March 31, 2018

Podcast from:  https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/biohacking-podcasts/the-real-research-on-wifi-health-cell-phones-dirty-electricity-more/

[00:45] Four Sigmatic/Kion

[05:02] About Nicolas Pineault

[09:24] What Factors Can Contribute to Increasing One’s Sensitivity to EMFs or Vice Versa

[10:00] The NO/ONOO (Nitric Oxide/Peroxynitrite) Cycle and How Research by Dr. Martin Pall Show Why Chemicals, Heavy Metals, Mold Toxins, Sugar and Junk Food, and Other Inflammatory Factors Contribute to Increasing Sensitivity to EMFs (and vice-versa)

[23:00] How Stimulating a Pathway Called the NRF2 Can Help Calm Down this Cycle and Make One Less EMF-Sensitive

[25:43] EMG-Shielded Clothes and Why Nicolas is Convinced that they Actually Work

[34:01] How One Can Reduce A Phone’s Radiation by 80% By Just Using 3G Instead of 4G/LTE

[37:26] Organifi

[38:55] How A Handful of Meta-Analyses Shatter the Skeptics’ Beliefs That EMF’s Do Nothing to Human, Animal and Plant Biology

[43:57] Why You Shouldn’t Hold a Cellphone in your Hand (And What to Use Instead)

[49:56] Why You Need to be Very Careful with Grounding Mats and Earthing Mats and a Supplement to Take at Night Before you Ground or Earth

[57:58] The Mineral Magnetite That is Found in the Body of Birds, Humans and Other Animals and How it Reacts with EMF

[1:02:25] The Importance of Metal-Free Inks and Natural Pigments in Tattoos

[1:06:39] Whether or Not Bluetooth is an Issue Compared to Wifi and Cellphones

[1:17:32] End of Podcast

Ben:  Prepare to put on your tin foil hat, baby.  This episode is a doozy.  I’m no alarmist but I guess I’m an alarmist now.  Yeah, I’m an alarmist.  Yeah, I’ll admit it in this podcast I’m a little alarmist.  Not as alarmist as my guest but I’m pretty dang alarmist.  This whole podcast is on the latest cutting-edge science on electrical fields in EMF’s, stuff like Wifi, stuff like Bluetooth and what it does to your body.  If your listening to this with your iPhone app then prepare to be guilty, sorry.  Unless you’ve downloaded it or something and your phone’s on airplane mode.  In which case, good job!

Alright, before we dive in.  This podcast is brought to you by something that allows me to bypass the mold crappy water and burnt [0:00:55.5] ______ instant coffee in every hotel room on the face of the planet that I travel to these days.  What do I do instead, I get myself some good water at least relatively decent water like let’s say Aquafina from the hotel.   I pour that in the hotel coffeemaker and then I pour that hot water instead of over the cup of coffee from the hotel or the instant coffee from the hotel, I pour the water over two things; I travel with packets of the Lion’s Mane and chaga mushroom coffee mix from Four Sigmatic and then I add extra chaga to that ‘cause I want my immune system to really get a boost when I’m travelling.  So I pour the coffee over mushroom coffee plus extra chaga.  Two packets.  If I’ve got a little bit of my organic stevia I put a bit of that in there too and it’s like going to the fanciest coffee shop in the world right in the comfort of my own hotel room.  Four Sigmatic makes a bunch of other things like a green coffee extract, reishi which is really good for naps or sleeping on airplanes, speaking of travelling.  A 10-mushroom blend which is just heck, why not just shotgun them all into your system.  Anyways, it’s all over there.  I’ll put my favorites over at foursigmatic.com/bengreenfield.  There’s going to be an automatic discount code too when you go to that URL.  Saves you 15% on anything.  Four f-o-u-r sigmatic just like it sounds.  Spell it come on, you smart cookie foursigmatic.com/bengreenfield.

This podcast is also brought to you as each and every episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show by Kion.  Kion is my playground.  It’s where I take all of my conversations with researchers and scientists and physicians and nutritionists and all of these four races that I go on all over the globe.  Hunting down superfoods and foraging for amazing plants and reading new research on things like ATP and aminos and colostrum and Kion is my playground to create new amazing formulations for you along with some of the best training and nutrition articles on the face of the planet.  Along with an amazing coaching program for those of you who are personal trainers, physicians, chiropractic docs et cetera who want to get certified to learn my ways, so to speak.  So anyways, that’s all over at getkion.com.  When you go there, there’s some automatic discounts that are going to pop up on your browser.  It’s just very simple getkion k-i-o-n getkion.com

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show:

 “I mean, I’ve seen a study last year about a tattoo ink  accumulating in your lymph nodes and didn’t realize that in some people it looks like if your detoxibility is compromised, let’s face I think only a fraction of the ink actually makes it in your skin and then the rest has to be excreted somehow.”  “Our average exposure in the city right now is a quintillion times higher than back in mother nature when it comes to these microwave radiation signals.  So what he argues is that if you go back to nature well, you have more recovery and this seemed to happen.”

Ben:  Hey folks, it’s Ben Greenfield here and some people including my guest on today’s show would claim that you could feel a lot younger, like years younger and make a bunch of health issues vanish with the click of a button, namely the airplane mode button on your cellphone. He’s an investigative health journalist and he wrote a recent book on EMF Electromagnetic Fields which I thought was going to be just kind of the usual hohum cellphones might kill you and there’s all those random research in Europe but we don’t have it in America yet.  Apple is evil blah, blah, blah.  But it turns out that this book has a ton of really good independent scientific evidence in it that goes into wireless technology, EMF, cancer, infertility, insomnia, depression and a whole host of scientifically proven issues with this new form of 21^st century electrical pollution.

He goes into everything from what your smart phone and your wifi router and your microwave oven have in common to why carrying a cellphone in your pocket can affect your fertility to big, big source of EMF radiation in your home which we’re going to talk about today.  Speaker phones versus earbuds versus Bluetooth, earpieces a whole bunch of stuff.  This new book which I’ve actually mentioned on the show before; it’s called the “The Non-Tinfoil Guide to EMFs: How to Fix our Stupid Use of Technology,” a non-tinfoil guide to EMFs.  I’m going to link to everything that Nicolas and I talk about over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/tinfoil that’s bengreenfieldfitness.com/tinfoil.  And like I mentioned my guest is Nicolas Pineault and he’s a health journalist, he’s published over 15 hundred articles, he’s got a newsletter called Nic and Jen’s Health Life and I like the book ‘cause it’s actually got research.  It’s not just him saying a bunch of random stuff about how his balls hurt when he put his cellphone in his pocket.  So we are going to take a deep dive today in that research so Nicolas, welcome to the show, man.

Nicolas:  Thanks for having me, Ben it’s an honor.  I’m looking forward to this.

Ben:  Yeah, is your phone on airplane mode, by the way?

Nicolas:  It is.  I don’t even know where it is right now.

Ben:  Good.

Nicolas:  It’s probably yeah, it’s plugged in and it’s airplane mode almost all the time.

Ben:  Good man.

Nicolas:  I actually don’t have a number to call now.  My wife and I share one cellphone for our business number and people know they can’t call me anymore.  So they just use Facebook chat or something like that instead.

Ben:  People can’t call you at all?

Nicolas:  No.  Never.

Ben:  Wow.

Nicolas:  I mean they ping me on Facebook chat and it’s alright.  It’s all good.

Ben:  Did you do that after you wrote this book like did you ditch your cellphone based on what you learned from this book or is this something you already did?

Nicolas:  Ah, it was over time, I mean I don’t know I love in-person interaction so I guess I’ve never someone who’s for long calls.  I prefer skype calls anyway, video.  Seeing people kind of well, face to face.  You have the internet, I guess.  But it’s been a couple of years, I think and then only writing the book and doing the research in the last two years only reinforced not using my cellphone abusively and now after writing the book I just do a couple of things differently.  So I’ll use my phone to kind of, I don’t know when I’m not doing anything instead of just being on Instagram and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling.  I’ll kind of try to do it in front of the computer where my computer is wired.  So just changing my habits a little bit should reduce my overall exposure during the day.

