How To Defend Yourself Against Cell Phone Radiation (& Keep Your Laptop From Frying Your Body.)

Hey, folks, I'm about to fill you in. Oh, this is Ben Greenfield, by the way. I should probably say that for those of you who have never heard the show before, I'm gonna fill you in today on cell phones and why you got to be really careful with them. So this one's gonna freak you out and turn you into complete aluminum hat, aluminum tin foil hat wearing hippie in the forest. But either way, it's important information that you gotta know. In this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Show, Power supplies and everything else that became part of the technology that evolved there, and they were all emitting emissions that were dangerous to the user. So we just didn't have a sense at that time that that was something we needed to focus on. Here's the first findings that come out that are statistically significant, that identify with a confidence level that what we found is likely there. That's what's important about that.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield. Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement. Get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy, all the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And I don't know about you, but literally, like two feet away from me right now. And now it's in my hand because I looked at it, because I just can't resist when I look at it or feel it or touch it or have it in my pocket to play with it. You probably have a cell phone nearby, possibly a fancy smartphone like I have. I resisted getting one for a long time. I was probably one of the last people that I know who actually got a cell phone. And I sprung for, like, the cheapo flip phone. But I've gotten to the where I. Well, what I have is an iPhone 6S. I may eventually spring for the 7. And frankly, if you're listening in, you are probably, unless you're a freak of nature living with hairy armpits out in the middle of the Ozark somewhere, you probably have a smartphone. So the thing I want to address today on today's podcast is how we can actually keep these things from damaging our bodies in terms of radiation. And I want to delve into the type of radiation they produce. But Also ways that we can shield ourselves not only from things like the phones that we have in our pockets, but also, and this is another really annoying thing for me, when I walk through an airport or I'm at a conference, the laptops that we in many cases place over our ovaries gonads right there in our laps. And that's another big issue that I know. In addition, having a cell phone in your pocket, that can cause some pretty serious health implications. So my guest today is, he's a really well recognized and an influential expert in the realm of shielding electronic emissions and electromagnetic radiation from things like laptops and cell phones. His name is Daniel Debaum, and Daniel used to work with companies like AT&T and Bell Labs and Telcordia and has over 30 years of electrical engineering experience in the telecommunications industry. And then after that, he went on and oversaw laboratories that analyze things like electromagnetic radiation interference from phones and electrical signals and digital formats, and was really recognized as an industry authority when it comes to analyzing how we can protect ourselves from smartphones and the type of things that they produce. So he also invents EMF rich radiation protection technology, which we'll also talk about ways that you can actually shield yourself from the type of radiation that your mobile device produces. So this should be an interesting one. Again, if you own or use a laptop or a smartphone. Daniel, welcome to the show, man.

Thank you very much, Ben. I really appreciate you inviting me.

So I guess the first question I have for you is your phone in your pocket right now?

No way.

No, no way. Okay, well, that might be a good place to start because frankly, in many cases, when you tell somebody that a phone might cause issues or might not be something you want to have constantly against your body, you get a raised eyebrow. Because frankly, with societal pressure and peer pressure and social norm, just about everybody has their phone in their pocket or in their hand. So what exactly is the type of radiation that something like this. Em.

Let me give you an example. Should you have a microwave oven and you go into the microwave and you put your piece of meat in the microwave, the water between the cells actually oscillate the cells and cooks the meat, right? So that is a 2.4 GHz signal. That's a strong, powerful, has powerful strength. That is just about the identical frequency that's in your cell phone. So just like the fact that it could cook your meat, it also has the capacity with less energy, of course, to heat up your cells, but it's way less energy.

I mean, you're not arguing that a smartphone could like, cook food.

Oh, yeah, there's no doubt it's far less energy. But what's interesting is that just because it's lower energy doesn't mean it has no danger. It's certainly less danger, but it's certainly not no danger. In fact, there's a lot of evidence that talks about the RF signal being a source of a low level radiation that does cause problems to the cells it hits of a human body.

Okay, and I want to back it up a second because you use that term, RF radiation, and the way that I understand it is that there's different types of radiation that these devices admit. Like you referred to that RF radiation, which I think is the cellular radiation. But what are the different types of radiation that these devices actually produce?

Oh, that's a good question, man. A cell phone transmits a Bluetooth signal, a WI FI signal, and a cellular connection signal. All three of them are rf. Radio frequency. RF is equivalent to a microwave. As I just pointed out for my example. They're all in the same family. They're around 900 MHz to 8 GHz coming out of your cell phone in three sources. But what's interesting about your question is there's another emission that you worry about as well, and that's extremely low frequency. And that's anything under 300 hertz. Very low stuff.

