, and that was after about two hours of exposure to the Bluetooth radiation.  Obviously these are really tiny animals with really thin skulls, but they did show basically some death of brain cells with that long-term exposure to a level of radiation that was significantly less than cell phones and a similar level of radiation as what you would find on a Bluetooth headset that you might be wearing around all day long.  Kind of my…

Christian:  Something to say about the frequency, 'cause there's a big difference between power and frequency.  Frequency would just be the time scale at which something's happening because Bluetooth is in gigahertz spectrum.  So are you saying that a lower frequency, in maybe megahertz or kilohertz was…

Ben:  In this case, they were using, I'm looking at the actual Hertz frequency on the study.  And by the way if you're listening in and you want a link to this study, I'll put it in the show notes.  But it's 915 megahertz what they were using as far as the actual frequency.  And then the energy absorption rate, which I believe is that watts/kilogram measurement, that varied from very, very low levels all the way up to, I believe that the highest, they used like five watts/kilogram.  So they go kind of high as far as the upper level of that energy absorption rate.  So that was the frequency and the absorption rate that they used.  Does that answer your question?

Christian: Oh, yeah.  So that if they're operating on a megahertz band, that's very different than what a Bluetooth radio would be operating on because a Bluetooth radio would be in gigahertz.  So that would be a thousand times, the wavelength is a thousand times shorter.  So which means those longer wavelengths might not pass as easily through…

Ben:  And megahertz is a shorter wavelength than a gigahertz wavelength?

Christian:  Correct.  Yeah.  So I guess that just that frequency probably has more of an effect on a cellular structure.

Ben:  Interesting.  So as far as the interpretation of a study like this, if they're using, if they're trying to simulate the biological effects of something like a cell phone, or let's get really specific, something like a Bluetooth, let's say a headset, and they're using a transmission frequency of 915, well it's mhg.  I'm not sure if that's millihertz or megahertz, but regardless, it's a smaller waveform than a gigahertz, right?  Or a tighter waveform?

Christian:  Yeah.  So that would be a hundred times longer.  So if you were on a cellular level, like if you were taking a school bus versus a toy school bus, a Hot wheels car.  I mean that's that kind of scale difference between those wavelengths.

Ben:  Okay.  Gotcha.  Interesting.  So you would say that in a study like this, it would be more appropriate to use a gigahertz-based frequency rather than a millihertz or a megahertz-based frequency?

Christian:  Yes.  Yeah.  If you wanted to say this is what the effect of Bluetooth would be specifically.  But I think that it does show that certain frequencies and exposure levels, I mean basically, yeah.  If you put a rat in a microwave, I think that its brain's going to have problems.

Ben:  Right.  Yeah.  Which is why there's a warning label on every cell phone that's sold, to keep it a certain distance from your ears.  And that's also the reason that, when you look at this, reports through the research, talking to you, the CEO of a company that relies upon Bluetooth technology and myself as a guy who's pretty immersed in the research in general, there's very, very little out there in terms of studies on humans with the actual frequencies that are being used on a lot of these devices, these wearables, et cetera.  And so it's one of those things where, for me personally, I'm simply careful with my level of exposure.

And for example, I use a headset, but the headset that I use with my cell phone is an airtube headset.  And I know they make these airtube headsets as a Bluetooth-enabled that allows the actual Bluetooth part of it to be farther from your head as well as just a wired cable that comes straight from your phone all the way up to your ear.  And I actually use the wired version.  And like for myself quantification, I own this spendy Health Patch that'll measure perspiration, and activity, and respiration, and heart rate variability, and heart rate, and all of these different variables.  But I don't wear it all day long.  I wear it for five minutes every morning.  I just do like this check-in every morning for five minutes and then I turn it off.  And my home really doesn't have Bluetooth-enabled appliances or anything like that just because I'm trying to play it safe.  That's my perspective at this point.

Christian:  Yeah.  So I guess you think about like, I think that's a really good point to bring up is its distance if you want to, one of the biggest driving factors in power, the power equation, which is you have your, let's see.  I think it's kilograms times meter squared divided by seconds cubed.  That's a watt.  So if you look at that, if you decrease the amount of time, then that's going to have an effect on exposure.  If you increase the distance, then that also, if you double the distance from a power source, then you're going to cut the power by 25%.  Or it will be 25% of the power.

Ben:  Yeah.  It’s almost like a power density equation, right?  In terms of measuring radiation?

Christian:  Mhmm.

Ben:  So the higher the density of power, the more of a biological effect you'd expect to see reported?  Like the closer that a power source is to the skin, or the body, or the brain?

Christian:  Mhmm.  It's kind of like a balloon.  If you have very little air in the balloon, then the walls are going to be thicker.  But if you blow that balloon up, double the size, then the walls are going to be much, much thinner.  Like maybe four times thinner if you double that.

Ben:  Yeah.  I found an interesting chart, and I'll put a link to this chart in the show notes for folks who are listening in, that actually shows a power-density curve.  It shows that at 0.1 for a power density that brain waves are altered when exposed to a cell phone signal.  And then if you jump up to the range of one to two, you actually see a two-fold increase in leukemia in adults who are exposed to that amount, that power density.  And I think that's close to what you get from holding your cell phone up to your ear all day long, 10 to 25 changes in the hippocampus of the brain.  And then once you get up to 120, you get what's called a pathological change in the blood-brain barrier, which is basically like neuronal cell death.  It's tough to say which devices, and I know a lot of these higher power densities are primarily coming from cell phones, and I know WiFi routers are a big culprit as well, it's tough to say which devices are producing what amount of power density.  But how easy is that to measure, Christian, something like a Bluetooth device?

Christian:  Sure.  So the power density on a cell phone is going to be about one watt. And if you look at a WiFi router, it's going to be about the same, around a watt.  And then all of these Bluetooth low energy devices are about a thousand times less than that. If you had a little health wearable attached to your body, measuring your heart rate and your activity, that device is going to have a thousand times less.  So if you hang out, if you have that on your wrist, then it's going to be an hour.  I'm trying to think how many seconds are in a day, I think it's 36,000…

Ben:  How many seconds in a day?  60 times 60, time 24, right?  So 3600 times 24, I believe that would give you seconds.  So it should be 86,400?