Ben:  Wow, man there are so many things I want to dive into but I won’t touch on the subject I haven’t talked about before on the podcast ‘cause like I’ve done podcast on EMF before.      

Nicolas:  Sure.

Ben:  But you have some really interesting things you talk about.  So the first thing I guess I would like to talk about like the sensitivity to these electromagnetic fields.  And whether or not like certain people can be more sensitive and things that could contribute to increasing our sensitivity to the electricity that’s produced by cellphones or cellphone towers or wifi routers.  So can you get into that like what kind of factors would contribute to increasing our sensitivity to EMFs or vice versa?

Nicolas:  Sure, so the research is really early but there’s one researcher in particular that has studied mechanisms that can show how these micro signals or even low level electricity, so electrical fields or magnetic fields from the 60 hertz and wires in your home can affect human cells because they kind of myth around and that’s self-perpetuated by industry and by physicists and by engineers that don’t know about Dr. Martin Pall’s research.    

Ben:  Dr. Martin Pall?

Nicolas:  Martin Pall, p-a-l-l.

Ben:  Okay.

Nicolas:  So this man has basically proven the mechanism that explain how is it that a non-ionizing signal, so that’s a very, very low power type of electromagnetic field such as micro radiation from cellphones, Bluetooth and wifi, how is it possible that a human body is affected because in theory what they talked previously is that well ionization, so direct DNA damage from ionizing radiation is the only thing you should worry about.  So when you use non-ionizing radiation to communicate wirelessly is all good.

Ben: But what would be an example of ionizing radiation?

Nicolas:  Ionizing, so x-rays?

Ben:  Okay.

Nicolas:  Nuclear radiation gamma rays.

Ben:  Got it.

Nicolas:  So this is research from… it was probably I mean, 60’s or the 50’s when research was coming out about x-rays causing this problem, DNA damage.  So one of the things that I heard about is how dentist eventually got leukemia because they were using x-rays on patients and they were also using x-rays very frequently in shoe stores to make sure that children’s feet were the right fit.  So at one point, they realized “oh, my god this DNA damage is accumulating each time you get an x-ray so it doesn’t mean we’ll ban x-rays altogether but let’s face it we’ll only use it in a medical setting in a very controlled manner where we know there’s more benefit than harm.”  So that was x-rays and this is ionizing radiation.

So when you go in the spectrum of non-ionizing radiation which includes well, daylights and visible light which includes infrared, UV but also microwave radiation in the range of let’s say 900 megahertz to 3 gigahertz which is basically your average cellphone these days with the 3G 4G technology.  So the thought was well, it’s non-ionizing guys so it’s all good.  So that’s the premise.

Then you get into Dr. Martin Pall’s work and he showed that on each cell in your body you have something called well, you have multiple of these called the calcium channels.  So the voltage gated calcium channels.  And as the name entices these are voltage-controlled so they are very how he puts it, exquisitely sensitive sensors on these little doors in your cells channels and what happens when you get exposed to extremely low voltage electricity which is each electromagnetic field has an electrical component and a magnetic component.  He discovered that these doors to calcium channels gets stuck open and the calcium will start flowing in as fast as I think four minutes of exposure.

In certain studies by another guy that looks at the therapeutic use of EMFs Arthur Pilla p-i-l-l-a, if I’m not mistaken, so his research has shown that what happens is that extra calcium would flow into the cell and that the damage instead of being direct in case of x-rays or nuclear radiation would be indirect.  So what is it doing that you have extra calcium in your cell? Well, it breaks the ominous spaces that’s happening inside the cell and one of the thing it does is that it increases nitric oxide to extremely high level and the downstream effect of that.

Ben:  You don’t want too much nitric oxide?

Nicolas:  Well, you don’t want too much because if you have the right amount there’s the pathway that will cause good effects.  We know nitric oxide if you take supplements, for nitric oxide for blood flow and nitric oxide effect of exercise that’s good.  But in excess nitric oxide when the levels are constantly elevated non-stop you get nitric oxide that will mix with super oxide to create peroxynitrite and peroxynitrite is in a nitrogen specie that is very damaging to mitochondria and that can now create a bunch of different side effects and these are the effects from EMF.  So it’s basically three steps down that you see disruption of certain body and systems in the body, not a direct impact.      

Ben:  Okay, so this is what you’re referring to as the nitric oxide peroxynitrite cycle that’s caused by a bunch of calcium leakage into the cell which is caused by this non-ionizing radiation that we get from something as simple as a like a cellphone signal or a wifi router?

Nicolas:  That’s right.  And one of the main issues when it comes to this technology and our exposure is that it’s constant.  So if this calcium is allowed to flow in constantly, well over time if you compound that for let’s say the last 12 years that people have been exposed to wifi and smart phones, now you start getting effects.  It might be over time.  So going back to your original question about electro sensitivity, well, depending on who you listen to it’s anywhere from 3%-33% that might have symptoms and it is very, very hard to study because it is exacerbated by so many things.  So the NO/ONOO cycle.  That’s nitric oxide peroxynitrite, this is Martin Pall’s research.

Ben:  You call it the NO/ONOO cycle?

Nicolas:  That’s right.

Ben:  Okay.

Nicolas:  The NO/ONOO cycle.

Ben:  As in N-O stand for nitric oxide and O-N-O-O stands for peroxynitrite?

Nicolas:  Yes, it’s O-N-O-O minus that’s peroxynitrite.  Just to be correct.  So Dr. Martin Pall originally before getting into EMFs he was studying multiple chemical sensitivity.  And he’s trying to figure out okay, why is it that certain people are chemically sensitive and is it a psychological issue or is it physical? And he found that there’s a mechanism that is basically how much your brain is excited by the toxins so basically you have, it’s entire cycle is based on the NMDA receptors in your brain getting overly excited by chemicals in that case.  And what does that do? Well, it actually does the same thing as EMFs so it will directly cause your calcium channels to stay open.

So this is the synergy that we see between chemical exposure and that I’m talking about all classes of chemicals.  In his different lectures, you can find on Youtube you’ll find where he explains how pesticides, heavy metals, organophosphates, so many types and different classes of pesticides all act through the same mechanism which is NMDA receptor activation over and eventually it gets overly sensitive and then it allows calcium to flow in.  So if you have EMFs plus chemicals then the bucket might overflow.  Then the damage might be too much or at least that the calcium is so overwhelming to the body that you can become symptomatic and what I need to add to that is that he shares in his research that the side effects are often local.  So this might explain why people let’s say, you carry a cellphone in your pocket well, you have an effect on sperm but if your cellphone is in your pocket that’s probably not affecting your shoulder that much because the really high concentration of EMFs sending to your crotch is way higher than your shoulder or your head.  And when you use it near the head well, you have links, you have [0:17:55.0] ______ about cellphone and headaches that show pretty good correlation and then the link, very controversial still but with brain cancer that might explain why people develop or it looks like in the research you have average 32% additional risk when you use a cellphone on this to develop a brain tumor on the same side that you’ve been using it for a long time.

Ben:  Hmm.  Interesting.  Okay, so basically what you’re saying is this nitric oxide peroxynitrite cycle and the influx of calcium into a cell from exposure to this radiation is actually something that Martin Pall has shown in research can be aggravated or made even more sensitive when you have things like heavy metal exposure and you’re eating a crappy diet and you’re getting exposed to things like herbicides and pesticides?

Nicolas:  Correct.  So there’s even the picture gets more complicated.  This entire cycle has 34 sub-cycles that honestly, it’s really, really hard to study.  This guy’s been working at it for decades.

Ben:  What do you mean? What’s a sub-cycle?

Nicolas:  Well, for example you have peroxynitrite, right and you probably heard about something called BH4 and so BH4.

Ben:  It’s like a chemical isn’t it?

Nicolas:  Yeah, exactly.  It’s a chemical in the body.  It’s tetrahydrobiopterin.  So that’s one chemical that’s actually good to have a lot of in the body because it directly impacts peroxynitrite.  It will actually, I think, bring it down but when you have elevated peroxynitrite levels, BH4 goes down.  And one of the mechanisms that could explain why do people feel very good when they go into an infrared sauna is that sauna therapy has been shown to increase BH4 tremendously. Therefore…

Ben:  Really?

