In this episode, I am speaking with Dr. William Pawluk – who is one of the world’s foremost authorities on pulsed electromagnetic fields. We will talk about the use of pulsed electro-magnetic fields (PEMF) in healing, health and cellular energy.
Dr. Pawluk, has been so generous to offer 10% off on any non-discounted device that costs more than $1000 on DrPawluk.com, if you order before Nov 18, 2021. Enter the code energyblueprint upon checkout.
Table of Contents
In this podcast, Dr. Pawluk discusses:
- What are PEMF and what benefits do they offer?
- How much evidence is there for the claims about PEMF devices?
- How can you use PEMF to assist with healing your health issues?
- Exactly how much should you worry about EMFs or dirty electricity?
- What’s the ideal frequency for healing?
- Which PEMF devices are recommended and how can you apply them?
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Transcript
Ari: Hey, there. This is Ari. Welcome back to the Energy Blueprint Podcast. I am very, very excited for today’s show. It is with someone I’ve wanted to interview for a very long time. His name is Dr. William Pawluk. He is one of the world’s foremost authorities on pulsed electromagnetic fields, which is a subject I’ve had some personal interest in for a few years now but I’m yet to do a podcast on because quite frankly, I’ve been waiting to interview this particular expert that I have on the show today.
He has an MB. He’s held previous positions at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland. He has extensive training in a variety of forms of integrated medicine as well. Including acupuncture and hypnosis, nutrition, and bodywork, and other areas. He’s considered one of the world’s foremost authorities on the practical use of pulsed electromagnetic fields.
He’s written an incredible book that I highly recommend called Power Tools for Health. This is something I bought I think two or three years ago when I first got interested in this topic, and I found myself just highlighting and taking notes rampantly. It’s just power-packed. There’s hundreds of references in this book. It’s really the only book on pulsed electromagnetic fields that I can recommend because quite frankly, there’s a lot of nonsense and pseudoscience surrounding this field. I’m sure that’s something that we’ll talk about in this podcast.
One other thing I’ll mention about Dr. Pawluk. In 2019, he received the American College of Integrated Medicine Lifetime Achievement Award for his work with PEMFs. He also received the Maryland’s top preventive medicine specialist award in 2021. Congratulations on those Dr. Pawluk, and welcome to the show. It’s such a pleasure to finally connect with you.
Dr. William Pawluk: It’s a pleasure connecting with you as well. I’ve been looking at your work for some time, and also wanted to be connected- [crosstalk]
What is PEMF?
Ari: I’m glad we’re finally making it happen. Pulsed electromagnetic fields. I almost want to play a little bit dumb in this interview, and pretend like I haven’t read much about it because this was something that I had so many questions on and found myself having a lot of skepticism of and a lot of difficulty wrapping my head around certain distinctions that I think are important ones.
Let me just start by asking you to give our audience an overview of what exactly PEMF is for someone who knows nothing about this topic, and has no idea what PEMFs are, pulsed electromagnetic fields are. How would you explain it and what are the benefits of it?
Dr. Pawluk: Pulsed magnetic fields are magnetic fields that are produced by current flowing through a wire, electrical current flowing through a wire. We know that about power lines. Power lines put off magnetic fields. They are not the kinds of magnetic fields we want for healing purposes, but even those power line magnetic fields can have health benefits. They’re not controlled, but they can potentially have health benefits. Studies have been done using 50 hertz and 60 hertz, which is what the power line frequencies are, depending on whether you’re in the US or in Europe.
Basically, a current that’s flowing will produce a magnetic field that’s called the right-hand rule. This is the direction of the current, the direction of my thumb, and the magnetic field is perpendicular to that current flow. The magnetic field is wrapping around that wire basically in this fashion, and it’s a closed-loop. Every time the current flows, the magnetic field goes like this. Every time it pulses, it goes like that. It’s open and close, open and close, open and close.
As opposed to radio signals or microwaves that are in the atmosphere, they basically broadcast out into the atmosphere. Those are waves and those are wavelengths. Just like waves in a pond. Those electromagnetic fields are not the same as pulsed electromagnetic fields. Tesla was one of the first people to actually discover that if you take a wire, a wire that’s connecting current into a lamp or an outlet is basically going in two directions.
There’s an outgoing loop of the wire and a backwards loop in the wire. Where the two wires are crossing, the magnetic field produced by each one is neutralized, and that’s called Lenz’s law. Tesla discovered that if you take that wire that’s going like this, and you open it up, and then bring it back, that opening then creates– That each loop of that, each part of that loop is able to create a magnetic field that is active. It’s not being canceled.
The magnetic fields then because it’s pulsing in and out, essentially it’s pulsing in and out of the body completely. The body is completely transparent to a magnetic field. To a magnetic field, the body does not exist, but the magnetic field exists to the body. In other words, the magnetic field ignores the body. Doesn’t pay any attention to the body. Whether it’s a body, or an insect, or a tree, or any living matter for that matter. Unless it’s metal, in which case the magnetic field will bounce around the metal, will be twisted, pushed away by the metal.
Ari: Just maybe to make a distinction there for people who didn’t quite follow that. The magnetic field is penetrating through the body as if it’s not there. The body is not an impediment to it. To contrast it with, let’s say ultraviolet radiation can pass through the atmosphere, and go down and down. As soon as it hits our skin, pretty much all of that UV radiation stops. It doesn’t go beneath the layer of the skin.
