Wireless signals are the pinnacle of “confusing health science”. Yet properly designed and controlled studies show clear danger. Why is it that we’re left wondering about the truth? Our guest this week shares the state of knowledge, and most importantly, the easy things you can do today.
On this episode of the Mind Body Peak Performance podcast, host Nick Urban chats with SYB CEO R Blank.
Key Takeaways
- Protection (ordered by effectiveness): remove, reduce, distance, shield, harmonize
- Doubling distance reduces exposure by 75%
- Immediate dangers include include infertility, miscarriage, birth defects, poor sleep quality, endocrine disruption, DNA damage, accelerated aging, brain barrier leakage, worsened infections, and more
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Transcript
Nick Urban 0:07
Are you a high performer obsessed with growth and looking for an edge? welcome to Mind Body peak performance. Together, we’ll discover underground secrets to unlocking the full potential of your mind, body, and spirit. We’ll learn from some of the world’s leading minds, from ancient wisdom to cutting edge tools and everything in between. This is your host, Nick urban, enjoy the episode. Hell Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Mind Body peak performance with your host, Nick urban. If you think back to an early biology class, you probably learned about how cells communicate with each other, mostly via chemicals. But the more recent school of thought is that we are mostly electromagnetic beings, instead of chemicals, putting electricity as the core biological mechanism. So what happens when we surround humans with electromagnetic frequencies, 1 million times more powerful than the intricate signals generated within our bodies. discussing this with us today is R blank. R is the CEO of shield your body whose mission it is to make technology safer, with hundreds of 1000s of customers in over 30 countries and having been interviewed on platforms ranging from ABC television to electric sense, R is an internationally followed expert on the issues of EMF health and safety. He was inspired to create s YB when he co authored the best selling book. Overpowered with his father, Dr. Martin Blanc, one of the world’s leading EMF scientists. He has degrees from Columbia University, and UCLA are now hosts the new healthier tech podcast, you can find the show notes to this one at mind body peak.com/and, then the number 62. If you want to go deeper, you can go to shield your biology.com/test. That’s the guide are created to help you understand your EMF exposures at home and on the road. If you want to try one of their products for yourself, you can use the code urban to save 15% On your first shield your body order. And then to really nerd out about this, you can pick up a copy of Dr. Joe Mercola, his book EMF that has all the mechanisms and everything you could possibly want to know on EMFs. I realized after we recorded it, we never even talked about 5g. Every cell can receive 5g information. It’s considered the communication band of nature. And it has wide ranging biological effects across species. We’ll save that topic for another chat. Okay, on to the episode with R blank. are welcome to the show.
R Blank 3:23
Thank you so much for having me. This is this is cool. I’m looking forward to this chat.
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Nick Urban 3:27
It’s a pleasure having you on. So what time is it over there today so far? Right now?
R Blank 3:32
It is 8am
Nick Urban 3:34
This question might be a little early, but what have you done? What non negotiables have you done for your health and performance?
R Blank 3:40
I’ve had six glasses of water so far and I ran a few
Nick Urban 3:46
miles. Wow. Six glasses of water by 8am.
R Blank 3:50
I tried to get in my my 15 glasses by 2pm. So that my sleep isn’t disrupted by going to the bathroom at night. Not to not to get too personal but interesting.
Nick Urban 4:00
So if you if you have water after 2pm and disrupts your sleep at night.
R Blank 4:05
Well, it makes it more likely that I’m going to have to wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. So yeah, I try. I tried to get in all my water by 2pm Are you very early? Yes, I like well, I like getting my exercise in first thing in the morning. And then B I like starting work early. On Mondays I try to wake up around four or 430 and then by Thursdays most of the time it slides to six or 630 but today because of our our interview I made sure to get a five
Nick Urban 4:37
I see. So today we’re going to talk about a subject that I started researching in about 2017 and is gained more and more attention and that is electromagnetic frequencies or EMR or it goes under a lot of different names now, but what is your backstory and how did you get involved in this world?
R Blank 4:58
My father was done Here Martin Blanc, who was one of the world’s leading scientists, and advocates and activists. Later in his life on the questions about EMF, in 2012, he had a contract to write a book. And this book, unlike everything he’d written in his whole career was designed to be consumed by regular people. He asked me for some help to help him write that book. And it became known as overpowered, and I co wrote that with him. It’s still today, one of the best books on this and most popular on this subject of EMF and health effects. And then, of course of I mean, of course, you know, he was my, my father, so I knew the work he was doing when I was growing up. And I knew why we didn’t have a microwave oven, for instance. And I knew that once I got my first cell phone after I graduate college, because that’s the age you got it back then I knew not to hold it up to my head, you know, things like that. But beyond those basics, I wasn’t really familiar with the whole topic. And so in the course of writing that book, I became really familiar with the topic. And a few points really kind of hit home. For me one is just the science on this question of EMF and health effects. It’s like, it’s so strong, we’re talking about 1000s of studies, it’s growing every year, but even 10 years ago, 1000s of studies showing a wide range of negative health outcomes from exposure to these forces. But on the flip side, right, these forces, which maybe we’ll get a little into a little later, become the sources of these forces are all the things that define and enable modern society in the modern economy. So there’s no getting rid of EMF from our lives. And so I realized there had to be safer ways for people to relate to their technology. And that’s where the idea for what became, that’s why B came from, and I released my first product in 2013. So when you’re after that, so it’s been nine years? Wow.
Nick Urban 7:09
It’s one thing to know, to research and know the science behind something. It’s another to distill it for the public to understand. And it’s even a league beyond that to create a product that your everyday person can use without having to even understand how exactly it all works.
R Blank 7:27
Right on Yeah, I agree.
Nick Urban 7:31
So if you were to summarize the health implications of electromagnetic fields, non native electromagnetic fields, the dangerous ones to a young kid, say a five year old, how would you make them think believe that this is an important topic to pay attention to?
R Blank 7:47
Wow. So there’s summarizing, there’s make believe, and then there’s the target audience of a five year old. So that’s three challenges. One wants very subtle, very subtle, what we see what the science shows is that EMF exposure has a wide range of negative health outcomes. In fact, we find these negative health outcomes in virtually every biological system, where we investigate for them. So it’s not just in humans, right? We see it in all forms of life. And the science is, like I said, it’s very strong. We see it in 1000s of different high quality studies showing cancer is a big one gets a lot of attention. But you know, even within cancer, you know, brain tumors get a lot of the attention. But we see it in thyroid cancer, we see it in lymphoma and leukemia. In fact, childhood leukemia, which is the incidence of leukemia in children between the ages of three and four did not exist until the power grid existed. And there’s a very, very important book, dirty electricity by Dr. Sam Milam and now I’m talking to you not to the five year old, by Dr. Sam Milam and what he did is he investigated the deployment of the power grid, right, because there was a point in time in which the United States did not have the power grid. And then it was deployed at different times in different parts of the country. And he documented a whole set of what he calls the diseases of civilization that emerged only once the power grid was deployed in an area and so childhood leukemia is one of them. ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease is another one of them. There’s this whole set and it’s and he did this with a very detailed analysis of death records in these different areas of the country. So and that’s just one example of the type of compelling evidence but so I got stuck on cancer, right. So but we don’t see it just to cancer. We see it in infertility, in miscarriage and birth defects. We see it in sleep disruption, we see it in and you see it also. There. Those are all diseases, right? Which kind of study out in the populations, you see it in the lab. And you see it in how EMF destroys DNA, just just using a cell phone for 15 minutes, you can see the damage that is done to your DNA, you can see it in multiple of these physiological systems in our in our bodies. And so I don’t know how well I did that for a five year old. But but that is how I kind of approach kind of expressing this stuff in the science is really, really significant on these various questions and the range of negative health outcomes we see is incredibly wide.