Nicolas:  It reduces peroxynitrite so that’s one cycle.  Yeah.

Ben:  That’s interesting.  ‘Cause I feel amazing when I travel. You’re getting exposed of non-ionizing and ionizing radiation when you travel, right? Like the airport x-ray.  Then everybody opens up their cellphones on the tiny little metal tube that you’re stuck on.  I come home sometimes, I feel like crap.  Then I get my infrared sauna and what you’re saying is I’m actually producing this tetrahydrobiopterin this BH4 stuff when I’m in the sauna and that’s actually shutting down some of my sensitivity to those calcium channels being open?

Nicolas:  It looks like it.  I mean I couldn’t say there’s like one study that shows correlation but it’s anecdotal evidence that’s very, very interesting and when you study Martin Pall’s stuff and I’ll send you the entire cycle for people to study because it’s complicated but in the end it comes down to this.  It comes to increase inter-solar calcium peroxynitrite oxidative stress and then the cycle goes on and on and on.  But there’s also this entire factor if you have just elevated inflammation in the body, if you have certain things like you have elevated IL6 interleukin 6 or interleukin 8, it talks about TNF Alpha, INF gamma so different transcription factors if I’m not mistaken, don’t quote me on this one, but basically if you have high inflammation in the body, that’s the short version it will also increase nitric oxide inside your cell.

So let’s say you’re someone super inflamed, you have all these pre-existing conditions then you get exposed to chemicals and then to EMFs, you have the perfect slew of things that will make this cycle self-perpetuate and then cause symptoms.  So it’s a slew of different things and to that I could add mold toxins for example, because…

Ben:  Mold toxins?

Nicolas:  Yes.  If you have mold toxins, I know Dave Asprey and a lot of people are now making the world aware of the danger of mold in your home.  Well, mold toxins are known to block NRF2, the NRF2 pathway.  I know you’ve talked about it a lot and what NRF2 does is that it controls the buffers of peroxynitrites, so glutathione production or SOD superoxide dismutase.  So basically, if you have mold toxins in your environment you’ll reduce the amount of let’s say your buffering capacity to this peroxynitrite hence, if your mold toxics and you have chemicals and this and that now you’re getting even more damaged from EMF.

Ben:  So you’re saying don’t eat a bunch of blue cheese while you’re talking on your cellphone basically.

Nicolas:  [Laughs] Well, it can be in the food, it can be in the air, I would worry personally more about environmental mold and especially look at Dave Asprey’s documentary Moldy that really talks about the issue.  So if you have the…

Ben:  Yeah, I’ll link to that in the show notes by the way, it’s a good documentary.  Go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/tinfoil.  I’ll hunt that down and link to it in the show notes.  So this NRF2 pathway which yeah, I have talked about that before, it’s basically one of the most important pathways involved in like elimination of reactive oxidants and a lot of these inflammatory agents, basically what you’re saying is if we activate that pathway or allow for that pathway to be healthy by mitigating mold exposure, I mean there’s a lot of things that can activate.  I recently read an article about how like consumption of exogenous ketones can activate this NRF2 pathway.  You talked about heat, that’s another big way to do it.  I know that Dr. Rhonda Patrick talks about the use of both cold and heat to activate this NRF2 pathway.  What you’re saying is figure out ways to activate that in addition to mitigating things like mold exposure and other forms of inflammation to actually decrease your sensitivity to EMFs and at least cause this stuff to be a little less damaging.

Nicolas:  Exactly.  When you stimulate NRF2 basically it’s your natural defenses that go off.  Let’s put it that way.  You become more resilient to any kind of body stress including EMFs in that case and Dr. Pall as he puts it, he’s not a doctor, he’s a PhD researcher so he doesn’t do medical advice but he recommends as an exploratory move to buffer this EMF damaged peroxynitrite is to increase NRF2.  So there are a couple of compounds that are known to do that.  I could find studies about olive oil extract being good.  EGCG from green tea, quercetin.  You talked with Tyler LeBaron in a recent episode well, maybe not recent depending on when people are going to hear that but Tyler LeBaron look up this episode with Ben.  It was amazing about molecular hydrogen or hydrogen-rich water, as you place it.  It can also boost NRF2 so these supplements, there are a couple of supplements that will directly help you raise this pathway in your body and make you more resilient.

Ben:  I’ve drinking a lot of that stuff since I interviewed him, that hydrogen-rich water.  I’ll link to that episode in the show notes for this company called TrueC sent me a bunch of hydrogen-rich water tablets and I’ve just been dropping into water.  I didn’t realize it was actually doing a good job protecting me against the rigors of EMF or the damages of EMF but that’s super-interesting.

Okay, so there’s a lot of other stuff to get into in the book and I want to kind of get out of these biochemical pathways for a little bit and just talk about some practical stuff.  So this is also something we haven’t talked about in the show before.  A lot of people kind of raised their eyebrows on this but talk to me about like clothing.  You talked about EMF-shielded clothing and why you’re convinced that they work.  People have given me underwear like conferences, they say it’s going to protect my balls and you know, folks were like wear essentially like faraday cage suits but talk to me a little bit about EMF-shielded clothing and also when you do, fill me on whether there’s an actual company that makes EMF clothing that doesn’t look like birth control for your whole body.

Nicolas:  [Laughs] Yeah, well I’m really have been exploring that in the last few months as I’m actually working on the EMF course for health practitioners.  I have to look at different solutions that really work in a clinical setting to offset EMF damage or to cure people that have chronic disease and one guy that I interviewed in the process of putting this course together is Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt, he’s from the Sophia Health Institute and this Klinghardt told me the average patient that we see has seen 23 different other health practitioners before me and what he considers the number one factor in the ill-health and the reason that these guys are not getting better and I’m talking about ALS, Alzheimer’s, autistic children, neurological diseases of all kinds, Stage 4 cancer.  He sees people that even the holistic medical system has kind of rejected because they don’t find solutions.  He tells me the number one factor that all practitioners are missing is EMFs, that’s it.  That’s his number one recommendation for insomnia, for he says his number one technique to fight viral infections, retroviruses that he talks about is a brand new field of science he’s studying and it’s EMFs.  It’s EMF-mitigation.

So then I asked him, okay, what do you think about EMF-shielded clothes? And he tells me everyone of these people gets better only if I use as many shielded clothes as possible.  Even if it doesn’t look so pretty or it’s not convenient and it can get pretty expensive as well.  So in his clinical observations, I think this is worth a lot.  This is probably worth more than certain studies because we’re talking about very sick people and what gets them better.  Now, I’m not arguing this means EMFs are the cause of everything but it looks like EMFs in various sick people are a factor that if your environment is not as close to nature as possible with very low levels of EMFs back in nature in fact, our average exposure in a city right now is a quintillion times higher than back in mother nature when it comes to these microwave radiation signals.

So what he argues is that if you go back to nature well, you’ll have more recovery and he’s seeing that.  He’s seeing stuff that looks miraculous from reducing the environment.

Ben:  That’s crazy.  Maybe this is why I’ve heard Amish kids don’t get autism and ADD and stuff like that.  Maybe that’s one reason is they’re not getting exposed to all these signals.

Nicolas:  Well, it’s…

Ben:  I mean, if you’re saying Dietrich Klinghardt and he’s pretty smart.  He’s like an MD, PhD.  He’s a smart cow.  I’ll link to his research in the show notes but so basically, he’s saying is the root cause of a bunch of our kind of like our surge of chronic diseases, it might not just be sugar and glyphosate but it’s actual EMFs.

Nicolas:  Yes, well I don’t know if you would say the root cause, he would probably say it, I don’t say it personally, I’m very careful because I don’t have any proof of that but it looks like one of the root causes of not healing from these diseases is high EMF environment, let’s put it that way.  Maybe because it’s simply preventing you from having the most restorative sleep that you can.  So back to shielded clothes, what he recommends is at least a t-shirt and at least a boxers or underwear for almost every single one of these patients that are chronically sick and for people that have neurological diseases he recommends either a hat or a shielded cap.  And there’s one guy that did a pretty good study about that.  It was a small group of people with chronic disease, I think it was autoimmune diseases and that wear very medieval-looking kind of cap or EMF-blocking hat on and they had good results and this study by Prof. Trevor Marshall, I think he’s from the UK and he’s actually studying that quite a lot and he’s reversing autoimmune diseases by wearing that.