Christian:  Yes.  So if you have one second of exposure to a cell phone, right, it's going to be an entire day.

Ben:  Oh, wow.  That's a good way to think about it.  So one second of exposure, or one entire day of exposure to the signal that you're getting from a Bluetooth device is similar to what you'd get from a single second on the cell phone?

Christian:  Yeah.  I think that's like a…

Ben:  That's power density comparison?

Christian:  Yeah.  Let's see.  Or it'd be 86 seconds.  So a minute of a cell phone.

Ben:  Okay.  So that'd be the equivalent of a minute.  Yeah.  Interesting, interesting.  So if you were to use this thing all day long, sleep with it, wear it around, whatever, it'd be like having a cell phone on your body for a minute as far as the actual power density?

Christian:  Exactly.

Ben:  Interesting.  So what do you personally do as far as your use of wearables?  Do you wear them?  Are you cautious?  What's your take on things?

Christian:  For wearables?  I find that I do a better job just kind of keeping track of simple routines.  I have used Fitbit, the Fitbit Zip.  It was great.  I loved using that.  But I haven't gotten too detailed into the whole quantified self movement.  I do use a sleep tracking device.

Ben:  Which one do you use?

Christian:  It's an app called…

Ben:  It's one of the ones that you put on your phone that goes underneath your pillow, or underneath your mattress, or next to you?

Christian:  Yes.  Yes.

Ben:  Okay.  Gotcha.

Christian:  Is the app that I've been using.  And it does a great job.  I mean all you need is the accelerometer on the phone and you can get some really high quality data.

Ben:  The one that I generally recommend is called a Beddit, and that is a Bluetooth-enabled device.  You don't wear it on your body.  It goes underneath the sheet on your mattress.  So there's a little less proximity to the measuring device itself, plus it allows you, if need be, to have your cell phone off in the bedroom, even though I know a lot of people sleep with it in airplane mode anyways.  I like that Beddit device though.  It seems to give it a pretty, pretty good and accurate amount of data compared to some of the other sleep tracking devices that I've used.  And that's actually what I have a lot of my clients uses is they use this device, and then I've got an online coaching platform where I can go and download at any given point in Excel spreadsheet that shows me sleep latency, sleep time, minutes up during the night, stuff like that.  So it's kind of cool for me from a coaching standpoint.  But that's pretty much the main form of self-quantification you use, is sleep tracking?

Christian:  Yes.  Yeah.  Sleep tracking and then just keeping a tally of the amount of pushups I do every day.

Ben:  Right.  Exactly.  Yeah.  So the other thing that I'm careful with as far as electronics is concerned, whether it's WiFi routers, or computers, or phones, or Bluetooth, or anything like that is a positive ion exposure.  Just basically the fact that if you look at positive ions or electrically charged atoms that are positive that a lot of these electrical devices churn out.  They can disrupt the actual electrochemical balance in terms of your membrane potential, your cell membrane potential, which is supposed to be at 70 to 80 millivolts.  So one of the things that I try and get exposed to is negative ions, and that's what you would get if you were doing earthing, grounding, walking in the forest, breathing deeply while next to a waterfall, or on the beach near water, that type of thing.  So that's another thing that I do quite a bit of is I try and step away from my computer, phone, et cetera and just get either outside or somewhere where I can breathe in a high amount of negative ions.

Christian:  Yeah.  I think that, I do a lot of surfing.  So there are lots of ions in the ocean.  I think walking around with bare feet or just running around outside is so key.  I usually find that somewhere in my daily path, I'll walk outside and go sit in the hammock and relax or do something like that, which is, it's always good to have this kind of rituals.

Ben:  Right.  Yeah.  Absolutely.  So what I'd be curious about, if you are sitting back listening to Christian and I talk, and you've come across research yourself or you're aware of things that we haven't brought to the table as far as some of the things to consider when it comes to Bluetooth, the power, or what's called the class of the transmission device that you're using, or anything else when it comes to Bluetooth radiation and whether or not it is dangerous or it isn't dangerous, leave your comments over on the show notes where you downloaded this particular episode over at bengreenfieldfitness.com and let us know what you think and what it is that you've personally found.  I plan on sticking to my protocol of being very careful with long term exposure and also making sure that if I am going to use something, it's one of these class three transmitters.  Which it turns out that wearables are.  So Christian, anything else that you wanted to bring to the discussion today?

Christian:  Yeah.  I think it's been you know really interesting to kind of take a look at and explore some of the capabilities of these devices.  And as we kind of discussed, I think it's really helpful to put everything into kind of the right scale, especially with all of this can be engineering data.  It's sometimes easy to see some pretty extreme results, like you mentioned at that 25 watts level, that really bad things are happening to certain things.  But it's also helpful to kind of see what is, that some of these effects are just negligible and our bodies are doing a great job dealing with them.

Ben:  Yeah.  Absolutely.

Christian:  With these Bluetooth low energy devices, I think that there really isn't much effect that it has on a human body.

Ben:  Right.  And then the other thing to take into account, it sounds to me like, is the actual wavelength used in the study.  Not just the power, but the ability of the wavelength itself to be able to penetrate human tissue.  So a gigahertz frequency versus a millihertz or megahertz frequency.  Because for example, like that study that I brought up, that is off decided when it comes to cell phone or Bluetooth radiation, it sounds like I've been using a signal that is similar to what we'd get from a wearable, for example.  So I think that's another important thing to consider is look at the study and see if they're using the same type of signals that a device would be using.

Christian:  And when you look at higher frequency signals, the World Health Organization did a study on exposure levels to these types of electromagnetic fields. And when you're operating in that really high spectrum, in the gigahertz, then those those radio waves are often just absorbed by the skin kind of at the epidermal level of the body.  They don't actually really penetrate as much as something that's a lower frequency, in the kind of the megahertz level.

Ben:  Yeah.  Interesting.  Alright.  Well, cool.  And by the way, I've got one last question for you.  Just kind of a random one off.  But as far as phones, do you use, with your cell phone, do you use any special cases, or headsets, or beads attached to the phone, or anything like that?