Dr. Pawluk: It gets absorbed. That happens because those are waves, and they’re extremely short wavelengths. As a result, they don’t get absorbed. Microwaves do the same thing, they don’t get absorbed. They create heating and they can create damage in the body depending on how deep they go, and how strong the fields are, the electromagnetic field because that’s all part of the electromagnetic spectrum as it’s called.
Probably, an easier way to see this is that a magnetic field is like wind. It’s going through the tree. It doesn’t stop. It doesn’t stay in the tree. It’s passing on through. As it passes through, its activity jiggles the leaves, the branches. The stronger the wind, the more action there is in the trees. What you don’t want to do is you don’t want to rip a tree apart. You could do that with magnetic fields too, pulsed magnetic fields.
Certainly, we don’t want to do that because that’s not the intent of pulsed magnetic fields. The intent is to try to activate processes in the body that will create healing. That’s what happens. As the magnetic field, these therapeutic magnetic fields pass through– They’re called extremely low-frequency fields, and they’re also relatively low-intensity magnetic fields. Most of the magnetic fields we use are much lower intensity than MRIs. They are very high-intensity magnetic fields. They’re Tesla. They’re 10,000, 20,000 Gauss, so they’re very high intensity.
Mostly, therapeutic magnetic fields are low intensity, and because they’re low they’re like a breeze in the trees, not a big wind going through the trees. As it’s passing through, it creates charge. The concept of creating charge is based on a relatively old law of physics called Faraday’s law. Faraday was the first to discover that when you pass a magnetic field past a current flowing wire– Sorry. When you pass a magnet past the current flowing wire, you’ll induce charge. He showed a needle going like this when the magnet was passing those wires.
Now, we don’t use what? We don’t use magnets anymore to do this. Now, we create this field that just goes like this. Basically, again, what you’re doing is– As it’s passing through the body, anything that has charge associated with it will be influenced by the magnetic field. The magnetic field then begins to activate those processes in the body that are charge-related. Ions, electrolytes, nerves, anything conducting in the body, conducting charges in the body. Everything will be activated.
Even down at the cellular level, at the molecular level. Because the body’s completely transparent to a magnetic field, everything in the body is affected by the magnetic field passing through. Whether it’s passing through an eye, or a brain, or a fist, or a shoulder, or a heart, or a lung, belly, you name it. It doesn’t really matter. As it’s passing through, it’s creating all this action, and that action then initiates all kinds of balancing processes in the body.
Healthy cells, healthy tissue ignores the magnetic field. It says, “Oh, that was interesting. I like that tickle. I was tickled slightly, so that’s great.” Cells that are damaged are damaged because they couldn’t finish the job of rebalancing. The stimulus that cause the damage to the cell was too strong for the cell to be able to rebalance itself. If I whisper to you and I tell you, “You dirty son of a person,” whatever [unintelligible 00:09:56] but I’m just whispering.
Your brain’s going to say, “La-di-da, la-di-da, la-di-da.” You ignore it. Now we’re having a conversation, it’s harder to ignore that conversation. If I was screaming and yelling at you, you’ll never be able to block it. The cells themselves then will use that energy. When I’m out of balance, then the body says, “Okay, I need help to get back into balance.” Essentially, that’s what the increased charge in the body is doing is getting the cells more energy to be able to rebalance.
Ari: What would you say? Let’s say there’s, I’m sure as an MD, yourself, you probably encounter a lot of other MDs who have never heard of pulsed electromagnetic fields, who are enormously skeptical of it and who might listen to what you just said and say, “Okay, well, that’s a nice theory, but is there any actual science to show that this has any actual meaningful benefits on medical conditions?” What would you say in response to that?
Dr. Pawluk: I would say, “Here’s the book.” It’s not my word. There’s 500 references in the book,
How PEMFs may affect different health problems
Ari: Right. Where are those benefits? What has this been proven to do as far as practical benefits for people dealing with different kinds of health problems?
Dr. Pawluk: In the book, I’ve outlined 25 different actions of magnetic fields. Since the book, I have discovered basically three more.
Ari: Interesting.
Dr. Pawluk: One is the adenosine receptor, which has to do with ATP, which is a energy production in the body. The miracle of PEMFs is that it causes ATP to be produced. ATP by itself is nothing. It’s a molecule sitting there. It’s got potential energy, has the potential to produce energy. Then what you have to do is you have to hydrolyze it. You have to take off one of the hydroxyl groups, and then that releases energy.
That’s where the energy release comes. You need hydrolysis to release energy. Then you go from ADP to ATP, adenosine diphosphate, two phosphates, to ATP, three phosphates. Then you have to strip off one of the phosphates that releases energy that goes back to ADP. PEMFs work on the entire cycle. They cause that cycle to be repeating itself continuously. That’s one of the key aspects of magnetic field therapy is the recycling of energy.
The next consideration is the endocannabinoid system. Now people are into marijuana and CBD, that’s cannabis-related. Well, it turns out, every cell in the body has endocannabinoid receptors, every cell. The nervous system, in particular. The only species that doesn’t have endocannabinoids are insects, that don’t have an endocannabinoid system.
Ari: That’s interesting. I didn’t know that.
Dr. Pawluk: Why do we have that? We have it because it’s important to us, it’s necessary for our function, a trigger for memory and for thought processing, processing for general energy, and so on. I know I have a blog on my website about endocannabinoids, cannabis, or marijuana. That’s not in the book, but that’s one of the mechanisms. The key mechanisms that were discovered back in the ’70s on what magnetic fields do. We’re going back to the ’70s when some of that original research was done in Eastern Europe. Causes vasodilatation, opens up blood vessels, relaxes muscles, I mentioned the ATP, stimulates stem cells.
