Electromagnetic Fields

An Electromagnetic Field (EMF) is a wave of energy that moves at the speed of light.

Visible light, X-Rays, Gamma-Rays, and Radio waves are examples of EMFs.

Radiofrequency Radiations, which include Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, can cause brainfog in sensitive individuals, even well within safety standards.

Although not yet recognized by the medical community and currently under research, “Radiowave Sickness” and “Microwave Sickness” were described since the 1950s, and now “Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity” presents the same main symptoms.

Introduction

EMFs are divided into categories by their oscillation frequency.

The ones that can cause brainfog are Radiofrequency radiations (RFs), with a frequency between 20 Kilohertz and 300 Gigahertz. RF are emitted by cellphones and any device that uses wireless communication.

Radio waves also come from other electric appliances, which emit radio waves as a side effect, one such device is the common energy saving lamp.

To deal with brainfog, you will have to avoid being exposed to sources of RFs as much as you can. Signal power decreases by a lot with distance, so the worst offenders are the sources under your control: your phone, computer, smart tv, wifi router. Switching to wired ethernet connections and keeping your phone in airplane mode when not using it will remove a lot of symptoms and the Brain fog will improve rapidly. Sources not under your control, like cell towers, neighbours’ Wi-Fi, digital TV signal, will still affect you but to a lower extent.

Brain fog will come and go with exposure to EMFs, there is no trick or cure, RF radiation is a toxic environmental agent.

Heavy brain fog is the easiest to deal with, will go away with avoidance of obvious sources. Unfortunately to really “unlock” your full brain potential you’ll need to be in a place with almost zero EMFs levels, which is a very difficult task.

The other harmful category of EMFs are Extremely Low Frequencies, 0 hertz to 20 kilohertz. This category pertains less to brain fog but is still associated with a number of symptoms and diseases, and usually people sensitive to RFs are sensitive to ELFs as well. These are emitted by any house appliance, wiring in the walls and high voltage power lines.

Symptoms

EMFs cause a variety of symptoms in sensitive individuals, everyone experiences a subset of the following (non exhaustive) list:

• Brain fog.
• Anxiety.
• Depression.
• Fatigue.
• Heart palpitations, irregular heartbeat, chest pain.
• Headache.
• Skin issues.
• Sleep issues.
• Tinnitus.
• Visual disturbances.
• Derealization.
• Dizziness.
• Mood swings.
• Nausea
• Decreased Libido.

How to test

Testing if you are sensitive takes a bit of time, but the good news is that it’s free.

Don’t try to guess if Wi-Fi is on or off, you are not familiar with the sources, you don’t know how long it takes for symptoms to come and go, you may have problems recognizing symptoms, and hidden sources may muddy your experiment.

Failing the experiment may give you a false negative.

Treat it as an allergy. Some days you are more reactive, some days less. Some times you sneeze as soon as you see pollen, some others you are not bothered. Some times symptoms last 10 minutes, some times one full day.

How to test:

Start avoiding exposure to the best of your ability, and pay attention to your ability to think. If brainfog goes away when you are in EMF-free environments you are on a good path. If it doesn’t there are three possibilities:

1. The environment is not really EMF free, something you don’t know is emitting RF (Most likely).
2. The environment is EMF free, but symptoms are lasting more than usual.
3. You are not EMF sensitive.

Keep practicing avoidance for a week. Change places, go to the park on the other side of town, to the beach or other. After one week weigh the evidence. Was there a pattern in your symptoms? If yes you probably are EMF sensitive.

The more you try the more you’ll be certain of the result, wheter it’s positive or negative. With this condition you can’t have a straight and rapid yes or no, but if you did things right you’ll definetely feel the fog lifting when in the right conditions.

In a truly EMF free environment brain fog should lift in 30 minutes at most, but keep in mind, every day is different.

Avoidance

This section will give you the basic tools to deal with EMFs.

If EMF is what gives you brain fog, every time you are exposed to a source you’ll get brain fog in a few minutes, it will go away just as rapidly if you go in an EMF free environment.