Christian:  I've got my headphones that I, I mean I just think that I get better sound and mic quality out of them basically.  Yeah, I use those.  And then just, I think it's a good practice just being in control of technology rather than having technology control a user is just put my phone where I want it to be and then only answer it when I need it, rather than keeping it strapped to my body so that I can get excited when it buzzes because someone just sent me a text message.

Ben:  Right.

Christian:  If I can take a little bit of, put some, control the distance that I have to my device, then I'm in control of the technology.  It's not controlling my behavior and actions.  So that's one philosophy that I try to exhibit.

Ben:  Yeah.  I use a similar philosophy.  I also use, the case myself and my wife use our now is called a Pong and it increases the signal or strengthens the signal of the phone while blocking some of the actual radiation that comes off the backside of the phone even though I never really have my phone in my pocket anyways.  I have been putting it in this device, it's just basically, it's called a Pong iPhone case.  So supposedly they say it reduces what's called the specific absorption rate of the actual radiation that's transmitted by the phone itself.

Christian:  Interesting.  I'll have to check that one.

Ben:  Yeah.  It is interesting.  I had a few sent to me and have just been kind of experimenting with them.  It doesn't seem to change the bar signal at all, so at least it's not hurting.   Well, cool.  So if you're listening in, you can go check out Christian's Trackr in the link that I have there in the show notes.  If you lose your bike, or your glasses, or any other objects such as car keys, that's a cool device.  And I'll also put a link over to Christian’s LinkedIn page if you'd like to connect with him.  And Christian, thanks so much for coming on the call, man.

Christian:  Yeah.  Thanks so much for having men, Ben.  It's been a great discussion.

Part II

Ben:  Hey, folks.  It's Ben Greenfield.  And as you know, I occasionally experiment with wearables.  Kind of makes it sound like a crime.  It's not.  I will use some of these things that do indeed emit Bluetooth signals, like things that track calories, heart rate, steps taken, things of that nature.  And recently I posted some of my results of a wearable I was using to Facebook, to my Facebook Ben Greenfield page, and one of the comments there, I believe it was, was from Dr. Jack Kruse, who's been a guest on our podcast many times, and I'll link in the show notes for you to some of the previous episodes that we've done with him.  But he begged to differ about a statement that I made that I had yet to see that Bluetooth technology had been proven dangerous, that these wearables might actually be causing damage to the body.

And so I figured, what the heck.  Why not get Dr. Kruse on to hear what his thoughts are on Bluetooth technology and what he's found with respect to that.  And of course, while I recommend that you go listen to some of the previous podcast I've done with Jack, you can also visit his website a jackkruse.com.  He is a respected neurosurgeon, is the CEO of Optimized Life, which is a health and wellness company.  He has a private practice right now in the Gulf south, and his research has been published all over the place in a bunch of different dental and medical journals.  I believe he gets close to a quarter million visitors each month to his blog and he's got some really good stuff over there. And he's always got an interesting take on these type of things and he's definitely willing to think outside of the box that a lot of physicians think inside.  So Dr. Kruse, thanks for coming on, man.

Dr. Kruse:  Hey, no problem.  Anytime, Ben.

Ben:  Alright.  So let's jump right in.  What do you think about Bluetooth technology, specifically its effects on the human body?

Dr. Kruse:  With regards to this, especially with the intro, when you talked about me thinking outside the box,  I'm going to tell you when it comes to Bluetooth, you need to understand a little bit of physics, and you need to understand a lot of biophysics, and you need to understand some basic concepts.  But when we get done, when we're finished here, you'll realize there is no box for Bluetooth because no one really knows the true answers based on the technology as it stands today.  Here's what we do know that is firmly published in research, and when we get done too, Ben, just to put it out though, I'm going to be sending you of couple links over Skype so that everything that I say today that someone may construe as controversial, you'll find that it's published, it's in the literature, and it's not controversial at all.  The problem is it's just not well-known and it's absolutely not connected to what I would call mainstream biologic police as they exist today.

Ben:  If folks are listening in, I'll be sure to put the show notes along with any resources Jack sends at bengreenfieldfitness.com/bluetooth.  Alright.  Go ahead, Jack.

Dr. Kruse:  Well, for those of your listeners who don't know my track history, I'm really big into non-native electromagnetic signals.  When we deal with Bluetooth radiation, what are we dealing with?  It's basically a wireless technology that uses very specific pulse radio frequency signals.  So when I say pulsed, that's kind of where this discussion needs to begin.  Pulsed radio frequency signals have been very well-studied going all the way back to my favorite doctor that we talked about in our EMF 4 podcast we did together, Ben, about optimized performance.  Becker is the guy who first showed that we could use pulsed electromagnetic radiation to actually increase bone density and to help bone healing.  The problem was in his work that is quite extensive, he told people that he would not recommend it being used because of the specific problems, and they were physics problems, around pulsed radio frequency signals.

Now, I want every to know that pulses carried by microwaves are particularly dangerous.  That's not a controversial point, okay?  And the reason I say this it's published in the literature, it's very well-known, but there's another side to the story that everybody needs to know.  The reason why they're dangerous, because they have extremely short wavelengths, and this allows transmission of these pulses with an extremely rapid rise and fall in times and distance.  And it turns out that the rate of change of these fields, because of the pulses, rather than the complete total energy that they deliver, does most of the biologic damage.  And the problem is in medicine and health care, we have not studied this from a biologic perspective well enough.  Now there are many, many things that have been studied, both on the biophysics side, the chemistry side, and things like that.  And one of the links that I'm going to give you, there is an article that was written in PubMed that you can find, it's called “Pulsed Microwaves Can Induce Light, Sound, and Electrical Discharges to Enhance By Any Biopolymer”.  And what was the point of this paper?  And this, just so you guys know, was published in 1999.  So we're talking about 16 years ago.  Basically pulsed microwaves allows for a phenomenon that generates an acoustic wave.  It also can generate bubbles.  It can also cause pulse luminescence, it can ionize gas, and it can cause electrical discharges.  And this is all within biopolymers.  Just so we're clear, you and I are…

Ben:  Just so people know, what's a biopolymer?

