EMFs & The Microbiome: How EMFs Can Cause Gut Imbalance
We are used to thinking about our body as parts, but did you know we are essentially made up of trillions of cellular microorganisms? Scientists call this the human micro biome, and it’s essential for our survival.
Our microbiome is directly impacted by artificial EMFs, which are everywhere in a digital society.
What are EMFs?
Electromagnetic fields, or EMFs, are invisible areas of energy (radiation) that come from power lines, Wi-Fi towers, and electronic devices. Anything that runs on electrical power can also produce EMFs. They can be grouped into two categories:
Ionizing EMFs are produced by sunlight or X-rays.
Non-ionizing EMFs are practically everywhere in a digital high-tech society, not least in your pocket from mobile devices and in personal spaces from everyday items such as SMART appliances, microwaves, computers, WiFi, Bluetooth devices, power lines, and MRI. Learn more about the types of EMFs here
How do EMFs affect gut health?
We already know the effects of EMFs include increased cancer risk, cellular stress, increase in harmful free radicals, genetic damages, structural and functional changes of the reproductive system, learning and memory deficits, neurological disorders, and negative impacts on general well-being in humans.
Research is discovering how it affects the gut.
Wellness doesn’t begin and end with what’s on your plate. Food is a direct source of energy and can be powerful medicine. However, your overall health is influenced by internal and external factors, and that includes your gut health.
While thousands of studies mount on the direct health effect of a cell phone and its radiofrequency (RF) EMF to human, the effect to unicellular organisms IS rather apparent. Even weak EMFs can cause all sorts of dramatic non-thermal effects in body cells, tissues and organs.
It is important to understand that the gut is a microbial system, and how our microbiota responds to say RF-EMF (just one type of EMFs) from cell phones and personal electronic devices. This is an important mechanism of a human health threat brought about by the disruption of the intimate and balanced host-microbiota relationship.
Signs of poor gut health
Symptoms can be chronic such as the niggly skin rash you have no idea what the trigger is. Gut health can also show up as autoimmune conditions, increasingly common celiac disease, type 1 diabetes, and myasthenia gravis.
Heartburn
Intestinal gas, and Bloating
Constipation
Diarrhea
Fatigue
Skin rashes
Autoimmune diseases, which can show up every body system, including the brain, thyroid, blood, GI tract, nerves, lungs, skin, muscles, and bones. It can also show up as PCOS and endometriosis.
Why an optimal gut health is so important
The gut impacts virtually everything because your gut controls your immune system and your brain, and your brain controls all the parts of your body.
Research into the “microbiome” as a term only properly began a decade or so ago. The digestive microbiome is made up of bacteria, viruses, or one-celled beings—essentially beneficial microorganisms.
Our gut performs many roles for us:
The digestive tract is your immune system.
The gut microbiome covers over 3000 sq ft in surface area and inhabited by over 40 trillion microbes. Without a healthy gut, you have no healthy immune system. The microbiome and the immune system are inextricably connected and the immune system would cease to function without the microbiome.
These microorganisms also support immune function as the digestive tract is open to the outside world, so imagine approximately 70% of your immune system lives there!
The digestive tract has a direct link to the neurological system and brain.
Did you know the gut sends more information to your brain, than vice versa?
The gut impacts virtually everything because your gut controls your immune system and your brain, and your brain controls all the parts of your body.
This is not only through the vagus nerve but as these microorganisms excrete neurochemicals like serotonin and dopamine. It also produces gamma-aminobutyric acid, a neurotransmitter, which helps control fear and anxiety.
The gut has over 100 million neurons that communicate with your neurological system ensuring that your general health and mental well being are maintained.
The digestive system also has its own nervous system.
Its nervous system is also known as the enteric nervous system. Approximately 30 micro-nutrients (vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, and essential amino acids) are needed for the brain to function!
Gut dysbiosis: What causes gut health problems?
If your gut microbiota is out of balance, health problems start.
These are common reasons why someone might suffer gut dysbiosis:
Food intolerance and processed food/low diversity in the diet. Low stomach acidity, pancreatic insufficiency, or gallbladder/liver dysfunction
Nutrient deficiency
Chronic stress
Pesticide and chemical exposure
Scientists also found out that EMFs are directly affecting these cellular organisms that make up our gut.
For example, the neurochemical serotonin, which also governs appetite, temperature regulation, and is turned into melatonin to activate sleep and natural opiods for pain is then depleted.
When this happens, people's appetite is altered, along with their sleep and mood.