You can’t heal from this condition, but the more you avoid the less your symptoms when you are exposed.

The goal is to limit as much as possible exposure, possibly 24/7. You’ll choose personally what is worth for you. Brainfog is just a symptom and goes away, but more serious damage could be done after years of EMF exposure, and no one knows what will happen with the high levels of EMFs we live in today.

Some people have no problem going out with friends and family, while some do.

Try to create an EMF free environment in the places you sleep and work.

Distance is the most powerful tool.

Wireless devices under your control:

This category pertains to things you or your family own. These are the most serious offenders, if you limit their usage you will have a big positive impact on your brainfog.

• Phone: keep it in airplane mode.
• Wi-Fi router: disable it and switch to ethernet.
• Smart home: disable Bluetooth and Wi-Fi from any smart device, like smart tv, oven and so on.
• Other: get rid of airTag, bluetooth headphones and so on.

Wireless devices not under your control:

This category includes things that will create a background RF level. Background RF may be extremely high or negligible depending on your specific case.

• Smart meters: in the US many complain of these devices, it’s a wireless device from the electric company that for some reason creates a lot of symptoms. If you have one, search online for mitigations.
• Cell towers,Radio and Tv towers, Neighbours Wi-Fi: To avoid these, you will have to move or install some shielding solutions that block RF signal. Unfortunately these are expensive and many (most?) complain of increased symptoms.

Sources that emit RF as a side effect:

Modern electronics manipulate electricity in complicated ways; this creates RF fields, which is a by-product, as not necessary for the object to do its task, in contrast to Wi-Fi in which RF emission is intentional; These will give you brain fog as well, but a bit less than Wi-Fi etc.

• Smartphone: It deserves a second entry. The complex cicuits in your smartphone will make it emit EMF as a side effect. Keep it away from your body whenever possible, when not using it put it one meter away from you.
• Energy saving lamps: unfortunately CFL lights and Led lights emit a lot of radiofrequency radiation. Safe models may exist, but the best choice is to go back to incandescent light bulbs.
• Tv: tv itself emits radio waves as a side effect.
• House appliances: all house appliances may emit some EMF, even when powered off. Better to unplug them when not using and don't sleep next to electronics or bedside lamps.
• Wiring in the walls: these emit ELF, they also emit radio waves. Originally in the wires there was only 50-60hz electricity, but modern electronics manipulate electricity and disrupt the normal wave as a side effect. Distantiate the bed from the walls (1 meter).
• Computer: the circuits and screen in the computer emit radio waves as a side effect.
• Ethernet: this is your best choice to use internet. Unfortunately it can emit radio waves, and can increase the RF coming from things connected.

Static Electric Fields:

These fields can be genereated on various textiles and materials. In animal studies, dogs (male and females) were made infertile simply by usage of polyester underwear.

• Clothing: only use natural fibers (e.g. cotton) for clothing and bed sheets.
• Other: other sources of static electric fields exist.

Earthing:

Earthing is the practice of being electrically connected to the ground to discharge electric fields. This happens when directly touching the ground or a conductive wire connected to ground and many studies showed positive health effects. Although interesting and promising it’s discouraged in urban environments for beginners, unknown sources of electric fields may indeed be detrimental.

Other: Other kind of EMFs and other sources of problems not mentioned here may exist.

This list will be useful when trying to understand if you are sensitive. To cover all different best practices, all the sources of EMFs, and all the mitigation strategies, a much bigger space would be needed.

Please refer to the Help section for further instructions on complicated topics.

What to Expect

If you are EMF sensitive you can have a normal life, just do what you can to avoid exposure and manage symptoms.

Some job positions may be off limits for you, for instance working in a retail shop with fluorescent lights and Wi-Fi is probably a bad idea.

Others, like software developer or graphic designer are perfectly ok if you create a healthy work station and work from home.

If symptoms are bad you may have to move.

You will have to change some habits, less screen time is a good idea, although with some effort you can create more tolerable setups for watching tv and gaming.

This said, once you realize the vastness of symptoms that EMF create beyond brain fog, you will likely want to reduce EMF to the minimum in everything you do.

