Are EMFs dangerous?

How much effort should you put into reducing blue light exposure?

Do electronics and cell phones cause cancer?

Do you really need to think about this?

On this week's Tuesday Terrain Talk, I’ll tell you what the science says about E.M.F.s, blue light and why worrying about these things may be a distraction from what's really important. To unplug or not to unplug might be more about what benefits peace and silence bring to your mind than what low levels of radiation do to your cancer risk. Listen now and embrace some time off the grid later.

Referred to in this episode: 

Better Than Before Breast Cancer Life Coaching Membership 

EMFs (Electromagnetic Fields): Cell Phone Radiation Effects on Human Body – Dr. Berg 

New Studies Link Cell Phone Radiation with Cancer 

The Hidden Benefits of Silence 

Radiation: Electromagnetic fields 

How blue light affects your eyes, sleep, and health 

Do Cell Phones Cause Cancer? 

Read the full transcript below:

Laura Lummer  00:00

You're listening to the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. I'm a certified life, health and nutrition coach, and I'm also a breast cancer thriver. If you're trying to figure out how to move past the trauma and the emotional toll of breast cancer, you've come to the right place. In this podcast, I will give you the tools and the insights to create a life that's even better than before breast cancer. Well, let's get started.

Laura Lummer  00:32

Hello, hello, welcome to another episode of the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. And I'm here today with another Tuesday terrain talk. First of all, I just want to stop and say thank you so much for all the great feedback I have been getting about these Tuesday episodes, I've received lots of messages and emails, and even more questions about topics people want to hear about, which makes me very happy. And if you have a topic you'd like to hear about, you can find me on Facebook and Instagram as Laura Lummer, the breast cancer recovery coach, and send me a DM of a topic you'd like to hear about on one of our Tuesday train talks. I'm happy to look into it. And you know, I think it's an interesting thing. I love doing these strange talks, because I think it's very empowering of as I have said on previous episodes, I want us to be more aware of all the little things we can do to support our health. And I think there you we need a little paradigm shift there. Because often, when we talk about things that people say cause cancer, right, this causes cancer. If I think it's a California roll, there's like a prop, I think it's prop 64 or something like that. But in California, like literally everything you buy has this little sticker this little piece of paper in it that says you know, prop 64, some kind of a notice of prop 64, that something in this product and this package and this clothing item and whatever it is, could cause cancer. It's literally on everything you guys. And it's so much so that I think it becomes silly, right? We start to look at it as go whatever, everything causes cancer, I can't worry about it. And I think that, on the one hand, I guess that keeps us from going into anxiety and worry about it. But on the other hand, I think it also strips us of some of our power. So if we can shift the thinking from everything causes cancer, what can I do to there are so many things that I can do to reduce my risk. What works for me and my lifestyle, what helps me feel more empowered. And really the bottom line, the big question is what's important to you? What things play a big enough role in your life that you feel it can be impactful for you, it's important for you, what things are such minor things in your life that you think, you know what, even if that could increase my risk of cancer, I don't care about that thing. It's not important to me. So why even have it in my life, if it's a risk, right? That kind of feeds into what we're going to talk about today. And I'm going to share a personal story with you of what got me interested in this and where my mindset was around this topic and kind of where it is now. So we're talking about unplugging. And when I talk about unplugging, two things come to mind, one, blue light, constant noise and light, how it affects our vision and how it affects our brain. And to EMF electromagnetic frequencies and the talk and confusion about whether or not this is actually something that can be a health concern for us. So I'll tell you, I would hear a lot of talk about EMFs. And I study a lot in the house, I will say necessarily naturopathic world, but I read a lot about anthroposophic medicine, naturopathic medicine, you know, I study with Nisha winters, and just look at all of the natural things that affect our circadian rhythms. And I've often often often heard about EMS, and often wondered, how important is that? I mean, is that really that big of a deal? And then a while back I one of the podcasts is podcast number 74 and 75. I did two episodes on sleep hygiene with Dr. Stephanie green. And she talked about radiation EMF and having your cell phones outside of your room away from you because there's constant frequency going into this phone right? We know our phones update during the night. We know that there's constant communication happening with these electronic devices. And as she got more and more into studying about good sleep, hygiene and the importance of sleep as a foundation for our good health she had for herself and for her children move the cell phones away from where they're sleeping, turn off all the little lights, put black tape over all the little LED lights that might be in the room. So you get that beautiful trifecta for good sleep, which is cold, dark and quiet is how we want our rooms. So when she brought up even EMFs, I started thinking about it. I was like, okay, and I'll tell you, I confess, I am guilty. I had a habit of reading on my iPad before going to sleep. And so obviously, brain stimulation and looking and having blue light come into my eyes. And so I thought, I don't know, like, is that really that significant? How important is it when there were so many other things I could do to support getting good sleep? Well, I started to do I started this habit, where I, you know, I