Tissue regeneration is a key element of what magnetic fields do. They will heal wounds much faster, typically about half the time. One of the reasons for that is it stimulates stem cells and it stimulates growth factors. In addition to that, you can’t grow a garden in a swamp. You got to remove the inflammation, you got to remove the swelling, the edema. You’ve got to bring in nutrients, you’ve got to bring in circulation. PEMFs do all that. Just like that. I don’t decide what the PEMF is going to do. You don’t decide what the PEMF is going to do. Your body decides what the PEMF is going to do in that body.
The body then we’ll determine what it needs, improved circulation, reduced rouleaux formation. There was a clumping of blood cells that can’t carry more oxygen, can’t carry more energy, they can’t deliver it into the capillaries. They get stuck before they get down into the narrowest capillaries. That’s increasing oxygen supply to the body, a key element of what magnetic fields do. Not only by circulations increases but also by their effects on red blood cells.
As I said, there’s 25 different mechanisms in the book. If you want to read the book, you’ll get that kind of level of detail, but the key ones are circulation, ATP, oxygen, tissue regeneration, stem cell stimulation, reducing pain and frequency-based magnetic fields pass rates for the brain. What do they do as they pass through the brain? Then it becomes like sound. Do you listen to soothing Mozart or do you listen to rap or do you listen to heavy metal? All of those are going to affect your mood.
Magnetic fields can go through the brain and do the same thing, but the nice thing about magnetic fields passing through your brain is they’re healing it at the same time. Sound goes into your ear, it affects the nervous system, and the nervous system relaxes or gets stimulated. The magnetic fields do that too, but at the same time, as they pass through the brain, they’re repairing. They’re improving circulation. They’re doing all the things that magnetic fields do. That’s happening in the brain at the same time that stimulated the brain function.
Ari: Fascinating. It’s having an effect on ATP, the endocannabinoid system, growth factors, stem cells, decreasing pain and inflammation. Those are some of the key ones. If we were to zoom out from the mechanism level to the health problem level or disease level, let’s say, what specific problems might one have that would benefit from this kind of therapy? Based on the mechanisms, I would suspect anything stress-related is going to be helped, anything inflammation-related is going to be helped, any kind of tissue wounds, like we would expect things to heal much faster. What would you say is the breakdown of the list of medical conditions or health problems that are likely to be helped by this?
Dr. Pawluk: In the book, I provide evidence for how magnetic fields work for 50 different health conditions. That’s a long list. Anything with pain, arthritis, autoimmune diseases, anything that has inflammation, injuries. Cut yourself, you’ll heal in half the time. Break a bone, you’ll heal in half the time. One of the most valid, one of the most studied actions and benefits of PEMFs is repairing bone. Osteoporosis is a good example.
Magnetic field therapy will stop the progression of osteoporosis. It’s hard to recover bone once you’ve lost it, but if you start doing magnetic fields, you won’t progress. Cancer is a big area where we use magnetic fields to help people with cancer. Still a lot of research that needs to be done. You can’t say that magnetic fields cure cancer, but they absolutely have to control it. For example, stem cells. There are cancer stem cells.
Cancer stem cells reactivate themselves to form metastasis to get new cancer growing in the body, distant cancers. If you decrease inflammation in the body, then you decrease those stem cells from being activated. Bladder problems, prostate problems, eye problems, brain. I actually did a study on concussion and brain injury using a relatively low-intensity magnetic field. We saw significant benefits in those patients because they were patients.
We proved that magnetic field therapy can help them with their function, their symptoms. We haven’t been able to prove that it heals the concussion because that study was not designed for that purpose, but we actually showed that it causes improvements in function. Anything in the brain, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, any inflammatory degenerative disorder in the brain would be helped as well. Sleep, clearly, one of the key mechanisms of benefits of magnetic fields is sleep. Why? Again, residents called entrainment by slowing down the brainwaves very safely, you can then control sleep, control mood, anxiety, addictions.
Anything that can get you to relax, you’ll feel better generally. It’s involuntary. The magnetic field therapy is just doing that involuntarily, but it’s safe. You don’t have to take a drug and you don’t have the effects of drugs. In fact, we know that when you take drugs or molecules into the body, even nutritional molecules, receptor sites get saturated, and they become resistant to the treatment, to the molecule. Magnetic field therapy doesn’t have that problem.
Ari: Very, very interesting. On a personal level, I’ve been a health nut for 25 years at this point since I was a little kid, and trying every wacky extreme thing I could possibly get my hands on. However, I never tried pulsed electromagnetic fields until a couple of years ago. There are two primary reasons why that I’d like you to speak to. Two reasons why I was wary of it and skeptical of it. One was I always look at things from a naturalistic and evolutionarily evolutionary lens and say, “Well, what in nature is this analogous to?”
For example, I’ve written a book on red and near-infrared light. We know that why it would make sense to use red and near-infrared light from an evolutionary perspective is very clear cut. We are designed to get those frequencies of light, those wavelengths of light from sunlight exposure. There’s this very clear and naturalistic explanation of why those things would be good. We have thousands of studies showing that they’re good and safe and effective and we have the evolutionary rationale for why humans would respond beneficially to it.
It never was clear to me why that would be the case for PEMF. Where does this kind of thing happen in nature? Because of that, I always went– Actually, there’s one more layer to it which is EMS. We need to speak to that too because everyone has heard of EMS, be careful of EMS, there’s EMS from Wi-Fi and from your computer-
Dr. Pawluk: Magnetic fields are dangerous.