Dr. Kruse:  Well, that's what I was just going to say.  You and I, Ben, are both biopolymers.  We're made of proteins.  Proteins are biopolymers.  When you string a whole bunch of proteins together, most people think of proteins in that fashion, that functionally is what a biopolymer is.  The reason I'm being very specific in the words that I use in this podcast is because there is so much misinformation from people who have a monetary gain for both Bluetooth and non-native EMF devices because they don't want you to understand the science, and they try to obscure the truth so that you can never get to the fundamental issues tied behind it.  But why do I have a big problem with pulsed microwaves is because pulsed microwaves and their radiations generate highly focused energy depositions, and it's been shown for 50 years to basically cause leakiness of any type of cellular barrier.  For example, the one that I'm most commonly interested in, the blood-brain barrier.  What's the one that the ancestral house community keeps talking about like they know something about?  How about the gut junction and leaky gut?  This is predominantly how you cause a leaky gut.

And here's the shocking part of this pulsed microwave story, the paper that I'm going to link to you in 1999 showed that most of these technology companies and biotechnology companies were using this to kill microbes and kill eukaryotic cells.  Ben, you and I are both eukayotes.  And here, you see that the original generation of this research was used to harm living things, not help it be more productive.  And when you understand that those things are possible, then you need to start to ask questions.  Okay, is the generation of the signals that they were doing in 1999 similar to what the Bluetooth technology is today?  And here's where the conundrum comes in, both with mobile technology and I would even say wearables, like the one that I'm sure we're going to talk about is going to be what happened with Google Glass and why all of a sudden it just disappeared from this whole wearable technology.  And when this iPhone iWatch comes out, this is going to be a huge area 'cause I predict that young kids like yourself, Ben, are going to get these really weird diseases and they're not going to know why it happens because they fundamentally don't understand how pulsed microwave interacts.  So let's talk about Bluetooth since that's what you wanted to bring…

Ben:  Yeah.  I definitely want to talk about it.  And one of the things, by the way, Jack, as we talk about it that I like hear your take on is the difference between the classes of Bluetooth.  ‘Cause there's another…

Dr. Kruse:  That's actually all you need to know, Ben.  And that's what I was going to start…

Ben:  Oh, okay.  Alright.  Go ahead.

Dr. Kruse:  The classes are the only thing that most your podcast listeners in 2015 really need to understand.  There's class one transmitters, which is what the market is going to.  And that's bad news for us because those transmitters are the most powerful. That means they have strong ranges.  They can work all the way up to a hundred meters away.  For example, the Bose speaker system that I got rid of several years ago that had great sound quality, the reason why it was so great is 'cause it was a class one transmitter.  And when I checked its pulse fields, it was off the hook.  So I got rid of it. There's many other things out there that are like that.  The class two transmitters are kind of where we are right now.  And I would say that's probably the bulk of the market, and they're found in a variety of different mobile devices, and they have a range anywhere between 10 meters all the way up to probably about 40 or 50 meters right now.  And they have different peak transmission powers, but none of that stuff for probably your podcast listeners are important.  The class three transmitters are the ones that were the first generation Bluetooth devices.  Those are the ones that were less than 10 meters in terms of their generating power.  They have functionally gone from the market.  They are already extinct.  Just about.

Ben:  Really?  So a lot of these, where we're talking about Fitbit and stuff like that, they're using a class two, not a class three transmitter?

Dr. Kruse:  Well here's the number one thing that I do want to bring to your attention and bring to your listeners attention: you have to realize that class one transmitters, class two, and class three are all tied to something called the SAR.  And I don't know if you remember when we talked last time what the SAR is.  It's called specific absorption rate values.  And they're tables that all cellular devices, by law in our country, and in most countries even in Europe, have to give in the package inserts.  Here's the problem with Bluetooth: they are not required to give you this information.  So if you try to find out what kind of transmitter class is in your Bluetooth device, you're going to be shocked.  It's extremely difficult to find.

Ben:  Really?  It's nowhere on the label or the packaging?

Dr. Kruse:  Some have it, some don't, Ben.  You're a biohacker, I'm a biohacker.  You know I pay attention to this.  I always look for this data.  And I have to tell you, I'd say at least 80% of the devices on the market, you won't find it in their packaging 'cause they're not having to do it by law.  But here's the big thing, when you take the extra steps as I have done, to contact the manufacturers, both by certified letter, phone calls, you still don't get the information.

Ben:  One thing that I used to think was that when you saw the Bluetooth version, 'cause when I first heard about classes, like class one, class two, class three, I started looking on the packaging and some of them say “version”.  Like they say “Bluetooth version 2 compliant”, or “Bluetooth version 3”.  But that's…

Dr. Kruse:  That's the way they skewer the truth.  It's a…

Ben:  Yeah.  But apparently the version doesn't have anything to do with the Bluetooth class.

Dr. Kruse:  Yeah.  It's all about software.  That's all it is.  And I will tell you that my own son got hosed on that specific issue because, say, “Oh, this one is Bluetooth V2.3 compliant,” and he's like, “Dad, what did that mean?”  When we found out that it basically has to do with more of the software that the Bluetooth device uses, it's a way for kids that are in high school and college to get completely screwed.  And that's the real reason why I'm so concerned, why I don't believe there is a box because there's no way, Ben, for you, me, most of the people that use Bluetooth, to really know what their true risk is.  The one thing that we can talk about is we can actually talk about how these devices fundamentally ruined cell membranes, how they interact with calcium and potassium, but you know as well as I do when we do podcasts, people don't want to get their head split open with the science.  They don't!  They don't want to hear this stuff.

But unfortunately, my viewpoint is that you need to understand that fundamental issue until the labeling on Bluetooth devices becomes at least as good as mobile devices, which here's an irony you probably never hear me ever say anything positive about a cell phone, but here I am saying it.  And that's part of the reason why when you posted that issue on Facebook, I was hoping that it would be provocative that we would eventually talk about this because I hate Bluetooth and the pulsed waves are a huge problem.  And Becker, in my realm, Becker was an orthopedic surgeon, he was a spine surgeon as I am.  I'm a neurosurgeon who does a lot of spine surgery.  He was very very cognizant that these devices could have some unintended side effects, especially when we didn't know fundamentally what frequency ranges they work in.  And there's a lot of very, very complex science that tells us how these things kind of work.  It has to do amplitudes, whether the frequencies are modulated or not, or actually how the pulsed radio waves are designed to work in these devices.

