EP 153 WTH?!? The Doctor's Chat: Navigating the Invisible Threat of EMFs with Nicolas Pineault

Foreign.

Welcome back everybody. Dr. Greg Eckel. And this is what the health and we are talking electrosensitivity and EMFS today with the EMF guy, Nicholas Pinault, number one best selling author of the non tinfoil guide of two EMFs which I have on my bookshelf. Thank you Nicholas. An advocate for safe technologies. Through his unconventional approach of blending humor, science and common sense, he's becoming a leading voice on the topic of electromagnetic pollution and how it affects our health. For the last few years, Nick has been interviewing some of the best minds on health and technology, facilitating the creation of courses and educational materials to raise awareness of this very important issue. He's got a summit coming out in early 2024. You can find more about Nick at the emfguy.com welcome aboard.

Thanks so much for having me.

I always learn so much with talking to you and I know my viewers and listeners. You know, this is one of those topics that, you know, I love that you one that you titled your book, the Non Tin Foil Guide. And you have some very practical applications in there. And there is more and more science coming out. We just are not hearing about it on mainstream media. However, you know, more and more of us are tuning into frequencies and its effects for health and for ill health. And before we jumped on here, you said one, one component is really talking about electrosensitivity as we're kind of bathed in the 5G world and more and more frequencies coming in in our commons, in public areas. You know, what are some common sources of EMFs? Number one, what is EMF and then what are some common sources?

Sure. Well, talking about man made EMFs, electromagnetic fields or electromagnetic frequencies and we're literally bathed in different frequencies and many of them are natur neutral comes from just the, the earth's natural magnetism. We have the Schumann resonance, it's about 7.83 Hz and then different variations of that or different multipliers of this frequency as well. So it's not just one frequency, but it's multiple. And then we have the entire visible spectrum, sunlight. We know that all of these things we have been exposed to for millennia to billions of years. All of biology is compatible with certain frequencies that have always been hitting the planet Earth. However, our modern use of technology, with the advent of electricity to then radio waves, to TV waves, TV broadcasting antennas and then to cell phones and then to WI fi and Bluetooth more recently and even new cellular networks that are more and more install more and more closer to people's homes, such as the 5G networks, small antennas that they call them, it's a bit of a misnomer because they're just as powerful as the 4G antennas, except that in certain situations they're enclosed. They're much closer to people's bedroom or just living spaces. So all of these technologies are using frequencies that at this kind of power level we have never been exposed to. So it's just in the last 150 years that we started introducing these new technologies. And the health effects have always been discussed since then and debated, I would say, because of course, there's a large industry that can profit off of these products and also they bring benefits to our life. That's undeniable connectivity. If we can say that connectivity also comes with bad, bad problems if you're too much on social media and whatnot. But also it can lead to great things. Connectivity, free access to the Internet and. Well, I don't know if that's free. But still, many technologies are part of life now and kind of help society move forward. And they're kind of part of life. So in this discussion, when you say, well, maybe these devices are unsafe or they are triggering in certain people symptoms related to electrosensitivity, that's a controversial thing to say. But I'd say that more and more mainstream scientists now are reading the scientific literature, the medical literature, and realizing, my God, there's a vast amount of science that has been produced and it's surely it shows some areas of concern and then other areas. What is especially concerning is what we don't know. How little data do we have about many of these health effects. We just have hints of animal data or in vitro studies on certain things. Like brain health, for example, is a good example. We don't have much on brain health. We have brain cancer risks. But what about brain health in general? You're hard pressed to find this area of science where you kind of study the oxidative stress caused by a cell phone. Or let's say just the fact that many people use Bluetooth earbuds these days, right. Instead of that, that annoying tangling wire that's, that's always, you know, kind of twisting itself and doing a thousand knots in your bag. Well, instead you can have Bluetooth, but it comes with a price. This is radio frequency radiation very close to the ear canal, very close to the brain, and not there's, there's a hole in our cranium. So I mean, it's, it's exposing the brain to, could be exposing the brain to a greater extent compared to a phone, although we don't even have good data on how. Like, what are the power levels of these things in the first place? So it's, it's all blurry and there's much speculation you can find online. But many scientists are starting to err on, on the side of precaution because they say, my God, we've seen, you know, this trail of scientific studies for the last several decades, and we should probably tell the public to lower exposure if it's just from cell phone in a pocket linked with the reduction of fertility in men, or, or cell phone to the brain, with the different brain, brain tumors that seem to increase if you talk on a phone for. In certain studies, they define heavy users for 30 minutes per day talking on the phone. I mean, it means a large segment of the population might fall in this category. And if it's not, if it's not in here. Well, for some people might have exposure to the thyroid or parotid gland, for example, and there are other cancers of the neck and head regions that might be correlated to cell phone. Many people are starting to say, well, you know, even if we don't know definitively what these things can do to the body, is that really what we want to do? Do we want to wait for definitive proof of harm, or is that always how it's done with toxic agents? And then we cause such a burden on the population as a result, instead of starting to, to say, okay, well, obviously there, there might be health effects, Even if it's just in a segment of the population, how can we make these things safer? But the discussion is not even there yet, quite unfortunately. So it's in the industry, they're not aiming to reduce cell phone emissions by 1%, nothing like that. Eventually, I think public pressure will win. But that's what I'm trying to do, really, to spread this message of awareness and prevention.