How PEMF differs from EMF
Ari: Right, and so you have to avoid all those harmful EMS. I had all of that programming in my head. Those two things in combination made me go, “I’m going to steer clear of that stuff. It sounds like it may be more harmful than helpful. I think I’m going to avoid it.” Can you speak to those two distinctions and I’m sure they probably need to be separated out, but first of all, the evolutionary side of it, where does this kind of thing happen in nature, and the other side is, how does PEMF differ from EMS?
Dr. Pawluk: The body is an electromagnetic apparatus. Nothing in the body happens without a magnetic exchange. Nothing. If there’s charge there’s magnetism, if there’s magnetism there’s charge. They go hand in glove that’s why it’s called electromagnetic. A red blood cell flow through a blood vessel is interacting with other ions in that blood vessel and producing magnetic fields as it passes through, it produces charge as it’s passing through.
Those magnetic fields then control a lot of outside stuff so they’re putting boundaries. It’s like magnets, take two magnets, the magnets either attract or repel. The magnetic fields interact with each other, pushing and pulling molecules. Sodium and chloride cannot dock to produce salt unless the magnetic field between them, interaction between those molecules allows it to dock. The magnetic field controls that.
Physics came before chemistry from an evolutionary perspective of the universe. It was physics, the laws of physics came first before chemistry. Now, we’re tissue, right? But our tissue is made of molecules. What controls those molecules and their functions and their movements and so on? They’re actions, interactions, magnetic fields. At a basic cellular level, at a very basic intercellular level, it’s magnetic fields that control all of that.
We happen to live on a planet which happens to be a big magnet. Those IRs, the FIRs, all the radiation that’s hitting the planet, triggers and activates charge in the body and affects the magnetic fields in the body. They can’t act without the magnetic fields basically allowing those actions to happen, because they are there. Magnetic fields are just in the background, they’re just everywhere constantly, continuously.
If we remove ourselves from the planet and go beyond the Earth’s magnetic field, magnetosphere, things start to break apart. People did experiments in Germany in bunkers, where they isolated people from the environment, completely isolated from the environment. Developed essentially what’s called a Faraday cage. It had no magnetic field, it had no environmental stimuli of any kind, light, sound, heat, temperature, et cetera, cold, barometric pressure changes.
They were completely isolated people for months and months. Their volunteer was months and months. What they found over time is their circadian rhythms became dysregulated and they figured out why. They started putting frequencies back into these chambers and discovered that 10 hertz restored circadian rhythms.
Ari: Wow.
Dr. Pawluk: 10 hertz is the basic frequency of the planet and that’s a magnetic frequency.
Ari: They used 10 hertz as far as what? Sound, vibration?
Dr. Pawluk: They happen to use electrical fields to put that back into the environment so frequencies from electrical fields. In fact, 10 hertz became the basis of an experiment conducted by NASA to stimulate stem cells for cultures. This is how the story goes, NASA discovered they were growing stem cells in the capsules going around the earth. They found that when the cultures went through the polar regions north or south, they had a significant increase in stem cell growth.
Why is that happening? It turns out that the magnetic fields in the north and the south are much stronger. The field lines are all together like this, as opposed to like this. Again because of that they did an experiment using 10 hertz because of the studies done in Germany. Lo and behold there was about a fourfold increase in stem cell growth with 10-hertz magnetic field exposure.
Now, again everything in the body is magnetic. One of the first approved uses of PEMFs is for bone healing called nonunion fractures, a fracture that won’t heal is a disaster for everybody. They tried all kinds of things surgically and orthopedics tried different modalities and approaches and prominently surgical of course, to try to heal these nonunions and they wouldn’t heal.
You have to ask yourself the question, why did it happen in the first place? You can’t grow a garden in a swamp. What the surgery was doing is trying to fix the bone. What caused the problem with the bone in the first place? Whatever caused the problem with the bone in the first place is still there. Usually, the surgeries failed. Then they started doing magnetic field therapy, discovered it at NYU. All of a sudden, magnetic fields started these wounds to heal, these fractures to heal, even though the bones were not even together.
It started to increase stem cell production and reduce inflammation, improve circulation, just whole host of different factors are going on at the same time caused by the magnetic fields. Again, we need that. When you walk, you’re putting stress on the bone that’s creating something called EPAs or electric field. All of our tissues have crystalline structures in them in their crystal matrix, every cell has a crystal matrix.
Our connective tissue has microtubules which are structures, are nanowire structures, and they conduct charge and electricity extremely rapidly. Magnetic fields interact with those and they interact with magnetic fields. We are an electromagnetic being at a very fundamental level. Now, again whether we have IR or not, we’re still electromagnetic. The question is how to activate that. We produce our own magnetic fields, but why does a fracture stop? It doesn’t have adequate nutrition, but probably also doesn’t have adequate charge.
Once you start to produce more charge in the area of that fracture, the fracture wakes up, stem cells wake up, circulation wakes up all these things that magnetic fields do, bingo, six months to a year later depending on the fracture and the person and so on. Bingo, a nonunion is healed, non-invasive, safely. Now, you may have to do magnetic therapy eight hours a day, 12 hours a day for six months to a year to get that wound to heal. Hey, that’s okay considering the alternative.
Ari: Absolutely. Basically, what you’re saying is there’s all these sources, there are natural sources of magnetic fields and these kinds of frequencies that we are being exposed to and our body is wired to respond to. The pulsed electromagnetic field device is meant to mimic certain of these frequencies. Is that accurate to say?