Ben:  By wearing a hat?

Nicolas:  Wearing a hat and blocking the…

Ben:  Hold on.  People are going to laugh.  He’s reversing autoimmune diseases by wearing a hat.  He’s got to be doing more than that.

Nicolas:  Yes.  It’s not his only thing.  Let’s say it’s an important part of his study is what is it doing to people.  How better do they get if they have the hat versus not.

Ben:  Where do you get this clothing?

Nicolas:  Ah, good question.  This guy Prof. Trevor Marshall I think he sells them but I’m looking at different brands right now.

Ben:  What’s his name?

Nicolas:  Prof. Trevor Marshall.

Ben:  Trevor Marshall, okay.  Like prof like professor?

Nicolas:  Professor, yeah.  Trevor Marshall, PhD.

Ben:  Okay.  I’ll link to his website, too along with this Dietrich Klinghardt guy and Martin Pall and some of these other folks you’re bringing up.  So I’ll write down a lot of notes while you’re talking here.

Nicolas:  Sure.

Ben:  So you don’t use like a specific brand of clothing?

Nicolas:  Well, right now I don’t have any good recommendation.  I’ve seen Spartan around that did a kick-starter a few years back for boxers?

Ben:  Oh, yeah.  Somebody shot me, yeah like they’re a brand of underwear called Spartan.  Funny you get suited by Spartan, by the way.

Nicolas:  [Laughs]

Ben:  That too like a low EMF.  While people are listening in, like if you’re listening in and you know of something that’s not just like ugly as hell that can block radiation.  I mean, they have a lot of anti-radiation kind of underwear just like on Amazon.  Are you talking about stuff like that? Just like the stuff you can find on Amazon?

Nicolas:  Sure.  It’s pretty much.  I’m sure you can find good stuff on Amazon, it’s just you’ve got to be careful that they have that the manufacturer will show how much it blocks.  So you want to find for example, a lot of companies would use oh, it blocks up to 99.9% radiation but that doesn’t tell you anything because it doesn’t tell you it could block zero percent radiation at one gigahertz.  So this is the signal that you’re going to get from certain cellphones and it could block 100% at three gigahertz from other cellphones.  So you want to make sure that they have actually created a product which blocks the entire frequency range let’s say, 900 megahertz to three gigahertz and it can vary depending on the quality of clothing that they use.  The quality usually will be cotton and silver thread mixed together.

Ben:  Oh, I shouldn’t get a G-string or a thong huh? Or I’ll get like a full coverage.

Nicolas:  Well, depends if you care about your butt cheeks.

Ben:  Yeah, full coverage.  Don’t put yourself when in your bra, either.  Okay, so there’s some other things that you get into in the book.  Like how you can reduce your phones radiation pretty significantly in a simple way? And I like some of these cellphone hacks.  I recently tweeted this about how I’ve got this set-up on my phone now, I just go into the color settings and by clicking my home button really fast three times I can now convert it so that’s only making red light at night.  And of course, I use night mode and I keep it in airplane mode when I can but you talked like 80% is a significant reduction of the phone’s radiation.  How are you doing that?

Nicolas:  So that’s the difference, 80% is the difference between using the 3G networks and the 4G/LTE networks.  So 3G is the third generation.  These were kind of the older cellphone towers and the older network around and the 4G/LTE, 4G stands for fourth generation and LTE is long term evolution.  That’s the standard.  That’s a little bit different but let’s say, for the sake of the argument it’s pretty much a new gen signals or cellphone towers telecom network that we have accessed to since 2012. so 4G/LTE is about three times faster than 3G.  So most people’s cellphones by default will connect on the faster network unless you tell your phone not to connect to the faster network, well it will by default do that.

So you can go into your settings and I can tell you for Apple but not for the other companies but usually under cellular you will have the option to turn off 4G/LTE.  So in other words you’re telling your cellphone, you know what I know there’s two kinds of cellular networks available, I just want the [0:35:20.8] ______ stuff, I don’t want the 4G/LTE because each time you go up in speed you go up in radiation.  So what I did for my cellphone while writing my book is that I tested the radiation with 4G while downloading a Youtube video and with the same Youtube video downloading I used 3G and I realized it’s something like 80%-84% less radiation by using 3G.  So if you’re someone that uses their phone a lot, you will see a slight reduction in speed.  Maybe three times reduction in speed but you will still be able to download maybe movies…

Ben:  So it’s not good for tethering but like if you can just talk on your phone, let’s say I have a conference call.  Just like going there really quick switch it to 3G and that’s all I need to do?

Nicolas:  Well, exactly.  I would keep it on 3G all the time unless, you need the extra speed.  Sometimes I do that myself.  Let’s say I’m in a coffee shop, I need to have a Skype call.  It needs to be super stable.  Maybe it’s an interview or connection call and I need to use my phone as a hotspot, okay I’ll just put it back on 4G and then I’ll use the extra power, try to create distance maybe put in a couple of feet away and then I know I can have the bandwidth but you don’t need it to be able to successfully use your phone in an everyday setting at all.

Ben:  Hmm, that’s good to know.  I never even thought about making that switch.  Okay, I’m writing down all these things I got to do.  This all makes sense.  I like how practical this is.  Your book’s very practical, by the way.  That’s what I like about it.

[Music Plays]

Ben:  Hey, I want to interrupt today’s show to tell you about my friend Drew Canole’s company.  It’s one of the top companies in America when it comes to nutrition and he makes powders.  Like juice powders, red juice powders, green juice powders.  This one that I’ve been drinking at night for the healthiest golden milk.  You go to a lot of coffee shops you can get golden milk now, you know.  It’s like cow’s milk and crappy turmeric and a bunch of sugar? Well, Drew made his own version of that with reishi and organic turmeric and coconut milk.  Dude, you pour a cup of hot water over this stuff at night or even piping hot like a good clean almond milk or if you’re a dairy person like a good goat’s or a cow’s milk and you sit there and you sip it cradled in your hands and you go off to a place of nirvana, an ayurvedic place of sleepful nirvana.  Try it.  It’s called Organifi Gold.  You get a 20% discount on Organifi Gold along with Drew’s amazing green juice, his red juice all of it.  With the code mentioned over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/Organifi.  Organifi, that’s spelled with an I, BenGreenfieldFitness.com/Organifi and the code is mentioned there.  Enjoy your sippy-sips.

[Music Plays]

Ben:  Now what about this belief that’s pretty problem like when I post a study like the one that I did in the school where they put the plant next to the wifi router and then they put another similar plant out in the separate room and the one next to the wifi router was wilted.  People were like, oh out of school it’s very small in population size.  People raise an eyebrow to a lot of these studies.  Do you actually have found studies like you found meta-analysis that you say shatter beliefs that EMFs have actually a lot to do with human, animal and plant biology.  Tell me a little bit about what you actually found when it comes to research like get in to some of the research that’s actually compelling and proven and important and relevant.

Nicolas:  There’s so much of it, Ben that it’s almost ridiculous, the more I look into it.  Just before preparing for this interview I actually have, maybe it’s a little bit overkill, 10 pages of notes here but I wanted to pull up the most high quality meta-analysis because when you look at a bunch of studies and these meta-analysis they only get high quality.

Ben:  When you’re using your weird accent to say meta-analysis here in America you’re referring to meta-analysis, right?

Nicolas:  Yes, it’s just that the stress thing I have a really hard time with. [laughs]

Ben: That’s okay, man.  I forgive you.  Your accent’s pretty cool.

Nicolas:  Thank you.  People will say it’s one of the sexiest things about me, anyway.

Ben:  [Laughs] That in your underwear.