Research on EMFs and Health

EMFs have been studied for a long time, and are currently a hot topic in research. As of now, the only damaging effect of EMFs that health organizations recognize is the thermal effect, that's when the power of the radiation is high enough to heat tissue; this is how microwave ovens work (they use the same EMF frequency of Wi-Fi). Thus the limit for CellPhone exposure is the power needed to increase the body temperature of a human-sized animal by one degree (Celsius), divided by 10; this gives us the power limit of 61 V/m.

Currently, regulation bodies deny that EMFs can have any non-thermal biological effect. This claim is easy to disprove, thousands of research papers have shown negative impacts of EMFs on cell cultures and lab animals without tissue heating at power way lower than 61 V/m.

Non-exhaustive list of Low-power Radiofrequency biological effects:

• DNA brakes, single and double strand (24 hours of cellphone exposure produces as much DNA damage as 1600 chest X-rays).
• Production of Free Radicals and Reactive Oxygen Species.
• Opening of the Blood Brain Barrier.
• Cancer: the World Health Organization listed Radiofrequency radiation as a 2b possible carcinogen in 2011, because of "limited evidence" of carcinogenicity in humans. This was after one study showed increased risk of brain tumor for people who had more than 1000 hours of call-time, or 17 minutes a day for 10 years (the personal risk is still low as the tumor was quite rare to begin with). In 2016 and 2018 two large studies on rodents showed "clear evidence" of carcinogenicity of RF radiation in these lab animals. The tumor they got was a Schwannoma, a rare tumor in rats. The brain tumor in humans was a tumor of the Schwann cells as well. In view of these animal studies RF radiation is expected to be promoted as 2a probable carcinogen in the next review, as it now meets the criterions for such category (limited evidence in humans and clear evidence in animals).
• The most popular mechanism of action is Voltage Gated Calcium Channel activation. RF activates this channel and calcium flows inside the cells, activating a cascade of negative effects.
• Intracellular calcium has a role in Alzheimer. Lab animals also showed brainfog symptoms when exposed to RF and Alzheimer-like behaviours.
• RF causes demyelination in lab rats, thus may have a role in Multiple Sclerosis.
• Drop in Male fertility is an established effect of RF radiation both in humans and lab animals.

Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity is currently considered a psychosomatic disease, but it's easy to understand that it is extremely likely given the vastness of RF biological effects. EHS has been described since the 50s, but double blind studies have failed except in a few occasion. Is to be said the extremely low quality of the studies and the complete disregard for the nature of the condition probably played a role in this. Patients failed to recognize the exposure, but their body passed the test. In blinded subjects EMFs were shown to disrupt sleep, cause heart palpitations, and interfere with alpha waves in the brain.

Resources

• Scientific talk by Professor Martin Pall on mechanism of action.
• Divulgative talk by Dr. Devra Davis.
• Ted talk on symptoms by wireless technology.
• Presentation on Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity, University of Tel Aviv.
• Full conference on dangers of EMFs, University of Tel Aviv.
• Scientific Talk By Joel Moskowitz, Phd (Berkeley), on EMFs and cancer.
• List of thousands of research papers on EMFs effects on health. Professor Henry Lai keeps track of new research on EMFs and updates the list.
• News coverage. Information on politics and science regarding EMFs and Health.
• Huberman Lab. Andrew Huberman is a neurobiology Professor and host of the most popular health podcast on youtube. In this clip he talks about cellphone radiation and male fertility.

Help

Don’t panic! If you have EHS, join the Facebook group and meet helpful people. Use the search bar, someone probably already had your same problem.

Beware of scams, its unlikely bracelets and pendants will help in any way. Shielding solutions are theoretically effective but in practice often cause side effects.

Get EMF meter(s), it's useful to be able to measure and not be blind.

You can ask the help of an "EMF expert" or "Building Biologist" (not cheap).

There is probably an association in your region or nation that represents EHS patients. They can help you find a doctor who recognizes EHS and can give you a formal diagnosis.

If enough people complain of EMF sensitivity on reddit we will try to write an advanced guide.