Am I unwell or is it my environment?

Having touched upon the subject of electro-sensitivity more than once, I’m now going for the straightforward approach as this is clearly a topic on which I have something to say after more than a year of very direct experience of it. Yet I’ve hesitated to do so because, overall, my health feels much better than it has for a decade and listing all the ways being electro-sensitivity affects me sounds like a contradiction of that; so is it really? Well, actually, no its not because I choose suggest that, rather than this profound sensitivity meaning there is “something wrong with me“, I find I am increasingly inclined to ask “is it me that is  so unwell or is it my environment?” Having spent over ten years recovering from fibromyalgia, almost all of my “symptoms” have retreated now…and my overall stamina and day-to-day wellbeing couldn’t be better…except for when I am impacted by EMFs in the environment, to which I seem to be ever-more sensitive. Its almost like, the better you fundamentally feel in your health, the more you notice; or as though whatever EMFs are doing to us is getting lost in how basically crappy most people feel most of the time until they start putting really great core health at the top of their priorities. Its like a sub-plot that’s not being picked up on because there is just so much else going on in most people’s overstimulated world.

Why is this happening? Well, human beings are innately adaptive to their environment and yet we’ve been asked to adapt to far more drastic and quite unavoidable changes in that environment in the last 100 years than ever before; in fact, our world has turned into electro-soup over the last 10 to 15 years, which I know about with every nerve-fibre of my being. Its fairly obvious to speculate that at least some people are going to struggle with the new world reality of EMFs literally everywhere, or that our electrified environment is likely to be disruptive to human homeostasis in ways we don’t yet fully understand or know the seriousness of…and yet we have dived into this technology with everything we’ve got. I’ve seen estimates suggesting millions of people (up to 60 million according to the latest research that I’ve come across) are now experiencing health issues related to EMFs in the environment and yet it feels vastly under-reported or even taboo as topics go.

Then there is simply no way of getting away from EMFs, they travel through walls and we generate more of them everyday; so the underlying naivity of considering whatever is invisible (wi-fi, for instance) as “simply not there” or “nothing to worry about” always startles me and feels like a mindset that has been whitewashed by those who stand to profit from the unquestioning roll-out of more and more wi-fi-dependent technology with a shrug of the shoulders. It remains to be seen whether we are all being affected in ways that are seriously detrimental to health, even those who have no idea that they are; and maybe those of us who are already sensitive are the canaries in all this…I don’t know, nor do I wish to get political about it. My aim, here, is to share my own experiences so that anyone experiencing similar can use my anecdotes as a resource for survival or at least mitigation of some of the profound discomfort of being electro-sensitive, a circumstance that can be extremely distressing when you have as yet to figure out its many triggers or any lasting ways to cope with it.

I should add, I am as big a fan of “new” technology as the next person and would be quite bereft without my daily dose of the  internet and all the other benefits of a fully-wired up world yet I also see that we are still in the midst of major teething problems…and, for some of us, what we are experiencing is equivalent to a very severe toothache; not something we can just ignore and hope will go away.

The growing reality of these symptoms amongst the population (more and more ordinary people calling in an environmental radiation consultant every day, I’m told by the one who visits me) tells me we are a little way off perfecting the relationship between our desire for more technology and our fundamental good health and so the undesirable effects do need to be reported so that those designing our technology and conducting medical research are made fully aware of the pitfalls to human health.

What’s space got to do with it?

One of the correlations that I make note of all the time is that between space weather events (a major source of radiation to our planet) and EMFs in the home; when the one occurs, the symptoms triggered by the other becomes much more severe in my case. Is anyone else noting this double-effect in the human body? You would expect so but I’m really not so sure. As articles attached at the bottom of this post indicate, many studies have begun to equate space weather variables with serious issues of human health such as cardio events, strokes, alzheimers and so on but this kind of research appears to look at space weather in isolation and not within the broader picture of ever-increasing radiation in our home environments; whereas those studying EMFs in the home seem not to take space weather into consideration. I could continue trawling the internet looking for research that is putting this one-plus-one effect on the table to study it all together or I could just get down to the business of documenting my own experiences; and so that is what I have decided to do in the hope that someone, somewhere starts to join up all the dots.

