Ben: Hey, folks, I’m about to fill you in, oh this is Ben Greenfield by the way, I should probably say that, for those of you who have never heard of the show before. I’m gonna fill you in today on cellphones and why you gotta be really careful with them. So this one’s gonna freak you out and turn you into complete aluminum hat, aluminum-tin-foil-hat-wearing hippie in the forest but either way, it’s important information that you gotta know.
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In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show:
“Our supplies and everything else that became part of the technology that evolved there, and they were all admitting that said emission that were dangerous 2 years ago. So we just didn’t have a sense at that time that that was something we needed to focus on”. “Here’s the first findings that come out that are statistically significant that identify with the confidence level that what we found is likely there. That’s what’s important about that.”
He’s an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America’s top personal trainer and one of the globe’s most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield. “Power, speed, mobility, balance – whatever it is for you that’s the natural movement, get out there! When you look at all the studies done… studies that have shown the greatest efficacy…” All the information you need in one place, right here, right now, on the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast.
Ben: Hey, folks it’s Ben Greenfield, and I don’t know about you but literally like 2 feet away from me right now, and now it’s in my hand ‘cause I looked at it because I just can’t resist when I look at it, or feel it, or touch it, or have it on my pocket to play with it. You probably have a cellphone nearby possibly a fancy smart phone like I have. I resisted getting one for a long time. I was probably one of the last people that I know who actually got a cellphone, and I sprung for like the cheapo flip phone, but I’ve gotten to the point now where what I have is an iPhone 6S, I may eventually spring for the 7, and frankly if you’re listening in, you are probably, unless you’re a freak of nature living with hairy armpits out in the middle of the Ozark somewhere, you probably have a smart phone.
So the thing I want to address today on today’s podcast is how we can actually keep these things from damaging our bodies and in terms of radiation. And I wanna delve into the type of radiation it produces, but also ways that we could shield ourselves not only from things like the phones that we have in our pockets but also, and this is another really annoying thing for me when I walk through an airport or I’m at a conference, the laptops that we in many cases, place over our ovaries/gonads right there in our laps, and that’s another big issue that I know in addition to having a cellphone in your pocket that can cause some pretty serious health implications.
So my guest today is a really well recognized and an influential expert in the realm of shielding electronic emissions, and electromagnetic radiation from things like laptops and cellphones. His name is Daniel De Baun. And Daniel used to work with companies like AT&T, and Bell Labs, and Telcordia, and has over thirty years of electrical engineering experience in the telecommunications industry, and then after that he went on and oversaw laboratories that analyze things like electromagnetic radiation interference from phones and electrical signals in digital formats, and was really recognized as an industry authority when it comes to analyzing how we can protect ourselves from smart phones and the type of things that they produce. So he also invents EMF-radiation protection technology which we’ll also talk about. Ways that you can actually shield yourself from the type of radiation that your mobile device produces. So this should be an interesting one again if you own or use a laptop or smart phone. Daniel, welcome to the show, man.
Daniel: Thank you very much, Ben. I really appreciate you inviting me.
Ben: So I guess the first question I have for you is, is your phone in your pocket right now?
Daniel: (chuckles) No way.
Ben: No? No way! Ok (laughs). Well, that might be a good place to start because frankly, in many cases when you tell somebody that a phone might cause issues or might not be something you wanna have constantly against your body, you get a raised eyebrow because frankly with societal pressure and peer pressure, and social norms, just about everybody has their phone in their pocket or in their hand. So what exactly is the type of radiation that something like this emits?
Daniel: Let me give you an example. Should you have a microwave oven, and you go into the microwave and you put your piece of meat into the microwave, the water between the cells actually oscillate the cells and cooks the meat.
Ben: Right.
Daniel: So that is a 2.4 gigahertz signal that’s strong and has a powerful strength. That is just about the identical frequency that’s in your cellphone. So just like the fact that it could cook your meat, it also has the capacity with less energy of course to heat up your cells.
Ben: But its way less energy, I mean you’re not arguing that a smart phone could like cook food?
Daniel: Oh yeah, there’s no doubt. It’s far less energy, but what’s interesting is that just because it’s lower energy doesn’t mean it has no danger as some as certainly less danger but as certainly not no danger. In fact, there’s a lot of evidence that talks about the RF signal of being a source of low level radiation that does cause problems to the cells it hits of the human body.
Ben: Okay, I wanna back it up a second ‘cause you used that term RF radiation, and the way that I understand it is that there’s different types of radiation that these devices emit. Like you referred to the RF radiation which I think is the cellular radiation, but what are the different types of radiation that these devices actually produce?
Daniel: Well, that’s a good question, man. A cellphone transmits a Bluetooth signal, a WiFi signal and a cellular connection signal. All 3 of them are RF, radio frequency.
Ben: Okay.
Daniel: RF is equivalent to a microwave, as I just pointed out with my example. They’re all in the same family. There are around nine hundred megahertz to 8 gigahertz coming out of your cellphone in 3 sources. But what’s interesting about your question is, there’s another emission that you worry about as well, and that’s extremely a low frequency and that’s anything under three hundred hertz. Very low stuff.