Nick Urban 10:39
So there’s something I want to highlight in the use of the science is very clear. And from my own investigations, I would have to agree, but then the layperson who’s just becoming introduced to this topic, hears that the experts are unsure, the science is not settled, we need more evidence to show that it’s actually harmful. So how, how are we coming to different conclusions than a lot of these news articles?
R Blank 11:05
Well, you’re well, media has a both scientism bias, it’s implicit in their coverage of almost any topic. And there’s a lot at play. There’s a lot of different mechanisms in play and in the dynamics that you were just talking about. But you know, one of them is that industry pays for a lot of science. So for all the signs that I’m talking about, there’s other science that is funded largely by industry that says, Oh, this stuff is benign, this stuff is safe. And so they use that. And this is this is well documented tactics. It’s known as the tobacco playbook because it was introduced and perfected by the tobacco companies to delay regulations on cigarettes and smoking for decades, when it was obvious to anyone who looked at the actual science that this stuff was causing diseases like lung cancer and emphysema. So, but I’m not the only person talking about EMF to compare it to to the tobacco industry, but I would bring up another example. Right. So I don’t know if you ever saw the movie concussion with Will Smith. Yeah, where he played, I haven’t written because I never remember it. And it Omalu which, who was a doctor who worked with NFL players, and he was documenting the incidence of CTE or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which is foremost serious form of brain damage. And he was seeing it in these NFL players. And he’s saying he’s postulating that, you know, if you ran your head with the force of a jackhammer 1000s of times in your career, that can cause brain damage. And, and you think about that, and it’s freaking obvious, right? You’re ramming your head. But that wasn’t the response that he got, right? You had very powerful forces in play with a lot of money on the line, although a fraction of the amount that we have behind the tech industry, and they they fought him for years. And you’re thinking about that. And it’s just obvious that pounding your head with the force of a jackhammer 1000s of times, is going to cause brain damage. Well, now let’s go talk about EMF, we’re EMF, it’s invisible. It’s odorless. You can’t touch it, you can’t feel it, you can’t smell it. And if you start to investigate what it actually is, it’s like super complicated. There’s all these words that maybe you haven’t heard sixth, or seventh grade, and then a whole bunch you’ve probably never heard before. And then you have the fact that it comes from all of these things that we love. We love our phones, we love our computers. We love our refrigerators, right? I mean, we may not realize we love our refrigerators, but take it Try, Try telling someone to live without one. And then they’ll realize how much they love it. And so you have all of these forces in play that make it really challenging to get this message out. But I will say even in just the 10 years, I’ve been involved in these issues, awareness has really grown quite a lot. And this is no longer relegated, like when I started selling my products, my first product on Amazon, and you and you test for the searches that your product comes up for right, you would get ghost detection meters coming up in the same searches, right because they use EMF to supposedly to detect ghosts. Now there’s there’s a ton of companies offering solutions, some better than others. But that bad to address these problems because more and more people are aware of that I interviewed on pocket just like with you, right in 2012. You were not aware of this topic. Now. You are so awareness is definitely growing, but it is still you know, it still has a long way to go.
Nick Urban 14:44
And you also mentioned that there’s some subtleties in the language that these studies and these companies are using to make to cast some doubt on the real danger of their products and their wiring. signal’s
R Blank 15:01
Yeah. So I think what you’re getting at there’s, you know, the usage of terms like conclusive proof, right? And so, when often wireless industry people talk about this, they’re asked about this, they say there’s no conclusive proof. There’s actually a whole chapter in overpower. And my father was, was brilliant with words, he spoke multiple languages, he did a crossword puzzle every day. He loves dissecting words and the meaning of words. And in this chapter, we talk about, well, you know, what is conclusive proof, even mean, right? Because if we’re talking about math, right, two plus two equals four, you can prove that conclusively. And then every mathematician in the world has to accept that in a court of law, you can prove something beyond a reasonable doubt. And then someone’s convicted, right? So there’s a clear standard in science, that standard doesn’t exist in the way write proof in science means I do X, I see y. And then let me explain why I think X leads to y. And you do that over and over again, and you publish your results. So other people can do what you did, and try to replicate it, see if they get the same results. And you do that over and over again, you do you answer the you investigate multiple questions, and you get different results, and you formulate the best possible theory. And so in science, conclusive proof doesn’t exist. And so when, when, when wireless industry or tech industry, people talk about the absence of conclusive proof, that is a red herring, that is not the standard by which scientists is judged and scientists used. And what we do see, like I’ve said, is 1000s and 1000s of studies, where their harm is demonstrated very clearly, a lot of these are peer reviewed, a lot of these have been replicated and reproduced by other scientists around the world. And so it doesn’t matter that there is loose of proof, what we have is very strong, serious evidence. And that’s really the standard by which questions like these need to be judged and evaluated by consumers and regulatory agencies?
Nick Urban 17:10
Yeah, even the testing methods were not designed for modern times with exposure coming from all directions, via phones, microwaves, dirty electricity from bad lighting. And because of that, it seems like it’s gonna be hard to get an accurate gauge of the true cumulative exposure throughout the day.
R Blank 17:34
Oh, it’s basically impossible. To do that. I mean, you can try with certain types of meters, that that measure that stuff, but those are incredibly expensive. Those are really reserved for for research purposes, because they it’s not like a kind of meter, you can go up on Amazon and find a buy, right? Because you need these measuring, and you need a measuring multiple different sets of frequencies. And you get a really good point, right? There’s a whole bunch of EMF exposures in the United States and around the world that are totally unregulated. But even among those that are regulated, they’re regulated individually. And none of them consider the whole scope of exposures that we have in modern life. So right, so for a cell phone, there’s an amount of radiation, theoretically, it’s not accurately or true, but theoretically, that a phone is allowed to emit. But that doesn’t account for the fact that you know, if you use it for one minute, or if you use it for two hours every day, right, those are totally different exposures. It doesn’t account for the fact that maybe now there’s 30, cell phones in the office where you’re working, as opposed to back when the regulations, the currently active regulations for cell phones were imposed in the 1990s. That was not the case, it doesn’t account for the fact that there’s Wi Fi networks on at the same time, much less all the electrical wiring the nearby cell towers that are proliferating, and so on and so forth. So there’s absolutely no accommodation for real world exposures in any of these regulations.
Nick Urban 19:07
Yeah. Can you walk us through a quick primer on the science behind this without getting too technical, there’s a lot of other podcasts that go deep into the mechanisms of action and everything. And there’s also a book called EMF, which is a newer one by Dr. Joe Mercola. And that was a great one he got dives really deep into each of the single pathways that different forms of EMF impact. So if you guys want to check out that that’d be a great resource, but for a primer, an intro to this, how would you explain it?
