I started writing this blog many months ago, and it wasn’t until recently when I was sharing our EMF protection efforts with a fellow mama that I felt inspired to come back to it and share this with you all here! I hope I can plant a few seeds and provide actionable steps towards minimizing and mitigating your family’s exposure to EMF in the house and elsewhere.
If you aren’t currently doing anything for EMF protection, please don’t feel overwhelmed or like you’ve failed in some way! It’s hard enough being parent at this time on the planet, and on top of that we have so many potential dangers, seen and unseen, in our environments and our food supply to look out for. We can only ever do our best with the information we have, and it’s up to us to decide when we are ready and able to make a certain change in our lives, and other times when it would simply put too much stress on us.
During our pregnancy, I was very diligent in wearing an EMF-protective Belly Band, especially when we were out and about. And when Leon was born, we were quickly overwhelmed and exhausted trying to protect him from every potential source of EMF. Yes, we realized that we can’t expect to mitigate all of it, otherwise we would just go crazy! We all have to find this balance for ourselves and honor where we are.
So, what am I even talking about?
If this is totally new to you, I highly recommend watching the movie Take Back Your Power, available on YouTube right here. Warning: This documentary may cause you to become extremely passionate about this subject! Radiation Nation is also great book written by the creators of DefenderShield. And if you want to do an even deeper dive into the history of electricity and its impact on health, I’m currently reading The Invisible Rainbow by Arthur Firstenberg and it is blowing my mind.
— Listen: Stacked 110 – How to Defend Your Family from 5G Radiation with Daniel DeBaun —
The gist of it is, we are living in a world with sources of radiation seemingly everywhere. Unfortunately with the prevalence of “smart” devices and 5G, the amount of radiation we are exposed to has been increasing over time. This type of radiation, although linked to cancer, anxiety disorders, and other diseases, isn’t acknowledged as a health risk by the industries creating and profiting from these technologies. And as you’ll see in the documentary, governments are certainly not doing enough to protect the public in light of the available health and safety information. This is an incredibly interesting read, a publication from Harvard illustrating how the FCC is actually working for the industries it is supposed to be regulating. (I remember learning about the FCC and the grid in my Energy Law class in law school, and I wish I would have had the chance to ask about this!)
Children are more sensitive
What has become increasingly clear over the years is that children, and especially babies, are more sensitive to electromagnetic radiation than adults, partially due to the width of their skulls. This is why protecting your little ones is so important and why it’s so important to share this information with parents.
So here are the tactics we use to minimize and mitigate our and our son’s exposure to EMF on a daily basis.
1. Adjust Your WiFi Habits
Turning your WiFi off at night is one of the easiest things you can do for your children’s health. If this sounds unrealistic for you and not something you think you can remember to do every night, then purchasing an outlet timer is a great solution for you. You can just set it and forget it, choosing the hours where you know you don’t typically use the WiFi.
We rarely have the WiFi on in our house, choosing instead to have the office computer set up with an ethernet cable. That said, during naps and in the evening, we occasionally turn it on as the WiFi doesn’t reach the bedroom. When we first moved into our house, the built-in chamber for the router was in our bedroom closet. Naturally, we made made some adjustments to be able to install it in the front of the house instead. Proximity to any source of radiation is incredibly important to consider, and is really the most important factor (next to length of exposure) when it comes to potential harm.
When we do have the WiFi on, we have it set to the slower network (2.4 G) only, and disabled the 5G. I know this is not the same technology as the 5G signals from the towers that our phones are picking up. The slower frequency is still less disruptive to human physiology.
When I first published this blog, I forgot to talk about baby monitors. I was very close to ordering this low-EMF audio-only monitor (that does not require WiFi) but decided to give it a few weeks… and I realized that we really didn’t need one. Thankfully, our bedroom is right off our living room so we can hear him if we leave the door slightly ajar, and we co-sleep. I realize that not having a baby monitor is not possible for a lot of people, and this article also has a few additional low-EMF options to look into. And if you’re a new parent who is on the fence, ask yourself ‘Is this something we really need? And do we need it right now or can we wait?’
