More and more people are affected by EHS. It stands for “Electro-Hypersensitivity” and it’s a new condition that between 3-10% of the population suffer from.
Here are the most common symptoms and health risks for people with EHS.
Table of Contents
Abbreviations used in this article:
EMF: Electromagnetic Fields (All types of radiation)
RF: Radio Frequencies (Radiation from wifi, cell towers, and other wireless technologies)
ELF: Extreme Low Frequencies (Radiation from power lines)
EHS: Electro-Hypersensitivity (Syndrome where you are very sensitive to EMF radiation)
V/m: Volts over meters (How we measure RF radiation)
1) Tiredness & Fatigue
My wife has been affected by electro-hypersensitivity for several years before we found out. Her main symptom was tiredness and fatigue. She definitely also had problems sleeping but we simply couldn’t find out why she was so depleted of energy during the day.
She would typically have energy till around noon and then her energy level would start dropping significantly.
It was not until recently we found out about DHS and it was like the light bulb went on. A lot of things started to make sense and we immediately bought an EMF meter and started taking measurements from all around the house. We quickly realized that we were living right next to a cell tower. We also had problems with dirty electricity and a ton of RF radiation.
She would typically describe her symptoms like this:
“I feel like I have a swarm of been in my head and I feel like my head is buzzing”.
If this all sounds familiar to you-you should definitely look into EHS. It has been very helpful for us to start researching this online and this is also the main reason why we decided to start this website.
2) Sleeping Problems
As I mentioned above, sleeping problems was also one of my wife’s main symptoms. And it turns out that sleeping problems and even insomnia are among the most common symptoms of electro-hypersensitivity.
When we sleep normally and effectively our sleep falls into 3 phases:
- Light sleep
- Deep sleep
- REM sleep
Sensitive people who are being exposed to high levels of EMF radiation will typically not enter phase 2 and 3 properly.
It’s typically the ELF magnetic fields that are causing disturbances. These are typically found around the electric wires in your house as well as chargers for electronic devices and power lines.
According to building biologist Oram Miller, electric fields are the most underrated and misunderstood kinds of EMFs. They are important to block for sensitive persons.
The best way to create a safe sleeping environment free of EMFs is to turn off the breakers for the electric wiring in the bedrooms. By doing so, you completely remove all electric signals in the wiring in the walls and in the ground. You should also turn off your Wi-Fi and make sure you’re never sleeping with your smartphone or tablet turned on around your bed.
There can be many reasons why people cannot fall asleep in an environment full of EMF. Here are some of the most typical answers we find from scientists.
- The Cells Are Being Stressed
When our cells are being exposed to electromagnetic fields and RF radiation it affects the cells. The cells are being affected by the radiation and they start letting in more calcium in than they should. This can cause sleep disruptions. - The Brain Mistakes The Radiation For Sunshine
Recent studies have indicated that the brain might be interpreting the RF radiation as sunshine. This makes sense because the body doesn’t know what to make of the radiation. It will start suppressing the bodies production of melatonin which means less REM sleep. It also means less healing in your body because the body needs REM sleep in order to heal itself properly during the night.
3) Headaches & Brain Fog
Headaches are also quickly becoming one of the most-common “lifestyle sicknesses”, as we typically call it. They are not that different from brain fog which is more like the cluttered brain that cannot remember details and think clearly.
If you are suffering from headaches or brain fog and you cannot find out why you should also try to investigate more into EHS.
When you are using your smartphone right next to your head you are actually heating up your brand by around 2°. This is also why all the smartphone manufacturers are required to include a note in their booklet about EMF radiation. You will always find information and warnings against using your phone directly against your skin.
How was very surprised when I found out about this information. Mainly because it’s something few of us know because we never read the fine print when we buy electronics.
But it turns out that using your phone up against your ear can lead to headaches and brain fog. It actually makes sense when you have the information about how the smartphone affects your brain.
When you’re using your phone directly against your skin is heating up the skin to the extent that it will radiation more EMF radiation than what is allowed by the FCC. They are following guidelines they made more than 20 years ago when we were only using our phones for a couple of minutes per day.
These safety guidelines haven’t been updated since the late 90s and we have constantly added new RF emitting devices to our everyday lives. Here’s just a small list of the RF emitting devices we have today:
- Smartphones
- Tablets
- Routers
- Smart meters
- Cell towers
- Smart TVs
- Bluetooth devices
- Intelligent light bulbs
- Thermostats
- Connected smoke detectors
- Smart watches
- Wireless gaming consoles
- etc.