R Blank 19:40
Right. So in terms of the mechanisms, there’s really two that I like to highlight for people. So one is DNA. And I talked earlier about how EMF can harm and I use the word destroy not everyone uses the word destroy but can can impact DNA and a lot of the some of the most important work in this To on this particular question goes back to the 1990s, two doctors out of Washington State named Dr. Henry Lai and Dr. Narendra Singh. And what they were seeing at the time, cordless phones, because cell phones weren’t quite yet a thing, but it’s very similar radiation, what they found is that even 15 minutes of exposure to radiation from a cordless phone led to significant increases in strand breaks, right. So DNA is formed by two, two strands, their inner woven into a double helix. That’s the shape everyone knows. And so it’s those two strands. And what a strand break means is that either one or both of those strands actually break apart. So EMF is breaking apart those strands, these, and I want to underscore DNA is in every cell in our bodies, right? It’s not just an apartment of our body, it’s an every cell in our entire body. And when you break, when you break the strands, right, you can have a single strand break or double strand, right? If you have a double strand break, the cell will kill itself, it will engage in a process called apoptosis, which in the context of what we’re talking about here is actually the preferable outcome. Because if only one of the strands break, the cell will will try to repair it using the information in the other strand. And it is through that process by which mutations emerge. And it is the emergence of mutations that lead to ill health and disease. Now, even more concerning out of this study is Lion Singh demonstrated that this increased rate of strand breaks persisted for hours after the exposure. And again, we’re talking about a 15 minute exposure. And so I find that to be a that very important science be replicated many, many times. And see, I feel like a lot of people, even if they’re not doctors, or scientists understand it’s pretty bad when your DNA is being mutated by a force. Right. So that’s one. The next, which I know you’re you’re familiar with, it has to do with something called the voltage gated calcium channels, or VG CCS. What that is, is that’s a like a port on your cell. That determines how much calcium can get in and out of a cell. And when excess calcium enters a cell, without going into all the details, that increases something, it creates an outcome, which a lot of people know the term is oxidation, which is a stressor on your cell. And that then contributes to multiple follow on effects, including inflammation and accumulation of free radicals in the body. So Dr. Paul’s work shows that EMF exposure leads to a through this mechanism of voltage gated calcium channels on the cell leads to increased oxidation, increased inflammation, increased levels of free radicals in the body. So those are two of the mechanisms that I regularly talk about. Because I feel like both of them are very easily understood by by people these days. But there are multiple as you point out there multiple other mechanisms in play, and we’re learning more about them all the time.
Nick Urban 23:16
Where does the distinction between ionizing and non ionizing radiation fall into this?
R Blank 23:25
Great question. So EMF is, as we talked about, stands for electromagnetic fields. And there are many different kinds of EMF and they they live on what we call a spectrum, there’s a spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, or the EM spectrum. Right in the middle of that spectrum is sunlight is visible light. And, and that’s out, that’s really the only form of EMF to which all life on Earth was exposed for 4.5 billion years starting until the last 200 years. Now there’s certain forms of EMF with more energy than visible light, more energy than the light we get from the sun. Those are called ionizing because they have so much energy, they can knock electrons loose from the cells in our bodies, they ionize ourselves. These are incredibly dangerous, and even very, very, very low doses. There’s absolutely no debate about that. And these include forces like X rays and gamma rays, as well as UV. So that’s the ionizing side. And again, everyone knows that stuff is really harmful. Even in the smallest doses, you want as little of that as possible. So then we have the forms of EMF with less energy than visible light. And that’s what you as you mentioned, are called non ionizing forms of EMF and when when, when people like me are on shows like this talking about EMF, those are the forms we are talking about these non ionizing and they’re called non ionizing because they don’t have the same amount of energy that can not knock electrons loose from the cells in our bodies. because they don’t, they can’t ionize ourselves. They were long believed to be benign to be in or to be essentially harmless to life unless there’s so many of them that actually cooks you, but we can. And so and so that’s really the key difference between ionizing and non ionizing now, what science over the last 100 years and increasingly in the last 40 years, 20 years have shown is that those original assumptions that non ionizing EMF was benign was harmless, those assumptions were false. In fact, we talked about this in overpowered that’s what my father was taught at school at school when he went to graduate school. And that’s what he taught for years when he was teaching at Columbia University Medical School until the 1980s. When he met, he read a study by one of his colleagues, Dr. Reba Goodman, also a Columbia. And he’s, he said this, this doesn’t make sense, this is different than everything I’ve ever been taught. And so he went and met with Dr. Goodman, and they actually ended up collaborating on multiple studies over many years. But that’s just to illustrate like, my father is one of the people most closely aligned and associated with with issues of EMF and health. And even he until the 1980s, did not believe that non ionizing EMF was harmful. But again, the science that we see today is incredibly compelling on these questions.
Nick Urban 26:30
It’s going to take a while for the gatekeepers of the previous knowledge where non ionizing isn’t harmful, when or non ionizing was thought to be safe, it’s going to take some time for that school of thought to slowly die out.
R Blank 26:44
Yes, that’s just how these things work. And, like you say, it does take time and takes conversations like this and having me be happy opportunity to chat with you and reach your audience.
Nick Urban 26:55
Yeah. Let’s talk now about the way it impacts different forms of life. You mentioned earlier that it impacts plants, it impacts other animals, and also a subset of humans that are most sensitive to these electromagnetic signals.