Are we talking about this openly enough?

The degree to which electro-sensitivity is a phrase now coming up in everyday conversation is increasing very slightly in my world, if still in hushed tones and with the kind of glances from one person to another that suggest “I’m only telling you thins because you seem to have the same thing going on”. However, I still flinch when I have to explain why I switch everything electrical off overnight (if anyone comes to stay) and I don’t exactly go out of my way to bring the topic up over dinner as its guaranteed to make people’s eyes roll. I stayed in a hotel last week where the owner was more-than clued up on electro-sensitivity (having it himself) and told me that the latest research has labelled it type-three diabetes – which I have now confirmed and attach the peer-reviewed research article by Dr Magda Havas below (well worth the read). When we realised we had this thing in common, he was more than happy to accommodate me by, for instance, turning off the wi-fi router overnight but was desperate for me not to mention this to anyone else incase people thought he was “a bit cuckoo”.

The extreme embarrassment that seems to hang around the subject is not supportive of the desperate need for people to share anecdotes, pool information and get this debilitating health issue taken seriously enough to make a difference. In the UK, as ever, people seem far more prone to thinking you are a bit eccentric for even mentioning this whereas in Sweden electro-sensitivity is a recognised health condition and taken very seriously indeed. Highly credible institutes of research into the effects of electronic pollution  in the home such as Geovital in Austria (whose products I have installed in mine) include an impressive gamut of experts on their panel incorporating geobiologists and electrobiologists plus experts covering disciplines from neurology to blood analysis, naturopathy to radiation shielding. These are the kind of innovative collaborations and multi-disciplinary approaches that are most likely to see us out of the wood of some of the more detrimental effects of EMFs upon human biology since the symptoms are incredibly broad-ranging and complex presenting a constant conundrum of “chicken or egg” to wrestle with. Is it my sensitivity to EMFs that makes me sensitive to space weather events or the other way around, I’m constantly left asking? Certainly I know, from experience, the more fine-tuned my general health is through excellent diet, great quality seep etc., the better I cope with both and that has been quite key to my approach to the symptoms I am now about to list followed by further discussion and suggestions below.