Extremely low frequency.

Yes, extremely low frequency.

Is that the same thing as elf?

It is elf. Okay, yeah, it is elf. And ELF is the term that everyone refers to. And that's for 300 hertz and below. When you have a device, any device that takes power, AC or DC and absorbs that power and converts it to talking on a phone. Toasting your toast. Vacuum floor. A byproduct of those electrons running through the system actually emit extremely low frequency emissions. And sometimes those emissions can be very low. Cell phones can generate 10. It's called Milligauss, is a reference to how you measure it. And a toaster can generate 150 milligauss.

Okay, got it. Substantially so, so the E. So, so this, the cell radiation, the RF radiation is obviously so you could make and receive calls. The WI fi is so you could whatever, surf the Internet or have a WI FI connection. The Bluetooth is obviously to do things like, you know, whatever talk to a Fitbit or, or interact with anything else that your phone might be interacting with. Then this ELF radiation, that's just basically what the phone needs to, to be powered on.

Well, when you're taking the power when you're converting it, a byproduct is, the unwanted byproduct is emissions that are coming from the device itself. When you use a hairdryer, there's a coil there and a 60 cycle emissions coming out of that at probably 150 milligrams. So there's an emission coming out of that. Anything that takes power and converts it is likely to create an emission at the low end.

Okay, all right. So we've got these four different types of radiation here. Your RF radiation, WI fi, Bluetooth, and extremely low frequency. Now, in terms of evidence of harm from any of these, I think that, you know, and we've talked about this on the podcast before, you know, we've the WI FI signal produced by, for example, the WI FI router in your house. There's plenty of evidence that that can cause some issues, you know, cognitive issues, cell issues, neural issues, et cetera. But these other forms of radiation, is there really evidence that they're harmful? And if so, where can we find this evidence and how strong is it when it comes to what it can cause? I mean, are we just talking about a reduction in sperm quality? Are we talking about bodies in the streets with brain cancer? What can we actually say in terms of the harmful potential of something like these?

That's a very broad question. Let me try to break it down for you. I'll give you an example first before I start. So it frameworks what I'm about to talk about in cigarette smoking. When I was young, 12 years old, which is quite a number of years ago, nothing was known publicly about the linkage between cancer, lung cancer and smoking. It was only in the 80s that we actually began getting evidence that was public domain evidence that suggested there was some dangers to the body when you smoked. So it was around for many, many years. Science knew for a long, long time it created problems, but it never became common knowledge until they began losing in courts. So there's an example of technology that was being used in our environment for 20, 30 years before we really knew publicly that in fact there was some potential concerns to our health. Now fast forward to electronics today. When I grew up, I didn't have a cell phone. Maybe you did, but I didn't.

No, I had a pager, which was kind of weird, it was kind of funny. I was one of the few kids had a pager because. And I wasn't a drug dealer. My dad had a communications company in which he. Well, he had an ambulance service and then a communications company where they did things like sc Scanners and pagers and etc. So me and all my brothers grew up with a pager which actually really annoyed us because our mom could like page us at any time and just be like hey, what's up? Where are you? So we weren't huge fans of the pagers. But yeah, I didn't grow up with a cell phone, but I did grow up with a pager.

Yeah. In fact I had none in my life. You had some technology today, your kids, the young generation, they have it, a cell phone by the six years old using the cell phone. So all of a sudden it's becoming to permeate our lives, the use of these modern portable devices. And how much do we know about it? Well we know quite a lot. In fact as I mentioned about this cigarette smoking link science knows. In fact, over the last 10 years there's more. It's not even anecdotal evidence, it's scientific evidence. Out of many, many organizations within the world talking about the potential concerns of an emission such as a low level RF signal from a cell phone.

Yeah. And if I could interrupt you real quick, one resource that I found to be very helpful with regards to this is the Environmental Health Trust website. Have you been to this website? Eh Trust?

Oh yeah, that's Deborah Davis. She does a great job of communicating the problem and she's one of the advocates actually her and Carpenter Blake there are a number of very well known scientists of the best ilk trying to share with us the concerns.