Yeah, you know, it just seems prudent. I, you know, it's a, it's a big unknown. You're not saying, hey, we gotta, you're not a Luddite. You're saying, hey, these are the benefits of the technology. But perhaps we don't know. I mean, there's a, there's wide regulations of you can't put cell phone towers on schools. Now that gets blurred really quickly because then you see a school with a cell phone towers, like, what in the world are we doing there? You know, we are, we are showing data also in animal populations and migration patterns and other components that may or may not be related. But the, the Bruton, the burden of proof used to be before you brought a product to market, you had to show that it was safe.

Exactly.

Now it's the exact opposite. It's, we're taking this to market, we're making a lot of profit. Yes, it enhances your life, but we have no idea what it's doing to you. And in my world, when I look at, you know, DEXA scans for bone health and I see a right hip has less bone mass than the left hip. And you ask people, which side are you carrying your cell phone on? And they say the right pocket. Is that a causative agent? I don't know, but it's. I don't know of anything else that would cause bone loss on just one side of the body other than you have this device over there. So it is levels of anxiety, sleep, what are some of the symptoms or precursors that may be associated here just to tune people into the consciousness of it? I think that's really the big component here is, you know, like the sky is not falling. However, we don't know if it is or not. And so just educating people about what to look for.

Right? For sure. And if, if we only talked about brain tumor, I think it's doing a big disservice to the, the public health space because a brain tumor might be at the end of your life or I mean, sometimes it happens tragically in very early and people die prematurely. That's tragic. However, the reality is a brain tumor happens in a very small segment of cell phone users or else these things would have been banned decades ago. Right. I mean, if half the population got a brain tumor, it would have been, you know, a public health crisis and would have taken the technology, banned it and called it today, or made them much safer. So obviously it's not an explosion of brain tumor, but there might be an, an increase in glioblastomas in particular, which is super concerning. But what if it's only slightly impairing the sleep of the entire population? What would that do to public health? Right. What would that do to blood sugar? Diabetes risk? What would that do to brain health? Risk of depression, anxiety? We know that all of these things can go up if you don't sleep properly. Well, in, in 2008, one researcher. And just to show you how sometimes researchers do not think can help in a, in a very holistic manner and come to the wrong conclusions about their experiments. One researcher, and that was published in scientific American in 2008. So that's 15 years ago. Just to tell you, it's pretty old. I mean, we're talking about phone exposure from old phones at this point. Almost, almost ridiculous to think about. What they did is they took a few people that were previously sleep deprived, so they told them to barely sleep the last night. I don't know what the protocol is. And then they put a phone next to their head as if they used the phone by the bedstand, like most people do every night. And then after 30 minutes of exposure, they turned off the phone and they asked these people to sleep. Well, they had one hour more of sleep onset, so it took an hour before they could fall asleep. And they were wired up to E, to eeg. And they discovered that it's really because the brain waves took a lot of time to recover from that exposure. The brain kept itself in a state that is of arousal of awakeness rather than being sleepy at night. So is this what, what's happening to the entire population? Well, the, the researchers said, you know, it's surprising that cell phones, even though, you know, people don't feel it or anything like that, it looks like it's shifting brainwaves. And they said, we cannot really say if cell phones are dangerous or not, because in the end, this effect is just the equivalent in arousal compared to half