Nicolas:  [Laughs] Oh my god, yeah and throw in my entire tin foil hat thing.  [Laughs]   I don’t wear that.  Anyway, 2016 review that looked at are these EMFs actually causing oxidative stress in humans? And 93 of them found effects.  That’s a 2016 review, let me look it up.  It’s posted in electromagnetic biological medicine 2016 and the main author is Igor Yakimenko.  I’ll send you all these links after.  Make sure.  So it’s actually 93 of them out of 100 showed.  Yes it actually causes oxidative stress in human cells.  So that’s not like you cannot argue with doing nothing, right, this is 2016?  Another one.

Ben:  When you say oxidative stress, like what’s that mean? When you say oxidative stress in human cells are they like putting cells in a test tube and blast them with cellphones for eight hours? I mean like what’s the relevance to humans when we talk about these meta-analysis? ‘Cause you know as well as I do like sometimes like a lab study doesn’t really transfer to the real streets in the trenches.

Nicolas:  Well, the different things that they looked at, they looked at a review of the data and I don’t have all the study that they looked at.  But basically, they looked at the activation of what they call key pathways generating reactive oxygen species, activation peroxidation, oxidative damage of DNA and changes in the activity of the entire oxidant enzyme.  So we don’t know to what extent but I’m just pointing out that if this is true it means that well, something is happening.  I’m just trying to shatter the belief that nothing is happening here and this is really a dangerous thing to be saying.  A lot of the skeptics who are saying, no, it doesn’t do anything.  It’s impossible that EMF’s or that wifi does something and you have reviews like these that say well, it’s doing something.  Now the question is, what exposure at what power density, at what frequency is doing what and we don’t have these things.  And that’s my whole point in the book.  I’m not arguing EMF’s is killing us.  Is it more important than diet than exercise combined? I couldn’t say but ignoring it is pretty stupid and it’s not scientific.  That’s my argument.

Ben:  So you’ve got all these meta-analysis.  You have them in your book as well, right?

Nicolas:  Most of them but I’ve got more that I found.  One is on the effects on nature.  So looking at, it’s a 2012 Indian review that looked at 919 papers to see okay, is there an effect from a cellphone tower in nature? Exposure to bugs, to animals, to plants for example, and 593 out of 919 papers showed effect to nature.  In their conclusion, they say that EMF exposure can change in different animals.  Neurotransmitter functions, blood brain barrier, morphology, cellular metabolism, calcium efflux and gene expression.  So it’s doing something and again these are non-ionizing signal that some people still argue, no, it cannot possibly do something and you have 593 papers showing effects to nature.  It is doing something.

Ben:  Yeah, I mean like the research we could talk ‘til we’re blue in the face about the research and people should buy your book ‘cause it’s all in there.  And what I would rather do versus just like talking about all and the list goes on and on in the book and it shocked me how many studies actually exists.  I want to continue to talk about not just underwear but all the other things that people can do to actually fix some of these issues.

So another one that you talk about in the book is why you shouldn’t hold your cellphone in your hands.  Tell me why you shouldn’t hold your cellphone in your hand and then what you can do about that ‘cause it’s hard.  I know that Dr. Mercola who I’ve interviewed before talks on his cellphone when it’s on a selfie stick.  Talk to me why you shouldn’t wear your cellphone in your hand or hold your cellphone in your hand and then what you would do instead.  What you’d recommend instead.

Nicolas:  Yeah, well I pointed that out in the book because in the fine print inside your phone it says to keep a distance between your phone and your body of 5-15 millimeters at all times in order to stay within the guidelines.  The FCC tested guidelines for this phone.  So it was just a bit ironic that you hold the phone in your hand then you’re already over the limit.  It’s impossible to use a cellphone the way that you should use it, in other words.  So it’s just ridiculous.  I guess, if you can make sure that your cellphone is on airplane mode when you carry it in your body, that’s good.  If you’re talking on a phone and you can have it rest on a table in front of you is way better than holding it in your hand, in my opinion.  And the reason is simple, is that near the phone is the highest radiation.

If you create one-foot distance between the phone and your body you’ve essentially reduced 80% of the signals.  Though my thought and it’s just personal opinion is, what are you doing when you hold the cellphone in your hand? Are you essentially kind of irradiating your blood because we know UV radiation is used to purify the blood in different medical techniques or biohackers use that.  What is this one called, kind of UV blood irradiation?

Ben:  So you’re talking about UV blood irradiation used to purify the blood is a good thing but you’re saying the radiation from the phone and the effect of that that has in the blood is not?

Nicolas:  Well, it might not be.  I mean, you look at other effects.  Other that near your head, it’s causing problems.  Near your crotch it’s causing problems so it’s probably causing problems near your wrist as well but that’s just a personal theory of mine.  So it’s not necessarily ideal to have a phone in your hand with earbuds.  It’s better than putting it next to your head but I think it’s all a matter of not creating a false sense of security.  I’d say the less you’re exposed the better off you’ll be and we’ve got to be careful because we don’t know exactly what it’s doing to us.  Even to people that don’t feel anything.  So I’d rather have people be aware that is if you touch the phone in one way or another, you’re exposing yourself to high amounts.  If you’re not touching I’d say 80% of that.    

Ben:  When you say touching, you mean touching the phone directly though? But what about some of these cases like I interviewed the folks from Defender Shield and they have a thing that I travel with that I put my lap that my laptop goes on and then they also have a case that supposedly blocks some of that radiation.  What if I’m holding my phone in my hand but I’m holding it inside that case?

Nicolas:  That’s way better.  I believe in these cases.  I’m testing another company aside from Defender Shield.  Defender Shield, I have great confidence in the company because Daniel DeBaun is an engineer with decades of experience.  So I know it blocks, is it 100 percent? I don’t know I haven’t tested the Defender Shield case in the real world setting however, it is deflecting most of the radiation that you would have.

Ben:  They say it’s 100%.  When I interviewed them they said it’s 100%.  They did independent FCC certified lab testing.  And they say that it blocks the full frequency spectrum of the EMF radiation which should be like everything you get from a cellphone or a tablet or a laptop.  I obviously have not tested that myself to see if that’s true but I mean, they’ve got the studies in their website.  I interviewed them for like an hour and a half about this stuff.

Nicolas:  Yeah, and I would believe that.

Ben:  So that would be.  You could do that and not necessarily to have to talk on a selfie stick or always have to have your phone like not in your hand when you’re using your phone? Like if you’re on a walk or something. It could be in your pocket or in your hand.

Nicolas:  This could be the number one thing I’d do on a walk is having one of these cases because the way they work is that they will block whatever radiation would otherwise go towards your body and instead there’s just an opening on the side for the antennae.  So that way your phone picks up 100% of the signals and doesn’t have to ramp up it’s radiation in order to connect to a tower.  And that’s something now people know but if you have five out of five signal bars your phone is emitting a fraction of the radiation compared to one out of five.  Because if you get one out of five it has to ramp up the antennae’s power and the radiation.  I’ve heard things like, I don’t know how accurate this is but I think up to a thousand times more signal and more radiation is emitted when you’re one out of five.  So it’s really if you use a case that doesn’t have a good design you could do more harm than good.  In other words you could block the signal going from the antennae to your phone and then your phone will be forced to ramp up its radiation which is exactly the opposite of what you want to be doing.

Ben:  A lot of these like Tour De France riders and professional athletes now they’re doing grounding and earthing.  And now that’s a big thing now like earthing mats and grounding mats to keep us connected to the earth’s natural magnetic field.  Is that a strategy that you could use kind of similar to an infrared sauna to mitigate some of these effects or other issues with grounding and earthing?

Nicolas:  Definitely a good idea.  And I’ve interviewed while working on the MF course I told you about it’s called Electrosmog RX.  Gaetan Chevalier is a fellow French Canadian so that makes me like him by default because we share the same accent.

Ben:  Absolutely.