Dr. Pawluk: Yes. I just completed an ebook on magnetic fields as energy medicine looking at things like qigong and acupuncture and many other things that are considered to be so-called energy medicine. Dowsing is a good example of energy medicine. It’s the use of our ability to sense magnetic fields and electrical fields for that matter. Magnetic fields, basically, again, are a basic modality within our bodies and within the universe that we sense and our bodies use it for healing purposes, but they’re subtle. They’re very weak. They’re mostly electric in the way they work but the electric interfacing with the body produces magnetic and magnetic influences electric. That’s Maxwell’s laws. Those have been discovered back in the 1700s, early 1800s. They go hand in glove. We can’t separate them. Again, it’s completely natural to us to have that happening.
Now, pulsed magnetic fields, in the old days, all we had was the earth. You could walk on the earth barefoot. You could lay on the earth when you’re sweating and your perspiration, the electrolytes in your perspiration are going to interact with the minerals in the earth, in the soil. What does that do? Creates charge in the body. The charge wakes things up. Copper bracelet on the wrist is producing charge, it’s acting on the acupuncture points and meridians.
That charge then activates all these other magnetic events in the body that stimulate various healing process. Now we have tools, we’re no longer ancient. Now we have a technology that can take that up multiple levels of exactness, but also predictability in terms of results and effectiveness. We’re learning different fields have different effects on the body, and you need different amounts of treatment and treatment time to produce the effects that you need. We’re understanding the technology better, so we can heal better faster than we’re ever used to. Even with healers around, how long do people live?
Ari: Average lifespan is around 80 in the US.
Dr. Pawluk: Today?
Ari: Yes.
Dr. Pawluk: What about 100 years ago?
Ari: You might not be looking for the answer I’m going to be giving but the tricky thing is it was common for people to live roughly as long, however, the average lifespan was brought down heavily by infant mortality and child mortality, and maternal mortality from childbirth, things like that. That’s probably-
Dr. Pawluk: Not because of longevity but that’s not necessarily true. What is aging?
Ari: What is aging?
Dr. Pawluk: Yes.
Ari: Progressive deterioration of cellular health.
Dr. Pawluk: Aging is death by a thousand cuts. Aging is all these nicks and scratches and bruises and all events that happen to us. That’s without a war and that’s without pestilence. One of the biggest causes of mortality actually was infections. Trauma and infections were the two biggest causes of mortality before we lived long enough to get cancer and heart disease. Once we lived long enough to get cancer and heart disease, then they became factors that we didn’t calculate before because people didn’t live that long.
100 years ago, the average age was probably 45. We had the potential, I agree. We had the potential to live a lot longer. What happens though, if you get an infection, and you have inadequate housing, you have inadequate water supply, you have inadequate food, you have all kinds of other stressors. Saber-toothed tigers goring you or bison goring you, whatever.
Those are all trauma, you have to heal from that trauma.
In the Civil War, all the people died, they got gunshot wounds, they could have survived but they died from the infections caused by the gunshot wounds. Also probably because of inadequate nutrition, and so on. Now, we have these same kinds of events happening to us. I’ll tell you, in Finland, they looked at people who had massive trauma end up in the hospital for months.
They discovered that when they did magnetic field therapy for those people in those beds, they shortened their hospital space by two weeks. Because the magnetic fields are giving the body the stimulus it needs to do the repair work. Now, in the hospital, they got the nutrition, they got the rest, they got the care, all they needed. What they didn’t get is the stimulus to integrate everything else that they were already doing to stimulate to, activate it.
I had a 55-year old guy who had bilateral gangrene of his legs. It was purple. I couldn’t see any circulation at all. They came in to get magnetic field therapy and nutrition and advice and so on. He was a smoker, a drinker, and had diabetes. Didn’t take good care of himself at all. I said, “I don’t want to touch this. This guy’s going to die on my watch from kidney failure and sepsis,” because he was being recommended– He came to my office because the vascular surgeon said, “Off with your legs, bilateral, below-knee amputations.”
We started nutritional therapies, we started putting him on supplements, got him to stop smoking, got him to stop drinking, did magnetic field therapy at the same time. Literally, within three months, he went back to the surgeon and said, “Well, I guess we don’t have to amputate.”
Ari: Wow, amazing.
Dr. Pawluk: Would medicine have done that? Medicine’s solution was amputation. That wasn’t going to stop the problem. He’s still going to continue having all kinds of problems with all those factors that he’s got going on. He just would not necessarily happen to have lost any more extremities, but maybe he would too. Lost his kidneys, lost his vision. That’s an example, a real example in my practice, of somebody who benefited from the comprehensive approach, you need everything together.
Ari: Very interesting. I want to go one layer deeper on this whole naturalistic parallels of pulsed electromagnetic fields. A lot of people have heard of the Schumann resonance and the idea that the earth resonates at a certain frequency. I think it’s 7.8 hertz or something like that.
Dr. Pawluk: It’s actually more complicated than that.
Ari: What’s the truth of that?
Dr. Pawluk: The Schumann resonances are a pattern of resonances. They’re almost, what do they call that? Fibonacci. They’re almost Fibonacci-like in the way they work. 7.83 hertz, has been classified as the average resonance. What are they made of? What causes those resonances, the Schumann resonances? Lightning strikes around the planet. Lightning strike in Srilanka is going to be felt in the US in seconds because that’s how electricity travels, without attenuation.
