Harmful Effects of Electromagnetic Fields Explained

Harmful Effects of Electromagnetic Fields Explained

Posted on July 9, 2023

Dr Mercola

Story at-a-glance

Exposure to microwave EMFs, like cellphones, causes massive mitochondrial dysfunction due to damage done by free radicals from peroxynitrite that also cause single and double stranded breaks in your DNA
Excessive free radicals triggered by low-frequency microwave exposure from cellphones and Wi-Fi networks have been linked to chronic diseases such as cardiac arrhythmias, anxiety, depression, autism, Alzheimer’s and infertility
Excessive calcium signaling produced by EMF exposures also has important roles in producing pathophysiological effects of EMFs including each of the effects listed above
Strategies that may help reduce the harmful effects of EMFs include optimizing your magnesium level, certain Nrf2-boosting foods, exercise, calorie restriction and strategies that boost nitric oxide signaling (which acts, in turn, by raising Nrf2)

Editor’s Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published September 3, 2017.
I’ve often noted that electromagnetic fields (EMFs) are a pernicious, hidden health risk. But exactly how does this kind of microwave radiation damage your health? Martin Pall, Ph.D., has identified and published research describing the likely molecular mechanisms of how EMFs from cellphones and wireless technologies damage plants, animals and humans.^1,^2,^3,⁴
Pall has a bachelor’s in physics from Johns Hopkins and a Ph.D. in biochemistry and genetics from Caltech, and is uniquely qualified for this type of research. For the past 18 years, he’s been scouring the medical literature, integrating and drawing parallels between work done by others to answer this pressing question.
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EMFs and Intracellular Calcium

When you expose cells to EMFs, there’s increased intercellular calcium. You also get increases in calcium signaling, which is important as well, in terms of explaining the damage EMFs cause. For the past 25 years, the industry has claimed that non-ionizing radiation is harmless and that the only radiation worth worrying about is ionizing radiation. Pall’s research unequivocally proves that this assumption is false.
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How EMFs Damage Your Health

When your VGCCs are exposed to EMFs, they open up, allowing abnormally large volumes of calcium ions into the cells — about 1 million ions per second per channel. Each VGCC has a voltage sensor, a structure that detects electrical changes across the plasma membrane and opens the channel. EMFs work through the voltage sensor to activate the channel and radically increase intracellular levels into dangerous ranges.
“Because of the structure of the voltage sensor and its location in the plasma membrane, one can predict from basic physics that it’s extraordinarily sensitive to the electrical forces from EMFs,” Pall notes. On average, these forces are approximately 7.2 million times stronger on the voltage sensor than they are on singly charged electrical groups in the aqueous (watery) part of the cell. What this means is that current safety standards are off by a factor of about 7 million.
That’s how these very weak EMFs, which industry claims can’t possibly cause you any harm, are actually taking you out prematurely. They work by activating VGCCs. This turns out to be absolutely critical, because when there’s excess calcium in the cell, a number of things happen. Not only do you get excess calcium signaling, you also get increased nitric oxide (NO). While NO has many beneficial health effects, massively excessive NO reacts with superoxide.
Superoxide levels also rise in response to increased intercellular calcium. Together, they form peroxynitrite, which is an extremely potent oxidant stressor. While not a free radical, peroxynitrites break down to form reactive free radicals, both reactive nitrogen species and reactive oxygen species (ROS) including hydroxyl free radicals.
“You get both, because you get hydroxyl radicals and carbonate radicals and NO2 radicals,” Pall explains. All three do damage. According to Pall, most of the damage is likely done by excessive free radicals, but some damage is caused directly by the peroxynitrites.
The end result is rather massive harm, as excessive oxidative stress and nitrosative stress are involved in nearly all chronic disease. Much of the pathophysiology also has to do with the excessive calcium signaling, independently of peroxynitrite.