All of this information, I think consumers need to have, even though they probably don't understand the science of what happens.  Because there's going to be guys like me and scientist out there like me who then can explain to people these are the things that you need to be careful, these are the things that you need to avoid.  And ultimately, Ben, you know when someone's in business and they're selling stuff, they do not want you to have all of the data.  And what you have to also be very cognizant of is that this industry is a monster industry.  I mean the wearable market, where it's going to be in two, three, four, five years is probably going to surpass what the iPhone and iPod are.  And I mean guys like you, you talk about the Fitbit, but wait 'til this iWatch comes out and Apple's marketing team behind it, it's going to explode probably in the teen age group all the way up to guys your age, and especially for the elite athletes.  And that's what my concern is, my concern is that this is going to be a technology that is probably taken too faster than anything else out there because you're only looking at one side of the equation.  And as I've told you many times before when we've talked the same door opens up heaven and hell, the key is to understanding how it works.

Ben:  Yeah.  I actually wanna ask you about what you mentioned as far as Google Glasses goes because I did see that article on CNET about the issue between Google Glasses and migraines and headaches.  But before we jump into that, I have one other kind of question on the frequency and the power of Bluetooth based on a discussion that I had with a guy who develops basically this technology that allows you to place a Bluetooth sensor on something you might frequently lose, like your car keys, and then be able to find those car keys should you ever forget where they are because of the signal they produce.  And he was talking about how there's a difference between the wave signal, like this teeny tiny wave signal that could be damaging to human tissue versus the long wave signal, and the actual power, like the actual power that a Bluetooth device transmits.  Apparently there's a differentiation between power and frequency.  Are you familiar with this at all?

Dr. Kruse:  Yeah.  There is.  It's a huge difference.  And that gets to the core issue of actually understanding the physics behind how this works.  And you have to realize where EMF fundamentally affects us biologically is on cell membranes and in water chemistry.  And the number one thing that I think the industry insiders and the biophysics community are beginning to understand is that cell membranes where we interface.  Meaning biology interfaces with the environment.  And it turns out how you ask the questions in experiments determine the answers you get, and this is why I am so concerned about guys like you talk to.  Because they understand if they ask the wrong questions, they'll get an answer which is not going to show an effects, and then they're going to turn around and sell these devices to kids in high school, your competitions, and you're not going to structurally understand why you're cell membranes become leaky, why the amplitude, if it's modulated, can completely change the mix.

There's a fundamental thing that we do need to talk about with microwave.  Because people may not know this, Ben, and I want to make this really crystal clear, microwaves are part of light spectrum.  I think everybody needs to know that light is part of the electromagnetic spectrum just as microwaves are.  There's UV radiation, there's a variety of different things in there.  So for you to understand light is probably almost where you need to start this discussion, and here's the point about light: light has a universal speed limit of 186,000 miles an hour.  There's only one way to turn up the power of light.  And how do you do that?  It's actually by altering its frequency.  Now, are there ways to carry energy and information by altering amplitude and modulating that amplitude?  The answer is yes.  And that's kind of how biology controls other organ systems in the body.  It's also how Bluetooth devices control other things that they run.  And the problem is these changes in frequency and the changes in amplitude modification is what these device manufacturers, in my opinion, need to study.  And they need to produce data to show that in the frequency ranges that they decide to use this stuff in, that there's no direct effect.

And I want to give you an example, if you just bear with me for a minute, I think this will be very interesting to you and your listeners.  I'm going to explain to you just how big a deal this is.  Every single one of your listeners and you and I both know a little bit about GPS, right?  I'm sure you've used GPS in the past.  Let me explain to you just how powerful the effect of being a little [1:00:09] ______, okay?  I said before that light has a universal speed limit of 186,000 miles an hour.  That means that light travels 30 centimeters in one nanosecond.  Okay?  I told you before that the only way to increase energy is to increase the frequency of the wavelength.  So what does this mean?  It means if timing is off for distance signals, it turns out that the distances that GPS measures will also be off.  So let me explain to you how this works in GPS, and maybe you'll understand why Google Glass is in deep trouble and why wearable technology's in deep trouble.

I want you think about this feature I just mentioned.  GPS clocks orbit the Earth.  They must run faster than the clocks on the surface of this planet in order for us to navigate properly, whether we're using it on an iPhone, in our cars, it doesn't matter where.  What people don't know is they have to run 38 microseconds faster.  So when you consider in 38 microseconds at the speed of light, if this clock difference didn't exist, GPS devices would be off by 10 kilometers when we used it.  I want you to think about that for a minute, Ben.  38 microseconds will put you off 10 kilometers.  What kind of effect would that be in Spokane, Washington? You'd be pretty lost, wouldn't you?

Ben:  Yeah.  I mean that's pretty significant when it comes to training, especially.

Dr. Kruse:  Well, guess what?  Now imagine you put one of these devices right next to your super suprachiasmatic nucleus in a glass called Glasses that has all these cool things.  What do you think happens to the brain's mitochondria that are in that area? How about the lens of your eye, the eye itself where you know that light comes in and goes to that suprachiasmatic nucleus?  When that happens, you get inaccurate timing results.  And what does that change?  It changes cell membrane function, but it changes the way mitochondria handle electrons and protons.  And what do the…

Ben:  And I would imagine your timing as a whole, your circadian rhythm.

Dr. Kruse:  Correct.  And you know better than most that I have been pounding the table, even at Asprey's recent event that I said food is not the most important thing, that circadian biology is.  Here, is proof positive that I might be right.  And the reason why we're getting neurodegeneration, type-2 diabetes, and autoimmunity when these type of things happen is because we are developing inaccurate timing between the cell membrane and our mitochondrial membrane.  Now remember, that mitochondrial information, that it has to go to the nucleus where DNA and RNA are expressed.  And here we're back to those protein polymers, those biopolymers.  And I told you earlier in this podcast that pulsed microwaves have a direct effect on all types of biopolymers because of its interaction on cell membranes.  Well if you remember we talked a long time ago, I told you that DHA in cell membranes takes light and turns it into a DC electric current.