love listening to audiobooks. And I will be listening to a great story that I didn't want to put down. And so I'd put my air pod in my ear. And I'd set the sleep timer, when you have the audible app on your phone, you can set it to go off and whatever, 510 15 minutes. So I would set the sleep timer for 15 or 30 minutes, because I was listening to a good part in the book. And I wanted to listen to it as I fell asleep. But I didn't want the noise in my head all night long. But what would happen is that the air pod would stay in my ear, those little suckers don't fall out. So the book would turn off, but the air pod would stay in my ear. Well, I made a habit out of doing this, I was doing it pretty frequently. And I started to notice one day that I was having a lot of pain in my jaw, I was having a lot of pain in my jaw, and down the side of my neck on the right side of my neck because I only wear my right airpot I don't ever or very, very rarely do I wear them both. And I have a hearing issue in my left ear. So I always wear the right air pipe. And it was becoming really uncomfortable, like uncomfortable enough that I was getting a little concerned there was problem because it was very painful. And then it occurred to me and I thought, You know what, I have been falling asleep with my air pod in my ear. And I wonder if this EMF thing has some validity here, could the the radiation get the EMF or radioactive frequencies that are constantly in my ear while I'm sleeping? I mean, you know, that's eight, nine hours of sleep. And it's just in my ear the entire time, in addition to the fact that if I was doing things during the day, like often when I'm cooking, or if I'm running errands or things, I have the ear pod in my ear just throughout the day, because I wouldn't think about it very often. And so I started to think, Wow, I wonder if this is having an effect on the pain I'm having in my jaw in my ear. And so I made a conscious decision to keep that air pot out of my ear, I would put it in if I had a phone call to make or something but I wouldn't just walk around with it in. And then I stopped doing it entirely at bedtime, I stopped using the airport completely at bedtime. And after a few days, that pain went away. Now, that isn't necessarily the showing me that it caused it. So of course, after a couple of weeks of no pain, I decided to try and see if I could create some more pain for myself again, I tried to get some for a couple of nights of that, let me check. Let's see, right. I'm an n of one on my own population of one in my scientific study. And let's see if I can duplicate my outcome. And I put their upload back in. And I would listen to my book as I fell asleep. And within three days, my jaw started hurting again. And I thought okay, for me, I have my answer. Whatever is happening, whether it's too much or too long, or the way that their pod fits in my ear, or the frequencies that are going in my ear or around my head, whatever it is, it's for me not working, right, it's creating some kind of pain, not good, I'm not going to do this anymore. And as I study more in the metabolic approach to health EMS is really a thing we talk about a lot EMFs and reducing that exposure to EMFs in many ways that you can in your life. And so I thought okay, you know, this is definitely a good thing. And I started looking and seeing online some images. And I would see these I don't know if they're a PET scan images or MRIs and they were showing people's brains or the side of their head after 15 minutes of a phone call with their smartphone held next to their head. And you could see the increase in the heat signature on the entire side of their head. And I thought that was pretty remarkable. So I started doing a little bit of research and reading and even in the World Health Organization, they say that the main effect of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields is heating of the body tissues. We know that right? We have radiation. Now that's a Uber Ultra amount of radiofrequency, we're not going to get that from our cell phone, but we know what it does and it creates heat. And the World Health Organization also says there's no doubt that short term exposure to very high levels of electromagnetic fields can be harmful to your health. And what they're referring to in very high levels are like energy plants, big commercial things. And I'm going to put a link to the article on electromagnetic frequencies radio activity from the World Health Organization in the show notes for the show. So there's a ton of information in there. And you can read it. And let me know what you think. Because what I will share with you is after reading, and watching some videos and reading some research or reading some studies, that it's about as clear as mud when it comes to our low level, radioactive frequency exposures harmful to our health. And some studies say, yes, they are, that they're possible human carcinogens. Other studies say you shouldn't call them possible, you should say their probable because we have this new rat study. And this rat study showed that it's a probable carcinogen, and that this exposure to electromagnetic frequencies can cause in that specific study caused increases of cancer in glial cells in the brain, and in specific cells in the heart. But then there was a lot of controversy over this study as well. And so everything I found that said, oh, yeah, EMS, even the low exposure for EMFs, from your phone, and other devices, wireless devices that we use increases our risk of cancer. For every one of those I found, I found another ones as well, not really. And it's hard to tell. And I can see why it is hard to tell, because as I read through these studies, there's so many things at play. So it's difficult to pinpoint where this electromagnetic frequency comes into play, and the influence it has, because even in studies where it shows that it's a possible increased risk factor exposure to these frequencies, they're such small risk factors that then the argument is, well, that could have been something else too, that could have been an unhealthy animal that could just be, you know, such a small percentage of the rats that died in that study or got cancer in that study that you would just expect that. And even