Certain foods negatively effect the microbiome, i.e. lots of sugar whether through alcohol or excess in food wipe out vitamin B1. Do this often and long enough, and it leads to a form of dementia called Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, common with hardcore alcoholics.
In fact, many, now recognise dementia as type 3 diabetes.
Many people have difficulty absorbing B vitamins, due to a methylation issue affecting vitamin B9 and the others B vitamins (methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase, or MTHFR). This means the body have difficulty removing waste from the cells and as a whole.
Synthetic and fortified B vitamins can make the problem worse. It is estimated between 30-70% of the population have this problem dependent on where they live, i.e. Italians have high levels.
Dementia patients and most mental health problems have MTHFR linked in with it. As you get older, your digestive system, particularly eating the trashy Western diet, deteriorates, hence the reduction in nutrient absorption and the impact on the brain and body.
MTHFR is also linked to approximately 150 illnesses, including cardiac problems, high BP, obesity, diabetes, cancer. Interestingly the covid jab wipes out the microbiome, hence the significant deterioration in health, it is one of the factors.
Folks with MTHFR seem to be hardest hit not only with the covid but also with the jab. There seems to be a correlation.
In fact, our gut is so sensitive, that even if another family member goes on a round of antibiotics, YOUR own microbiome can be affected. In essence, when one person in a household is on antibiotics, the gut disruption that this person experiences is shared by everyone else in the home. That’s incredible news!
How to improve your gut health
First: we’ve heard the quote: “You are what you eat.” This dates back to 1825 — and it’s as true today as when French bon vivant Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin penned the axiom in his book The Physiology of Taste.
Not all bacteria are harmful. Some of them are essential for our bodies. They help us digest food, absorb nutrients, and produce vitamins like niacin, folic acid, B6, and B12 in our intestinal tracts. Eating the right foods fortifies your gut’s complex microbiome and the trillions of microbes — including “good” bacteria — that call it home. It’s essential for your health to maintain a good balance of gut bacteria.
For example, e.coli produces vitamin K, lactobacillus helps metabolism and form some of the B vitamins.
If the gut is depleted and unable to produce B vitamins that are needed by every cell in your body to gain energy, we suffer low energy.
The microbiome is made from what you eat
You feed the microbiome with pre- and pro- biotics. Probiotics are the beneficial microorganisms, prebiotics are their food. This is usually some form of fibre, such as Jerusalem artichoke, dandelion greens, burdock root, chicory root, garlic, and other members of the Allium family, flax seeds.
You can buy your supplements, or you can eat fermented foods such as sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha which contain both pro and prebiotics. This needs to be a regular in your diet.
Let food be thy medicine, and keep your space a sanctuary
It is no secret that medical schools teach little, if anything, about nutrition, especially as pharmaceuticals came to dominance in the mid 1800s. Fewer know about the effect of EMFs on your gut microbiota.
Fortunately, more people are recognising the direct link between their every day wellbeing and what they put into their mouths.
And more of us are realising that we are living in artificial environments with harmful electromagnetic fields emitted by our own lifestyle devices, and this is harming our gut, and therefore, our whole health.
No quick fix or single silver bullet can be relied to healing and health, if you’re living in today’s world. You have to chip away at old toxic practices and be open to including “new” (relatively speaking) ways of being.
One day we will treat food the way it once was: and as modern day naturopaths and medical herbalists do. Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. We will keep our environments free of pollutants, as it is our space that determines how well we thrive.
References & resources
Kıvrak, Elfide Gizem et al. “Effects of electromagnetic fields exposure on the antioxidant defense system.” Journal of microscopy and ultrastructure vol. 5,4 (2017): 167-176. doi:10.1016/j.jmau.2017.07.003
Dartsch PC (2020). Compensation of Mobile Phone Radiation by the Medic Amber: In Vitro Investigations Using a Novel Test System . J Biomed Sci Res 2(3): 131
Report on Preclinical Research of Somavedic Medic Uran Case Efficacy (2019). https://somavedic.at/wp-content/uploads/Preclinical_Research_of_Somavedic.pdf. PDF download
Examination of an effect of Somavedic Medic device in relationship to stress of electrosmog using analysis of blood cells in dark field https://somavedic.fi/_files/200000101-12838137d4/IGEF_Blood_analysis.pdf. PDF download
Antiobiotic use affects family members — Microbiologist Kiran Krishnan describes this disconcerting information in the Healing Quest podcast. https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/microbiome-cloud-sharing/