Symptoms of electro-sensitivity

• Skin itching or “insect-crawling’”sensations, typically to scalp and torso
• Spreading patches of numbness or tingling to the skin over the side of the scalp following the path of all the nerves in that region – similar to the effect of a dental anaesthetic but over the sides and top of the head
• Patches of random numbness to legs and feet
• Episodes of great pressure in the head like wearing a tight helmet
• Tingling, electric, stabbing, twitching, trembling nerves to various parts of the body or like glass shards or splinters sticking into flesh, electric “worms” entering via the face or leaving if the EM source is removed
• Powerful electrical sensations coming up through the feet and legs at times of geomagnetic activity as though from a very strong ground current
• Random (not just finger-tips) white and pink patches in the fingers and palm – Reynaud’s phenomenon –  often triggered  in a highly-electrified environment regardless of temperature
• Rubbery, numb sensation to the face especially around the nose and top lip
• A relentless whole body pulse through the small nerves of the body or patterns of sensation like currents of electricity sweeping through the nervous system that make me feel like a sea anemone (and it turns out there’s good science to explain why – see article below)
• Restless legs syndrome, especially in bed if electrics are switched on
• Episodes of intense pain and tension to the jaw and ears without any other cause
• Teeth that feel randomly loose or seem to click in their sockets, inexplicable episodes of intense toothache that come and go relative to EM triggers
• Irresistable urge to tap out rhythms (relentless foot tapping, finger drumming)
• Stomach tenderness as though the small nerves that line the stomach have suddenly become extremely bruised, not necessarily after a meal (often on waking) or intense muscular tension around the stomach just below the ribcage
• A toxic sensation in the mouth that I have come to understand is a nerve sensation to the tongue caused by electrical stimuli becoming so rapid and intense that it registers as something between a chemical “taste” (it reminds me of the “taste” of diesel traffic fumes) and an unquenchable thirst – it is as though the tongue is actually fizzing with miniscule electrical pulsations which becomes a burning, sour, toxic taste-sensation
• Fiery breath: similar to the tongue phenomenon, this feels like a rapid-fire nerve reaction in the stomach that delivers as an acidic, hot-breath sensation through the mouth
• Eyes aching as though extremely tired, eye dryness and twitching of the eyelids and episodes of suddenly blurred vision (a typical symptom of increased blood viscosity  which is now known to be triggered by EMFs – see Dr Havas’ research article below)
• Bouts of unexplained nausea or “motion-sickness” even when sitting still
• Adrenalised toxic feeling as though having drank too much caffeine ( I don’t ever)
• Burning, painful soles of feet
• Feeling weak, exhausted, in brain fog, nauseous, dizzy or hit by a wall of energy by the sudden onslaught of walking into highly electrified environments such as shops
• Sustained diabetes-type symptoms of crashing sugar-low for days, weeks or even whole seasons after heavy exposure to triggers which then don’t register in clinical tests (Dr Havas’ research, above, explains why this may be down to clinics being such electrified environments that sugar-levels tend to spike as soon as you enter them)
• Symptoms of raised blood sugar level around EMF sources without having eaten anything likely to have triggered this
• Massive energy depletion from even brief time spent on wi-fi connected computer technology; much worse when there is a geomagnetic event taking place
• Extreme sensitivity to environments with fluorescent lighting and technology such as shops, offices, clinics and public spaces; feelings of excitotoxity in these places followed by extreme energy crash afterwards (I now suspect, a major contributing factor to my original health crash when I was working in such an office)
• Yoyo-ing sugar levels that are generally aided by daily walks in nature (bringing about a comfortable homeostasis after time spent indoors surrounded by EMFs)
• Conversely, exercise not well tolerated in highly electrified environments such as leisure centres or gyms with flourescent lighting and electrical equipment
• Inability to use a mobile phone close to the ear due to pain, head pressure and profound brain fog; difficulty using any electrical equipment near the head for sustained periods
• Episodes of sudden deafness, muffled hearing or intense ear pressure (which can sometimes be myofascially released by gently holding a finger  in the opening to the ear – not inside – and circling this like a key in a lock while pushing very carefully against the scalp bone)
• Extremely shrill and relentless head tones – tinnitus – that ebb and flow dependent on EMFs and space weather conditions (may be slightly relieved by the exercise above)
• Extremely painful cartilage of the ear following space weather episodes (which can be somewhat released by gently massaging and stretching it between finger and thumb)
• Congested sinuses without other obvious cause (I find a weak solution of Himalayan salt “sole” sprayed into the nostrils when lying down helps to relieve this)
• Itchy, painful, hot ear canals (I find a spray of colloidal silver or sole into the ear canal helps)
• Burning skin patches to the point of actual scar tissue forming  (mine occur around the spine area) exacerbated by space weather conditions
• Lower bowel tenderness or even lapses into full-blown IBS
• Frequent desire to urinate especially at night (remove all electricals from the bedroom to reduce this significantly)
• Interstitial cystitis – episodes of agonising nerve pain, inflammation and pressure that directly correspond with space weather events
• Feeling both exhausted yet wired during episodes
• General body aches and sudden aggravation of any other pre-existing pain or health conditions for periods of time that relate to EMF exposure or space weather events
• Episodes of sudden brain fogginess, forgetfulness, loss of clarity, confusion, impaired spacial awareness, slow reactions, exaggerated tiredness and inexplicable irritability corresponding with EMF exposure or space weather events
• Intense hot flushes throughout the body and face as though cells are attempting to burn something off; a classic reaction to toxicity
• Chest pains and breathlessness, tight or fluttery nerves around the heart, angina-type pains, intercostal tightness and muscle spasm around the ribcage, irregular heart beat
• Extreme sensitivity to light and noise, to people’s voices, to domestic sounds  and smells that don’t normally bother you
• Profound sensitivity to space weather variables such as geomagnetic storms, CMEs (coronal mass ejections) and yes times of full moon – if these affect you, you will soon become a walking almanac on these events as you will feel them  in every cell
• Sensitivity to food that may normally trigger you a little or not at all, particularly gluten and glutamate containing foods, sugar and alcohol. You may find, as I have, that reducing or eliminating these is one of the biggest steps you take towards mitigating extreme reactions to electro-sensitivity, enabling you to achieve a relatively normal existence. Supplementing with taurine also helps counter the effect of glutamates and/or EMF episodes: I take taurine before I go to sleep at night.
• Excruciating, debilitating headaches that are nothing like any other headache you’ve ever had including conventional migraine; in my experience (of myself and other people) these very often correlate to space weather events such as CMEs. To mitigate, make sure wifi is turned off, along with your mobile phone and – better still – get away from even the low voltage household electric currents and put yourself where you are close to nature, doing what is most relaxing to you or just closing your eyes. Ground your feet in the garden, drink good quality water and ride the sensations out without engaging with them; you’ll be amazed how quickly you reduce the pain if you make your environment electro-free for as long as it takes (even if that means a couple of days of being off your technology). Conversely, you’ll come to know that being around people and places where technology is quite unavoidable is something that you just can’t do at these times and you will be brought to the threshold of a choice as to whether you are prepared to stand up for your own health, come what may. In fact, this could be a huge turning point in how you decide to live your life and what kind of work you feel prepared to do if these headaches become a regular occurrence as they do not respond to simple pain relief options and are impossible to ignore; in my experience, complete avoidance of the triggers is the only way forwards.