R Blank 27:12
Well, as I mentioned, right, the just using the DNA example, DNA is in every cell in our body, it’s in every cell of every living thing. And so when you have when you have science, showing clearly the impact that this stuff can have on DNA, it shouldn’t be surprising that that we see negative health outcomes across the animal kingdom across the plant kingdom as well. And there is a lot of research on this, but I’ll give a couple of examples. So there’s a 2010 study published in the International Journal of forestry research that concluded the EMF, like from cell towers, has strong adverse effects on trees. And what they did is they built Faraday cages, they built shields or EMF shields around a whole bunch of different trees. And then they compared the health outcomes and effect between the shielded and the non shielded trees. And they found that the the trees that were shielded from EMF radiation grew 75% More than the trees that were not shielded from EMF radiation. And that’s just that’s again, that’s just that’s just one study. This is, you know, this is a very well researched area. Another well researched area has to do with birds and bees. So there is a scientist named Bill Mori, I think it was Dr. Alfonso Mori. And so one of his studies, in 2009, he observed that storks that had nests within two to 300 meters of a cell phone base, never had any checks. So he was able to measure again, in this real world scenario, that the the the birds that nested closest to the cell phone towers were unable to reproduce. We see a lot of this research into bees. Right. And it is believed that personally, I think there are many causes of Colony Collapse Disorder. But it is believed by many that EMF radiation is contributing to colony collapse disorder. And there’s some very powerful illustrations of this, right, there’s, there’s studies where they just put a phone in front of a hive, and the bees never come back. And so And when we’re talking about EMF, some of your listeners may not realize that birds and bees as well as other animals and insects, they rely on the Earth’s magnetic field in order to know how to navigate. And when you throw like a cell phone that’s really powerful into the mix. They lose their ability to even navigate. Yeah, so in your question, you talked about a population of humans a sub population of humans that are more sensitive to the sources and that is called electromagnetic hypersensitivity or EHS, although it goes by some other names, even Wi Fi allergies is what I’m seeing more common. And what what it is it is a poorly understood condition, and it is not universally recognized. But there are there are facilities, there are doctors who recognize and provide treatment for it. And there are a couple of governments around the world that recognize this condition and
qualify for disability and so forth. But what this is, is a condition where people are just more sensitive to love, so I can walk into a room and feel more or less, okay, I mean, it’s okay, it’s I’m ever gonna feel, and someone with EHS will walk into a room, and again, same room, but they will start getting rashes, they will start getting joint pain, they will start getting severe anxiety, they will not be able to go to sleep, there’s a wide range of these symptoms that manifest from people who who suffer from EHS. Now because this is a poorly understood condition. And because it is not universally recognized, we don’t have great data on the percentage of population that experiences this, it is estimated to be anywhere between five and 30%, based off of work by, you know, research, including Dr. Matta half us who is one who is performed that kind of work. Personally, I believe that the numbers are much higher, right? Because when we’re talking about the types of symptoms that that we get from people with EHS get from EMF exposure, these are symptoms that people get all the time, how many people today have increased rates of anxiety, how many people today have trouble falling asleep, and you go through life, and you’re like, oh, I have trouble going to sleep, you don’t think oh, maybe I should stop sleeping with my cell phone, or oh, maybe it’s the Wi Fi networks that are all around my apartment building. And so I believe that it’s actually a quite a lot of much bigger percentage of the population that has this. And also keep in mind, right? The the amount of EMF in the environment, particularly in cities, but through almost everywhere that people live is growing each year. So it makes sense that the number of people who are whose symptoms would be triggered would grow each year because the levels are higher each year. And when people talk like how do I know this is true, why didn’t this ever exist before? You know, well, hey, because the amount of EMF in the environment was never this high. But be you know, look, look at other conditions like peanut allergies. You know, when I was growing up, no one had peanut allergies. And now the air incredibly common. The so we see with the open A with the amount of EMF and the environmental be with the overall level of toxins in the environment, we see this increase in cross susceptibility. And this is actually well documented. In terms of people with EHS, they are much more likely to have MCs or multiple chemical sensitivity and vice versa, right. So you see, across susceptibility to multiple different types of toxins. And again, it’s the overall level of toxins in the environment keeps growing each year. So these types of allergic reactions, I believe we will continue to see the rise.
Nick Urban 33:29
And I know from my own research that it’s believed to also impact microbes.
R Blank 33:34
One study, I can think of by a very well known scientist named Dietrich Klinghardt, who showed that mold spores that were exposed to EMF radiation grew at 600 times their regular rate. And that was again just just by being exposed to EMF. And this is another example of cross susceptible susceptibility, right, because EMF causes mold to grow faster, more mold causes increased susceptibility to EHS symptoms, right? So it’s one of these vicious cycles that we see for
Nick Urban 34:11
I lived in a place that had a mold problem, and also had a right Wi Fi router right in there. So it sounds like a perfect storm to susceptibility for these deleterious effects.
R Blank 34:23
Yeah, mold is real i Long time ago, but I lived in a place that had a mold problem. And it’s It’s brutal. It is it is really bad for your health. But a lot of I mean, a lot of places that Mo Problems, even if you don’t know it, so it’s one of these forces that’s really harmful to our health.
Nick Urban 34:40
Yeah. Okay. Let’s also now discuss some of the long term and immediate effects EMFs can have on your health and performance, because before this, I had heard that cell phones might cause cancer. And I said, yeah, yeah, that’s a problem that I’ll deal with in 2030 years, but really, it starts Long before that,
R Blank 35:01
with voltage gated calcium channels, that is an immediate effect. And when you start increasing the inflammation in your body, you start to see all sorts of negative health outcomes in very short order. When I talked about DNA, I mentioned how exposure to this stuff can break apart the strands of DNA. And I said, you know, and sometimes there’s, you know, because there’s two strands of DNA, the cell can repair itself. But something that doesn’t have two strands of DNA is your sperm. And so if you start breaking apart the DNA, the sperm is just going to die, the sperm cell is going to die, because there’s no second strand there. And in fact, that is one of one of the very well documented areas. So PMF health effects is the growth in infertility, some fertility, and particularly in males, right, because it females, you have the the eggs are, are buried kind of deeper in the body, there’s more natural insulation there. But but in the case of sperm, that is very fun. It’s dangling outside of the body, for lack of a better term. And it’s very exposed and very close to pockets where men carry phone while everyone carries phones. And also where people tend to use their laptops. And so you see these study after study after study. People who carry their phones in their pockets have very much worse sperm counts. Now, there’s a little bit of good news there for people, right, because sperm is regenerated approximately every 24 hours. So if you remove the phone from the pocket you are, you can see the improvement in about a day. Or if you start wearing, you know, radiation, shielded underwear, you can see the improvement in sperm counts in about a day. Other negative health outcomes that you start seeing in very rapid order, right. I mentioned sleep disruption. Before there’s there’s a bunch of mechanisms involving the endocrine system, EMF exposure in the endocrine system. And one of one of the results of that is decreased melatonin production. And that then leads to poor or disrupted sleep. And that’s another one of these vicious cycles, right? Because when you’re getting poor or disrupted sleep, your body is less able to heal itself and regenerate for the following day. And you can kind of create this downward spiral. So those are just a few of the examples. There’s all sorts, right, there’s based on the current state of science, it we don’t know whether it’s the EMF, or the digital experience, or the dopamine triggers that are being integrated into these platforms. But we do know that the tech is causing these harms, and using less of it makes you healthier and more resilient.
Nick Urban 37:58
Yeah. A couple other effects I want to highlight, I saw a paper a while back where it breaks down the blood brain barrier, and also the blood gut barrier. And the blood tests these barriers. So that could lead to some immediate issues. And then also long term as well.
R Blank 38:16
One of the works that shows that was done by Dr. Leif Salford, another one of the 30 important scientists in this area. And he showed that EMF exposure leads to increased permeability or leakage of the blood brain barrier. And for those of your listeners who don’t know, that’s a very important barrier that surrounds your brain. And when it when it permeates, you’re creating pathways for viruses to enter and other pollutants but viruses being a big one to enter the brain viruses that otherwise wouldn’t be able to enter the brain. And so when you went and again, yeah, this is the very best is very important research. I’m glad you brought that up.
Nick Urban 38:53
And when that happens when things enter the brain that shouldn’t it causes inflammation, which then slows down your processing speed, your memory becomes a little hazy, which is why brain fog is often reported as a symptom of
R Blank 39:04
Yes, both VHS and EMF exposure. Yeah, exactly.
Nick Urban 39:08
And then also, because of the free radical theory of aging, this would also like increasing your cumulative exposure would also make you age faster.
R Blank 39:18
Yeah, certainly follow this follows. Makes sense.
Nick Urban 39:23
Let’s talk about now the, what are the different types of EMFs? Because we’ve talked a lot about one subset, and that’s radio frequencies. But what about the others?