Ben: Extremely low frequency?
Daniel: Yes, extremely low frequency…
Ben: Is that the same thing as ELF?
Daniel: Yeah, it is ELF.
Ben: Okay.
Daniel: Yeah, it is ELF, and ELF is the term that everyone refers to and that’s for three hundred hertz and below. When you have a device, any device that takes power AC or DC and absorbs that power and converts it to talking on a phone, toasting your toast, vacuuming a floor. A byproduct of those electrons running through the system actually emits extremely low frequency emissions. And sometimes those emissions can be very low. Cellphones can generate ten, it’s called milligauss, or with reference how you measure it, and a toaster can generate a hundred and fifty milligauss.
Ben: Okay, got it. So this cell radiation, the RF radiation is obviously so you could make and receive calls. The WiFi is so you could whatever surf the internet, or have a WiFi connection. The Bluetooth is obviously to do things like whatever, talk to a Fitbit or interact with anything else that your phone might be interacting with. And this ELF radiation, that’s just basically what the phone needs to be powered on?
Daniel: Well, when you have taken the power, when you’re converting it, the unwanted byproduct are the emissions that are coming from the device itself. When you use a hair dryer, there’s a coil there, a sixty cycle emissions coming out of that at probably a hundred and fifty milligauss. So there’s an emission coming out of that. Anything that takes power and converts it is likely a created emission at the low end.
Ben: Ok. Alright, so we’ve got this 4 different types of radiation: your RF radiation, wiFi, Bluetooth, and extremely low frequency. Now, in terms of evidence of harm from any of these, I think that and we’ve talked about this on the podcast before, the WiFi signal produced by for example, the WiFi router in your house. There’s plenty of evidence that that can cause some issues, cognitive issues, cell issues, neural issues etcetera, but these other forms of radiation, is there really evidence that their harmful, and if so where can we find this evidence and how strong is it when it comes to what it can cause? Are we just talking about like a reduction in sperm quality, are we talking about bodies in the street with brain cancer? What can we actually say in terms of the harmful potential on something like these?
Daniel: That’s a very broad question. Let me try to break it down for you. I’ll give you an example first before I start, so frameworks with what I’m about to talk about. And cigarette smoking when I was young say twelve years old, quite a number years ago, nothing was known publicly about linkage between cancer, lung cancer, and smoking. It was only in the eighties that we actually began getting evidence that was public domain evidence that suggested there was some dangers to the body as when you smoked.
So it was around for many, many years. Science knew for a long, long time it created problems, but it never became common knowledge until they began losing in courts. So there’s an example of technology that was being used in our environment for twenty, thirty years before we really knew publicly that in fact there was contentious concerns to our health. Now fast forward to electronics today, when I grew up I never had a cellphone, maybe you did but I did not.
Ben: No, I had a pager which was kinda weird.
Daniel: Yeah. Exactly.
Ben: It was kinda funny, I was one of the few kids that had a pager because, and I wasn’t a drug dealer. My dad had a communications company in which he had an ambulance service and a communications company where they did things like scanners and pagers and etcetera, so me and all my brothers grew up with a pager. Which actually really annoyed us ‘cause our mom could like page us at any time and just be like, hey, like what’s up, where are you? So we weren’t huge fans of the pagers, but yeah, I didn’t grow up with a cellphone but I grew up with a pager.
Daniel: Yeah, in fact I had none in my life, you had some technology. Today, your kids, the young generation, they have a cellphone by 6 years old, they’re using the cellphone. So all of a sudden it’s becoming to permeate our lives. The use of modern portable devices, and how much do we know about it? Well, we know quite a lot. In fact, as I mentioned about this cigarette smoking link. Science knows in fact, over the last ten years, there’s more. It is not even an adorable evidence, it’s scientific evidence out of many, many organizations throughout the world talking about the potential concerns of an emission such as a low level or a signal from a cellphone.
Ben: Yeah, and if I could interrupt you real quick, one resource that I found to be very helpful with regards to this is the Environmental Health Trust website. Have you been to this website?
Daniel: Oh yeah.
Ben: EH Trust?
Daniel: Oh yeah. That’s Devra Davis. She does a great job of communicating the problem, and she’s one of the advocates actually, her and Carpenter, Blake, there are a number of very well-known scientists of the best [0:16:45.0] ______ trying to share with us the concerns.
Ben: Yeah, and by the way, to interrupt you just real quick, when I have someone who I’m trying to convince about the dangers of cellphone radiation or why it’s an issue, I send them to this site because it’s very easy to just subscribe to the blog, and I mean like just today, for example they have posted a major US government study that found increased brain cancer in rats with exposure to smart phone radiation. I believe this was the RF frequency that you were talking about, and then also a pretty big article about a new recommendation from the American Academy of Pediatrics to reduce exposure to cellphones in kids who are playing whatever, Angry Birds with the cellphone in their lap. So yeah, this ehtrust.org website for any of you listening in. If you go to this particular podcast’s show notes over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/defend that’s bengreenfieldfitness.com/defend, I’ll link to everything that Daniel and I talk about including that website. But Daniel, I interrupted you, what were you saying?