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Radiation from space

I have already mentioned profound sensitivity to geomagnetic variables such as geomagnetic storms etc and that includes times when the sun flatlines as it is now increasingly doing as we head towards the solar minimum part of its eleven year cycle. When there is less going on in space, even more cosmic rays are able to reach us here on earth; here’s the reason why from the Spaceweather website:

Why are cosmic rays intensifying? The main reason is the sun. Solar storm clouds such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) sweep aside cosmic rays when they pass by Earth. During Solar Maximum, CMEs are abundant and cosmic rays are held at bay. Now, however, the solar cycle is swinging toward Solar Minimum, allowing cosmic rays to return. Another reason could be the weakening of Earth’s magnetic field, which helps protect us from deep-space radiation.

A facility I use when I need to check-up on why I’m feeling a certain way is the current Kp index  (global geomagnetic storm index)  on the Tesis website. When those charts go into the orange and red you can bet your bottom dollar I will have been feeling that surge in my body even before the data goes live on their website. The example given is what I found on there this morning, having had an unusually difficult day yesterday and then woken up in a huge amount of pain just now, more than I had had for some time – and there are the reds to explain it! My dog is also showing his characteristic behaviours of this kind of geomagnetic condition…he is very obviously out of sorts with an audible growling stomach but he can’t eat his food (picks it up and drops it again) which is making him miserable but then he will obsessively pull grass to eat on our walk – these are his behaviours every time those red-levels occur. By the way, our pets tune into these variables far more than we do, cats will sleep where there are particularly strong geopathic energies while dogs will avoid them and they will tell you all about space weather conditions if you are prepared to watch their behaviour.

Equally, when the greens on that chart bottom out to a very flat level over a sustained period of time, that can also be a big problem for me if in subtly different ways that feel more toxic and like I, too, am flatlining in my energy. Both extremities necessitate that I unplug from as many electrical gizmos as possible and ride it out until things return to a healthy up-and-down green pattern (rather like breathing…) which seems to be when I am at my physical best. The other resource that I use most often when I need to check what is going on with my body is the Spaceweather website, as referred to many times in my blogging, plus some other useful resources as listed below.

Space weather causes surges in atmospheric conditions, in ground forces and in the electricity grid and these can be registered  by sensitive electrical equipment on earth so why not by human beings? I am certainly testament to the ability to register these since the same alerts that are issued about variables in the body as space weather conditions aimed at those relying upon such equipment also apply, most accurately, to me.