2. Devices on Airplane Mode When Not In Use
When your phone is on, it is emitting and receiving signals. As mentioned above, proximity and time are the two most important factors when it comes to exposure, so it blows my mind that some people sleep with their phone on, right next to their bed. Seriously, in 2022, who is still doing this?! This practice of putting your phone on Airplane Mode and ideally leaving it somewhere outside your bedroom is especially important if you have little ones who sleep near you.
More importantly, there’s no reason not to give our bodies a break during the night. You’re not using the WiFi, you’re not expecting a phone call…
During Leon’s first year (and particularly the first few months), we asked friends and family who came to see us to place their devices on Airplane Mode. We even asked people to remove any Bluetooth devices (such as Apple Watches and Oura Rings) before holding him, so as not to expose him to Bluetooth. I know some people thought we were crazy!
What many people don’t realize is that Bluetooth is automatically turned on on most Apple devices, so even when you take your phone off Airplane Mode you will likely still need to go in and turn Bluetooth off separately. Even more unfortunately, this isn’t as easy as hitting the Bluetooth button from the swipe-up home menu (next to the WiFi): this must actually be done in Settings because the home menu Bluetooth button simply cuts off any existing connections but keeps your phone’s signal open to receiving new connections, and emits a signal in performing that function. Wild, right?
I always keep my phone on Airplane Mode and only take it off when I need to send a message or do something else on my phone, then it goes right back.
3. Unplug Devices Not In Use & Other Ways to Reduce Dirty Electricity
One of the easiest ways to reduce some of the dirty electricity in our homes is to habitually unplug anything that’s not in use, with the bedroom being the most important room for this as it is where we spend most of our time. You can also plug in these grounded outlets that filter dirty electricity and keep the outlet usable. We use these in the bedroom and the living room, where we have lamps on that we like to keep plugged in most of the time.
There’s so much to understand in this area, and I am still very much learning. I recently returned a lamp that had a dimmer switch, as lamps with dimmers emit a ton of dirty electricity. We also only have incandescent bulbs in all of our lights (because I get a headache from anything else) and they happen to create a lot less dirty electricity than LED bulbs. Although seemingly insignificant, little changes like this add up over time and will ultimately make a big difference to the radiation you and your family are exposed to.
And as you’ll see from the documentary Take Back Your Power, smart meters are another huge cause for concern. If you own your home, the best thing you can do is opt out and have your meter (or meters) removed. If you are renting, you can place a smart meter cage over it to minimize some of the radiation. I don’t know of any cages that work on smart water meters, however. We were thankfully able to opt out of a smart water meter being installed in our home, as I noticed them installing one outside of our next-door neighbor’s house. They were very nice and let me know what to do to ensure that the water company knew we were opting out, which is important because they are not required to knock on your door or do anything to let you know what they are doing or when.
Lastly, we took EMF into consideration when choosing a mattress and bed base, ultimately deciding on Essentia for our bedroom and Live and Sleep for the guest rooms. Both of these brands use natural memory foam, with the latter being more budget friendly. It’s important to avoid spring mattresses, as they induce EMF through the coils and can even amplify nearby EMF fields. My understanding is that similarly, you want to avoid bed bases with metal. Our Pottery Barn crib had some metal by the slats, so we lined it with EMF fabric and placed the crib mattress on top.
— Check Out: Incandescent Christmas Lights —
4. Protective Clothing
After I gave birth, I had dreams about putting my baby back in my belly for his naps. I think the meaning here was that I felt he was so safe in there, and it was really hard to emotionally navigate as a new mom, constantly sleep deprived and obsessed with keeping my baby out of harm’s way. (I questioned whether or not to use the word obsess here, but really that’s what it felt like and what it feels like for a lot of new moms!) One of the reasons I felt he was so safe was that I always wore an EMF-protective Belly Band while pregnant. (I had bands from DefenderShield and Belly Armor.)