Daniel: Okay, that’s a great site. Devra has been for the last 5 years very, very high profile in this space trying to bring those messages across. But in 2011, well you may know or I’m not sure, World Health Organization issued a research finding, and said that RF signals, and the range we were talking about is nine hundred megahertz to ten gigahertz, they are a classified probable human carcinogenic.
Ben: Yeah.
Daniel: It’s 2B carcinogen, and so already in 2011 people we’re beginning to be more and more concerned about it and by the way, that’s like the same categories as arsenic is. So to give you a correlation if you think that killing a rat is the way to die, then you better consider their view too. But another even more up to date modern understanding is really being driven by the Bio Initiative Reports. Every year they update their findings that are literally were all findings about the impacts to the mobile phones, young children, parents, pregnant women, all these things the Bio Initiative Reports deal with every year. So I would strongly encourage your listeners to seek out the Bio Initiative Report.
Ben: Is that the bioinitiative.org website?
Daniel: Yes. Yes.
Ben: Ok, cool. Yeah, that’s another really, really good one.
Daniel: That is the way to go and what I love about those guys is they are all scientific. There’s a lady who is called Cindy Sage, you ask me something about low level emissions at the extreme and when if it’s dangerous or not, Cindy Sage is the editor for that report and fifteen, twenty years ago she wrote a book that said that ten milligauss which is very little emissions at the low end can double to triple a miscarriage of a pregnant woman. So we know that there is a lot of information out there. They’ve been pushing that kind of information as all are scientific based and they’re the ones who are sort of the beacons in this space.
One final thing, you did mention the National Toxicity Program, that I think is the science group behind that. I hate to get into detail but one of the controversies of the standard, you know we talked about the microwave oven and it cooks your meat well, that’s called a thermal impact. So an RF signal which has 2.4 gigahertz has a thermal impact that’s well known in science and has been for many, many years. In fact, the standard to what’s only about the thermal impact. When the standard was set up thirty somewhat years ago the standard was a 6 foot male, occasionally using a cellphone and what they concluded is if there was more than an energy level 1.6 watts just a simple number, if it’s more than that, the temperature around the ear or wherever you have it will increase by 2 degrees. They only worried about the thermal impact. They never worried about the biological impact.
Ben: Ok.
Daniel: So if you look at the National Toxicology Program report, and by the way that’s a division of the National Health Organization. They are the federal government. They spend 25-million dollars on setting up a clean environment. And there was an epidemiology study in which they looked at the impact of an RF signal around 1.9 gigahertz using CDMA and TDMA. Two different technologies that are currently being used by cellphones.
Ben: What are they called CDMA and what?
Daniel: CDMA and TDMA, they’re coding applications.
Ben: Ok.
Daniel: Code division multiplexing, time division multiplexing is the way they transmit the signals and how they’re received, and so what they did was they set up an environment, and a thermal impact is when you’re really, really close to the signal. And when they said 2 degrees, they talked about that 2 degrees as it related to being close to your head when you’re using it. While these science experts were really bright, they moved the signal away to the point where the only result was not a thermal increase but a biological impact.
And so they took a pre-reviewed report which should actually in the middle of summer this year, and they had a statistically significant data base of twenty five hundred, three thousand participants in rats that were exposed to these emissions and the results were unequivocal. There is a direct link between the front lobe of the brain and to the heart, believe it or not. They were surprised that they found a sort of a rare cancer being regenerated by emissions this ties up. So where before…
Ben: Wait. Wait. When you say it was affecting the heart, you mean like the heat, the thermal effect of the phone was affecting the frontal lobe of the brain that was…
Daniel: No. It was biological. That’s what was important.
Ben: Or not the thermal effect. The biological effect?
Daniel: Right. They really looked at what’s the impact of ongoing low level emission touching the human body.
Ben: So you mean even if there’s no measurable temperature change in the human body from the heat produced by a device, you’re talking about the actual microwave exposure causing biological issues that go above and beyond just the heat?
Daniel: That’s exactly right, Ben.
Ben: Ok. Gotcha.
Daniel: Yeah. That’s what’s so really interesting about this and was statistically sound. So now the federal government, a branch of the federal government said that this stuff has a direct link to very serious health concerns.
Ben: Yeah.
Daniel: And where before this was an ongoing debate in all the industries that play a part in it, this was a clear and evident linkage between this use of a cellphone and the potential impact to the body’s cell.
Ben: Have you seen some of the research on genetic mutations and cell damage like DNA structural breaks and fragmentations, stuff like that?