As you can see, the list goes on and on.
The worst part about this list is that most of these devices are being used by very young people. Our youngest are avid users of tablets and smartphones and they have a whole lifetime in front of them off constant radiation.
On top of that, researchers have found that (growing) kids are two times more receptive to EMF radiation because they have smaller and thinner skulls and they have more water in the bodies. I learned this from Daniel Debaun who wrote the excellent book “Radiation Nation”. He is also the guy behind the fine e-commerce store “Defendershield” where he designs and sells EMF protection stuff.
4) Skin Diseases & Painful Joints
Makes a lot of sense that the use of smartphones directly on your skin cost skin diseases. After all, the booklet inside your smartphone package actually says that you aren’t supposed to use your smartphone directly against your skin.
The same goes for tablets.
I always get the chills when I see women in the gym carrying their smartphones in their bra. Men are not better as they often carry the smartphone inside a band around the upper arm. This is a horrible way to carry your phone.
The same goes for caring your phone inside your front pocket us many men are doing. I did that too for many years until I found out about EMFs.
This is one of the few things that are directly linked to research that has been certified by the FCC and acknowledged by the telecommunication industry itself. The cell phone manufacturers have to align their production with the guidelines from the FCC so they are telling people to never use the phones directly against the skin.
But even though they’re not using their phone against the skin some people with hypersensitivity to electromagnetic fields are experiencing skin diseases like toasted skin syndrome and pain in the joints. My wife has often told me that her joints were painful with no reason.
6) Tinnitus
Tinnitus is something I have experienced myself for around the year. However, I didn’t catch this from EMFs because this was long before I got my first smartphone. I got tinnitus because I liked rock music too much and would practices with my high school band without earplugs.
So even though I’m not hypersensitive to EMF myself I know about tinnitus. It’s a horrible thing because you can never have complete silence in your head. I literally fell asleep listening to music every night for around a year before it magically disappeared one day.
Over 50% of people with EHS report having problems with tinnitus. So this is a very common symptom for people who are hypersensitive to this stuff.
The body is using electrical signals to transfer information between the brain neurons so it’s not that surprising that other electric fields can interfere with the brain.
7) Weight Gain
According to the study by Samuel Milham, MF, Ph.D., people who are being exposed to dirty dirty electricity are more prone to gain weight. The study found that smaller islands which are typically powered by diesel generators have a direct correlation to obesity. He also found that place us with very low levels of electricity (in Africa and Southeast Asia) have a much lower percentage of people with obesity.
The problem with diesel generators is that they emit high levels of dirty electricity. They are typically used to power islands that aren’t connected to power grids.
This is a very interesting study where do they look at how electric pollution is affecting the thyroid which plays a central role in weight gain, fatigue, and other issues.
He also makes the case that since we invented electricity people have been exposed to a lot of dirty electricity. You can read more here about exactly what dirty electricity is.
The dirty electricity in our homes is typically caused by light bulbs with fluorescent light as well as dimmer switches and other devices that alter the frequency of the electricity. You can even detect it with an AM radio because it’s very low-frequency radiation of the ELF type. AM radios are able to pick up these low frequencies around 50 to 60 Hz.
EHS & EMF Sensitivity Test
There’s no official test for EMF sensitivity at this point.
But that doesn’t mean that you cannot test yourself for the most common symptoms.
If you can check off several of the issues on the list here in this article and you haven’t been able to find any other reason why you feel this way, you should have a good indication of what’s going on.
This is by no means a test for EHS but you can start by taking a look at these common symptoms in order to find out if there’s a pattern here. This is how it started for my wife. She has been suffering from fatigue and brain fog for many years now and it actually started that she moved from the countryside to the city.
We have talked about this many times but we never found any reason for a correlation between moving from the countryside to the city. But now that we know about cell towers and Wi-Fi pollution we can finally start to connect the dots. It just makes a lot of sense that this all started around 15 years ago when she moved into the dense city we live in.
Learning about EHS most definitely helped us change our lives. I decided to become an expert on EMF because my wife was highly affected by it (at least we suspected so) and we found her sensitivity to EMF to be the root off the problem.
That’s also why I hope this list above with commonly known symptoms for hypersensitivity towards electricity will help clarify things for other people.