I want you think back on what I just told you about GPS devices.  Well if you can't do this, how are you ever going to know what season you're in, what foods and how they're going to be handled?  I mean the system goes to molecular chaos.  And we have different synonyms, names that your listeners know about molecular chaos.  One's called swelling.  The other one's called inflammation.  I call 'em circadian mismatches.  But I need people to fundamentally understand that what a Bluetooth device will do to you, especially when you put it very close to your suprachiasmatic nucleus is you will create a ripple effect.  And that ripple effect starts right where your main clock timer is, where your main GPS device is.  When that GPS device is off, all hell can break loose.  It can have massive effects, and effects that some of your listeners would not believe, and I'll explain to you why this is the case.  The radiation from these Bluetooth devices or mobile handsets can cause whole body irradiation because it basically conducts electricity.  And basically, it behaves just like an antenna would in your own house.

So you need to realize that some membranes are designed by evolutionary biology to absorb radiations from the native signals.  And when we absorb non-native radiation, this begins to generate any currents that most people in biology don't even know exist because we don't measure for them.  But guess what?  Biophysicists know they exist. And what does that, why is that point, even if you don't understand the science, why is that point important for you and your listeners to understand?  Because that means those non-native electromagnetic currents can then flow beyond the side of application. So you just think, Ben, it's in your ear.  You're not realizing that all the blood vessels in your body, in your brain then become electric wires that can send all of this information all over parts of your body.  And you have to realize that your blood plasma is 93% water that's got salt in it, which is a great conductor for all of these devices.

What functionally happens everywhere this information goes is it uncouples calcium from potassium.  When that happens, all you need to know is this simple thing: it makes membranes more leaky wherever the effect is.  And this is in the range of non-thermal, meaning not the microwave that you're thinking about in your kitchen.  We're talking about below that level, at an atomic basis.  Because most people do not understand how microwaves alter the actions of electrons and protons.

Ben:  Yeah.  Now I have a question for you, Jack, and I don't know if you know the answer to this or not, but do these wearables, or the headsets themselves for that matter, constantly emit this signal? Or for example, if I were to, obviously when you get a phone call, the headset starts emitting a signal.  And when you sync it to your phone, a wearable starts emitting a signal.  But I'm curious if they're consistently producing this radiation or if we need to be most careful when the Bluetooth is actually being utilized.

Dr. Kruse:  Well, here's the funny thing.  It's a great question, and the answer is I don't think anybody knows because of what I told you before.  From the manufacturing standpoint, no one is being transparent about how their devices functionally work.  And I think one of the things that we need from the FCC is we need clarity.  Just like they forced the cell phone manufacturers to post the stuff about SARs, we need to know about how they're using the pulsed microwaves.  And we need to know when the device emits it most, when the information is being sent, say, from your Fitbit, your Google Glasses, or whatever we're talking about.  Whether it be the iWatch, is it constant?  Is it pulsed like the wave is?  Does it tend to happen during use?  Before use?  Ben, we don't know the answers to that.

Ben:  Yeah.  And by the way, if people are listening, if you're listening this podcast, I'd be very curious if you happen to have any insight or review of this stuff because I mean, heck, go leave your comments at bengreenfieldfitness.com/bluetooth if you know something about how often these devices transmit or some kind of resource that might show us some of this data that we don't currently have on these devices that are out there.

Dr. Kruse:  I just think you're not going to get this data because right now, the device manufacturers want to keep people completely in the dark about this.  But that's the reason I tried to be provocative earlier because remember two years ago, especially in your world and in the business technology world that Asprey works in, with all the biohackers, everybody was so excited about Google Glass.  And now it's like Google Glass died.

Ben:  Yeah.  You don't see much about it.  And I'll link to the CNET article in the show notes, by the way.  But did you hear anything else past the fact that it gives people headaches and migraines?

Dr. Kruse:  Oh, dude.  If you actually went on Google's website, when they came out with all this information two years ago, I left a massive comment.  And dude, it was nuclear.

Ben:  Really?

Dr. Kruse:  Oh, yeah.  You would have thought that I basically just cursed out Jesus Christ on their forum.  And I told them, I made the prediction before anything was published that this will cause huge spikes in cataracts, it's going to cause huge problems with eye disease, we're going to have huge problems with blood-brain barrier.  And I even linked the data back to Alan Fry's work that was done 50 years ago in the federal government.  I mean this guy took methylene blue, which you probably know about, Ben, 'cause it actually helps mitochondrial function, but he injected it into animals, into their circulatory system, exposed their head to pulsed microwaves, and guess what he found?  The methylene blue got in through the blood-brain barrier.  Just so you know, when you don't have pulsed microwaves, it doesn't get in.

And then subsequent researchers have then done the same experiment in humans with albumin.  Meaning the albumin that's made in your liver, they subjected your head to the pulsed microwaves, and they found that your own albumin gets through your blood-brain barrier.  What does it do?  It opens the pores.  And in  the ancestral health community, and your community, my community, we always talk about how the brain-gut axis works.  Dude, here's the ticket.  When your brain-blood barrier is open, anything that happens in your gut is going straight to alter the water chemistry and CSF.  That's one that's when all shit hits the fan.  And look, I've been pounding the table for a long time that people need to come to my scale.  They need to get off this biochemical scale because people don't understand these hydrogen bonding networks in CSF, in our blood are designed to flicker.  And they flicker based on the electromagnetic waves that we choose to put them in.  And when you put that device somewhere on your body, you're actually augmenting the effect.

And just to give you an example, I really wanted to tell you this just to make the point. You know that I've been pretty provocative on Facebook probably in the last six months about comparing you and Jimmy Moore on a variety of different things because you both set the tone for why you can do some of the things you can and Jimmy can't do some of the things he can.  And you know that he embraces technology probably far more so than you do because he's really a podcaster.  He's talked about these issues that he's had with fertility.  Well, here's what I want to bring to you.  You've just had a kid. You're not having an issue with that.  Just think about Bluetooth on a cell phone.  Do you know it's been shown if you use a Bluetooth device and you tether it, most people put the Bluetooth device around their belt or their pocket, if you have change in your pocket, do you know that the rates of infertility go up exponentially?