Daniel: Oh yeah. Yeah Ben, one of the things when I was in the labs, I haven’t talked about my background but I was in the labs and I would look at a data and I try to determine the accuracy of findings, and where before there’s been this debate and here’s the debate. The only way you would be happy that I can prove it to you that I’m plus or minus 5% confident of the data I give you is if I took, I don’t know ten thousand children, I’ll put them in a room, weighed them and watch to see what happens over a twenty year period and see who died and how they died. And obviously I’m not gonna do that, Ben, right, because we’re not gonna do that to our children. So there’s a lack of this definitive statistically significant data simply because of the nature of the technology we talked about. Here’s the first findings that come out that are statistically significant that identify with the confidence level that what we found is likely there.
Ben: Yeah.
Daniel: That’s what’s important about that finding.
Ben: Yeah, and again like I don’t want this whole podcast to just be scare-mongering but I mean if you go to this EH Trust website, you find not only those DNA issues but things like oxidative stress which I’ve talked about on this podcast before is probably one of the primary causes of mitochondrial damage and eventually cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. There’s some really interesting studies. Have you seen the ones on sleep like the disruption of the ability to get into deep non-REM sleep?
Daniel: Oh yeah, it mocks around with your melatonin.
Ben: Right. Exactly.
Daniel: That’s why you should never ever sit near any transmitting technology because then clocks transmit as I said before, that’s a byproduct [0:27:01.0] ______. A cellphone certainly not because it screws around with your ADHD, and it’s considered. There are many studies that talk about the impact on children exposed to these emissions. In fact there was guy from UK, Barrie Trower. He is a British physicist and he was working for forty years in the military and his expertise as a physicist was to build weapons, RF weapons. That’s what he did for the government. So over the last, I don’t know ten years or so, Barrie was retired and party T-r-o-w-e-r was retired, and he’s been going to classrooms, parents of children in classrooms and trying to identify the fact that RF are where children being exposed to 2.4 gigahertz and the 5.0 gigahertz of a WiFi signal, and was the kind of weaponry they’d used to fight enemy. That’s what the message he was pushing.
Ben: That’s crazy. That’s why I have for example, like something I travel with and keep in my house, I use a Macbook, so I’ve got a little firewire to Ethernet converter and I almost constantly have the WiFi turned off right at the airport, turned off on not just my phone but also my computer and I hardwire in like, I take this into hotels and when I check in to a hotel I ask them, do you have an Ethernet cable that I can use because most of them do and most hotel rooms if you have an adaptor, you can just plug straight into the Ethernet cable on your computer for example, so that you don’t have to get exposed to the WiFi that you were just talking about because, I mean the data on that alone you know, cellphones aside is flabbergasting when it comes to the amount of issues, health issues from constant exposure to WiFi. The only thing that I do when I go into the hotel room for example, is I’d find the WiFi router and unplug it, right away so that I can only be hardwired into the wall.
Daniel: Yeah, Ben you’re absolutely right. In fact, let me give you a technical content message. A cellphone generates 1.6 of maximum 1.6 watts per kilogram. If you were to go into a classroom with this WiFi, what is the level of energy that’s in that room? Its .5 watts. Which is a substantially high energy level emissions that are enveloping the children for 8 hours a day.
Ben: Yeah.
Daniel: And by the way, you said something that was very important. We don’t wanna be war mongers about this subject matter and there’s a real reason you shouldn’t worry about it because there are simple things you can do, Ben to reduce exposures. When you’re in these kinds of environments in your home, for example, you’re a great example of what to do to reduce emissions that you’re exposed to. And simple stuff you do and what you’re doing really is reducing the impact to yourselves from the constant attack from these emissions around you. Simple things. When I give you the cellphone, do you know that when you take a cellphone 1 foot away from your head, 80% of that danger is gone?
Ben: Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard basically. The distance you are from a signal, the radiation from that signal exponentially decreases the farther you get from it, right?
Daniel: Yeah, that’s exactly right by 4 foot it’s going to be ninety eight percent almost.
Ben: Ok, so does that mean for example the use of a headset would be advantageous over having the phone up to your ear, obviously?
Daniel: Yeah. The sort of degrees of that if you think about a cellphone, if you have it directly against your head you’re being exposed to the power levels maximum of 1.6 watts. If you were to put that and put the earbuds on, or overhead earmuffs that would reduce that by eighty percent.
Ben: Uhm. Yeah, and the other important thing to note with regards to that is that Bluetooth uses the same microwave frequency as a microwave oven as well. I think Bluetooth is around that 2.4 gigahertz or so signal, and so people who hear you’re not supposed to hold your cellphone up to your ear but then get a Bluetooth headset, you’re still getting microwave frequencies right next to your brain when you’re using a Bluetooth headset, right?
Daniel: Yeah, Ben that’s a very good point. I typically interject at this point to try and give a perspective of what that means. A cellphone can go up about 5 miles, and so it has enough power, enough energy to go from your cellphone to a tower that’s almost 5 miles away. WiFi has enough power to go several hundred feet, so there’s much less power typically being transmitted out of that device. Bluetooth can go about thirty feet. The types of technology we talked about portable devices, the class 2 Bluetooth runs about thirty feet. So, is using a WiFi connection better than a cellphone? Yeah, the power’s much less. But is it good? Not necessarily. Bluetooth is better because it’s much less.
Ben: Right.