Events that I “feel” as a massive onslaught of electro-sensitivity are those which, according to Spaceweather,  aren’t meant to be registering on planet earth yet…such as brand new sunspots that have just appeared on the face of the sun or solar winds that haven’t “arrived” here yet or where, apparently, a “near miss”. Yesterday was point in case…one of the worst days, symptomatically, that I’ve had for a long time, I was almost clawing the walls with electro-pain by bedtime and here’s this morning’s news on the Spaceweather website (see right and below). I’ve registered the appearance of a new sunspot countless times as extreme electro-pain in the body, long before it has apparently become active in any way that “should” affect the earth’s atmosphere…which tells me there’s something scientists really aren’t getting about our extremely intimate relationship with our most local star. The connection seems to be quantum or something to do with entanglement, an aspect of the largely unexplored reality (I’m sure there must be untold ramifications…) that it should be possible for us to be in two places at one time – see article If an Electron Can Be in Two Places at Once, Why Can’t You? for an interesting read on this. And while we may not see the effects of our relationships at the quantum level (since seeing alters everything where quantum is concerned) perhaps we get to feel them at the cellular level…just a thought that has occurred to me many times when I “feel” what is going on with the sun. OK, I’m not a scientist; I’m just playing with what I know from my own experience but you know how it is when you just know something to be so without having the science to explain it yet (in fact, I just wrote a post about this in my other blog entitled On the insistence upon proof, if you’re interested).

Another effect that I notice I have at extremely intense times, geomagnetically speaking, is that I can “blow up” any technology that I am attempting to continue using; again, something which happened late last night when my newish computer delivered the blue wall of death for the first time ever after I had continued using it long after I felt well enough to do so. This is not an isolated anecdote; it has happened many more times than I can keep track of; usually to self-rectify, no explanation ever reached, when things have calmed down a few hours later.

Radiation in the home

I’ve learned that keeping all electrics away from where I sleep is absolutely key to how well I cope with the bigger triggers (other people’s wi-fi or space weather – neither of which I can control). I suspect my increasing sensitivity to heavy-duty EMFs such as those generated by wi-fi has made me ever-more sensitive to these “ordinary” sources of EMF in my house so that I can now detect even the subtlest presence of electricity, such as through the keys of my laptop (even when not connected to wi-fi) or when I’ve accidentally left something switched on in a room. If you are researching electro-sensitivity on the internet then you will very quickly come across the term “dirty electricity” referring to a harmful aspect of the ordinary electrical wiring found in a typical domestic setting or, more exactly, the “high frequency voltage transients on electrical wiring” (a term used by Sam Milhan in his book below). Talking about this phenomenon in his brilliantly useful blog “Electric Sense”, Lloyd Burrell says:

“The human body is an electrical being. All the cells, tissues and organs in your body communicate with each other via small electrical currents. Dirty electricity perturbs these communications which makes the body vulnerable to disease.

Studies show that there is a biological impact to electromagnetic pollution. Cell phone towers and cell phones produce one form of this pollution, but dirty electricity produces another. Just as deadly.

Where does dirty electricity come from in the home? According to this article in Health Impact News “Dave Stetzer and other scientists have determined that these high frequency voltages come from our computers, televisions, game boxes, printers, copiers, tube fluorescent lights, compact fluorescent light bulbs, dimmer light switches, variable speed motors, treadmills, vacuum cleaners, sewing machines, solar energy inverters, wind turbines, smart meters, and other electronic devices. All of these modern electronic devices add high frequency transients to the electrical wiring in our homes”. Oh and, yes I just confirmed, dirty electricity is also generated by induction hobs, one of the most problematic appliances in my living environment (especially when there are active geomagnetic conditions), which has demonstrated to me that I am, indeed, highly sensitive to dirty electricity as a health trigger in my environment, made even more acute by space weather events.

Putting it all together

Why do I mention this? Well, I learned long ago learned that, when it comes to my health, it’s a case of one-plus-one…the more triggers there are at once, the more dramatically my body responds to them. So, if there is a geomagnetic storm side-swiping the planet but I’m not hooked up to wi-fi eating a pile of gluten-containing food, I’m (maybe) doing OK and can cope as long as I don’t have a busy schedule or need to go out into shops or other highly electrified spaces. But when this happens, I start to really feel electronic devices around my home that might otherwise not bother me and one of the things I’m most sensitive to is my induction hob, which can sometimes pulse out pain to me as soon as I turn on the dial…which I’ve had people basically say shouldn’t be possible because its like being sensitive to an ordinary old-fashioned light bulb or a kettle which is, in their view, ridiculous. What I’ve come to recognise is how it can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, for me, to have those pieces of everyday household equipment pumping out EMFs when I’m already up to my limit with wi-fi and, potentially, a space weather event that has intensified the trigger-effect…and maybe its the same for everyone else too…only they don’t feel it , yet. My induction hob seemed like a real asset to my “new” kitchen when we bought it half a decade ago but now I am reading on the Power Watch website:

So if this is you, at least think about your household devices and how important they are to you. A no brainer is to lose the dect phone and microwave and to reconsider whether dimmer switches are worth the health risk, then look at your lightbulb options, install an ethernet cable to your computer equipment for times when wifi becomes too much, only switch on the wifi router when you are actually using it, keep your mobile phone off or on airplane mode (and never carry it around on the body), turn off all electrical devices and plugs when not in use especially overnight, have nothing electrical in the bedroom (not even a clock radio) and, in fact, consider installing an isolator switch so that the whole circuit goes quiet overnight. You might want to consider a dirty electricity filter of the kind that are available all over the internet (mine came from Geovital) which, in my experience, doesn’t eliminate the problem but helps somewhat combined with other measures.

Keeping myself in optimum health has been key to every bit of this journey through the trials and errors of electro-sensitivity; excellent diet especially playing a big part. Another big player in the game is maintaining hormone balance including optimum oestrogen levels, a topic I have written about before. I have noticed that at times when my oestrogen levels are low (and women of a certain age will know what I’m talking about) I am considerably more electro-sensitive and feel the symptoms as pain much more so than as the mild irritant they can be at other times in my cycle. This makes me suspect that women are more likely to be electro-sensitive than men…and that this possibly becomes more of a challenge to them as they get older (and I would love to know if anyone is gathering any data on this). It even makes me wonder if hot-flushes even happened before we wired up our houses!

Hormone balance is a precarious thing – more so when melatonin production gets tampered with through poor-quality sleep – and it has been suggested that EMF exposure “dangerously” increases  ostrogen yet I find one of the most potent ways of turning down the pain levels of electro-sensitivty is to near-drown myself in phytoestrogens in the form of, particularly, liquorice tea. Interesting eh? This one definitely needs to be looked into by someone with a combined interest in women’s hormones and extreme reactions to EMFs as I feel there are answers to be found lurking in the close relationship between the two.

Does where I live make a difference?

I used to assume that my sensitivity to EMFs would be pretty much the same wherever I happened to be in the over-populated and wired-up western world but…to my surprise…a recent two-week trip to Copenhagen and Stockholm proved to be absolutely fine, both day and night, even with the wi-fi and electricity on where we slept. This was in direct comparison with a night spent in a London hotel earlier this year which was the most horrendously electro-sensitive night I can recall. In Scandinavia, I watched myself very closely to make sure this wasn’t a case of me glossing over anything because I was on holiday but was left scratching my head at how good I was feeling, wondering things like could this be down to geomagnetic anomalies related to being at a more northern latitude or down to a difference in population density with less wifi-smog. At home I live on a busy road within 40 miles of London where there’s really no hope of getting away from the electro-smog in our ever-more densely populated location, the target of numerous new housing developments. The sheer intensity of how “electric” everything feels where I live – noticeable as soon as I landed back in the UK – is quite overwhelming everywhere you go, even sat in traffic surrounded by phones and GPS whereas Scandinavia, even in the cities, felt far less jam-packed with people and there is an incredibly strong cycling culture. I also speculated that it might have something to do with the considerably thicker/denser walls of the older buildings we were staying in compared to the paper-thin plasterboard and wooden frames of my twenty-year-old house modern house with its bundles of electrical wires dangling inside hollow walls.

This example demonstrates how looking at the most fundamental design features of your home such as its location in proximity to other properties and roads, its materials and layout, the location of your fuse box and wifi router etc are an obvious starting point for making the kind of changes that could make your living space tolerable. I sincerely hope that geobiology is added as an essential module on any architecture or structural design course, going forwards, so that houses can be created from the drawing board upwards to work far more closely with optimum health. Of course, as the Geovital Academy are all about geobiology, their website and products demonstrate how it is entirely possible to build modern houses with protective features included from the foundations up and that would be my aspiration for the future; in other words, to build a place to live that is geared to meet all of my personal health requirements and in a location that is less densely populated than where we currently are.