Ben:  That's crazy.  Wow.

Dr. Kruse:  Well, here's what I want to tell you.  This is the reason why, Ben, the physics is important.  What is metal?  It's made out of transition metals.  What do you need to know about non-native microwave pulsed EMF?  It draws.  In other words, it seeks metal.  Now why do I want people to pay attention to what I just said?  I want you to pull out a biochemistry book and realize that every amount of every cytochrome has iron sulfur clusters.  Iron is the number one transition metal that non-native pulsed microwave seeks.  Do you know that the number one transition metal in biology is iron or copper?  Okay?  Guess what Becker found in his original…

Ben:  That returns to that whole nail, penny, Lemon experiment that we all used to do back in high school.

Dr. Kruse:  Right.  Exactly.  It brings back the point back to Becker.  ‘Cause what did Becker find in bone physiology?  And this is not even arguable anymore.  It's published. He found that two copper ions have to be between the PN junction.  What a PN junction is in bone, it's collagen meets appetite.  Two copper ions electrostatically have to be there.  Guess what knocks them out?  Non-native EMF.  Why did all the guys that went up in Meer, why did all the guys that go up in Sputnik, why did all the guys in the International Space Center get space induced osteoporosis?  One reason, my friend. They can't keep those two copper ions between their PN junction.  And guess what?  It's the same reason why people on this surface are getting osteoporosis in my clinic when they use non-native EMF kind of the way Jimmy does as opposed to what you do.

And in people think that I'm a jackass for pointing this out.  I'm just using him 'cause he's a good example and a proxy for what many people who are followers of you and me do every single day.  Because let's face it, Bluetooth and mobile technology do make us more productive.  There is a good side to these things.  The problem is we're not being told how it's destroying the cell architecture and how it can affect our medical problems.  So that when you do go to the doctor and the doctor can't figure out why all of a sudden under you're Fitbit you've got this allergic reaction, or someone who didn't have a leaky gut subsequently develops rip roaring Hashimoto's within a couple of months, dude, those two examples I gave you, I've seen in my own clinic in the last four weeks.  It happens.  And the problem is you guys can't get mad at doctors.  And I'll tell you why.  Doctors aren't any of this stuff.  I wasn't taught any of this stuff in medical school or residency because, guess what?  This is the domain of physics.  That's why it's important to get cross-pollination between physics and biology so that people can begin to understand how these non-thermal effects will affect the biopolymers in us.

Ben:  Wow.  Well it's sounds to me like obviously a huge need here is more transparency, transparency from the people producing these wearables and Bluetooth-enabled devices that lets us know not only what class they are and what power that they're transmitting at, but whether they are constantly transmitting or not.  And that's something I'm personally very, very curious about is if I put a wearable on, or I've got Bluetooth-enabled, is that a consistent signal or is it only going on when I'm using it?

Dr. Kruse:  I think what you're bringing up here is a great point, and I want to actually piggyback on this point for you to consider.  Again, I'm going to go back to Jimmy and you.  Here's something else that I would say to all your listeners.  I'm going to say this to you to be provocative.  I believe Ben Greenfield can handle a class one transmitter.  I don't believe Jimmy Moore can.  And why did I say that?  And it's simple.  ‘Cause Ben's redox potential is far better than most people probably listening to this podcast, including myself.  But see the difference is that I realize it, most other people don't.  And the point that I want to make to you that not everyone will be equally affected by this radiation.  I know, Ben, you didn't hear my talk at Asprey's event, but I made a comment there that is very apropos here is that the reason why biohacking is incredibly important to me and why I really respect guys like you and Dave, because you share your biohacks with people.  What we are finding in biophysics is that all of our results will rhyme, they will be exactly the same.

And the reason why is because our mitochondria are designed to be electromagnetic sensors of the environment that we choose.  So that means Ben's environment is different than mine, is different from Dave's, and is different from Jimmy's.  But why do we need to share this information?  Because it will give us insights.  In other words, the effects of a class one in Ben may not be as great as it would be in either me or Jimmy. But that means what would Ben can tolerate and what he may talk about may be far different than the listeners there.  So you have to realize that your context is critical.  Why?  Because what did I say in a blog post that I wrote, and I'll send the link to you, it's called “The EMF Prescription FAQs”, meaning the frequently asked questions.  I said there that one of the major effects is that non-native EMF, especially from Bluetooth devices, affects water chemistry.  Well what happens if you're one of those people that already has high [1:17:44] ______ ratio and you didn't know it?

So that means you're going to be more affected.  You're going to be more likely to get an autoimmune disease, you're going to be more likely to get an allergy, or electrochemical sensitivity, or some other crazy effect.  And if you do it for 20, 30, 40 years, which we now have people doing kind of like Jimmy, you're much more at risk for metabolic syndrome, obesity, neurodegeneration.  There's even papers now being published on ADHD and autism spectrum disorders.  And people in my world think this is kind of, the world of craziness because they've never thought about these links.  The problem is it's because they don't realize that all these effects are tied to calcium, magnesium, and water chemistry, and we are altering our defense mechanisms in our body.  And when you alter them to a point, you begin to destroy cell function and cell signaling, and cell signaling goes awry.

That's when all these diseases all of a sudden manifest out of the clear blue air.  And I would just tell you and your listeners to think about what's happened in the 20th century since we started using these devices.  All the diseases I just mentioned have shown up out of thin air in the last 50 years.  Well what else is also shown up in the human condition?  We now embrace this technology.  I mean, Ben, I'm older than you and I can tell you that I didn't use a cell phone until I was probably 27, 28, 29 years old. Dude, you've grown up in a world where this is just expected technology.  Like you couldn't imagine growing up in a world I did.  That gives me a little built-in advantage. But the problem is the more of this stuff we use, the more sensitizing effect it's going to have on you.  And that's the point I've tried to make to the ancestral health community is they just focus in on food and they don't understand how these things directly demolish circadian signaling.