Daniel: And then, is Bluetooth the problem? Yeah, there’s still low level of emissions. Is a wired pair of earbuds better? Yes. That’s even better because it’s less energy being transmitted.
Ben: Yeah.
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Music Plays…
Ben: So when it comes to for example, keeping your cellphone away from your head, one thing that I do is I use a special kind of headset called an Airtube headset. Have you seen this?
Daniel: I have, Ben. That is the best to use.
Ben: And can you explain to people since I know you’re the expert in this, you can probably do a better job explaining it than I can. How does sound actually arrive at your ear when you’re using an Airtube headset?
Daniel: It’s acoustical. When you have a speaker in the room and you are listening to the music that sound wave is interacting with the air space, and all of a sudden it comes to your ear and you can hear. Well, that’s what happens literally with Airtubes. They take it, they convert the audio into a speaker, and then they take that speaker and put it to a tube and at the other end you can hear it and there’s no electrical signal being transmitted through that tube. So you have the benefit of hearing the voice or music wherever it may be, and you have the benefit of no emissions passing costly to your head while you’re using them.
Ben: Yeah, I like it. Now a couple other questions before we talk more about ways that we can protect ourselves from these type of things.
First of all, I know that you worked or at least were involved with companies like Telcordia and AT&T and Bell Labs. Do you know anything about internal discussions that are going on in the cellphone industry to try and mitigate some of these issues? And one of the reasons I ask that is like for example, I know that Apple just produced the iPhone 7 that doesn’t even have a headset jack, so like that Airtube headset that we talked about, I think you have to have some kind of special adaptor to even be able to use. And that’s how they made the phone water-proof, but I’m curious like is there discussion inside these agencies that you’re aware of in which people are trying to figure out ways to mitigate the damage rather than just make these devices more convenient to use and or are more powerful?
Daniel: I’m not aware of it and I’ll tell you a story. When I ran the technical labs in the various companies. They were all by the way, all generated from the [0:38:52.0] ______ 1984. [0:38:54.6] ______ had to break up, so the laboratory experts that I had in the Bell Labs went to Telcordia and then that’s where most of the standards and testing was done for the Bell system. And at that time I used to have experts that I would make sure tested the right stuff. My concern was always the environment it worked in and how to prevent it from harming others, and how effective it was in doing a function I had to do. And that’s what I get.
When people talk to me about grounding for example, I used to have sophisticated grounding testing not for protecting people but for protecting electronics. We didn’t even believe at that time there was a concern, yet at that time we had the mainframes that were taking the power supplies and these major conversion power supplies and everything else that became part of the technology that evolved there, and they were all admitting emissions that were dangerous to users. So we just didn’t have a sense at that time that that was something we needed to focus on. For me that changed actually, being very familiar with this space. When I left those spaces and had other interests, I began realizing that the industry didn’t quite fully understand what the technology was all about and there were things that they were really very dangerous and being close to your body, having these signals close to your body was clearly of a concern, in fact that’s what prompted me to develop technologies that help people deal with these things.
Ben: Now I’ve got one of the pieces of technology that you helped to develop, this thing called the Defender Shield which is like this case that the phone goes inside of. The thing that baffles me, it makes me raise my eyebrow about all these devices that say they’re gonna protect you against cellphone radiation, like when I have my phone in this, obviously it’s shielding some of the heat from getting onto my body, like if I have in my pocket the phone feels less hot etcetera, but how is it even working if I can still take calls and I can still make calls when I’ve got this case on the phone? Would it necessarily indicate that if it were protecting you from radiation, you wouldn’t be able to make or receive calls?
Daniel: One maybe coming to that conclusion but let me give you a little bit of additional detail that may help. A RF signals the Bluetooth, the WiFi, the cell link connection, they’re which referred to as omnidirectional. What that means is it goes and starts at a tiny pinpoint and opens up, and opens up like a ball keeps on getting bigger and bigger. So the whole room fills with that RF transmitter, and so what would we do to deal with that omnidirectional signal? What we do is we simply create a wall. A wall that says, you RF signal can’t go through here, but if you wanna go the other way, be my guest. And lest you go in the direction of the cell towers or the WiFi, and works fine and doesn’t even get its signal at all, but that part of the RF signal that is towards your body, we shield with a wall. It’s simple as that.
Ben: Okay, so basically when I put my phone inside this case, this Defender Shield case, it allows the RF frequency to not penetrate into my body but at the same time it allows the phone to send out a signal to the tower itself?
Daniel: Yeah. Yeah.
Ben: And the way that it’s doing that is because the part of it that’s facing my body is that like a stronger shield, and the part that’s facing outward isn’t?
Daniel: Yeah. That’s right.
Ben: Alright.
Daniel: When it has a wall, inside doesn’t have it.
Ben: So if you owned a case like this, you would wanna make sure that you didn’t put it in your pocket with the wrong side facing in?
Daniel: Yeah, (giggles) that’s right, Ben. That’s exactly right.
Ben: I didn’t know that. Ok.
Daniel: Yeah, you definitely want to put it where the wall is facing your body.