in humans, the World Health Organization says there are humans that are very sensitive to electromagnetic frequencies. And so for those people, they have to be more cautious of their exposure. And for other people who are not as sensitive, and it's not going to really hurt their health. But then they say, but the studies are still out. And we're still looking into it. So one of the videos that I watch is through Dr. Eric Berg, he's a very well known YouTube doctor, I will link that YouTube video in the show notes for this episode, as well, you'll find those at the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash 255 In this video, and there's a few videos that Dr. Berg has done on EMS, and I like him because he's really rational. He's not an extremist kind of guy. And one of the things he points out, which I can definitely see, after reading a lot of the research that you could conclude is that right now, everyone says there's no risk to human health. But something he points out is that's what we said for decades about trans fats and for decades about smoking. And as the World Health Organization says, As an article in Scientific American said, as Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center says in an article that I'll also post a link to is that studies are continuing. And so it's just saying, you know, research isn't clear from the research we see. Now, we don't think it's a problem. But research is continuing because people are reporting problems. And so I think that we as we approach this from a terrain mentality, and from thinking about supporting the train of your body, I say, you know, let's not freak out, just don't have a ton of fear about it. But recognize how your body is affected. As the story I shared with you, I kind of did my own study. And notice now this is bothering me something about it, whether it was radio frequencies are not but something about it was definitely creating pain. And so why not reduce your exposure where you can, if you can, so if this is some kind of potential risk, and something in the article from the World Health Organization that they said was that these studies could all mean that radio, electromagnetic frequencies have no effect on our health. Or it could also mean that we just don't know yet how to detect the effect that it's having on our health. So it's really murky out there. And so there's lots of tools that people use to reduce the level of exposure to electromagnetic frequencies. You'll see if you check out the video from Dr. Berg he has a device where he checks different devices and sees you know, what is the electromagnetic frequency coming off of these lights, for instance, on this computer, for instance, or your cell phone, and to remember that with distance that gets less intense electromagnetic frequency is going to get less intense the further away you are from it. So if you have a cell phone that's only emitting it for two feet, then move the cell phone to the other side of the room while you sleep. keep it away from your head, use the kind of earplugs that plug into your cell phone. And then they have the little, I can't recall right now what that thing is called, they have the little device on it, that lessens the electromagnetic frequency and reduces your exposure to frequencies and they have those and you can put them on your cell phones, you can find ear plug devices that have those in there, and we can take steps towards reducing our exposure to them. Because why not? Why not? If we can, why not if we're not sure if this is a risk or not. And there are simple changes that we can make that don't cost us a thing. And we can potentially lessen our exposure. Well, as we talked about, before, the toxic burden that we expose ourselves to in this world can we reduce it in ways that still work for our lifestyle, and I think when it comes to electromagnetic frequencies, that's one thing that we can definitely reduce wherever we can find ways that it works for us. More importantly, I think that as we're talking about unplugging, I think about also blue light, as I said before, and blue light, we know disturbs the way that the brain works. And it can be disruptive to our sleep patterns. It can affect melatonin production, if we're exposing ourselves to blue light reading on our cell phones, reading on our Kindles reading on our tablets or iPads or things like that before we go to sleep or playing games on it. So that can definitely have an impact on the way that our brain functions and our ability to get sleep, which again, is a foundation of good health. And so the recommendation to unplug from those electronic devices and give your brain a rest for at least an hour before bedtime, I think is great advice. And we can move things around and reduce the exposure directly to our head from electromagnetic frequencies as much as possible. But why not reduce that exposure to blue light as well. And especially when it comes if you have little ones in the house because there's a lot of evidence showing that with the constant exposure of blue light to through their eyes, that it can have definitely an impact on our vision on everyone's vision. And I also think about when I think about unplugging because to me unplugging means, Okay, I'm off of electronics. Right now I'm reading just a book with actual pages. I'm letting my brain just relax. I'm not watching TV, I'm not listening to something I'm just unplugged, or I don't have technology around me. But other things too. Like even music going on any kind of noise. To me unplugged means time out in nature, time in silence time in quiet time focused on your breathing, just silence. And I think that that's an even bigger aspect of why we unplug. I think it's much more important because here we can look at, okay, what do EMFs do? Well, we don't really know yet from different studies, we do know some effects from individual people. And as with everything else we do to support our health, we must respect our bio individuality. We must look at our body and how our body responds to things and honor that I don't care what any study says. It was study says no, that air pod in your ear all night long cannot possibly cause jaw pain. But when I use it, I have jaw pain, I'm going to pay more attention to my