Ben:  Yeah.  Well, I've made a lot of changes just based on some of the discussions that you and I have had, Jack.  And for anyone listening in, you can go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/bluetooth and I'll put a link to previous podcasts we've done with Jack.  As we're talking, I'm hardwired into, I don't have WiFi in my house.  Period. There is no WiFi.  It annoys people because if they come to my house and they want to use the internet, they have to get one of the long cables, take it out of the closet, drag it over to the wall, plug it in, plug it into the computer.  My laptop is grounded.  I've got special lighting in my office right here where I'm standing at my standing desk, talking to Jack.  It's like I certainly am into the biohacking scene, but I've gone through great steps and taken a lot of Jack's advice, and my body feels much, much better because of it.  I noticed a huge difference.

So I would, first of all, encourage you if you're listening, to go and listen to some of the other stuff that we've done with Jack, and then also be proactive and help me because I'm going to be reaching out to some of the people who develop some of the technologies that I use and asking them these questions about class power, whether or not there's constant transmission, things along those lines.  And I would encourage you also to not just use this technology indiscriminately just because it says health and fitness on it, assume that it is safe.  Because I think that we have yet to prove that's true.

Dr. Kruse:  The other thing too, Ben.  Again to piggyback, you have a lot of people that listen to you for optimal fitness and performance.  The point I want to make, I hope that all of us together, when we get together and share these thoughts and share these electrons, that we can get people to biohack this stuff and actively talk about it on your forum, my forum, Facebook, maybe even at future conferences so that we can share our insights and our data, and maybe people can begin to realize that these effects are not going to be consistent across the board because since our bodies make antennas, each one of our antennas are only as good as the mitochondria it's attached.  And people need to understand that really basic premise about how things work.

And when, I think everybody's had the experience when you try to find a station on the radio and it comes in fuzzy, and then all of a sudden it comes in.  That's kind of the same thing that I'm talking about when we deal with these kind of biohacks for these wearable devices, because I have to be honest with you, it's probably one of my biggest concerns for the next three to five years.  I do not feel as you do that I think these are going to be devices that are going to be great.  I think there'll be some that are pretty good, but I'm really concerned there's going to be some really negative things out there about it and the reason I wanted to highlight the Google Glass thing is 'cause I think everybody who listens to this knows two years ago, that's all anybody talked about.  Dude, you can't find it anywhere.  And this is the reason why, 'cause when people started using it, the aftermarket data came out and Google said, “No, thanks.”  And I personally believe this is the reason why Google has now moved into the health care platform.  And for those of your listeners who don't know, they are now trying to get into Myspace.  And I think they realize that what they sell directly impacts biology and I think they would want to control the message so that it doesn't affect their bottom line.

And this may be a shocking revelation to the people listening to this, but I'm not interested in shocking people.  I'm interested in telling people the truth so that they begin to understand, they look under this rock and realize that when they go to the doctor and the labs are screwed up and the doctor can't find an answer, maybe the answer is in the mirror because of the way you use this technology and it's happening completely below your sensory perception.  That's really my job, Ben, on the internet. It's not to tell people what to see, it's to point them in the direction of what's published in the science and make them understand how to completely connect to how mitochondria work.  And I think everybody listening to this knows that mitochondrial function in anybody who's a eukaryotic mammal is pretty damn important.

Ben:  Yeah.  Well, we could go on and on, but I think that gives our listeners plenty to chew on for now.  And again, Jack's going to send me some of the resources that he talked about.  So if you're listening, go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/bluetooth and leave your thoughts, leave your questions, leave your feedback there.  Check out some of the resources that we have there.  And Jack, thanks so much for coming on, man.

Jack:  Hey, no problem.  Anytime, Ben.

Ben:  Alright, folks.  This is Ben Greenfield and Jack Kruse signing out from bengreenfieldfitness.com. Have a great week.

 

 

Do you use a wearable like a FitBit or Jawbone? How about a bluetooth headset? A bluetooth enabled appliance? A car that has bluetooth technology? Some other bluetooth-enabled self quantification device?

Then this episode is for you, because it's important to know exactly how bluetooth technology is affecting your sleep, your circadian rhythms, your health, your gut barrier, your blood-brain barrier and your performance.

In Part 1 of this episode, I talk to Christian Johan Smith, who is founder at Phone Halo, which creates technology that helps you track devices that you might lose. In this discussion Christian and I talk frankly about what he knows as the CEO of a company that relies on Bluetooth technology, and what I know from my research in the health space.

Resources Christian and I discuss during Part 1 of this episode:

Trackr app for iOs/iPhone

Trackr bluetooth tracking apps on Amazon

The research study that Ben cites relating bluetooth to the blood-brain barrier

Articles and studies on health effects of EMF

Bluetooth airtube headset

The anti-radiation Pong case for iPhone

In Part 2, I talk with Dr. Jack Kruse, a respected neurosurgeon and CEO of Optimized Life, a health and wellness company dedicated to helping patients avoid the healthcare burdens we typically encounter as we age. He is currently in private practice in the Gulf South and his research has been published in respected dental and medical journals. Jack's previous episodes at BenGreenfieldFitness.com include “Jack Kruse Tells You How To Live Like A Polar Bear And Eat Like A Great White Shark“, “How You Can Use Cold Thermogenesis To Perform Like Lance Armstrong And Michael Phelps”, and his “How To Beat Jet Lag Naturally“.

Resources Dr. Kruse and I discuss during Part 2 of this episode:

The “Google Glasses cause headaches” CNet article

-“Bluetooth Radiation May Be More Harmful Than Cell Phone Radiation” article

Pulsed microwave induced light, sound, and electrical discharge enhanced by a biopolymer study

EMF and fertility study

Proposed exposure levels of pulse-modulated electromagnetic fields study

Microwave pulses health effect paper

Blood brain permeability in rats from EMF paper

EMF and cars article

Radiofrequency, radiation and cancer paper from cancer.org

Cross Currents: Perils of Electropollution book by Robert O Becker

Electromagnetism and Life book by Andrew Marino

Questions, comments or feedback about whether bluetooth radiation is dangerous? Leave your thoughts for me, Christian or Jack below!

Update: after recording this two-part series, I contacted Timex about the MoveX20 activity and sleep that I've used. They were very helpful, and informed me that it is a “Class 3” bluetooth device (listen to the podcast to see what that means), that it has a power of 1mW (0 dBm) and that it transmits every 1 second. I'd encourage you to do the same research for any devices that you wear!

 

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