What happens and all these lightning strikes are producing these frequencies, and there are patterns of them. They’re densities of them in one part of the world and not in another part of the world and so they average out across the world. Those resonances are in the ionosphere. What do our brains do? They tune to those resonances. What are the different brainwave patterns? They’re tuned to those resonances. Why do our brains tune to those resonances? Have you heard of magnetite?
Ari: I have, yes. Don’t certain animals species that have migratory patterns, like let’s say birds, or sea turtles, things like that, don’t they have higher levels of magnetite?
Dr. Pawluk: No, they don’t have higher levels but they don’t listen to TV or radio. They’re not distracted. They’re completely in nature. When you’re completely in nature, you’re getting your signals from nature. Native Indians knew all the patterns of the world, the Earth because they were in tune with nature. They were not distracted the way we are today. Yes, these animals do that and that’s how we discovered. Why are they migrating? How can they migrate?
Whether it’s clouds or nighttime, they’re still going where they’re supposed to go? We discovered, of course, that they have these magnetic crystals, called ferrous oxide crystals basically, in their brains. We have in our brains, we have billions in our brains, billions and they’re all throughout our whole bodies. Now, we recently have discovered that humans can detect direction as well.
Ari: Wow, I didn’t know that.
Dr. Pawluk: But we have to be quiet. They took humans and they spun them around in chairs. They eliminated audio, they eliminated visual, and they spun them in chairs, and then ask them what direction they were facing. A large percentage of the time they figured that out.
Ari: Wow.
Dr. Pawluk: We have that sense too but, to go back to that point, if we have all these crystals in our brains, they’re like radio crystals, crystal radios. Remember crystal radio sets?
Ari: It was before my time.
Dr. Pawluk: [laughs] Radio crystals are piezoelectric electric and you can stimulate them with charges and with sound and light and all kinds of things can stimulate the crystals. These crystals in our brains are tuners. They are transmitters actually. They are receivers, but they’re also transmitters. A guy named Sheldrake did lots of fascinating experiments. You’ve heard of the morphogenetic fields?
Ari: Yes, Rupert Sheldrake.
Dr. Pawluk: Rupert Sheldrake.
Ari: Yes.
Dr. Pawluk: He found that people would be sitting at the back of a room staring at somebody’s neck. He repeated this experiment over and over and over again. Everybody looked when somebody was staring. What does the person staring at the neck doing, at the back of their head doing?
Ari: I have no idea.
Dr. Pawluk: They’re projecting a field.
Ari: Photons. That would be-
Dr. Pawluk: All kinds of electromagnetic stuff, whether it’s photons or light or scalar, but they’re projecting some kind of connection. They’re transmitting a thought to this other person. An idea and they’re sensing it. What allows that sensing to happen, I believe on a huge part of that, is actually the magnetite. It’s a receiver and a transmitter. It does both.
Ari: Is this why my wife can always read my mind, even when I’m trying to hide what I’m thinking?
Dr. Pawluk: Yes. Women are more sensitive. I think estrogen makes you more sensitive. I think a lot of women lose that sense after menopause.
Ari: Interesting. There’s still this other piece of my wariness around EMS which is the EMF, and everybody’s taught to fear EMS, the dangerous harms of EMS. Can you break down the distinction between pulsed electromagnetic fields versus the kinds of EMFs that are harmful and people should be wary of?
Dr. Pawluk: All right. EMFs, I call EMFs, even though they really are electromagnetic fields, I call them environmental magnetic fields. Environmental magnetic fields include microwaves that are in the atmosphere. We went from 3G to 4G, now 5G, and then we’re going to go to 6G. They’re being broadcast all over the place. We’re drowning in those kinds of signals. That’s not man-made. That’s not natural to us. At least not a concentrated fashion.
Ari: Sorry, you said that’s not man-made. You mean it is man-made?
Dr. Pawluk: I’m sorry. It’s man-made, it’s not natural. It’s not man, within man. That we actually create that ourselves. Then cell phones, Wi-Fi, routers are part of those environmental magnetic fields. Because they broadcast, they’re very short wavelengths. Like we discussed earlier, they get absorbed. IR, FIR, et cetera. Ultrasound, infrared, they’re all going to be absorbed. They cause harm because of that.
Then we have electrical charges through the grids. Our homes are wired and they’re producing wavelengths from the electrical system in our homes, the radio. Then just like power lines too. They’re reading all kinds of stray frequencies. It’s not just pure 50 hertz. It’s what we call dirty electricity. What we call transients. You get all kinds of frequencies, they are in our homes. When we live in boxes surrounded by wiring, that wiring is coming into the atmosphere and it’s affecting us.
It’s very weak, so the effects are not noticeable right away, but they accumulate over time. Especially as we go through peaks and valleys with our immune systems or with our vitality and so on. When we’re vital, when we’re really energized and healthy, and so on, then our bodies shrug it off, ignore it. The dosing, the amount of exposure is key. The intensity of the exposure is key.
If you have a cell phone to your head. I tell people, do this experiment. Make a call with a cell phone to your ear. Look at your ear when you’re done. It’s going to be very red. Look at the opposite ear. It may be a bit redder than it was before you started. Now take that cell phone, put it on airplane mode. Put it next to your ear and hold it there for the same length of time that you would do for taking a call. Look at the difference. The ear with an active signal is cooking your ear.
Ari: Because of the microwaves.
Dr. Pawluk: Because of the microwaves.