Steps I have taken to make our house habitable

In the meantime (since we aren’t quite in that position yet…) I have done what I can to make – primarily – my bedroom a non-EMF zone and then to reduce them considerably in the rest of the house. I find that the less EM stressors I have in my everyday environment, the better I can cope with space weather variables or the wi-fi smog that I can’t control even when my own router is switched off and that is especially so if I ensure a neutral sleep-zone which enables melatonin to do what it is designed to do while I am asleep. Creating a sleep environment that is almost entirely devoid of low frequency interference (that’s the household electrics – 99% of which I switch off overnight using a Geovital isolator switch) has vastly improved my quality of sleep for the past 6 months, which has had HUGE and very tangible benefits for my health. My ability to cope with the inevitable onslaught of EMFs in the environment and the occasional bit of space weather has increased ten-fold since making that one change – I can even walk into (most) shops, airports, hotels etc. now without feeling my knees buckling beneath me which is quite a result!

I continue to use computer technology, including wi-fi, most days of my life – for work and pleasure – but I use it differently. If I don’t need the wi-fi to be on, I switch it off – how simple is that (though how many people bother to do it)? If everyone made use of the on/off button on their wi-fi router, the electro smog that we are all starting to register in our health (whether we admit it or not) could be reduced – quite literally – overnight when we are all asleep but most people laugh or roll their eyes when you even suggest it. I also keep my phone switched off or on airplane mode most of the time and make next to no calls using it; and almost never use it for roaming as I register that as an immediate pain throbbing up my hands, as a hit of energy in the body and as a toxic sensation in the mouth…all that from the world’s favourite piece of techno-equipment; one that most people carry with them, literally, everywhere they go.

I have almost stopped using my iPad at all these days as I find it the most difficult gizmo of all of them (perhaps because it is now four years old) – it literally hits me in the head with a wave of electro-pressure and, after more than half an hour using it, I am usually in a lot of pain, irritability and a state of crashing exhaustion. I can even tell when its switched on in the same room as me, a sensitivity that has increased exponentially this year which makes me wonder if I will even bother replacing it.

By the way, the last time I made regular use of it was on holiday to upload photos, which was the worse thing I could have been doing and I really felt it. I have generally learned that uploading or downloading files, using any kind of equipment, is the worst kind of internet activity I can engage in, registering as extreme pressure and pain, so I now step out of the room until the process is finished but, again, how many people even leave their desks whilst they are doing this kind of activity? I also know not to hold my phone or iPad while it is switching on or searching for a website, not to go anywhere near anything when it is attached to a charger, not to have any electrical device in direct contact with my body apart from inevitable contact through my fingers, not to stand unnecessarily next to my induction hob while something is cooking…all these things become very obvious when you register them as extreme pain and other weird and wonderful symptoms. I find I have to really want to do things on technology to put myself through the risk of it these days and I generally avoid using it first thing in the morning or last thing at night. I write my blogs offline (often, in handwritten form first) and then upload them at times when I can bear to be on wifi and can step away from the screen while it is saving.

One of the biggest pitfalls of technology addiction is that most people multi-task on these devices, they rely on them for more and more everyday tasks, they carry them around switched-on  24/7 and even sleep with them by their head, using them as alarms, watches and so on. If they felt what I felt, all this would be completely out of the question.

By the way, those changes I mentioned making to my living environment were all under the advice of Geovital, who I mentioned earlier (with their head office and research academy based in Austria) who now have consultants around the UK and around much of the world; so I heartily recommend calling them in for a survey and to see what tweaks can be made to turn your house back into a home again. Certainly my consultant, Leonard Stafford based in Bracknell UK, seems to be run off his feet visiting clients these days so I know I am far from alone in experiencing these issues or wanting to do something about them. Honestly, I had begun to think I was living in a “sick house” when I first contact Leonard in March but have reclaimed my home as somewhere tranquil and good-feeling to spend time in again and, against the relentless tide of technology, that’s not a bad outcome. Piece by piece, Leonard worked with me – very patiently – to figure out what was most affecting me in my environment and to eliminate the problem of it, focussing on creating a quiet sleep zone; and we got there in the end. It involved making some changes to furniture and habits, carrying out some tweaks to my wiring and installing some very unobtrusive equipment but it was worth it for the difference it has made to my overall health.