Ben: What is it made out of? What is this case made out of?
Daniel: You know, it’s funny. Good question. When I was in the labs and I hate to say this early 80’s, actually before that. There was a trans-atlantic cabling put in and one of the problems we were encountering over there was that the byproduct of the current flow which we talked about before, was an emission of electromagnetic radiation up to three hundred hertz and below, and the fish were attacking the cables. So we actually at that time invented a material, it was compose of many materials that combined actually refracts the emission and keeps it contained in this lesser material. So what we have is in our wall, we refract the stuff that’s three hundred hertz and below. and we conducted and absorb the RF that’s above. So it’s a simple concept. We don’t get too complicated about it. It’s a serious engineering problem but from a practical design point of view, it’s fairly straight forward.
Ben: Ok, so the shielding is just made up of a bunch of layers of products that absorb the EMFs?
Daniel: Yeah, that’s right. Exactly.
Ben: Ok, got it. As well as the heat?
Daniel: Yes. Hey Ben, let’s go back to what happens to a cell.
Ben: Sure.
Daniel: That’s always a good story. As a mechanical engineer you look for the mechanics of what happens to a cell. And we have spent a lot of time trying to understand these kinds of things, and some of the conclusion I’ve found in the medical community is inspiring. When you talked about oxidative stress of the cell, oxidative stress actually creates a thin film around the cell, it becomes weakened. As a result of that as you may know, the proteins that pass back and forth are retarded, sometimes non-existent between the adjacent cells. And so, all of a sudden you have a situation in which you’re not feeling well today or something not quite right or you’re getting headaches and that’s because the cell itself is saying, wait a minute I’m tired of that exposure. You know something like fifteen to twenty percent of everyone that is exposed to these RF emissions and extreme low stuff they’re electrically hyper sensitive and what they’re actually feeling is the stress of the cells dealing with the exposure.
What I like more recently, there’s been actually several different experts in this phase looking for the mechanics. You have your calcium flow into the cell which is then creating a nitrate build-out within the cell. That’s what’s causing the DNA damage. That’s what’s causing the mutated cells that you just talked about. We are now understanding the actual mechanics of what’s happening to a cell when it comes to what happens under exposing your environment like that. So I’m excited about those kinds of research that we’re doing. We’re better understanding why our bodies are reacting the way they are to these things.
Ben: Just playing devil’s advocate like you know, oxidative stress is something that’s considered to be like a hormetic stressor, right? So when you get the production of peroxides and free-radicals in small amounts your body will for example, step up its own endogenous anti-oxidant production, and in small amounts of UVA and UVB radiation are good for you. You talked about grounding and earthing earlier and we know that that for example, the planet itself emits like a mild, like a pulsed electromagnetic frequency when you’re standing on that gets absorbed into your body. Could you…
Daniel: By the way, Ben that’s an extremely low frequency below ten hertz.
Ben: Yeah, it’s like 7.38 hertz or 7.83 hertz or something like that. But when it comes to cellphones could you argue that minimal use? Like occasionally getting exposed to the radio frequencies and the creation of this oxidative stress might be something that in small amounts isn’t necessarily harmful and might actually be even be beneficial. Have they ever done studies I guess that shows like a dosed-response effect?
Daniel: No, actually that’s one of the things I would like to see. A lot of like for example, with the National Toxicology Program report, they didn’t say if we moved it an inch away, this is the effect that would happen. If we reduce the energy level by X, that’s what we saw happen. So there’s not a lot of granurality in what we understand these days yet, and so we created rules of thumb. If you’re gonna be in front of an arc signal for really, really short period of time and it’s a reasonably strength emission, and you’re not gonna be doing it long, then don’t worry about it. It’s not gonna bother you. What we know is the longer you’re exposed in the 3 hours or more space, we know that’s when it’s more likely true that’s there oxidative stress.
Ben: Ok.
Daniel: There’s an impact to the body. So it’s duration. How long are you there? And you gotta watch that as you increase it, it gets worse.
Ben: Ok, got it. So you’ve got this case that the phone goes into, this Defender Shield case. It’s basically the best way I can describe it and if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/defend, I’ll put a link and some photos of what this thing actually looks like along with the discount code that you can use to get a fifteen percent discount on this actual case. It’s like a flip-open case. It flips-up or as I told you guys I think the last time I saw you at a conference, Daniel I was showing you how hard it was for me to Snapchat with the (laughs) flip because I had a different case that allows for us social media mavens to be able to Snapchat-away.
So this case opens and closes over the phone, it goes into the phone, how is this any different though than and there’s so many devices out there. There is these little dots that you put on your phone, there’s like the one I’ve talked about before is like the pong case that supposedly blocks EMF, like what’s the difference between this and any of these other devices out there that supposedly blocks EMF?
Daniel: Great question, Ben. I always like to help sort that through.
Ben: Especially the holographic stickers, by the way. Those are the ones that always [0:50:44.3] ______.