Nicolas:  [Laughs] And he talks about the benefits of earthing.  He’s published so many research papers in the last few years on the mechanisms and also on exactly what different blood markers extra are improved when you’re grounded and among other things.  It looks like it’s a type of antioxidant for the body so it has a capacity to buffer reactive oxygen species.  It didn’t have any data on reactive nitrogen species like peroxynitrite but I would guess it’s doing the same thing.  And just anecdotally people that are electrosensitive they each see benefits from grounding.  And some of them let’s say they spend a bunch of time in a wifi environment or they go on a plane, on a flight, right and most people are now using wifi on planes.  And they have to ground and once they ground they instantly feel better.  And it has multiple things that it’s doing so that it might buffer the ROS that you got in the reactive oxygen species from your environment and then it reduces inflammation and it’s been confirmed with medico infrared imaging where they’ve seen it in DESA thermography.  They’ve seen almost instant kind of reduction and inflammation but the benefits increase when you go to 20-40 minutes of grounding.  And then…

Ben:  I thought you talked in the book about, I thought you said something about how grounding might not be a good idea?

Nicolas:  In certain situations.  So grounding is good and I think it’s something that might be in the future looked as essential as your light environment and your food and your exercise.  I think it might be something that we’ve disconnected from our lifestyle but that we need to reconnect and that might be so primal in our health.  So I just want to preface this.  And then if you ground the way nature intended it to be which is you walk by the beach, you swim in a lake, you swim in the sea, you walk barefoot on the grass, in the forest.  Basically, you’re barefoot, you’re grounded.  Some people now have started to ground inside so we’ll use something like a grounding mat inside, right? You can purchase these.  You can look at it at justearthing.com.  And for research, you can look at The Earthing Institute, I think it’s dot org just Goggle it or Dr. Gaetan Chevalier.

Basically, it might backfire if you ground inside and there’s a lot of reasons behind it but what Klinghardt told me is that he grounds everyone with grounding mats inside because he finds it really hard to have someone that’s chronically ill go take barefoot walks or just do physical activity outside.  So instead he’d rather have them use a grounding mat inside but what he does before hand for everyone is turn off the circuit breaker to the bedroom.  And the reason behind that is simple, is that if you’re using a grounding mat inside most people will plug their mats in the ground outlets of the electricity wires in their bedroom.  And if there’s still electricity in there his thought process and a lot of people in the building biology profession think that is that, you might have dirty frequencies on the ground that will get into your body.  And you might get more harm than good.

Dr. Chevalier has other opinions about that, he claims that every single study done was inside the laboratory setting with electricity on, with wifi on and with so many dirty frequencies around randomly.  It never basically didn’t do the studies in a very controlled environment and still people get benefits.  So his argument is that grounding is always beneficial.  Dr. Klinghardt and other people in clinical practices they say just to be safe turn off the circuit breaker and then ground.  So that way you basically remove this risk.

Ben:  Okay, so basically according to this building biologist using granny equipment that’s connected to an electrical outlet if you’re in an area that has a lot of dirty electricity or a bunch of wifi that turns your mat into a huge EMF antennae.  But if you’ve got your wifi router off and you’re plugging into like a dirty electricity filter or something like that you know, a bunch of wires all over the floor, then it would be something that would be beneficial.

Nicolas:  Yes, and something I need to add and something that really surprised me when I interviewed Dr. Klinghardt is that he told me that in the first few weeks of grounding, let’s say you’ve never grounded in the past 20 years and most of us actually don’t have a regular grounding practice, he tells me that most people will get way worse before they get better because in his opinion and Gaetan Chevalier actually told me too that this can happen.  Which is it will actually kick up your detoxibility so much that you might get a lot of side effects from heavy metal pollution in your body.  Heavy metal basically stirs up any heavy metal that used to be in your brain or in your tissues because grounding will put you in a… I would [0:56:09.3] ______ would be it’s a deeper state of sleep and your glymphatic system tries to flush out these toxins from your brain.  I don’t know what the mechanisms are but both of these guys told me, warning you will feel like [beep] once you start grounding but Klinghardt told me, you know what, to buffer these effects, you can simply have a bunch of tablets of chlorella with dinner the night before and you should be okay.  So using some kind of binder.

Ben:  Oh, ‘cause it soaks up some of the metals that get released.  Yeah, that glymphatic system is really interesting like that waste clearance pathway that occurs of the whole central nervous system while you’re asleep.  Like it’s how you remove brain waste and you’re saying you ground or you earth that process is upregulated and if you’re kind of toxic you need to be careful and have a binder in your system.  So it’s almost like a biohack, right? You take some charcoal or some chlorella and go to sleep on a grounding mat and it access more functional waste clearance pathway for your nervous system.

Nicolas:  Correct.

Ben:  Cool.

Nicolas:  So I guess it’s a tool that you want to be very careful of if you’re already let’s say, you’re already detoxing, you’re already feeling under the weather and you start grounding all night long.  Maybe it’s not the best and maybe you could start grounding, I don’t know [laughs] just grounding like walking in nature a little bit and then easing into it.  Klinghardt is a little bit more extreme, he’s like no, just take a bunch of chlorella, ground all night and then the side effects are gone.  And other doctors I found for example, there’s Dr. Tom Cowen who treats a lot of Lyme disease patients.

Ben:  Yeah, I know him.  He’s been on the show before.

Nicolas:  So he tells his patients personally 15-30 minutes per day at first and then they kind of monitor how they feel.  So he doesn’t want to overwhelm their body with this toxic release.

Ben:  Interesting.  So you’ve also got this stuff called magnetite.  That’s not a supplement that you take.  That’s something’s that’s already in your body, right?

Nicolas:  Yes, exactly.  Well, there’s actually two lines of thought here.  I’ve read that a recent study looked at magnetites, so magnetite is a form of iron that’s electromagnetic and it’s found in birds.  It’s found in different animals and what researchers have found is that it’s the way that birds will navigate.  So basically, in other words they have in their beaks have high amounts of this iron oxide that is magnetic and it will help them.  It’s probably wired to their brains somehow.  They don’t know the exact mechanisms but it helps them figure out where is North and where is South.  How do we migrate?  And in humans it’s found in human brains and what researchers don’t know and if someone has more data I couldn’t find a lot of data here but is it natural or is it because of pollution? Because one study in 2016, it’s very recent, has looked at magnetite content in the brain and they found that it might have been because of air pollution.

So the air charged with some iron oxide I guess, from see there’s so much stuff in the air now that who knows where it came from.  It’s so global, the pollution.  So they don’t know exactly if it’s a natural thing.  I would think personally that we probably have a magnetic sense of some kind but to humans even if we don’t migrate just because I think that science has yet to discover everything that there is to intuition and even I don’t know magnetism.  For example, it’s very interesting there’s Gaetan Chevalier who was talking about the fact that there’s probably a huge correlation between grounding and jetlag.  And I know that this is something that Dave Asprey has talked about for years how he gets up in the plane and he will start doing yoga in a park on barefoot, of course.  So he gets his grounding effect and he realizes that this will attune me to the new place, to the new time of the day.  And it’s probably also light exposure but what I think is happening and Gaetan Chevalier is a top expert on grounding thinks too is that there’s probably the magnetism felt by your body and it might be another way on top of light of environment that your body will know what time of the day it is.

Ben:  That’s pretty fascinating.  I haven’t heard of that before how you actually have a mineral in your body, this magnetite stuff that actually makes you sensitive to magnetic fields.  And I’ve seen people talk about like colony collapse disorders in these or certain bird populations having issues with death or with not being able to navigate properly and some people say that’s due to all the cellphone towers and all the wifi.  And EMF is kind of floating around now and maybe even Goggles balloons.  Now that they’re launching those into space and this idea that it’s magnetite.  This stuff that’s actually already in your body that could make you more sensitive to that. I never actually realized before that we had this mineral in our body that could make us more sensitive.  And this mineral by the way, this magnetite stuff kind of like the chlorella with the grounding and the earthing, did you come across anything that could almost like protect the magnetite or cause it to become less damaged or less affected by these magnetic fields in your research?

Nicolas:  No, I actually don’t have a lot of data about that.  I will be extremely interested to hear more because this natural innate sense of magnetism I think it needs to be studied more.  There’s probably something to it.  I don’t know.  There’s so many things like I hear about the earth map and what these guys do around the magnetic field emitted by the human heart, feet around you and I’m so fascinated by these things because I think we have yet to discover so many aspects of our biology, you know.