Yeah. And when I. And by the way, to interrupt you just real quick, when I have someone who I'm trying to convince about the dangers of cell phone radiation or why it's an. I send them to this site because it's very easy to just subscribe to the blog. And I mean like just today for example, they have posted a major US government study that found increased brain cancer in rats with exposure to smartphone radiation. I believe this was the RF frequency that you were talking about. And then also a pretty big article about a new recommendation from the American Academy of Pediatrics to reduce exposure to cell phones in kids who are playing whatever Angry Birds with a cell phone in their lap. So yeah, this ehtrust.org website for any of you listening in, if you go to this particular podcast shownotes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com defend that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com defend I'll link to everything that Daniel and I talk about, including that website. But Daniel, I interrupted you. What were you saying?

That's a Great site. She's has been for the last five years, very, very high profile in this space, trying to bring those messages across. But in 2011, or you may know, I'm not, I'm not sure, the World Health Organization issued a research finding and said that RF signals in the range we were talking about, 900 MHz to 10 GHz, they are a classified probable human carcinogenic to be carcinogen. And so already in 2011 people were beginning more and more concerned about it. And by the way, that's like the same category as arsenic is. So to give you a correlation, if you think killing a rat is a way to die, then you want to consider their view too. But another even more up to date modern understanding is really being driven by the bioinitiative reports. Every year they update their findings that are literally world findings about the impacts to the mobile phones, young children, parents, pregnant women, all these things the bioinitiative reports deal with every year. So I would strongly encourage your listeners to seek out the bioinitiative report.

Is that the bioinitiative.org website?

Yes.

Okay, cool. Yeah, that's another really, really good one.

Way to go. And what I love about those guys is they are all scientific. There's a lady who does Sydney Sage. You asked me something about low level emissions at the extremely low end, if it's dangerous or not. Cindy Sage is the editor for that report. And 15, 20 years ago she wrote a report that said that 10 milligrams, which is very little emissions at the low end, can triple, double to triple a miscarriage of a pregnant woman. So we know that there is a lot of information out there, they've been pushing that kind of information also all scientifically based and they're the ones who are sort of the beacons in the space. One final thing you did mention the National Toxicity Program that I think is the science group behind that. I hate to get into detail, but one of the controversies of the standard, remember we talked about the microwave oven and it cooks your meat well, that's called a thermal impact. So RF signal 2.4 GHz has a thermal impact. It's well known in science and has been for many, many years. In fact, the standard talks only about the thermal impact. When the standard was set up 30 some odd years ago, the standard was a six foot male, occasionally using a cell phone. And what they concluded is if it was more than an energy level of 1.6 watts, just a simple number, if it's more than that the temperature around the ear or wherever you have it will increase by 2 degrees. They only worried about the thermal impact. They never worried about the biological impact. Okay, so if you look at the National Toxic Toxicology Program report, and by the way, that's a division of the National Health Organization, they're the federal government, they spent 25,000 million dollars on setting up a clean environment. And it was an epidemiology study in which they looked at the impact of an rf signal around 1.9 GHz using CDMA and TDMA, two different technologies that are currently being used by cell phones.

What are they called? CDMA and what?

CDMA and tdma, they're, they're coding applications.

Okay.

Code division multiplexing, time division multiplexing. It's, it's the way they transmit the signals and how they're received. And so what they did was they set up an environment and a thermal impact is when you're really, really close to the signal. And when they said 2 degrees, they talked about that 2 degrees as it related to being close to your head when you're using it. While these science experts were really bright, they moved the signal away to the point where the only result was not a thermal increase, but a biological impact. And so they took a peer reviewed report issued actually in the middle, middle of summer this year, and they had a statistically significant database of 2,500 3,000 participants in RATS that were exposed to these emissions. And the results were unequivocal. There is a direct link between the front lobe of the brain and to the heart. Believe it or not, they were surprised that they found a sort of a rare cancer being generated by emissions these types. So where before.

Wait, wait. When you say it was affecting the heart, you mean like the heat? The thermal effect of the phone was affecting the frontal lobe of the brain.

It was the biological, that's what was.

Important or not, the thermal effect. The biological effect.

Right. They really looked at what's the impact of a ongoing low level emission touching the human body.

So you mean even if there's no measurable temperature change in the human body from the heat produced by a device, you're talking about the actual microwave exposure causing biological issues that go above and beyond just the heat.

That's exactly right, Ben.

Okay, gotcha.

Yeah, that was so interesting about this. And it was statistically sound. So now the federal government, a branch of the federal government, said that this stuff has a direct link to very serious health concerns.

Yeah.

And where before this was a debate, ongoing debate in all the Industries that play a part of it. This was a clear and evident linkage between this use of a cell phone and the potential impact to the body's cell.