Take A Detox Week From EMFs
We decided to go camping for two weeks in order to find out how it would affect my wife to get completely away from all the EMF sources.
When you do this you should be able to detect improvement immediately.
If you are hypersensitive to the electrical stuff you should feel more energized and relieved as you get away from cell towers and the many wifi signals in your urban environment. If you’re already living in the countryside you can still be affected by EMFs if you have dirty electricity in your house are a lot of wireless signals.
The only way to know for sure is to use your EMF meter to do the readings in your house. Now that you know what you are dealing with you can remove yourself from all these sources and go to the countryside for a week or two.
Remember to bring your EMF meter because you will also be able to find places in the countryside with high levels of EMF radiation. People are starting to put up cell towers and Wi-Fi signals all over the place so you need to look for a place that’s as radio silent as possible.
We chose to see this as the perfect opportunity to get a few weeks vacation in the countryside. We packed our RV and went camping for two weeks.
We quickly found that my wife felt more energized and rested after a good night sleep. Normally she would feel her body vibrating and buzzing when we went to bed.
Even when we had turned off most of the electricity and all the wifi signals in the bedroom.
EMF Sensitivity Doctors Near You
Too often, it’s very hard to find a local doctor with knowledge about EHS and EMFs in general. This is because people are generally uninformed about these matters. Even our doctors and scientists know very little about this topic in general.
But as more evidence and research is being done into the field of EMF and non-ionizing radiation people are increasingly becoming aware of the EHS syndrome.
So, where do you find a doctor who knows anything about this stuff?
The best place to start is probably to contact the building biologist and have them look at your home in order to do measurements and calculations. They will be able to tell you exactly how much radiation you are experiencing on a daily level in your home. They will also be able to point you in the right direction when you want to see a doctor or someone from the medical world with experience in EHS.
Jeromy Johnson is one of the front runners within the EMF community. He has created a very fine list of doctors in the US and Canada who knows about EMF sensitivity and the EHS syndrome. There are also doctors on the list form Europe, New Zealand, Australia, and Japan.
This is a good place to start if you need a specialist who can help you diagnose the problem and find out what you can do.
EMF Sensitivity Recovery And Treatments
So, what do you do and where do you start if you just found out that you are probably highly sensitive to EMFs?
The most important thing is to start educating yourself on the subject. You need to get your hands on a good EMF meter like this one.
With this meter, you will be able to do your own readings in your home and you can quickly start to locate all the sources of EMF. As we started to shield our house and turn off some of the main sources of radiation we have been able to decrease the exposure significantly.
That’s always the first step toward recovery from EHS.
I would always advise you to educate yourself at least to some extent on EMF and to get the smart meter. That if you feel like you need an expert to help you figure things out in your home you should contact a local building biologist. They are the experts and they are typically educated by either German or American experts on EMF readings and sources.
They will be able to help you shield your house the best way possible.
These are some of the ways we have shielded our home from EMF:
- We turn off the breaker panels with the wiring to our bedrooms at night. This removes a lot of the magnetic and electric fields in the walls and the floor.
- We have painted our bedrooms and living room with EMF shielding paint. This is a very effective way to shield your house from the external sources of EMF such a cell towers, wifi signals, and smart meters from the neighbors. You can read our guide here on EMF shielding paint.
- We have removed the Wi-Fi signal and replaced it with Ethernet cables. By wiring our laptops we are able to shut off the wireless router signal most of the day. This also helps in other aspects because we are now having faster connections and more secure networks.
- We have invested in EMF shielding protection for all cell phones and the smart meter. You can see our recommendations here. Too often, it’s not possible to remove or turn off the smart meter, like in our case. But there are pretty good shielding boxes that you can put on top of the smart meter in order to reduce the radiation significantly.
In Closing
I hope this list with symptoms for electro-sensitivity has helped you figure out if this is something you are experiencing.
Too often, people find out about these things very late in life and that is just a shame. My wife was affected by this for more than 13 years before we finally figured out what was going on.
I hope you have more luck.
A Good place to start is to check out this list of recommendations. These are the things and the solutions we have found to be effective ways of shielding our home and the environment around us. From smartphones and wifi signals to a quieter and radio silent bedroom for perfect sleep.
Sources:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3780531/
https://www.who.int/peh-emf/about/WhatisEMF/en/index1.html
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/239940746