Ben:  What about wearing things that are made of metal? Like how that might act as an antennae, attrack more EMFs to your body, like metal bras or dental fixtures that are metal or metal framed glasses? Don’t you talk about tattoos as well like heavy metals and tattoos?

Nicolas:  I do.

Ben:  Tell me a little bit about that.

Nicolas:  Sure.  So basically, when people get into a medical setting and get an MRI some people are tattoo’s acting because let’s say red pigmentation, I think yours has some red in it, right?

Ben:  Dude, I’ve got so many tattoos.  I’ve got green, black, red, blue.

Nicolas:  Okay, [laughs] you have all of them, okay.  So anyhow, sometimes you have iron oxide I think that is used for red. But anyway, you have different also heavy metals that are used in tattoos.  So it’s a slew of different minerals and basically some people I think might react to electromagnetic fields.  My wife has a tattoo on her forearm and I think she got a rash at one point.  And I was wondering okay, could it be a wifi rash? I don’t know.  I mean let’s face it it’s a small antennae that’s in your skin subcutaneous so I don’t know exactly but at the same time there are some other things aside from tattoos that are metal in your body and that might be reacting.  For example, one of them is metal-framed glasses.  And if the entire frame of your glasses is pure metal, there are a couple of studies showing that it will increase the EMFs from your cellphone that your brain is exposed to.  And that’s pretty logical, you’re essentially wearing an antennae around your eyes so that’s one thing to consider in a high EMF or foreign EMF environment that we live in.  Minimizing the metal that you have on your body might be a good idea.  But I cannot say [laughs] tattoos are just a personal choice.

Ben:  You did say one research study that shows that heavy metals using tattoo ink are known to react with MRIs and dude, I did a podcast with the Dr. Jack Kruse where I went to London and I did a full body scan in this fancy like MRI unit and it actually showed that I had a whole bunch of like, I forget the way that he described it was like poor redux potential.  I believe was the phrase that Dr. Kruse used specifically the area that I had the poorest redux potential in my entire body was where I had a bunch of red ink on my tattoo on my right shoulder.  It was a totally different color than anything else.  So I think the MRI was interacting with it and I don’t want to be a fear-monger but it does like if you can get metal-free inks if you’re going to get a tattoo it sounds to me like that could be a pretty good idea.

 

Nicolas:  Yeah, with natural pigments.  I mean, I’ve seen a study last year about a tattoo ink accumulating in your lymph nodes.  And they didn’t realize that in some people it looks like if your detoxibilty is compromised let’s face it, I think only a fraction of the ink actually makes it in your skin and then the rest has to be excreted somehow.  So if you have a poor detoxibility well, it has to go somewhere so hopefully it’s not going to be accumulating inside of your body and causing side effects.  Another thing when it comes to metal and wifi well, people that have dental amalgams.  So these silver fillings that are 50% mercury be leeched more and faster when you’re talking on a cellphone.  And that’s been demonstrated, and that’s two studies but still and not a lot of people are looking to this but if you have dental amalgams there’s let’s say, some indication that they might actually leech more toxic mercury when you’re exposed to wifi or to cellphone.  So it’s not ideal, having them in the first place and then combining that, combining the chemicals and what we talked about the NO/ONOO cycle.  You have the chemicals and then you have even more leeching in that wifi environment.  So that’s just another thing you want to take care of in your health journey is removing this amalgam safely, I think.  It’s just another reason to do it.

Ben:  Can we say some of the same stuff about Bluetooth?

Nicolas:  Well, pretty much.  Bluetooth has three different classes to it.  There’s class one, class two, class three and let me just look it up.  I don’t want to say stupid things here but one class emits more than others so used to have devices that were Bluetooth, let’s say Bluetooth ear pieces that were fairly like not emitting a lot.  However, these very, very low emissions have been now eliminated from the market.  So these were the class three.  The class three are actually have a range, okay so the new Bluetooth class is class three and they will emit one milliwatt.

Ben:  Class three is less damaging, right? [crosstalk] That from what I understand class one is the one you want to avoid.

Nicolas:  It’s less damaging.  That’s right.  Yeah, exactly.  So it’s less damaging.  The class three devices are these less damaged but these are actually not available on the market.  They’re barely found so now they’ve been replaced with class two and class two has a power that’s 2.5 times higher than class two.  However, certain ear pieces are class one and have a range in fact, of 300 feet.  So you could literally have like your ear piece throw your cellphone.  I don’t know why you would do that, but anyway, you could be so far from your cellphone and still be able to get good connectivity but that comes with a price.

In one case, a building biologist has measured an ear piece that emitted more than a cellphone.  So this is really why I’m not a huge fan of Bluetooth.  But that being said, let’s say you have an Oura ring or even if you use, I don’t know if you use a FitBit or if you use a Polar heart rate monitor during your workout one hour per day, I don’t see it as an extremely huge deal if you do everything else right.  We’ve got to be moderate in what we say and this is what I hate from.  When I got into EMFs, I found two very polar opposite discourses about EMFs and some people said you know what, EMFs the end of the world, it’s causing every illness on the planet.  It is the devil.  And other people said it does nothing.  So I found myself torn apart.  I’m like, okay well these guys seem to be both [1:09:14.4] ______ and they are [1:09:15.7] ______ would be a scientist saying both of these things.  So I’m like, okay who’s right? In the end it’s somewhere in the middle.  It’s grey area.  So I think when it comes to EMFs you’ve got to look at your own devices.  How much time you’re spending very close to a device that emits EMFs and then your own wifi router and can you go wired? That would be ideal.  Can you at least turn it off at night? And then if you do all these things right then you have a Bluetooth device that you use from time to time, I don’t see a big deal.  If you’re extremely sensitive and extremely sick however, well, in that case you’ve got to take more steps to reduce your exposure.  Just like if you’re extremely sick maybe a McDonald’s can shatter you.  I mean, and you’re so sensitive to everything.  So it depends on how much you want to optimize your life and how healthy you are in the first place, I think.  This is really how you’ve got to look at EMFs.  Just another environmental factor to consider and then you take the action that you think are necessary and you see the results.

Ben:  I use a Bluetooth headset sometimes and it’s made by that same company that I talked about earlier, Defender Shield and if you guys go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/tinfoil, I will link to the interview that I did with the folks at Defender Shield about this stuff.  But it is a class three signal.  And again, you get pretty far from your phone, it doesn’t work that well ‘cause it is class three.  But the other thing I like about it is the actual little Bluetooth receiver piece it hangs pretty far away from your head.  It’s not as close at least to your skin or to your skull.  And I’ve done a couple of interviews on Bluetooth before, it’s like there’s not as many bodies in the streets or as much hardcore research as there is on wifi and cellphone signals and some of these other forms of non-ionizing radiation per se but it’s still one of those things.  And Dr. Kruse again when I interviewed him about Bluetooth and I’ll link to that interview in the show notes.  He talks about how it could affect our red blood cell function.  He had some research that he had discovered on the effect of Bluetooth on specifically red blood cell function, which would be of concern especially like athletes or exercising individuals.

Nicolas:  Yeah, you know what, Ben it’s important to know that Bluetooth essentially has the same signal as a cellphone.  So when it comes to frequency it doesn’t have the same power so consider it is the same kind of signal.  It’s a microwave radiation signal. So people need to understand Bluetooth is just the name of the technology, it just means usually and maybe lower power.  So if Bluetooth can harm your blood cells and can change the viscosity of your blood in certain studies well, probably Bluetooth and wifi and smart phones and smart meters and cell towers they each emit the same kind of radiation so it’s all to be considered.  I think the one thing you want to think about is your accumulative overall exposure.  Just like you would with chemicals.  So how can you reduce your exposure as you can.  One step that I took and I’ve got to say, I’ve got to admit, it’s been only recently that I started working wired.  I used to be still on wifi even as writing a book on the topic.  And into the book.

Ben:  You mean, you use ethernet now instead?