Have you seen some of the research on genetic mutations and cell damage like DNA, structural breaks and fragmentation, stuff like that?

Yeah, well I. Ben, one of the things, I was in the labs, I haven't talked about my background but I was in the labs and I would look at the data and I try to determine the accuracy of findings. And where before there's been this debate, and here's the debate, the only way you would be happy that I can prove to you that I'm plus or minus 5% confident of the data I give you is if I took, I don't know, 10,000 children, put them in a room, radiated them and watch to see what happens over a 20 year period and see who died and how they died. And obviously I'm not going to do that then. Right, because we're not going to do that to our children. So there's a lack of this definitive statistically significant data simply because of the nature of the technology we talk about. Here's the first findings that come out that are statistically significant that identify with a confidence level that what we found is likely there. Yeah, that's what's important about that finding.

Yeah. And again, I don't want this whole podcast to just be scaremongering but I mean if you go to this eh, trust website you find not only those DNA issues but things like oxidative stress, which I've talked about on, on this podcast before, is probably one of the primary causes of mitochondrial damage and eventually cancer and Alzheimer's disease. There's some really interesting studies. Have you seen the ones on sleep? Like the disruption of the ability to get into deep non REM sleep?

Oh yeah, it mucks around with your melatonin, Right, Exactly. That's why you should never ever sit near any transmitting technology. Even clocks transmit. As I said before, there's a byproduct of them operating the cell phone, certainly not because it screws around with your ADHD is considered. There are many studies that talk about the impact of children exposed to these emissions. In fact there was a guy from uk, Bernie Tower, he's a British physicist and he was working for, oh I don't know, 30, 40 years in their military and his expertise as a physicist was to build weapons, RF weapons. That's what he did for the government. So over the last, I don't know, 10 years or so, Bernie's Retired. And Bernie T R O W E R retired.

Yeah.

And he's been going to classrooms, parents that are of children in classrooms and trying to identify the fact that the RF your children are exposed to the 2.4 GHz and the 5.0 GHz of a WI FI signal in a classroom was the kind of weaponry I used to fight enemy. That's how he. The messages he was pushing.

That's crazy. That's why I have, for example, something I travel with and keep in my house is I've got one of the. I use a MacBook, so I've got a little firewider Ethernet converter. And I almost constantly have the WI fi turned off. Right. The airport turned off on not just my phone, but also on my computer. And I hardwire in, like I take this thing to hotels and when I check into a hotel, I ask them, do you have an ethernet cable that I can use? Because most of them do. And most hotel rooms, if you have like an adapter, you can just plug straight into the ethernet cable on your computer, for example, so that you don't have to get exposed to the WI fi that you were just talking about. Because I mean, the data on that alone, cell phones aside, is flabbergasting when it comes to the amount of issues, health issues from exposure to WI fi, constant exposure to WiFi. The other thing that I do when I go into the hotel room, for example, is I find the WI fi router and unplug it right away so that I can only be hardwired into the wall.

Yeah, Ben, that's. You're absolutely right. In fact, let me give you a technical content message. A Cell phone generates 1.6 maximum 1.6 watts per kilogram. If you were to go into a classroom where there's WI fi, what is the level of energy that's in that room? It's 0.5 watts, which is a substantially high, low energy level emissions that are enveloping the children for eight hours a day. And by the way, you said something that was very important. We don't want to be warmongers about this subject matter. And there's a real reason you shouldn't worry about it, because there are simple things you can do, Ben, to reduce exposures when you're in these kinds of environments. In your home, for example, you're a great example of what to do to reduce emissions that you're exposed to. And it's simple stuff you do. And all you're doing really is reducing the Impact to your cells from the constant attack from these emissions around you. Simple things. When you use a cell phone, do you know that when you take a cell phone one foot away from your head, 80% of the danger is gone?

Yeah, that's what I've heard. Basically, the distance from which you are, or the distance you are from a signal, the radiation from that signal exponentially decreases the farther that you get from it, right?

Yeah, that's exactly right. By 4 foot, it's 98% almost.

Okay, so does that mean that, for example, the use of a, the use of a headset would be advantageous over having the phone up to your. Up to your ear, obviously?

Yeah, there's sort of degrees of. If you think about a cell phone, if you have it directly against your head, you're being exposed to the power levels, maximum of 1.6 watts. If you were to put that and put earbuds on or overhead earmuffs, that would reduce that by 80%.