a cup of coffee. That's what they said. So it shows you that, oh, just half a cup of coffee, I mean, that's such a dismissive attitude. It's crazy to me. I really, I discovered that last month and I've been studying the topic for years. I was very angry at this kind of thinking, because if everyone starts sipping coffee before bed, what do you think is going to happen in a population where, what is it, 25 to a third to 25% to a third of the population cannot sleep properly? I mean, it's already a crisis of just not, not of a certain disease, but of wellness. Right. So if we add cell phones by the nightstand, plus WI fi, plus Bluetooth earbuds, plus all these things, what are we doing to sleep quality? Well, that's not even being properly investigated. I have yet to find one sleep researcher in the world that is doing experiments on, let's say a shielded bedroom, no signal, versus people that sleep in a room with real devices. So it's not being funded, it's not being studied. So it's a big black box. What we have is rat studies, effects on the pineal gland, melatonin reduction or the release of melatonin. So there's a lot of reasons along with the brainwave study I mentioned to say, well, probably your cell phone will interrupt your sleep patterns or kind of disrupt your sleep to some degree. And who, who knows, maybe for Nick it's 5% a minute effect. I wouldn't even feel it. But maybe for my neighbor It's 50%. We don't know. There's always a distribution curve to these things. So some people that fall on the electrosensitive spectrum might be much more effective than the next person when it comes to sleep. And the same is true for other things such as fatigue, which obviously is very closely related to how much or how good you sleep. Depression, anxiety, and also tinnitus is seen often, especially in environmental medicine. Doctors that I have the chance to interview, they tell me tinnitus is a very good tell sign that someone is especially sensitive to these man made electro frequencies. But what do you do if you live in a city? What do you do if you go to Starbucks and there's 175 people typing away on their laptops? Right? So if you get tinnitus with exposures, it makes it increasingly difficult to eat to live in a city. What are you, what are you to do? Live in a countryside? And now it becomes almost a human rights issue because are you the problem or is the environment problematic for certain human beings? And researchers have no idea what is the exact number of electrosensitives? Those that are mild or those that have moderate symptoms, or those that are completely debilitated. Some researchers say it's 1 to 3% that could be debilitated, even if that's a mere fraction of that worldwide. We're talking about a crisis that is quite extraordinary. If we talk about these people that cannot live in society, and maybe some of them don't even realize it because they live in the countryside and they don't care for all these things. But now we're rolling out satellites and more cell towers to the countryside. So these people really cannot escape for long. So that's why certain doctors are kind of spearheading our understanding of electrosensitivity and they are able to figure out ways to lower the sensitivity of these patients so that they can keep living in the modern world. It's like if you are chemically sensitive, for example, it is just as big as a problem. You cannot really go shopping. You feel sick entering the grocery store. Sometimes there are air fresheners in the taxi that you're supposed to take or the Uber. Well, you cannot even enter in there. You would get a headache. Some people get like Dramatic impact from smelling chemicals even after a few minutes. So it is the equivalent. It's just that I think that the EMFs are being rolled out more rapidly than the new chemicals are being rolled out. In a sense, it's kind of this, this new modern stressor. Except it's. While most people would agree, okay, well, toxic chemicals, we need to minimize exposure. A lot of people don't realize we need to do the same with cell phone radiation.

Sure. Yeah. Because it is. I mean, we're not even sure. Do you have. Do you recommend a specific measuring device or there is some kind of hit or miss out there on the market on those?