Nicolas:  Yes, I use ethernet and I just ran this 75-foot long wire that looks very ugly in the middle of the condo but we don’t own this place and maybe we’ll have it wired in the walls but in the meantime I’m spending all day in front of my computer like at least six hours, why would I need wifi? I don’t need to move around.  My computer is in one place.  Now I’ve reduced my exposure to wifi tremendously.  And I like to think it affects my health.  I’ve seen the difference is it psychological? I feel less fatigued.  I don’t know I’m doing a bunch of things but one thing is sure, I don’t need more signals.  Most people need to reduce their exposure, I think and would be better off long term if they reduce their exposure as much as they can manage to or afford to.

Ben:  You have a ton of things in this book.  Like the effect of cellphones on weight and actual research that could make you fat or reduce the capacity of fat cells to actually [1:13:53.2] ______ or to burn fatty acids.  You talk about the link between wifi very strongly between wifi and cortisol.  I see a lot cortisol, very high cortisol in people’s bloods these days.  You talk about blood brain barrier leakage.  You talk about DNA damage.  You have one page that pretty much shows the debate is completely over about this stuff causing cancer.  And then you even get into some stuff we didn’t have chance to get into today like why we should probably not to have any dimmer lights in your whole home.  Make sure wires are tucked like three feet away from your feet.  Don’t use your cellphone in a moving vehicle like tethering like in being moving vehicle, especially a bad idea.

I mean, I know a lot of this stuff sounds alarmist but frankly for me, if I’m going to feel like crap all day, I don’t care if I have a convenient day ‘cause I’m able to whatever make a few phone calls in the car.  I mean this stuff’s really important.  And this book honestly, like “Non-Tin Foil Guide to EMFs” probably the best book I’ve ever read on this stuff.  So if you’re listening, you need to get this book because we only scratched the surface.  The book only took me two hours to read, like I flew through ‘cause it’s pretty easy to lay out but so it’s not going to knock your socks off if you’re concerned about the volume of reading.  So I’ll link to the book if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/tinfoil that’s bengreenfieldfitness.com/tinfoil.

And Nicolas, thanks for writing this book first of all and for coming out and sharing all these stuff with us.  And thank you also for inspiring me to probably go out and buy new underwear today.

Nicolas:  [Laughs] Well, I can’t wait to see what you come up with.  I want to do an experiment just wearing EMF-blocking underwear for a couple of weeks and seeing if I can increase libido or testosterone or different factors like that.  I would be very interested because what you’re doing essentially is that you’re let’s say, family jewels.  I don’t think this one will have to be, will it?

Ben:  You can say jewels that’s fine.

Nicolas:  Jewels.  Anyway, your jewels won’t be exposed to any signals essentially will be back to mother nature while the rest of your body is getting exposed.  I would be looking forward to your results.

Ben:  Awesome.  Cool, man.  Well, I’ll link to all these stuff again, you guys go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/tinfoil.  Check it out.  And Nicolas, thanks for coming on the show.  Thank you, all for listening in.  Until next time, I’m Ben Greenfield, signing out bengreenfieldfitness.com.  Have an amazing week.

 

 

Can you really feel years younger and make unexplained symptoms vanish with the click of a button — the “Airplane Mode” on your cell phone?

Investigative health journalist Nicolas Pineault used to think this all sounded like something only crazy people wearing tinfoil hats would say.

But the overwhelming amount of independent scientific evidence linking electromagnetic fields (EMFs) from wireless technologies with increased risks of cancer, infertility, insomnia, and depression sure has the uncanny ability to change a man’s mind. His new book “The Non-Tinfoil Guide to EMFs: How to Fix Our Stupid Use of Technology” is a simple and unconventional book that will teach you exactly how to reduce your exposure to this brand new 21st-century pollution without going back to the Stone Age.

In it, he covers…

-What your smartphone, your wifi router and your microwave oven have in common (page 9)

-Why policymakers and scientists all worldwide don’t agree about whether EMFs are dangerous or not (page 21)

-Is Electro-Hypersensitivity as popularized in the TV show “Better Call Saul” real? Or is it all psychological? (page 62)

-Why carrying a cell phone in your pocket can harm your fertility (201 studies prove it) (page 72)

-The 1-click fix to reduce cellphone EMFs by 84% (page 142)

-What is safer? Speakerphone, earbuds or a Bluetooth earpiece? (page 155)

-The #1 worst source of EMF radiation at home (page 160)

-Why baby monitors are worse than smartphones, and better alternatives (page 208)

It’s true. The jury is still out about whether cellphone radiation is the new smoking or just a temporary scare. But why take chances?

Nicolas Pineault is a health journalist who has published more than 1,500 online articles through a daily newsletter called Nick & Gen’s Healthy Life. In 2017, he authored this unconventional book endorsed by top health authorities such as Dr. Mercola, a book that combines common sense and humor to tackle the very serious topic of electromagnetic pollution and its effects on human health.

During our discussion, you’ll discover:

-The NO/ONOO (nitric oxide/peroxynitrite) cycle and how research by Dr. Martin Pall shows us why chemicals, heavy metals, mold toxins, sugar and junk food, and a bunch of other inflammatory factors each contribute to increasing our sensitivity to EMFs, (and vice-versa)…[10:00]

-How stimulating a pathway called the “NRF2” pathway can help calm down this cycle and make you less EMF sensitive…[23:00]

-EMF shielded clothes, and why Nicolas is now convinced that they actually work…[25:50]

-How you can reduce your phone’s radiation by 80% by using just 3G instead of 4G/LTE…[33:45]

-How a handful of meta-analyses shatter the skeptics’ beliefs that EMF’s do nothing to human, animal and plant biology…[38:55]

-Why you shouldn’t hold a cell phone in your hand (and what to use instead)…[44:00]

-Why you need to be very careful with grounding mats and earthing mats, and a supplement to take at night before you ground or earth…[49:45]

-The mineral magnetite that is found in the body of birds, humans and other animals, and how it reacts with EMF…[57:55]

-The importance of metal-free inks and natural pigments in tattoos…[62:25]

-Whether or not bluetooth is an issue compared to Wifi and cell phones…[66:40]

-And much more!

Resources from this episode:

–The Non-Tinfoil Guide to EMFs: How to Fix Our Stupid Use of Technology

–Dr. Martin Pall

–Dr. Arthur Pilla

–Moldy documentary

–Tyler Lebaron hydrogenated water episode

–Dietrich Klinghardt, MD, PhD

–Prof. Trevor Marshall

–EMF blocking underwear on Amazon

–The DefenderShield case Ben uses

–My Jack Kruse interview on Bluetooth

–Martin Pall’s presentation

–Martin Pall’s presentation on the NO/ONOO- cycle and how EMFs and chemicals act in synergy

– Study from Pilla which shows how calcium channels are activated after less than 5 seconds of EMF exposure

–Study by Magda Havas where she mentions that up to 33% of the population suffers from mild to moderate symptoms of electro sensitivity

–Cellphone use increases ipsilateral brain cancer risks by 33%

–Medical hypothesis — sauna therapy might act by raising BH4 levels

–Ochratoxin A (common mold toxin) inhibits the NRF2 pathway

–Olive leaf extract mitigates EMF damage, probably because of NRF2 stimulation –EGCG stimulates NRF2

–Quercetin stimulates NRF2

–Molecular hydrogen stimulates NRF2

Electrosmog Rx, the EMF course for health practitioners I’ve put together with Dr. Klinghardt, Lynch, Mercola, etc. Live beta launching from Feb 26 to Mar 11.

–Sophia Health Institute, Dr. Klinghardt’s practice

–Background microwave radiation levels are a quintillion times higher than back in Mother Nature

–Prof. Trevor Marshall study using EMF-blocking caps to help autoimmune patients

 

–Spartan underwear>

–2016 review on EMFs and oxidative stress

–2012 Indian review on EMFs and animals + nature

–Defender Shield

–Earthing

–Best source for earthing research

–Metal framed glasses increase EMF exposure to the head

–How MRI might react with metals in tattoos

–Silver fillings leach more mercury when exposed to cell phones

–Silver fillings leach more mercury when exposed to wifi

Show Sponsors:

-Kion Aminos – For for muscle recovery, better cognition, reduced cravings, immunity, try Kion Aminos from GetKion.com.

-Four Sigmatic – Go to FourSigmatic.com/BenGreenfield for 15% off.

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