Yeah. And the other important thing to note with regards to that is that Bluetooth uses the same microwave frequency as a microwave oven as well. I think Bluetooth is around that 2.4 GHz or so signal. And so people who hear you're not supposed to hold your cell phone up to your ear, but then get a Bluetooth headset, you're still getting microwave frequencies right next to your brain when you're using a Bluetooth headset, right?

Oh, yeah, Ben, that's a very good point. I typically interject at this point to try to give a perspective of what that means. A cell phone can go up about five miles, and so it has enough power, enough energy to go from your, your cell phone to a tower that's almost five feet, five miles away. WI fi has enough power to go several hundred feet. So there's much less power typically being transmitted out of that device. Bluetooth can go about 30ft. The types of technology we talked about, portable devices, the class, the Class 2 Bluetooth, it runs about 30ft. So is a WI fi using a WI FI connection better than a cell phone? Yeah, the power is much less. But is it good? Not necessarily. Bluetooth is better because it's much less.

Right.

And then is Bluetooth a problem? Yeah, there's still a low level of emissions. And is a wired pair of earbuds better? Yes, that's even better because there's less energy being transmitted.

Yeah. So when it comes to, for example, keeping your cell phone away from your head, one thing that I do is I use a special Kind of headset called an air tube headset. Have you seen these?

I have been. That is the best to use.

And can you explain to people, since I know you're the expert in this, you could probably do a better job explaining it than I can. How does sound actually are arrive at your ear? When you're using an air tube headset, it's acoustical.

When you have a speaker in a room and you're listening to the music, that sound wave is interacting with the airspace and all of a sudden it comes to your ear and you can hear. Well, that's what happens literally with air tubes. They take it, they convert the. The audio into a speaker and then they take that speaker and they put it through a tube, and at the other end you can hear it. And there's no electrical signal being transmitted through that tube. So you have the benefit of hearing the video, voice or music, whatever it may be, and you have the benefit of no emissions passing through closely to your head while you're using them.

Yeah, I like it. Now, a couple other questions before we talk more about ways that we can protect ourselves from these type of things. First of all, I know that you worked or at least were involved with companies like telecordia and AT&T and Bell Labs. Do you know anything about internal discussions that are going on in the cell phone industry to try and mitigate some of these issues? And one of the reasons I ask that is like, for example, I know that Apple just produced the iPhone 7 that doesn't even have a headset jack. So like that air tube headset that we talked about, I think you have to have some kind of special adapter to even be able to use. And that's how they made the phone waterproof. But I'm curious, is there discussion inside these agencies that you're aware of in which people are trying to figure out ways to mitigate the damage rather than just make these devices more convenient to use and or more powerful?

I'm not aware of it. And I'll tell you a story. When I ran the technical labs and the various companies, they were all, by the way, all generated from divestiture. 1984, the Bell system had to break up. So the laboratory experts that I had in the Bell Labs went to Telcordia. And then that's where most of the standards and testing was done for the Bell system. And at that time, I used to have experts that I would make sure tested the right stuff. My concern was always the environment it worked in and, and how to prevent it from harming others and how effective it was in doing the function it had to do. And that's why when people talk to me about grounding, for example, I used to have sophisticated grounding testing, not for protecting people, but protecting the electronics. We didn't even believe at that time there was a concern yet at that time we had the mainframes that were taking the power supplies and these major conversion power supplies and everything else that became part of the technology that evolved there. And they were all emitting emissions that were dangerous to the users. So we just didn't have a sense at that time that that was something we needed to focus on. For me, that changed, actually being very familiar with the space. When I left those spaces and had other interests, I began realizing that the industry didn't quite fully understand what the technology was all about. And there was things that were really very dangerous. And being close to your body, having these signals close to your body was clearly of a concern. In fact, that's what prompted me to provide to develop technologies that help people deal with these things.

Now I've got one of the pieces of technology that you helped to develop, this thing called the defender shield, which is like this case that the phone goes inside of and the thing that baffles me and that actually it makes me raise my eyebrow about all these devices that say they're going to protect you against cell phone radiation. When I have my phone in this, obviously it's shielding some of the heat from getting onto my body. Like if I have in my pocket the phone feels less hot, etc. But how is it even working if I can still take calls and I can still make calls when I've got this case on the phone? I mean, wouldn't it necessarily indicate that if it were protecting you from radiation, you wouldn't be able to make or receive calls?