Ari: It’s enhancing blood flow. Maybe that’s not a good way of phrasing it. It’s heating those- [crosstalk]
Dr. Pawluk: It’s not just blood flow. It’s heating the tissue. It is blood flow too. When it’s more than that, it’s heating the tissue. That’s why microwave ovens work. We put meat in a microwave and it cooks it. Whatever you put in the microwave is going to heat it. In a sense, the inside out. Those are environmental magnetic fields. They’re not designed to be therapeutic. They’re generally fairly low intensity, except for these exposures that we have that are fairly high intensity.
DECT phones, baby monitors, all of these are transmitting signals into the air. Wi-Fi signals, higher frequency signals. That’s how they work through higher frequencies. They are not natural, and they cause a major stress to the body and the body has to deal with that stress. That’s why PEMFs, they cause stress to the body too. If I turn on the light, my body’s being stressed. What does stress mean? There’s two kinds of stress. Three kinds of stress. There’s eustress, which is good stress, then basically neutral stress, and then distress. Anything, even eustress can be distress. Because it’s causing a change or reaction for you. You have to react to it, you have to deal with it.
Ari: Sure. I mean, it’s possible to even overdo exercise to the point where it’s damaging.
Dr. Pawluk: That’s true too. Whether it’s heat or cold, or humidity changes, temperature changes, all of those are stressors. Sitting in one position, one place for a long time is a stressor. Why do we keep shifting? Because it’s stressful to those tissues. You could put in pressure on those tissues and the body’s sensory system would say, “Move, silly.” You shift position and you stay in that new position for a while. Then the body says, “Move.” There are other terms you could use besides silly. Our sensory system telling us. That’s a stressor.
Magnetic fields are a stressor. They cause the body to have to shift and change and move. It’s a eustress, in a sense it’s a good stress because it’s actually causing improvements in function in the tissues. All the different ways that magnetic fields work. Those are the primary distinctions. PEMFs are safe because they go right through the body. They do not stay in the body. They don’t get absorbed by the body.
Potential risks of using PEMFs
Ari: Just to follow up on that, is there any potential that magnetic fields could be not safe in some way? Can you cause some negative reaction that disrupts something that causes cancer or who knows what? I remember hearing one report I think probably a mutual friend of ours is Dr. Mercola. I think it was from, if I remember correctly, a conversation with his girlfriend where she told me that she used an extremely powerful magnetic field device and it sent her heart into atrial fibrillation or something like that.
We know, obviously, the heart is using electrical conduction, and magnetic fields are affecting that. That’s just a random example, but can you think of any potential consequences of the use of magnetic fields?
Dr. Pawluk: Well, there are certain things that we prefer not to use magnetic fields around. Implanted defibrillators, implanted pacemakers, any implanted equipment in our body, magnetic fields can turn that off. Somebody who has an organ transplant. I can’t control the directionality of the magnetic field effect in a body when it comes to the immune system. With organ transplants, you’re trying to prevent rejection, so you’re immunosuppressed on purpose.
We don’t want to mess with that, because we don’t know how the magnetic field is going to affect that. It may help you, it may help your hand or your arm or your shoulder or your, or your arthritic knee, but I can’t control where that magnetic field effect is going to stop in the body. It goes through the whole body, ultimately in terms of its effect. Those are areas where we clearly have to be careful.
We say that magnetic field therapy shouldn’t be used in pregnancy. That’s because we haven’t proved that they’re safe for pregnancy. Although, there’s lots and lots and lots of indirect evidence to say that they’re safe. Even at pregnancy, women work in MRI environments when they’re pregnant. They’re not stopped from working. That’s an exposure that clearly we know by default has not been proven to be a risk.
Putting those aside, as a rule, magnetic field therapy does not cause harm, it reveals harm. If somebody’s getting a magnetic dose that’s too much for their tissues to be able to handle it, again it’s a stressor. Your body has to react and respond to it if it’s too much for that tissue. If I did it to you, if I did 30 people with high-intensity magnetic fields like [unintelligible 00:50:03]‘s wife or girlfriend did. Maybe only a handful would have a problem. To me, if somebody has a problem with a magnetic field, then you want to ask what’s going on with that heart because a healthy heart won’t do that. In other words, it’s maybe an early indicator that this heart’s got some issues, whether it’s EBB, whether it’s auto-immune, whether it’s diet, there may be an imbalance. There are lots of people who eat well and take lots of supplements who are out of balance because they’re not necessarily rationally putting things together.
Ari: I think she did mention to me that she was using an extraordinarily high power unit in that moment. Is it possible that using a higher power unit has more potential to cause those kinds of effects, if there’s an imbalance right now?
Dr. Pawluk: If there’s a minimal imbalance, then a high-powered unit is more likely to cause that minimal and balanced to show up. If it’s a lower, so we have a protocol, I advise people to go low and slow. I use the same level of intensity feels that she was experiencing. I don’t recommend cranking it up because I don’t know how your body’s going to react. I don’t know what’s hidden in your body. There are some clinicians who actually take these high-intensity coils, crank it way up and then put it on different parts of the body and see what the reactions.
Basically, it’s a scan. It’s a high-intensity scan. If the body reacts, then you know that those are areas that are going to need some help, whether there’s local inflammation, whether there’s an old injury whether there’s a developing arthritic process. If I know you’ve got arthritis of your knee and I wallop that knee with a high-intensity magnetic field, don’t be surprised that you’re going to react.