R Blank 39:32
Well, radio frequency is a big one. And sometimes it’s called microwave also, they’re basically used interchangeably in the science. And that is those are the types of EMF that are emitted by anything that communicates wirelessly so obviously that includes cell phones includes Wi Fi, it includes Bluetooth, so air pod headsets, it includes TV for those people who still get TV when I’m talking like not over the internet, but like to an antenna. It includes radio if it includes radar, it includes anything that communicates wirelessly that is happening in this range. Then another big range is called elf or extremely low frequency. And these are the types of EMF that are emitted by anything that runs on power. So that includes power plants, power lines, electrical appliances, is the kind of EMF that’s emitted by your refrigerator, even if it’s a really dumb one without a computer in it. And so those are the two big kinds there are, you know, there are some others. But those are the two big kinds that are emitted into our environment and that are studied in the science. Again, you know, and so with some with some devices, they can be big sources of both. A common example I use is microwave ovens, microwave ovens are called microwave ovens, because they use microwaves to cook your food. So that’s, that’s obviously that’s microwave radiofrequency radiation that comes out through the leakage of those chambers. But in order to create that level of microwave, in order to generate that much power, you’re using a tremendous amount of electricity, which then emits elf. And so microwave ovens give you a effectively, it gives you a big double dose of this stuff, which is why it’s so important to stand as far away as possible from those things when there are I mean, ideally, not use it at all, but to stand as far away as possible from them when they aren’t used. And that’s another good example, if you read the manual, they tell you pregnant women should use this right? That should be actually a pretty big warning sign right there.
Nick Urban 41:35
Yeah. And a second, I want to cover some of the most pernicious and common everyday sources of EMF, even my, in my own experimentation, when I measure what’s coming off my microwave, from 10 feet away from 20 feet away. It’s off the charts.
R Blank 41:53
When you look at the science, right, the levels that we see triggered these negative health outcomes, right? And I’m glad you put you brought this up, because sometimes it can, it can get a little lost when we’re just talking like, oh, yeah, EMF can cause these issues. But you know, I don’t I’m not exposed to that much. Right now, what the science is showing is, like, miniscule levels of this stuff, really miniscule levels are our thresholds for harm, right? Far, far, far less than you get from just talking on your cell phone, much less having all of these cell phones or a cell phone towers, Wi Fi networks, your your microwave oven. And so even if you stand 10 feet away from your microwave oven, if you have a good meter, you’re gonna see the levels are still really hot. I mean, it’s much safer to stand 10 feet away than right up against it. But the levels, even 10 feet away are really, really high, these things have so much power. That’s, that’s the name of the book that I wrote with my father was overpowered, and that is that they have they have so much power. And that includes the cell phone in your pocket, these things are incredibly overpowered devices.
Nick Urban 43:07
What are just mentioned is that basically, anything that has a cord will put off an elf. So when you’re working next to a power strip, with cords going to your laptop, to your monitor to all kinds of gadgets and gizmos, or you’re sleeping with a alarm clock and the cord running right behind your head. If you can, it’s best to try and reconfigure that cord to increase the distance between your body and the source the cord.
R Blank 43:42
Yes, very good advice. And when possible switch to battery powered. So a battery powered alarm clock is going to have much much, much lower levels of EMF can almost I mean, almost negligible compared to like an alarm clock that you plug in into the wall that is a very common actually increasingly common because now everyone’s using cell phones instead of alarm clocks, but still quite a common source. And you know, it tends as you pointed out, tends to be right next to your head, or very close to your head. And whenever I’m staying in a hotel room, that’s one of the first things I do is I find the alarm clock, which is still in a huge number of hotel rooms and I unplug it, you know, I can’t unplug all the Wi Fi on the floor. But I can get rid of that alarm clock next to my head.
Nick Urban 44:27
Yeah. So what are some of the other sources that we should pay attention to?
R Blank 44:31
Well, the cell phone in your pocket is a huge one. So one of the top things I actually generally the first thing I tell people, if they’re concerned about this stuff, and they want to start making changes, is stop carrying your phone in your pocket or your bra. And in fact, this is another week I mentioned. You know if you look at the microwave manual, it says you know pregnant women shouldn’t use it. This is another one of those things where if you actually read the manual, like you’re not supposed to carry this phone in your pocket or your bride you’re not actually supposed to hold it up to your head, even though that’s clearly what they designed it for. And so or if you do need to carry it in your pocket or your bra put it into airplane mode before you do, because when it’s in airplane mode, virtually all of the EMF is is cut off. So that is a huge one. Even though it’s an obvious one, I just want to underscore for people it is huge, right? But when these things are so powerful, right, it’s really like they have to communicate for miles. And that’s just the cell connection, right, they also have Wi Fi, they also have Bluetooth, they also have NFC, increasingly, they have multiple radio cards, they have multiple wireless transmitters built in. And when it’s right up against your body, you are getting the maximum possible dose that this thing has to give. And so even with all of the sources of EMF, and I don’t think you can actually quite pick it out. But there’s like there’s a cell tower right across the street over there, right with all of these sources in our environment. For a lot of people, their relationship with their cell phone is going to be a huge source, if not the biggest source of their own personal exposure in their life. So personal cell phone hygiene etiquette is going to make a huge difference. But beyond that wearable technology, right Apple Watches, for instance, are increasingly popular. When when when you have those on, you’re being exposed non stop while you have it on. air pods are and other Bluetooth headsets are another one, the closer that something is to your body. In general, the a the closer it is to your body and be the longer you are designed to use it. In general, these are going to be the biggest sources of your own personal exposure. So I strongly recommend never to use Bluetooth headsets, I strongly recommend never to use smartwatches. And increasingly, you’re seeing you know smart glasses. Facebook has over your face. Facebook has them snap past them. Other companies now have them Apple is rumored to be coming out with a pair soon, these things they’re right up against you. It’s not just your brain, although you know, that’s pretty important, too. It’s your eyes are incredibly vulnerable to this sort of stuff. And there’s all sorts of nerves that are very important, right there in your head. And again, these are things they’re not just, they’re not just sources of, of EMF, they’re they’re ones that are right up against your body that you’re being fed are designed to be used for extended periods of time. Because the time of the exposure also matters quite a bit. So these are the sources that I spend most of my time talking about, because we are facing the introduction of more, and we’re finally entering the era of wearable tech. And you know, it’s been one of these things people have talked about for years. And it’s actually happening now. And if you like if you have kids don’t get your kids this stuff. If you want to have kids don’t do it yourself. Right? This the the use case, there’s no way to use this stuff more safely is I guess what I’m saying, right? It’s impossible for me, I and I make products that that make that reduce your exposure, this kind of stuff, it’s impossible for me or anyone like me to make a product that makes air pods safer to use, it’s impossible for me or anyone like me to make a product that makes you know, snap glasses easier or safer to use, right? The use cases of this whole new generation of technology, make it such that it is impossible to use them more safely. And so those are the that that now I will get down off my soapbox and let you continue the interview.
Nick Urban 48:46
Yeah, so that’s I agree with you on people. I talk to people about this and they’re interested in reducing their exposure. The first question I always ask them is that about their cell phone habits because you can have like a perfectly optimized house in pristine environment. But if you’re walking around with your cell phone pressed up against your leg, or God forbid, your your breasts all day, that’s going to have a seriously detrimental effect more so possibly than a lot of the other things that would be in your environment.