Yeah, well, there, there are some that are good just to detect. Sources like to be able to tell, you buy a new toaster. I mean, these days you buy a new thing and it might have Bluetooth in it. And if you have no intention of buying something with Bluetooth, like, I don't want to connect my toaster to my cell phone. Well, you can take the detection device and kind of say, well, it's emitting wireless, I don't want it. And you bring it back to the manufacturer. So some of them are more used to detect if something is emitting rather than have precise numbers. Because if you want precise numbers, we're talking about instrumentation that was designed by the telecom industry for telecom engineers, and we're talking about thousands of dollars. Some professionals that survey people's homes for emf, the building biology consultants or EMF mitigation specialists, use these tools. But for the average layperson, I recommend something like the SAM Pro Tech 33 on my website. That's around $200, but at least you get something that. Where you can start quantifying your environment a little bit. Some people that are sensitive realize that this, this gives them ammunition to actually figure out what's wrong with them. Sometimes you don't realize you're sitting in one place. Imagine you're just sitting in. I don't know, Someone invites you over, you sit in their living room. All of a sudden you start getting a headache and you're like, what's happening? You don't you realize there's a router under the sofa where you're sitting with a meter? You could say, well, I'm in the red zone here. What's happening? They could say, oh, yeah, that's the router. Okay, well, I'm gonna sit over there. Right? So if you are sensitive to an agent, you get to be able to figure out, when am I being exposed, how, for how long? Am I being exposed in this kind of environment? And for some people, they're, they're able to handle maybe city environments, but just for a weekend after that, they have to go. They kind of feel fatigued and they feel, you know, prematurely exhausted compared to most people. And a lot of the reality is also this. A lot of people live with these symptoms 24, 7. So how can you tell if you're sensitive? Well, some environmental medicine doctors tell their patients to go camping, to go off the grid. No cell phones, no wi fi, no Bluetooth thingies, and see how they feel. For some people, they feel dramatically better, which is an indication that EMFs might be at play. But so could be chemicals, mold, and other factors that are all part of environmental medicine or environmental health inside your, your home. So all of these things are important and they also play off each other in a synergistic manner. If people are exposed to mold, usually they tend to be more sensitive to EMFs. I keep hearing this from mold doctors, from Lyme doctors. I hear, well, if they have Lyme and co infections, Bartonella, and also they could be sensitive. So it's not just one thing that causes sensitivity. It looks like it's the, the overload, chemical exposure, physical trauma. So like concussion or whiplash. Some people have whiplash or a tbi and then they wake up the next day, their cell phone starts almost burning their hands, you know, tingling sensation. And they say, what is this? It's a new thing, right? Because now their entire system, their limbic brain is, is completely out of whack. It's super inflamed. So none of this is really published per se in the medical literature, but it is part of the, what these practitioners know among themselves. And they're starting to try to establish the best treatment protocols for something that is brand new and not widely recognized. So a lot of physicians, you know, do no harm and also do good. I mean, they want to treat these people now. So they're trying their best to kind of start developing protocols. And the good news is many people do get better. Some of them are so sensitive they can barely live in a city. And after several, usually it's months to years, they're able to greater degree, lower their sensitivity so that they're able to, you know, at least visit their relatives or take a plane from time to time or take a car. I mean, even just a car ride for some people is too bothersome. So that degree of sensitivity is, is, is just horrible to live with.

Well, you hit one that was a big one. You know, as we move more and more to electric cars and their batteries, you know, I, I've used meters in the back of Priuses and I'm like, I kind of counsel my patients. Do not get that and put your kids in there like that is, it's creating a field that is not super great or conductive to health of a human being, especially small child. You know, we do find that constellation, you know, people are more sensitive with mold infections, Lyme and metals. And that is a mainstay of underlying foundations, foundational health around brain health and neurodegeneration in our practice. So that's why I wanted to bring you on here and really educate our, our listeners and viewers on this because, you know, you don't hear about it otherwise. And there is more and more research and evidence to support that. You know, there's something here doesn't mean, you know, let's get rid of the entire industry, that's not going to happen. However, it's getting tuned in, into your conscious awareness with these issues and potentially, you know, that's why I asked on the, the monitor or what do you, what do you recommend? I mean, I know there's a, there's a, an array of them on the market. You've got a good resource page on your website. But, but being aware of it, I, I even had, you know, some of my staff here at the Energy for Life centers in Park City were concerned on 5G and EMFs. And I said, look, I, here's my meter. I'm walking around your workspace and we're not showing an increase here. And so what are the things for somebody that is concerned or like common areas or easy fixes here? Because it's not all doom and gloom.