One may be coming to that conclusion. But let me give you a little bit of additional detail that may help. A RF signal, the Bluetooth, the WI fi, the cell lake connection, that what's referred to as omnidirectional. What that means is it goes and starts at a tiny pinpoint and opens up and opens up like a ball. Keeps on getting bigger and bigger. So the whole room filled with that RF transmitter. And so what do we do to deal with that omnidirectional signal? What we do is we simply create a wall. A wallet says urf signal can't go through here. Okay, but if you want to go the other way, be my guest. And it Lets you go in the direction of the cell towers or the WI fi. It works fine and doesn't interfere with the signal at all. But that part of the RF signal that is towards your body, we shield with a. With a wall. Simple as that.

Okay. So basically, when I, when I put my phone inside this case, this defender shield case, it allows the RF frequency to not penetrate into my body, but at the same time it allows the phone to send out a signal to the tower itself.

Yeah, yeah.

And the way that it's doing that is because the part of it that's facing my body is that like a stronger shield. And the part that's facing out where it isn't.

Yeah, that's right. Doesn't have it.

So if you owned a case like this, you would want to make sure that you didn't like, put it in your pocket with the wrong side facing in.

That's right.

I didn't know that. Okay.

Yeah, you definitely want to put it into whether wall is facing your body.

What's it made out of? What is this case made out of?

You know, it's funny, Good question. When I was in the labs, and I hate to say it was early 80s actually, before that, there was a transatlantic cabling put in. And one of the problems that was we were encountering when we were going over there was that the byproduct of the current flow which we talked about before, was an emission electromagnetic radiation at the 300 Hz and below. And the fish were attacking the cables. So we actually at that time invented a material. It was a composite of many materials that combined, actually refracts the emission and keeps it contained in this, lost in the material. So what we have is in our wall. We refract this stuff that's 300 hertz and below, and we conduct and absorb the RF that's above. So it's a simple. It's a simple concept. We don't get too complicated about it. It's a serious engineering problem, but from a practical design point of view is fairly straightforward.

Okay, so the shielding is just made up of a bunch of layers of products that absorb the EMFs.

Yeah, that's right, exactly.

Okay, Got it. As well as the heat.

Yes. Let's go back to what happens to a cell.

Sure.

That's always a good story. As a mechanical engineer, you look for the mechanics of what happens to a cell. And we have spent a lot of time trying to understand these kinds of things. And some of the conclusion I've found in the medical community is inspiring. When you talked about oxidative stress of the cell, Oxidative stress actually creates a thin film around the cell. It becomes weakened as a result of that. As you may know, the proteins that pass back and forth are retarded, sometimes nonexistent between the adjacent cells. And so all of a sudden you have a situation in which you're not feeling well today or something not quite right, or you're getting headaches. And that's because the cell itself is saying, wait a minute, I'm tired of that exposure. Do you know something like 15 to 20% of everyone that is exposed to these RF emissions and the extremely low stuff, they're electrically hypersensitive. And what they're actually feeling is the stress of the cells dealing with the exposure. What I like. More recently, there's been actually seven, several different experts in this space looking for the mechanics. You have your calcium flow into the cell, which is then creating a nitrate build out within the cell. That's what's causing the DNA damage. That's what's causing the mutated cells. As you just talked about, we are now understanding the actual mechanics of what's happening to a cell when it comes to what happens under exposure environment like that. So I'm excited about those kinds of research that we're doing. We're better understanding why our bodies are reacting the way they are to these things.

Just playing devil's advocate. Oxidative stress is something that's considered to be a hormetic stressor. So when you get the production of peroxides and free radicals in small amounts, your body will, for example, step up its own endogenous antioxidant production. And small amounts of UVA and UVB radiation are good for you. You talked about grounding and earthing earlier, and we know that, for example, the planet itself emits a mild electromagnetic frequency when you're standing on it, that gets absorbed into your body.

By the way, Ben, that's an extremely low frequency. Below 10 hertz.

Yeah, yeah, it's like 7.38 hertz, 7.83 hertz or something like that. But when it comes to cell phones, could you argue that minimal use, like occasionally. Occasionally getting exposed to the radio frequencies and the creation of this oxidative stress might be something that in small amounts isn't necessarily harmful and might actually even be beneficial. Have they ever done studies, I guess, that shows, like a dose response effect?

No, actually, that's one of the things that I would like to see a lot of. Like, for example, with the National Toxicology program, we're report they didn't say if we moved it an inch away, this is the effect that would happen. If we reduce the energy level by X, that's what we saw happen. So there's not a lot of granularity in what we understand these days yet. And so we created rules of thumb. If you're going to be in front of an RF signal for really, really short period of time and it's reasonably strength emission and you're not going to be doing it long, then don't worry about it, it's not going to bother you. What we know is the longer you're exposed in the three hours or more space we know, that's when it's more likely true that there's oxidative stress. Okay, there's an impact to the body. So it's duration, how long are you there? And you got to watch that as you increase it, it gets worse.