R Blank 49:15
Yes, yeah, totally agree. That’s a great example of something that I just want to state explicitly, which is that distance really matters, right? So with with EMF, if you have your phone and it’s an inch away from your body, and then you take it in now it’s two inches away from your body, the power of that exposure of your exposure has been cut by 75%. And that’s because the power of EMF radiation diminishes exponentially with distance. And that’s why when people like us are saying don’t carry your phone in your pocket. That’s why that’s so important. Right? Because the further away it is from your body, you’re making huge differences in terms of what your actual exposure is to that force. And the same is true for the retailer. We’ve talked about the microwave oven standing as far away as possible from the microwave oven in any Wi Fi routers, keeping the Wi Fi router in wherever you live keeping it as far away from where you spend your time as possible. Distance is your friend with with with EMF.
Nick Urban 50:15
Yeah. Well, we’ll talk about remediation steps in a second, because I don’t want to make this all about the doom and gloom and the problems that are coming with increasing EMF exposure. But before we do, I want to talk about two other things. And that is solar power, and electric cars. What are your thoughts on those.
R Blank 50:34
So it’s solar power is a tough one, because I’m a big believer in not only a green energy, but in the need for green energy. And the issues with solar. Unfortunately, when it comes to EMF, they’re not limited to just solar, they’re shared between solar, wind and hydro. And that is, our power grid is built on AC, alternating current. And when you are generating renewable energy, through solar, or wind or hydro, you are generating DC, and it’s stored in batteries. In order to convert dc into AC, right, in order to power the grid, you need an inverter, a power inverter. And these power inverters are tremendous sources of dirty electricity. Dirty electricity is another kind of EMF that flows through the grid, right, so it doesn’t get emitted by a cell phone, it gets introduced into the power grid and then flows around the grid, and then it’s emitted off of all of the wiring that that is connected to. And solar power is a big one, because more and more people are going solar. And when you do it, you introduce a tremendous amount of this dirty electricity. And that is very hard to address. There are certain products out there like dirty electricity filters. But there you need an expert to really work with you to really customize the implementation in your home to get this stuff working properly. And so that’s the big issue is solar. And it’s one, you know, you know, I wish industry had some kind of incentive to help fix that, right. Because right now, there’s absolutely there’s no reason to for them, right? If there’s no public pressure, there’s no regulations restricting how much dirty electricity can be put out onto the grid, right. So there’s absolutely no incentive, which means more and more people going solar are going to be exposing more and more people to dirty electricity. Now, when it comes to electric cars, this is an area where there is almost basically no regulation right now when we’re talking about EMF exposure. But you know, electric cars are making more people aware of this. But this is true for all cars, right? There’s no regulations, and we just did an article on the shield your body site, about cars. And we were looking we’re like, what, what do like when you buy a cell phone, you know, the, you can at least look how much theoretically, you know, it’s how much radiation it’s supposed to, because the manufacturer has to publish a number. Now, there’s a whole bunch of reasons why that number may not be entirely accurate, but they have to, right? Same for Apple Watch. Right? I may not believe the numbers. But Apple has to actually say this is how much radiation when you buy a car, how much radiation is it exposed me to, you have no idea. They don’t have to tell you. And increasingly with these cars, right, it’s not just the fancy Tesla’s it’s any car is going to have some kind of Bluetooth, it may have some kind of wireless satellite signal in order to get like OnStar to work or cell modem, it may have Wi Fi as well as blue, like you have no idea really all the different things that are running in the car, and you have no idea how much you’re being exposed to. So yes, in general, an electric car will expose you to more than a conventional car. And a hybrid car will in general expose you to more than an electric car, because hybrids have those inverters that I was just talking about. And so, but with all cars, it’s one of these examples where it’s just totally it’s from my perspective, it is essentially unregulated in terms of what your EMF exposure from a car is. And yes, as as more and more cars switch electric, that is going to become a bigger issue. And it’s unfortunate, right? Because as I said before, I’m a big believer in the need for green energy. And what we’re seeing the way it’s working right now, the more that it’s being deployed for LEED. We’re seeing just more and more and more of this harmful EMF put into our environment. And it’s very unfair, like it doesn’t have to be this way. If there was some kind of regulation in place guiding development of these products and these technologies and these platforms, then they would be engineered at an earlier stage to be safer, but what we are doing is deploying these networks and and without those regulations in place to guide the development to be safer and healthier, and now that you know that infrastructure gets in place, and then it becomes even more difficult, more expensive, more challenging to make that infrastructure healthier.
Nick Urban 55:13
Yeah. When I recently bought a car, I was looking through the different options, I considered a hybrid considered electric and wanted to do that for the planet sake, but then also realized I’d be sitting on a huge, super powerful battery. Yeah. And then I was also deciding between year models, and when I looked at some of the newer ones, like how many different signals are coming off? This is like sonar. There’s Bluetooth, there’s like, inbuilt built in Wi Fi. There’s all kinds of different things and just not I don’t have a need to have Wi Fi in my car. So I’m gonna forego as many of these as possible, because a lot of them don’t even allow you to put the car into airplane mode.
R Blank 55:53
Yeah. Yeah, I rented a car recently. And, and I’d never used Android Auto before. So I was like, this is kind of cool. Like, I get in the car. And I’m like, Okay, let me experiment with it. So I turned on Bluetooth. And then I don’t remember which told me it was either the car told me or the phone told me it’s like, this will work a lot better if you turn on Wi Fi. And it auto turned on Wi Fi for me. I didn’t want Wi Fi on I thought Bluetooth was bad. But yeah, I have a I have a super low tech car in real life, not not when I’m renting. And in fact, the only thing it had in it was a radio that had Bluetooth. And this radio was really annoying, because you couldn’t turn off the Bluetooth. And fortunately, or unfortunately, my car was broken into and the radio was stolen. And I said, you know, I don’t need a radio. And so now there’s a huge hole in my dashboard for the radio as and I’m like, Yeah, that was the it was like the one source of human media and half of my current I got good, it’s gone.
Nick Urban 56:56
Yeah. Okay, so what can people do to reduce their exposure and live more healthy from an EMF perspective?
R Blank 57:06
Sure. So it comes down to what I call the two key rules of EMF protection, which I’ve already alluded to, but one is minimizing your use of EMF technology, right? And there’s, you know, it’s obvious, right, you if you want less exposure to EMF radiation, use less of it. But there’s a lot of ways to do that without sacrificing your enjoyment of modern technology. So, you know, one that I tell people a lot is, a lot of my customers do this right away, once they come to shield your body and start reading our stuff is to turn off your Wi Fi at night, right? It, I mean, ideally, you get rid of Wi Fi, you switch over to Ethernet and have a hard wired a home or apartment, but a lot of people you know, that’s a big, big step that and so so they keep their Wi Fi, but turn it off at night, when you’re going to sleep that that is not going to harm you or your enjoyment of modern technology. This is when you’re not even using the networks.