jaw than I am to the study. Okay? Because the study wasn't done on me. So we always have to honor our bodies. And when we're unplugging, it's not that Oh, is unplugging, is being off of electronic devices, is this fighting cancer? That's not the thing that we want to be thinking about. Right? We're thinking, is this supporting my health? Is this supporting my ability to have optimal wellness. And I think that's the most important thing, because we know that when we have silence, we benefit our brain. So when people go to sleep, and they've got the television on, I hear this often I can't possibly sleep without the TV on. While we're not getting that really restful sleep, because we're not our brain is still there, like it's still working that sucker is on 24/7. It's listening to what's going around us. And I know for me and for other people who I've heard from when you have a radio on or if I were to fall asleep with an audible book on or if the TV is on, we wake up and realize we've incorporated what we were listening to into our dream. And what does that tell you? I mean, it really says your brain is on and your brain is still taking in information and still working. During a time when it's not supposed to be during a time where it's supposed to be really quiet. Twitter's supposed to be doing the work to help our body regenerate, recover, detoxify, heal, cleanse and restore and renew during sleep. So just like we don't want to eat food right before we go to bed because then we've activated our digestive system. And instead of our body being able to focus on detox and cleansing, and cell renewal, it's focusing on digesting food as we're sleeping. Kind of the same thing with our brain, if we don't have things turned off, if we've got lights in our eyes and noise going on all the time, our brain is just digesting information constantly, when unplugging, and giving ourselves that quiet time, allows the brain to just be in peace, it actually allows our brain to regenerate. It gives us space to get to know ourselves and observe ourselves. As I say that I kind of laugh because people will say to me all the time, oh, I don't, I don't want to be in silence. Because my brain goes a mile a minute, I'll have to listen to so many thoughts basically, in my head. And that's the whole idea. You know, when we notice that the brain is on, like overdrive, it's just constantly going constantly having thoughts. And we think, Well, what am I supposed to do about that? Right? That's just how my brain works? Well, yes, it is how your brain works. But you as the conscious observer of them, you have the ability to say, Okay, I'm going to do something about this, I'm going to allow myself quiet, and lack of input here. So I can just focus on breath, and I can calm the brain down, I can use that part of me that's aware of how much I'm thinking, to do certain things, to focus, to breathe, to calm to choose different thoughts to calm the brain. And in doing that, I can call my body and I can support my optimal health. So when it comes to unplugging, and I look into electromagnetic frequencies, I look into blue light. And I read the studies that leave you just like going into the nutrition area in a bookstore would leave you going well, what's right and what's wrong, or what do I do what's dangerous and what's not. I think most importantly, it step back and say, Why am I choosing this? Why do I want to be looking in this phone? Every chance that I get? How is this phone distracting me from being present in my life? Why do I need to have the TV on? What are thoughts that are happening in my brain that I'm not dealing with? What are emotions that I'm not processing? Because I'm not allowing silence? I'm not allowing even my brain cells to regenerate and relieve them of the stress of constant information input. Right? I'm not giving them any space for creativity, for getting to know myself and forgetting to understand what my body's needs are and what are affecting me. And I think that when it comes to to unplug or not, that is a much bigger question. Then How dangerous are EMFs? So I would propose those questions. When you consider how much time do you spend on a cell phone? How much noise Do you have constantly going in your home? Or the TV's always on? Do you leave a TV on when you're sleeping? Do you have exposure and noise constantly going on? Whether it's through an air pod, cell phone, or through anything else? Why the avoidance of silence because silence is so beneficial, and so calming for our nervous system, and so necessary for our nervous system. So when we talk about some of the most popular emotional disturbances, I shouldn't say popular but common emotional disturbances. Anxiety is definitely one of them. And when I think about anxiety from an Ayurvedic perspective, from an energetic and natural perspective, anxiety is fast movement of thoughts, right is the brain on just hyper overdrive thinking about a million things at once, and unplugging and giving yourself time to just settle down and give the brain space and allow the brain to relieve itself? I think is such a critical aspect of supporting our ability to be well. So I have given you a lot of links where you can look into these EMF articles yourself and check out what the World Health Organization has to say what Memorial Sloan Kettering has to say what Scientific American has to say and decide for yourself. But once again, I think when it comes to supporting a train, honor your body, why not take steps to get back as close as you can to your circadian rhythms to that calm state. And allow yourself throughout your day and throughout your life throughout your week time to unplug to get your feet on regular ground especially now summertime because sunshine is finally out in California to get some bear feet on the ground, to be off of devices and to just listen to yourself and tune into your breath and discover what it is you need for yourself to support your optimal health. All right, well I'm glad you plugged into this podcast and you know you can always come and work with me you can find more information on my life coaching membership on my website, the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash life coaching. Take care and I will talk to you again soon.