We also had blankets, a sweet baby blanket from Belly Armor and a larger more heavyweight blanket from DefenderShield that I would use at night while pregnant (when I didn’t want to sleep with the Belly Band). When it wasn’t too hot, we would lay a blanket over Leon during his naps.
We loved Leon’s EMF-protective hats and they got so much use in his first year, all from Belly Armor. I highly recommend buying this hat (buy it in a few sizes!) and it was especially a must when we traveled from Europe back to the US when he was only 6 months old. (You are exposed to a lot of radiation in the air.) In addition to his EMF baby blanket, the hat was also great to have when out and about, and even for visiting friends and family because you don’t always know where the router is. If you are hanging out in someone’s living room, you might be seated right across from it and not realize.
5. Protective Technology
We felt passionately enough about this subject that we decided to invest in some of the technologies that are available that help mitigate some of the EMF we are exposed to. The first one that I would recommend before anything else is the Blushield Portable Unit (save 10% on Blushield with code STACKED). We kept this in the diaper bag at all times so that we were more protected in stores, coffee shops, the car, at friends’ houses, and especially during travel. Now I keep it in my purse and make sure to place it in the stroller or car when we go out.
The second would be the Blushield Plugin, which is what we use at home and have plugged in right outside our bedroom. Creating a field 45 meters (147 feet) in every direction, this is what most people will need in their homes. The Blushield website has a plethora of information about EMF and you can read about how their technology works right here. When we first plugged this in, Joe and I both had body aches for a few days, so our bodies were definitely adjusting!
The most recent addition to our home is the Somavedic (save 10% with code STACKED), which we keep on our kitchen island. It creates a field that spans 30m in every direction and structures water with the field, so we keep our pitcher of spring water right next to it throughout the day. When we got it early last year, I remember immediately noticing a difference in the taste of our water and found myself intuitively drinking much more.
I know these devices are investments, and they may not be right for everybody. We live relatively close to our neighbors on either side, with smart meters and a number of Wi-Fi networks within range. Our house is also made of wood, which is more penetrable than cement. (Our apartment in Luxembourg was cement and it was impossible to pick up on anyone else’s WiFi.) So for us, these devices make sense to mitigate the exposures we do not have control over. People often say our house feels really serene and calm, and I strongly believe it’s because of our lack of WiFi combined with these devices.
What’s next?
In addition to minimizing your exposure and protecting yourself as best you can from the exposure you cannot control, spending time in nature is truly equally as important as anything I’ve listed above. During pregnancy and starting again when Leon was 3 weeks old, we enjoyed hour-long forest walks almost daily (weather-permitting) while we were in Luxembourg. And in Austin, we go the Greenbelt or national park by our house at least once a week and get our feet in the water!
As it relates to how this intention will continue to unfold for us… We are still learning and taking this journey towards a lower radiation home step-by-step. As we are renting, we won’t be doing EMF-protective paint or wallpaper or anything like that… Which is perhaps why I also felt called to share our experience and solutions, because so many of the articles I read focus on things that are extremely difficult for renters!
Regardless of whether or not you own your home, I highly recommend investing in an EMF meter so you can identify (and quantify the magnitude of) the sources of radiation within your home. Even if you can’t make any permanent changes, there’s always something you can do. Because we have a 5G tower in our neighborhood, we are currently looking into EMF canopy beds to ensure we have an incredibly clean sleep environment. I will keep y’all updated on that front (and I pray I’ll have some stylish solution hahaha)!
Questions?
Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions at all! Similarly, I’d love to hear if you have any other great tips. One day I’ll share more about my experience with EMF and the health challenges I have faced. For now, I simply hope to inspire others to exercise a little more care, especially with your little ones, and to take your health back into your own hands. It’s amazing how much better a lot of people feel once they start doing this!
Much love,