Nick Urban 58:05
And also the most important time for your body when it’s trying to repair and
R Blank 58:09
Exactly, yeah, you want to enhance your sleep as much as possible. Another example of that is right on your phone when it’s on. Like when it’s community, right, there’s, as I said earlier, there’s multiple wireless cards in play, right. So when I say turn your phone into airplane mode, maybe you can’t do that, maybe you’re expecting a call or you need to be connected, but turn off some of them, right. So turn off the Bluetooth if you need your phone to be online. But you know, you’re not using Bluetooth, turn off the Bluetooth, if you can use Wi Fi calling instead of the cell network, turn off the cell network and the Bluetooth and the Wi Fi on right there. All these options actually reduce the amount of EMF coming off of your phone, again, without reducing your enjoyment of modern technology. So men and the one I’ll just underscore that I said earlier, is you know, don’t buy, don’t buy airpots use use a wired headset. You know, just you can opt out of a lot of this stuff without impacting your enjoyment of technology. Now the second that was meant that was rule number one that was minimize, second rule is maximize you want to maximize the distance between your body and the source of EMF when it is in use. And we talked about this already right. Don’t carry your phone in your pocket or your bra that is like the number one thing. I also use the example of standard as far away as possible from your microwave oven when it’s on. Keep the Wi Fi router as far away as possible from where you and your loved ones spend your time in your home. Right. These are all examples and they make huge differences in guess you’re not going to get rid of all of your EMF exposure in the modern world. There’s just no way that shouldn’t be your goal. Your goal should be finding ways to use less EMF emitting tech and to be as far away from it as possible when you are using it. And then you are making huge differences in your personal EMF exposure. And though so those are the two key ways. And then once you’ve done those, then you can start considering EMF protection products, like the ones that I make and sell. So, you know, I say, don’t carry your phone in your pocket or your bra. That is, again, the number one thing, but there are people who do either because they insist on it or because they actually need to, for instance, you know, certain people needed for their job they needed, they, they need their phone to be on, and it needs to be on their body because there’s nowhere else to carry it as they’re walking around. And so that’s when, for instance, my phone, my FYP phone pouch can come in handy. And that is a good way to use EMF protection product to reduce your exposure, but the you know, the first step should be eliminating as many of the sources as possible, or weakening them as much as possible with distance before starting to investigate and evaluate EMF protection products.
Nick Urban 1:01:07
And then what about if people can’t put it on airplane mode? And they don’t have a product? Is there anything else they can do? What about the harmonization technologies, such as either grounding, or some of the stickers or different things you can apply to your devices?
R Blank 1:01:21
Sure. So a lot of these types of solutions, there is no science to demonstrate their efficacy, and there is no way of testing their claims. And in my experience Harmonizers fall into that category. Notice I was very precise in my wording, I am not saying that they don’t work, I am saying that there is no way to verify their product claims. And their claims are not based on any science of which I’m aware. Now I have client clients, customers who use products like that and say they work. And I say keep on using it. You know if it’s working for you, you know, definitely keep on using it. But when we’re talking about products like mine, like we make it shield your body. These are all based on shielding technology, which has existed for almost 200 years since Michael Faraday in first invented the Faraday cage. And what he showed is if we’ve conductive metals into certain patterns, you can block and deflect certain frequencies of EMF in the other direction just like a window shade blocks and deflect sunlight. And all of my products are based on this type of shielding technology, they are all tested in a lab. And we post the results and they can be tested by consumers at home with with with EMF meters that are of a certain quality, you know, not the $20 ones, but like the $150 ones you can actually verify. But you also mentioned grounding and grounding is a really good practice. Now, what grounding means is actually it’s bringing your body into contact with the ground or with the earth. It’s also sometimes called earthing. And what that allows you to do as an organism is to discharge accumulated positive ionization. And that then leads to reduced levels of free radicals reduced levels of inflammation and oxidation. It is a very good practice. Now when I say it’s a good practice, I’m talking about actually coming into contact with the earth or the ground meaning walking barefoot in the park walking barefoot on the beach, walking barefoot in your backyard, if you can. There are certain classes of products out there that are grounding products. Meaning you you actually plug them into the ground that that third prong, that ground prong in your outlets. And so you can get grounding sheets, you can get grounding mat, you can get grounding all sorts of products these days, and you plug them into the wall. When you do that they they allow you to discharge advise station like we talked about, but they also start exposing you to pollutants from the grid itself. And so I am not an advocate for using grounding products like that, although we do at sy V now have a product. It’s called the NCP or the nuisance current blocker that makes it safer to do that right by filtering out those harmful for so you can plug your like grounding mat into the NCP and then plug your NCP into the wall and it will filter out a lot of those pollutants from the ground wire. And it makes it safer to practice grounding at home using those types of products that I was just talking about.
Nick Urban 1:04:24
That’s good to know because I have several grounding mats and I use them regularly. So I guess I should pick up that new product that you guys offer.
R Blank 1:04:32
Cool, yeah. Yeah, that’s brand new. That’s that’s this year. That’s our newest product. Yeah. And so we have the NCB that allows you to just plug in like a grounding mat into it. We also have the NZD Pro which has to be professionally installed that allows you to clean the entire grounding conductor on the on the circuit so anything you plugin will will be will benefit from that.
Nick Urban 1:04:53
So that’s really cool. What do you recommend if people are just getting started with shielding? Where should they look? Look or shield first?
R Blank 1:05:03
Well, you know, so my advice, and it’s something I wish I had a simpler, easier answer on this one. But because we get this question a lot, or some version of this question a lot, and my advice to people is if you are concerned about EMF and you know, you’ve done the base, if you’re concerned, you know, you’ve probably already done the basics, meaning, if you can stop carrying your phone in your pocket, you’ve done that if you can switch from Wi Fi to Ethernet, you’ve done that it all the basics you’ve done. And so how do you know where you need protection? And the answer is to get a decent meter and learn how to test and, and I don’t make or sell meters, but there are several that I recommend. And I have a free ebook, it’s really, I think, a very good ebook that explains to people how to test so I recommend certain meters again, I don’t make or sell them, I don’t profit off of it. But you know, you need a decent one. And so I recommend, and then I explained to people how they can test. And then I also explain what levels might be worth worrying about versus ones that don’t. And, and that’s what I recommend, as a first step for anyone interested in before buying EMF protection. And so that ebook, if I may, it’s shield, your body.com/test. And you can get it for free. That’s the best place to start for. And I know not everyone’s going to do it. But that’s what everyone should do is get a decent meter and learn how to test because you’re not going to know, right, and I’ll give you an example, like you could like because there could be wiring in the wall that’s just wonky, it was done badly, because a lot of electricity don’t know how to measure this stuff, they don’t, it’s not part of the standard by which they built wiring into homes. And there could be just a huge electric field coming off of one part of your living room wall. And you would have no way of knowing that unless you measure. And that could be an example where if you just moved your couch, you know four feet to the right, you and your family are exposed to way less EMF, but you’re never going to know that unless you actually measure because again, this stuff is a physical, it’s odorless, tasteless, that the only way you’re going to know is if you learn how to measure. And so I’m a big advocate for people to learn how to measure.
Nick Urban 1:07:21
Yeah, me too. And I will put the link to that your ebook in the shownotes. And if people are interested in picking up and as YB product or multiple and to help reduce their cumulative exposure, where can they do that?
R Blank 1:07:36
Sure. Thank you for that as well. And shield your body.com that shield your body, all one word.com. And that’s we have our whole catalog is available there. And we have shipping all around the world. So we can cater to almost everybody.
Nick Urban 1:07:54
And I think we created a special code for the listeners. I think I believe it’s urban. Do you know the specifics of that?