Daniel: It’s very simple, Ben. Working in the laboratory the only thing you consider real is something that can be measured. Measured knowing what you have with measurements that you know is real. So when you look for any device that talks about its place in the world in the RF space it’s shielding, you always wanna make sure that there’s evidence. Independent evidence that it works. Now let me get back to pong. Pong and others, they use a different technique for what they refer to as shielding and (inaudible). Remember we talked about the omnidirectional link? It connects, it’s omnidirectional.
A cellphone can create 3 different levels of strength and what those 3 levels are is hey, I’m really close I don’t need to output a lot of power. And then you walk away through the tower you’re 2 miles away, oh I need more power let me go to the median level. And then there’s the, I’m 5 miles away, I can barely see the tower I’m gonna be at the maximum strength. What pong and others do is they actually take that signal and they build an antennae. A bridge between the cellphone and the tower. They help that signal find the path to the tower easier than it typically would be.
Thus, making it appear less distant. It has less power needed to regenerate. So in the case of pong-types of technology, they’re reducing the power levels of the cellphone itself because they are helping increase the connection efficiency between the cellphone in there. So they actually do, if there are engineering products that do what they say they do. They don’t eliminate the signal. We eliminate it. Their technology is better. It’s like when we’re talking before about earbuds versus putting to your side versus other ways of dealing with emissions. Reducing the power level if one of those things that’s a good thing.
Ben: Even those holographic stickers?
Daniel: No. No. No. In my opinion, they are in a different class. They at most, they talk about an indirect result. There is no such thing as an indirect result when it comes to scientific study. They can claim that if we use this and the muscle changes in this way therefore something happens in your sake. That is illogical, and it’s not an engineering-based evaluation. With those kinds of things, they’re using technologies, quite honestly, unbaffled with because it’s not scientific physics they’re talking about. So for me, some of these stuff just doesn’t seem to make any sense and it’s very simple. Where is your independent laboratory study work that shows this to be as legitimate as it says it is? And they all have difficulty finding it.
Ben: Ok, so you guys have done actual FCC certified lab testing like independent testing on this case?
Daniel: Oh yeah. Anybody that you buy from, you should look for independent study work that identifies the claims as being accurate or not.
Ben: Ok now, this would obviously fix myself on issue if I put this around my cellphone and then ideally when I’m making and receiving calls not only would I have it inside this case but I’d be using like an Airtube headset, right?
Daniel: Yeah, you can actually put your cellphone in your pocket with the Airtube. It’s the ideal work for you.
Ben: Ok, cool. And by the way, you can get these Airtube headsets like off of, I know you can get one on Amazon. Do you guys have them on your website, Daniel?
Daniel: They’re actually going up this week, believe me.
Ben: Ok, cool. So if people use that fifteen percent discount then they could get the discount on both the Airtube headset and also the case?
Daniel: Yes.
Ben: Ok, cool. Now what about laptops because obviously not only if you don’t have the airport wireless turned off or they’re emitting a WiFi signal, do they produce an RF signal as well?
Daniel: Oh yeah. This is the important point, I think this what we’re talking about. A tablet looks so small, remember it generates a WiFi signal as strong as your laptop. There’s no difference. They go to the maximum power levels to connect to the routers. So you have the WiFi signal 2.404, 5.0 gigahertz transmitting from a laptop. You have the Bluetooth typically. You have the ELF, by the way. That’s also there is wrong.
A great story, Ben, when I got involved with this stuff several years ago, it was a holiday season we were in this time of year. My sons were visiting and they’re crazy like you having their cell laptops on their laps all the time you know, working away and your generation is always using these technologies for long durations of time. So my wife says to my kids, there’s gotta be something more, I want grandchildren. Can’t you do something about not putting it on your laps so much? And that’s when I thought, wait a minute I know exactly what the problems were, let me go find the solution. I couldn’t find it. In fact I saw a lot of misinformation in the market place. So that’s why I created and designed the technologies we use to protect my sons. After about 3 to 4 hours of cellphone and laptop use, 25% of the male’s sperm count is immobile.
Ben: Oh yeah, like mine. Not to be crass but like my (censored) hurt when I work on a laptop without ‘cause I have one of these devices, it’s basically like a tablet that your laptop sits on top of that I just throw my book bag and take with me everywhere, but it blocks the heat and radiation, and I can put my laptop in my lap ‘cause I used to just use like a pillow, for example. But this thing blocks more than the pillow and again like my (censored) don’t hurt after I’ve been on my computer for thirty, forty-five minutes. You don’t feel your thighs getting really hot. You don’t feel a little bit of sweat on your inner thighs that you get when you’re working on the laptop. So having not just your phone inside a case but also having your laptop on top of some kind of a pad, I think is also crucially important. Why shield yourself from your cellphone radiation and then get yourself radiated by your laptop at the same time?
Daniel: That’s right. Ben, you know pillow does nothing. A concrete wall does nothing. A piece of wood doesn’t prevent a signal from passing through. So when you’re feeling your balls heat up, that’s the thermal impact of that signal close to your body. That’s exactly what it is. It’s not just the heat coming off with the fan and those things can be dangerous. In fact, we mentioned something about a man that probably ten years ago there was a study ten thousand subjects out of Italy, women that were exposed to emissions, they had something like 2% had tumors, non-cancerous tumors by the way, most of them. But there was certainly not only a male problem but a female problem as well.