NO Signaling Pathway Versus Peroxynitrite Pathway

It’s important to realize that not all oxidative stress is harmful. There’s a certain baseline of free radicals that’s biologically useful and necessary. NO, for example, is a free radical, yet it has many very beneficial effects. The problem is excessive oxidative stress. Interestingly, Pall notes that the NO signaling pathway and the peroxynitrite pathways inhibit each other, which I never previously knew.
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Neuropsychiatric Effects of EMF Exposure

And this brings us to the crux of the problem, namely the physical locations where VGCCs are the densest, and the subsequent diseases you can expect from chronic excessive exposure to EMFs. The highest density of VGCCs are found in your nervous system and, indeed, studies dating back to the 1950s and ’60s show the nervous system is the organ that is most sensitive to EMFs.
Some of these studies show massive changes in the structure of neurons, including cell death and synaptic dysfunction. When the VGCCs are activated in the brain they release neurotransmitters and neuroendocrine hormones. Hence, consequences of chronic EMF exposure to the brain include the following, which Pall details in a 2016 paper:⁵

Anxiety
Depression
Autism
Alzheimer’s

In animals exposed to EMFs, there are massive, cumulative effects in the brain. Genetic polymorphism studies also show that elevated VGCC activity in certain parts of the brain produces a variety of neuropsychiatric effects.
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Cardiac Effects

Your heart is also very sensitive to EMFs, particularly the pacemaker cells of your heart, as they have the highest density of VGCCs. As a consequence of this, we find that EMFs tend to trigger the following conditions. If you have any of these conditions (or any of the ones discussed above and below), you need to know that EMF exposure is a major contributing factor and take immediate and aggressive steps to remediate your exposure.

Cardiac arrhythmias (associated with sudden cardiac death)
Atrial fibrillation / atrial flutter
Premature atrial contractions (PACs) and premature ventricular contractions (PVCs), also known as heart palpitations
Tachycardia (fast heartbeat) and brachycardia (slow heartbeat)

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EMFs and Cancer

Studies on cancer have also been blocked by the industry in a number of ways, including preventing researchers from obtaining real-world data on cellphone usage. Obviously, people who use their cellphones the most are at greatest risk. While not at the top of the list of concerns associated with EMF exposure, cancer is yet another potential consequence of mitochondrial damage.
Women who carry their cellphones in their bra, for example, risk cancer in the upper inner quadrant of the breast, which is very atypical and not the usual upper outer quadrant.
Brain cancer is another possibility from extended cellphone use if you keep the phone to your ear. That said, emphasizing the cancer risk is likely counterproductive, as most people use cellphones and those who develop brain cancer are few and far in between.
The problem is brain cancer has a latency period of a decade or more. Arrhythmias, autism, anxiety and Alzheimer’s, on the other hand, are extremely prevalent these days, and we now have a mechanism that explains how EMF contributes to all of them.
So, even though two U.S. senators likely got brain cancer from cell phones (Ted Kennedy and John McCain), it’s important to understand that cellphone dangers are not just about brain cancer. It’s all these other problems as well, including infertility. “In my judgment, cancer is down around No. 4 or No. 5 on the list of my concerns. It’s not that cancer is not important. It’s very important. We’re just looking right now at the early stages because of long latencies,” Pall says.

What Is More Dangerous, Cellphones or X-Rays?

If you are like most, the answer is obvious: X-rays. That is because you have been convinced by the deceptive lies of the telecommunications industry that have lobbied the government to reinforce this delusional myth. The reality is that there is compelling evidence showing cellphones are more dangerous than X-rays — by several orders of magnitude.
Some of the best evidence comes from a German study (headed by professor Franz Adlkofer), in which the effects of ionizing radiation equivalent to 1,600 chest X-rays were compared to 24 hours on a cellphone. Surprisingly, they found both produced roughly equivalent amounts of DNA breaks in in-vitro assays. According to Pall, this actually vastly underestimates the effects of cellphones, because they used a continuous wave EMF, not pulsed.
There’s extensive evidence showing pulsed EMFs are far more damaging than continuous wave EMFs. That’s important for a number of reasons, including the fact that all wireless communication devices communicate by pulsations. In another paper, the group showed that when you use pulsations designed to be similar to the pulsation from a real cellphone, damage occurred at far lower intensities.
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Ionizing Radiation and DNA Breaks

The industry says there’s not enough energy in microwave radiation to cause direct damage to covalent bonds in DNA. This is true. There isn’t. It’s the biological amplification resulting in excessive oxidative stress that causes the damage. Interestingly, even most of the damage caused by ionizing radiation is actually due to secondary free radical formation that breaks DNA. It’s not directly from the energy within the radiation.
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Via https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/07/09/electromagnetic-fields-harmful-effects.aspx

THANKS TO: https://stuartbramhall.wordpress.com/2023/07/09/harmful-effects-of-electromagnetic-fields-explained/