Final thoughts

The more people speak out about their experiences, share their anecdotes, learn from each other and carry out the kind of research that will make a difference to the ways we use and legislate around technology, the sooner we can get to a place where human health isn’t the factor that drew the short straw in the name of progress.  I’m optimistic that the learning curve that we are all on will start to reconcile our desire for technology with optimum biology sometime very soon (ultimately, we would like to have both of these things – and I believe we can – so we all have such a lot invested in getting this right). When it comes to my home, I keep it  at bay as much as is possible, inviting it in for my own use but not allowing it a free-for-all at my expense. I am not in opposition to technology; I just want to see it done right, in ways that don’t chronically affect our health and our quality of life along the way.

In the meantime, I choose to take responsibility for my own state of health and that of my family which means I don’t turn a blind eye to symptoms that have felt aggressively destructive at times and which, even now, persist in having their say at times when I could happily live without them; there is no ignoring electro-sensitivity as it can make your life seem like hell if you let it. Attitude is all and I choose not to treat it as an unseen enemy that is “out to get me”; rather as a wayward force that I hold my hand up to as much as I can when it gets too much for my cells to handle. It has certainly forced me to prioritise other things over my access to technology and that’s no bad thing.

I started this post discussing reasons why we may have these issues coping with technology where it is currently “at” and you might have taken this to mean we are slower than the technology…that humans have to evolve to catch up with it, to learn to adapt to having it around but I would like to look at it another way. Anyone who reads my blogs will know I am all about human evolution; that I believe we are doing great things as a species and that we are currently outstretching all of our previously imagined potential. And yes, our technology is doing great and exciting things too but, actually, humanity is evolving far more rapidly and in completely unforseen ways. So, is it the technology that’s actually not keeping abreast with the way we are are now operating at the unseen levels, creating havoc for people who are running unleashed with what is humanly possible, vibing high you could say? Is technology clashing with our frequency the most in areas where we are learning to  become the direct interface with our own technological potential, like interference across our radio waves? After all, the technology we currently use is still rooted in a reality that is causal when we are going quantum and beyond and, where a conflict arises, that tugs us back into a different frequency of operation and can hurt!

In the short term, knowing when to be around technology, when to turn it off is key to good health and, yes, unfettered evolution; its the total emersion in never-switched-off manmade electrical impulses that concerns me the most about the current trend. Like remembering how good it is for us to get away from light pollution to reconnect with a starry sky, having times when we step away from the technology (especially at night time) will be key for those who learn best how to run alongside it.

In practical terms, would I cope “out there” in the world of work being as sensitive as this, in an office or a shop for instance? No, I couldn’t do that now, not even for half a day…and when it gets to the point that a tipping point of other people are being made so unwell by over-exposure then, I guess, that will be the point when something major is done  to slow the runaway train of electro-technology just long enough to look at some of the broader consequences and alternative ways of making it work in sync with human biology. May that time be some time very soon; and in the meantime, I simply do what I need to do to keep my health optimum day-by-day, sharing what I know in the hope that this may be encouraging for others in a similar boat.

Resources

Lloyd Burrell “Electric Sense” blog – an invaluable resource for anyone who is electro-sensitive and looking to keep abreast of research and ways of coping

Geovital – home radiation protection advice and products; you can find your local consultant via this main website

Complex nerve-cell signaling traced back to common ancestor of humans and sea anemones

On the insistence upon proof – article considering how we sometimes know something before we have the means to explain it; and how this has led to some major breakthroughs in science

Sam Milham “Dirty Electricity : Electrification and the diseases of civilization ” book referred to above

Spaceweather.com – for daily spaceweather news

Tesis – for current geomagnetic storm data

Space Weather Prediction Center – for detailed daily data

Current Global Geomagnetic Activity – date from the British Geological Survey

Cardiac Arrhythmia and Geomagnetic Activity – E Stoupel, FESC

Selected Electro Sensitivity studies, a list of research links relating to the health effects of EMFs in the environment