Yeah, for sure. It's all about, you know, creating distance between devices in your body. So it means I wouldn't keep my phone in my pocket all day every day like many people do. It's a matter of time of use. Also, if you keep your cell phone in pocket as you, you take a 15 minute walk, it's not that concerning to me, but if you tell me that, you know, you have it as you wake up in the morning, you put your jeans on, you put the phone, you sit at your office, the phone is still there, and then you go to bed and you put it on your nightstand so you're always very close to that phone, then I say, my God, over a lifetime you're going to be exposed so much. So therefore you're that much more likely to get Health impacts. So. And it's the same if you keep it in your shirt pocket. There are even cardiologists who told me that they saw patients with heart troubles, heart arrhythmias of all kinds, that could not be explained. And it turns out if they had the phone, they didn't feel well and they had. Their heart rhythm was disrupted. Which is not that, you know, it's not that special if you understand that the heart is biological, electrical, like every other thing in this body, and that there could be interactions. It's just I think that this belief comes from the idea that, well, there are no interactions whatsoever. That's kind of the meme at the moment. But I mean even I and I had to share that because you're into brain health. There's a good review in 2021. Effects of electromagnetic fields on neuronal ion channels. A systematic review and people who want the mechanisms. It, it looks like this is the main way that EMFs impact our body is through changing calcium homeostasis in the cell through voltage gated calcium channels. It's been proposed by many people in biophysics who study emfs. And that could be the primary way. If you have these calcium channels or other ion channels in the cell and they are modified, their behavior is modified by external fields. When? Now, now we're playing with fire. It could cause oxidative damage, it could cause hormonal changes, it could cause a change in reaction time even and brainwaves. So it's many aspects that could be impacted. So how can you avoid this? One of the things that I mentioned is distance. The other thing could be at night. You want to make sure to turn off your phone or hit airplane mode before you go and get your sleep in. But also turn off your WI fi at night if you have WI fi at home. Just these practices alone can greatly reduce the impact. Even if you have a thousand WI fi around you, I don't really care for it. Turn off your own WI fi because this is oftentimes the one that is closest to your body. So therefore the effects, technically speaking are, or at least theoretically speaking, are greater on your body. So sleep and distance. And then another tip that I give every entrepreneur out there, everyone who does zooms and most people are on WI fi. That's just how it goes these days. But you can be wired in, you can have a cable running from your router to computer. And that's just how things used to be. Fifteen years ago, 20 years ago, when I started being online, you know, we had cables wifi wasn't around, and I don't know, I think I was online in 98, playing video games very early. And we have a cable for every computer, or even if you had one of the few with a laptop at the time, it was a little bit tedious. But if you stay in one place with your computer, you have a workstation like I do in this room, you don't need WI fi, right? I won't move this computer around. I don't move it. If I move it, I can go on the WI Fi at some point. Starbucks or something like that, and that's fine. But most of the time I stay in one place. So if you can turn off WI fi and have a cable bring the data to your computer, not only is it faster, it's more reliable, never drops off. And then you are. If you're an author like me or someone who works at a computer 30, 40 hours per week or more, you're avoiding all of this exposure. So imagine the benefits over time so you greatly reduce the risk. And personally, I just feel less exhausted, more energized at a day, at the end of a day of work, if I work without WI fi compared to with WI fi. And that's just my own experience, everyone will have a different experience, but if you don't try it, you'll never know it either.

Yeah, that is so true. And I think minimizing or reducing your exposure is, you know, when, even if you think of it on, in a longevity realm, like, what are these frequencies? What do they do to the body? Well, they have the potential of changing, you know, corrupting DNA or affecting genetic expression of your body. That's where the fatigue come from, mitochondrial toxicity, et cetera. So, you know, when I work to educate my patient base about how do we promote longevity for you and quality of life and into thriving, this is one of the, this is a piece of the puzzle that we really need to look at. Like, it doesn't get addressed in a. In a conventional way.

Yeah, definitely. It's. It. It's still, it's still a topic that I think doesn't have its place yet in the entire discussion of health. And that's what I'm trying to fix. It should be in there. We talk about mold so much these days. Mold, EMFs, chemicals, they all matter. It's just that oftentimes people, I don't know if they prefer not to think or talk about ems. It's a very inconvenient topic and it needs to be at the forefront. We need to talk about these exposures.

Yeah, but just because you don't think it's happening doesn't mean that it's not right.

Exactly. Yeah.

Well, Nick, thank you so much. Is there any last parting words you'd like to share with our listeners and viewers?

Well, just again, when it comes to any topic, when you learn about all the sources of EMFs through my book and courses and things like that, it can feel overwhelming. Just try to modify your habits one at a time. If you take something out of this presentation or my work, turn off your cell phone at night or set it, you know, further away from your nightstand, not one foot from your head, aim for six feet. You know it's going to make a difference, even if you don't necessarily feel it does. It's, it's a preventative measure. It's a sort of preventative medicine for your body. And I, I know for sure because I'm looking at the direction of the science and what has been published since I started this work in 2016. And you're going to hear about it. You're going to hear many more studies to come. The controversy will get bigger and bigger and those who start now reducing their exposure, they're going to be just in a healthier place moving forward. And you might found, you might find that you were one of the sensitive ones and you feel much better once you start doing so.

I love it and thanks for ending that way with the curiosity and just run an experiment for yourself like you.

Don'T exactly know until you try.

Thank you so much. The EMF guy, Nicholas Pinault. This is what the health everybody, thank you for tuning in. I wouldn't be doing it but for you. And if you like today's show, please give us a five star rating and give a little review of what you learn. What are your take homes from what your what was shared here today? These are really awesome things for you, your family and community to learn and know about. Thanks for tuning in. Much love. See you next week.