Okay, got it. So you've got this case that the phone goes into, this defender shield case. It's basically the best way I can describe it. And if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com defend I'll put a link and some photos of what this thing actually looks like along with a discount code that you can use to get a 15% discount on this actual case. It's like a flip open case that flips up or as I told you guys, I think the last time I saw you at a conference, Daniel, I was showing you how hard it was for me to snapchat with flip. But you guys have a different case that allows for us social media mavens to be able to snapchat away. This case opens and closes over the first phone. It goes into the phone. How is this any different though than there's so many devices out there. There's these little dots that you put on your phone. There's like the one I've talked about before is like the pong case that supposedly blocks emf. What's the difference between this and any of these other devices out there that supposedly block emf?

Great question, Ben. I always like to help sort that through.

Especially the holographic stickers, by the way. Those are the ones that always get Debbie.

It's very simple, Ben. Working in the laboratory, the only thing you consider real is something that can be measured. Measured. Knowing what you have with measurements that you know is real. So when you look for any device that talks about its place in the world in the RF space is shielding, you always want to make sure. That there's evidence, independent evidence that it works. Now let me get back to Pang. Pang and others. They use a different technique for what they refer to as shielding. Remember we talked about the omnidirectional link? It connects its omnidirectional. A cell phone can create three different levels of strength. And what those three levels are is, hey, I'm really close. I don't need to output a lot of power. And then you walk away from the tower, you're two miles away. Oh, I need more power. Let me go to the medium level. And then there's the. I'm five miles away, I can barely see the tower. I'm going to be at the maximum strength. What Pang and others do is they actually take that signal and they build an antenna, a bridge between the cell phone and the tower. They help that signal find a path to the tower easier than it typically would be, thus making it appear it's less distance, has less power needed to be generated. So in the case of Pong types of technology, they're reducing the power levels of the cell phone itself because they're helping increase the connection efficiency between the cell phone and there. So they actually do. They're an engineering product that do what they say they do. They don't eliminate the signal, we eliminate it. But their technology is better. It's like we were talking before about earbuds versus putting to your side versus other ways of dealing with emissions. Reducing the power level is one of those things. That's a good thing.

Even those holographic stickers.

No, no, no, no. In my opinion, they're in a different class. They, at most they talk about an indirect result. There is no such thing as an indirect result when it comes to scientific study. They can claim that if we use this and the muscle changes in this way, therefore something happened and you're safe. That is illogical. It's not an engineer based evaluation with those kinds of things. They're using technologies that quite honestly, I'm baffled with because it's not scientific physics they're talking about. So for me, some of this stuff just doesn't seem to make any sense. And it's very simple. Where's your independent laboratory study work that shows this is to be as legitimate as it says it is and they'll have difficulty finding it?

Okay, so you guys have done actual FCC certified lab testing, like independent testing on this case?

Oh yeah. Anybody that you buy from, you should look for independent study work that identifies the claims as being accurate or not.

Okay, now this would obviously fix my cell phone issue. If I put this around my cell phone, and then ideally, when I'm making and receiving calls, not only would I have it inside this case, but I'd be using, like, an air headset, right?

Yeah. You can actually put your cell phone in your pocket with the air tube. It's the ideal world for you.

Okay, cool. And by the way, you can get these air tube headsets, like, off of. Well, I know you can get them on Amazon. Do you guys have them on your website? Daniel?

They're actually going up this week, believe it or not.

Okay, cool. So if people use that 15% discount, then they could get the discount on both the air tube headset and also the case.

Yes.

Okay, cool. Now, what about laptops? Because obviously not only if you don't have the airport wireless turned off, are they emitting a WI FI signal. Do they produce an RF signal as well?