R Blank 1:08:02
No, but we can decide that right now live in real time. So how about 15% off your first order with the coupon? Perfect. Is that is that good? Yeah, that’s great. Okay, I will I will make sure that’s created as soon as this interview is over. Thank you. Yeah. And
Nick Urban 1:08:21
one other question is that I have I’m wearing headphones right now. And I listened to a lot of stuff on podcasts, audiobooks, you name it. And I have known that to avoid bluetooth headphones. But I also was aware of a problem that there might be with wired headphones as well.
R Blank 1:08:38
Yeah, so I want to be clear. I never discourage people from using wired headphones, they are always better than a Bluetooth headset or holding the phone up to your head or anything like that. So if all you have is wired headphones use them and don’t spend too much time worrying about it. But if you’re really focused on reducing your EMF exposure and optimizing your EMF exposure profile, right wired headphones, they are they are wired, and so they can conduct radiation from your phone up into your ears is that elf it’ll be mostly radiofrequency but it’ll also be some coming off of the battery. So it’s mostly the RF because you know your phone is sending and receiving all of this RF and so in you’re basically plugging an antenna into it. And then which is the wire in the headphone and so it’ll conduct some of it up to your ears and so we make air two headsets and what air tubes do is at a certain point along the wire, they the wire stops and the sound gets converted to air and and those because there’s no wire there the radiation conduction stops. Now the problem with air tubes is that they don’t sound so great. Even the best best ones they just don’t sound that great because air isn’t as good a conductor of sound and Wire is. So another solution. And so I use air tubes all the time, but I use them for calls. And for podcasts, I don’t listen to music with them. I don’t, you know, while I don’t watch TV on my phone, but I wouldn’t watch a video on my phone with them. So what another product we have is called the heart, the heads of anti radiation device. And that’s a filth, that’s an adapter. That’s also a filter. And what that does it you plugged the heart into your phone, and then you put your headsets into the heart. And that filters out that stray radiation. And this is laboratory tested, we have the report on the website, it filters out the stray radiation, and turns it into a tiny, tiny amount of heat that dissipates off of the adapter itself. So you never, you never even sense it. And what’s great about the heart is not only do you not lose the sound quality, like you do with the air tubes, it actually improves the sound quality. In fact, that’s how the product was initially developed by the inventor. Because by stripping off that stray radiation from the sound signal, you’re actually improving the audio quality. And so that’s why I love the heart. Because not only do you not get the poor sound quality from from the air tubes, you get the enhanced sound quality and actually stripping that interference off of the signal. And you can use any headset that you want.
Nick Urban 1:11:19
Wow. Yeah, that’s another thing I’m adding to my s YB shopping list. Okay, we’re gonna start wrapping up now. But before we do, if there was a burning of the books and all knowledge on Earth is gone, what three works would you choose to keep and why?
R Blank 1:11:37
Okay, so that is a tough question, because I used to be cool and hip and motivated to that, you know, now older, more boring, but there’s one that I and I wouldn’t have answered this the same way two or three weeks ago, but I was just cleaning out a storage unit. And I basically paired all the books that I own down to one box, so I just had to go through this process and one that made the cut, I realized, well, if it made the cut, it’s clearly important to me, are the works of Edward Tufty, who is a statistician and information designer. And I realized once I, you know, I don’t do this work kind of work anymore. But I used to earlier my career, his works were so important and so significant to me, that they made it into the box. Another is Jack Kornfield, who is a Buddhist philosopher, who’s whose meditation recordings is discussions were really important to me earlier in my life. And then third at some other book, is, it’s not like it was a seminal work, it was just very important to me, is called Einsteins dreams. And I don’t even remember who wrote it. But it’s a physicist. And it’s a work of fiction. And what he did was he pasta, he kind of imagined what was Einstein dreaming every night, before he came up with the theory of relativity. And it’s this, it’s just this fantastic exploration of it’s an imaginative approach to the types of dreams that someone like that would have in the lead up to coming up with such a revolutionary set of findings. So that those were the three.
Nick Urban 1:13:18
I love it a diverse collection as well. Thank you. What area of your own health and performance are you currently working on?
R Blank 1:13:27
So? Well, as you know, I’m not at home right now. That’s so busy scene in the background. But when I’m at home, the thing I’ve been working on this year is taking longer walks barefoot on the beach. So we were talking about grounding. And so this year, we have been taking like 10 mile walks barefoot on the beach as regularly as possible, and that it’s been wonderful, both for the mood and for the body. And so that is I’m very much looking forward to getting back home and resuming that practice.
Nick Urban 1:13:59
Yeah, killing multiple birds with one stone.
R Blank 1:14:01
Exactly.
Nick Urban 1:14:03
All right, our what’s one thing that your tribe does not know about you?
R Blank 1:14:08
Okay, so I actually used to live work and study in Russia, Estonia and in Georgia. And I actually built the website for the Parliament of the Republic of Georgia back in 1996. So reaching way back into my my history there to come up with a trivia factoid for you. Yeah. What
Nick Urban 1:14:28
an accolade. How would you like to end our episode today? Any final thoughts?
R Blank 1:14:36
Yeah. So you know, when when we talk about when I talk about issues like this, I know it can be, like just a little unpleasant or terrifying, you know, because these forces, you know, they really are harmful. But you know, what the message I’d like to leave people with, is I want people to become more aware of The ways in which their relationship with technology impacts their health, right, your listeners to your show, obviously, you’re very concerned with optimizing their health. And I want people to become more aware that they actually they are in control of a lot of the ways in which technology impacts their health, we are all more in control of this than we think. And, you know, even as there’s tons of cell towers out there, and we turn on the Wi Fi, and on your computer, and you see there’s like 30 networks popping up and, you know, there you’re you’re still have you weren’t, you are, you are the one in control of this stuff. And you have a lot of the way in which you personally interact with the technology around you will really dictate a lot about the health impacts of your relationship with technology. And there are a lot of ways in which we can modify our behaviors and adapt them so that we can live healthier and happier alongside modern technology. And, and so hopefully, at the end of the day, you know, people can just have a little bit more awareness of these, the health mechanisms that are in play here, and then realize, Oh, I am the one in control here, I can make a big difference in in my health, not just by having protein powder, or microgreens. But also, you know, turning off my cell phone at night, and never bring it into the bedroom and kind of grouping it in with those types of human optimization practices.
Nick Urban 1:16:23
Yeah, you’re bringing awareness to the invisible forces and stressors that shape our life and through education, only then can we help improve and optimize those.
R Blank 1:16:35
Exactly, yes. And I really thank you for the opportunity to chat with you and to help educate your audience just a little bit on these on these on these issues.
Nick Urban 1:16:44
Yeah, thanks for demystifying this subject. And for joining me on the mind body peak performance podcast today are thank you so much for happening. All right, until next time, I’m Nick urban here with R blank, signing out from Mind Body peak.com. Have a great week and be an outlier. Thank you for tuning in to this episode. Head over to Apple Music, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and leave a rating. Every review helps me bring you thought provoking guests. As always, you can find the show notes for this one at mind body peak.com/and then the number of the episode. There you can also chat with other peak performers or connect with me directly. The information depicted in this podcast is for information purposes only. Please consult your primary health care professional before making any lifestyle changes.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