Ben: Oh yeah. When I look at the evidence of single and double-stranded DNA breaks and reproductive dysfunction, I also get concerned about what this does long term not only to my future kids but like their kids, kids. When we’re talking about like disrupting eggs, damaging sperm, damaging DNA, you’re talking about affecting kids that maybe you haven’t had given birth to yet. So it’s pretty crazy. I know they’ve also found a lot of effects from microwaves and stem cells which are very active in kids. And you know when you’re talking about like decreasing the effectiveness of stem cells which are crucial for growth, for regulation of repair in the body, it’s a pretty significant biological impact.
Daniel: Ben, let me add to that. Some experts, I’m not sure I know enough about it to now, but some experts say that the catastrophe is still to come and it’s because of the reason that you just said. Some pending generations of damaged DNA mutated cells impact the creation of unknown problems in the future of our some tending generations.
Ben: Right, it goes way above and beyond just them wondering the streets playing Pokemon Go.
Daniel: Right (laughs). Exactly. Exactly.
Ben: Yeah. Well, so your website is defendershield.com, and I’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well. I know the code of 15% discount is Ben, if you use that on the Defender Shield products. I’m also gonna put a link in the show notes for those of you interested, I’ll put a link to Bio Initiative and also the Environmental Health Trust website if you have friends who are just scoffing at you for having your fancy phone case or your laptop tablet and you want them to see the research, send them to those sites.
So if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/defend, that’s bengreenfieldfitness.com/defend, I’ll link to all of these in the show notes and of course when you’re over there, if you have comments or you have questions for Daniel or questions for me, leave them over there. I know that Daniel like he mentioned on his site he’s got the Airtube headsets. He’ s got the little cases like I use that you could put the smart phone inside of and then he’s got the pads that you put underneath the laptop. They’re made from the same material like the multi-layering shielding material that the case is made from right, Daniel?
Daniel: Yeah, exactly. It’s not magic. We use the same proven technology on all of our products, so we have the same level of performance.
Ben: Yeah, so you’re blocking the EMF that you talked about but then also the ELF, the radio frequency of the RF and then also the heat. So wanna block all 4 of those?
Daniel: Oh, yeah. Right.
Ben: Ok. Cool. Well again the website that you can check out of the show notes for this podcast it’s bengreenfieldfitness.com/defend. I’d love to hear your questions, your comments for either Daniel or myself. And Daniel, thanks for coming on the show today and sharing this stuff with us.
Daniel: Oh no problem at all. I appreciate your inviting us, Ben I really do.
Ben: Alright, folks well that’s how to defend yourself against cellphone radiation. And keep your laptop from frying your body and your (censored) or your eggs or your over-easy or whatever you wanna call them whether you’re a man or a woman. And again, bengreenfieldfitness.com/defend. Daniel thanks for coming on the show.
Daniel: Thank you very much.
You’ve been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to bengreenfieldfitness.com for even more cutting-edge fitness and performance advice.
My guest on today’s podcast is an internationally recognized and influential expert in shielding electronic emissions and Electromagnetic Radiation (EMF) protection, with particular focus on the effect of exposure from mobile devices such as laptops, tablets and cell phones.
His name is Daniel De Baun, and his concern regarding the health impact of electronic radiation emissions grew from over 30 years of engineering experience in the telecommunications industry where he held a variety of leadership and executive positions at SAIC, Telcordia, AT&T and Bell Labs.
Through the course of his career, Daniel has created requirements for large telecommunication systems, led technical divisions responsible for establishing industry standards and formed analysis adherence testing for next-generation digital transmission systems. Daniel also oversaw laboratories which analyzed electromagnetic radiation (EMF) interference, electrical signals and digital formats. He and the teams he led were looked upon as industry authorities.
Daniel is the inventor of DefenderShield®, the most effective EMF radiation protection technology for mobile devices ever developed. In addition to his work with DefenderShield®, Daniel is a highly-regarded industry consultant, writer, and speaker as well as frequent guest national radio and television programs discussing EMF heath issues.
During our discussion, you’ll discover:
-Why your smartphone actually isn’t that much different than a microwave…[8:15]
-The four types of radiation your phone produces…[10:00]
-Exactly where to find concrete evidence that phones are harmful…[12:50]
–The shocking evidence of DNA damage that can affect kids that haven’t even been born yet…[22:50 & 46:30]
-How you can protect your ears and brain by using a non-Bluetooth headset, and which headsets are best…[31:20]
-The best type of phone case for blocking radiation from your phone…[41:50]
-Whether things like cell phone chips, diodes, holographic stickers, the bracelets, pendants, the plug in harmonizers, USB resonators, etc. work to actually block radiation…[50:15]
-Why tablets, e-readers and computers have similar issues and what you can do about it…[55:12]
-And much more…
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