Oh, yeah. This is an important point. I think you're talking about a tablet. Looks so small, remember? Generates a WI FI signal as strong as your laptop. There's no difference. They go to the maximum power levels to connect to the routers. So you have the wi fi signal 2.44, 5.0 GHz transmitting from laptops. You have the Bluetooth, typically, you have the elf, by the way, that's also there as well. A great story, Ben. When I got involved with this stuff several years ago, it was a holiday season this time of year. My sons were visiting, and they're crazy like you, having their cell laptops on their lap all the time, you know, working away. And your generation is always using these technologies for long durations of time. So my wife says to my kids, there's got to be something wrong. I want grandchildren. Can't you do something about not putting it on your lap so long? And that's when I thought, wait a minute. I know exactly what the problems were. Let me go find a solution. I couldn't find it. In fact, I bought a lot of misinformation in the marketplace. So that's why I created and designed the technologies we use to protect my sons. After about three to four hours of cell phone laptop use, 25% of the marrow sperm count is immobile.

Oh, yeah. Like my. Not to be crass, but, like, my balls hurt when I. When I work on a laptop without. Because I have one of these devices. These. It's basically like a tablet that your laptop sits on top of that I just throw in my book bag and take with me everywhere but it blocks the heat and the radiation. And I can put my laptop in my lap because I used to just use like a pillow, you know, for example. But this thing blocks more than the pillow. And again, like my don't hurt. After I've been on my computer for like, you know, 30, 45 minutes, you don't feel your thighs getting really hot. You don't feel that little bit of like sweat on your inner thighs that you get when you're working on the laptop. So having having not just your phone inside a case, but also having your laptop on top of some kind of a pad, I think is also crucially important. I mean, why shield yourself from your cell phone radiation and then get yourself radiated by your laptop at the same time?

That's right, Ben. A pillow does nothing. A concrete wall does nothing. A piece of wood doesn't prevent a signal from passing through. So when you're feeling your walls heat up, that's the thermal impact of that signal close to your body. That's exactly what it is. It's not just the heat coming off with the fan. And those things can be dangerous. In fact, we mentioned something about men, but probably 10 years ago there was a study, 10,000 subjects out of Italy, women that were exposed to emissions. They had something like 2% had tumors, non cancerous tumors, by the way, most of them. But there was certainly not only a male problem, but a female problem as well.

Oh yeah. When I look at the evidence of like single and double stranded DNA breaks and reproductive dysfunction, you know, I, I also get concerned about what this does long term, not only to my future kids, but like their kids kids. When we're talking about like disrupting eggs, damaging sperm, damaging DNA, you're talking about affecting kids that maybe you haven't even had given birth to yet. So it's, it's pretty crazy. I know. They've also found a lot of effects from microwaves and stem cells, which are very active in kids. And when you're talking about decreasing the effectiveness of stem cells, which are crucial for growth, for regulation of repair in the body, it's a pretty significant biological impact.

Ben, let me add to that some experts. I'm not sure I know enough about it to know, but some exits say that the catastrophe is still to come. And it's because of the reason you just said. Subtending generations of damaged DNA, mutated cells become impact, the creation of unknown problems in the future of our subtending generations.

Right. That goes way above and beyond just them wandering the streets, playing Pokemon Go Right, exactly.

Exactly.

Yeah. Well, so your website is defendershield and I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. I know the code. 15% discount is Ben, if you use that on the Defender Shield products. I'm also going to put a link in the show notes. Those of you interested, I'll put a link to BioInitiative and also the Environmental Health Trust website. If you have friends who are just like scoffing at you for having your fancy phone case or your laptop tablet and you want them to see the research, send them to those sites. So if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com defend. I'll link to all of this in the show notes. And of course when you're over there, if you have comments, you have questions for Daniel or questions for me, leave them over there. I know that Daniel, like you mentioned on his site, he's got the air tube headsets, he's got the little cases like I use that you could put the smartphone inside of. And then he's got the pads that you put underneath the laptop. And these are the ones that they're made from the same material. Material like the multi layering shielding material that the case is made from, right, Daniel?

Yeah, exactly. It's not magic. We use the same proven technology on all of our products, so we have the same level of performance.

Yeah, so you're blocking the EMF that you talked about, but then also the elf, the radio frequency, the RF, and then also the heat. So you want to block all four of those.

Oh yeah, right.

Okay, cool. Well, again, the website that you can check out or the shown us for this podcast, it's BenGreenfieldFitness.com I'd love to hear your questions, your comments for either Daniel or myself. And Daniel, thanks for coming on the show today and sharing this stuff with us.

Oh, no problem at all. I appreciate you inviting us, Ben, I really do.

Alright folks, so that's how to defend yourself against cell phone radiation. And keep your laptop from frying youryour body and your balls or your eggs or your ovaries, whatever, whatever we want to call them, whether you're a man or a woman. And again, BenGreenFulthennis.com defend Daniel, thanks for coming on the show.

Thank you very much.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.