What you want to do is go low and slow. What you want to do is to help heal those tissues, which is what the magnetic field is going to be doing. If you go low and slow, you’re gradually conditioning the tissues to begin the repair process. Magnetic fields cause physiologic reactions right away but pain is a good example. If you don’t deal with the cause of the pain will come back. You might get relief with the magnetic field, from your pain temporarily but it’ll come back.
Ari: Because you haven’t addressed the root causes?
Dr. Pawluk: Didn’t heal the tissue. That’s an indicator to you that you have more work to do. I tell people that magnetic field therapy is like athletic training. You don’t get off the couch and run a marathon tomorrow. You’re going to train and you’re going to push, you’re going to back off. You’re going to push, you’re going to back off. Your body’s going to tell you how much you can push it, how much it can withstand.
In that sense, magnetic fields are the same way. Most of the time they’re not going to cause a problem. Healthy tissue ignores the magnetic field. I had this guy who was actually very buff, really working out a lot and really healthy, and he was full of himself in terms of how well he was, right? Put a small magnet on his knee. It hurt like heck. He cursed the magnet because it hurt like heck. “What is this crazy stupid thing doing? It’s causing me pain.”
I said, “There’s a problem.” Well, he ignored it. He went on and did other things. Eventually, he came back and did the magnet again, same problem. I said, “You better go see an orthopedic surgeon.” Turned out he had a septic knee. He had an infection in his knee. The magnetic field discovered it. He had it taken care of properly, went back and did the magnetic field therapy, working added gradually, increasing the healing of the tissues, recovery of those issues and then he’s fine.
Ari: Very interesting.
Dr. Pawluk: You do have to know how to use your magnetic fields. Now, if you’re using very weak magnetic fields, it probably doesn’t matter a whole lot, but then you’re not going to get a whole lot of benefit either.
How frequency affects your health
Ari: Got it. One more thing I would love to talk about is different frequencies and you’ve alluded to this a bit here and there throughout this, but there are a number of claims out there of people saying it use this frequency for this and this frequency for that. To what extent is that thinking legitimate? If it is legitimate do you have any specific recommendations of best frequencies to use for different kinds of problem, let’s say treating pain and inflammation or tissue healing or migraines or depression or any other type of thing?
Dr. Pawluk: The challenge we have is the research. If I do a study, I did that brain injury study, I used 10 Hertz and we got benefit. 10 Hertz happens to be alpha. What does alpha do to you? Makes you relaxed. We also did that stem cell study with NASA, that used 10 Hertz. We talked about that being the earth frequency but very little research is being done that compares frequencies and intensities. It’s not common. Most studies are done with one frequency and one intensive to treat arthritis or to treat headaches or to treat infections. Whatever, you name it, whatever magnetic fields are used for.
As a result, we say, “Well, that’s the frequency you should use.” With rife in particular and frequency-specific micro-current, it’s whispered down the lane. “I used 10 Hertz, I got these benefits.” Everybody says, “Okay, 10 Hertz does all this,” but nobody’s studied other frequencies to know which one actually was better than 10 Hertz. I didn’t study other frequencies for the brain injuries. I only studied 10 Hertz. There are thousands and hundreds of thousands of variables that go into the design of a magnetic field. The only time that I get somewhat specific about magnetic fields is the brainwaves.
Basically, I say that all frequencies are going to help you. Any magnetic field exposure is going to help you if it is directed properly, used properly. The frequency only matters in terms of the nervous system in the way I use it. Now, again, everybody’s going to have their own experience. I prefer to be science-based. If you read the book, you’ll see as you go through all the different conditions in the book, it’s all over the place.
Ari: Yes. It’s the same with red and near-infrared light therapy. Most research only tests a specific wavelength with one of any– there’s hundreds of different kinds of devices at different levels of intensity and different surface areas that they’re treating. Each individual study is testing one type of thing. It’s also limited in the same way you’re describing.
Dr. Pawluk: They’re uni-variate. That’s a problem, and that’s okay, but that limits your choices, it limits what you could potentially achieve optimally. You could optimize an individual frequency. You could optimize it by increasing the intensity. You could change the waveform. You can change the amount of time that it’s being used for.
There’s many things you can do with one frequency, and then you can optimize that frequency but it may turn out that 17 Hertz actually works better with less intensity, less treatment time and so on, but that study wasn’t done. That’s where clinical experience or personal experience becomes the key. If you happen to own one device that’s only got one frequency, well, then, again, learn to use your device. You’ll see what the parameters of value are for that device. Intensity, treatment time and so on.
Ari: Having said all of those kinds of– couching everything around frequencies and those nuances in that context, is there any area where you feel it has been tested thoroughly and there is research to test different frequencies for a specific condition and they found, let’s say, for sleep, to in train delta waves, let’s say, for example, this specific frequency is best or for depression this frequency is best? Is there any area where you feel it’s possible to make that kind of claim?
Dr. Pawluk: No. What I do know is I know that if I’m in training the brain for delta, I’m going to have to use a delta frequency. It’s going to work the best and the higher the intensity, the better the entrainment. Again, it’s going to grab the brainwaves. Brain’s not going to listen to other things if it’s a higher intensity magnetic field. At 10 Hertz, I designed the FlexPulse, one of our equipment, a piece of equipment that we were involved in designing.
Ari: I got mine right here.
Dr. Pawluk: There you go. The FlexPulse has 10 programs. One of the key programs is 3 Hertz, which I think at that particular system is about 10 programs. That means that 3 Hertz is program one. I use it under the pillow every night for sleep, 3 Hertz. Now, you’ll read about sleep and the sleep goes through all these different patterns and frequencies through the night. The brain decides what it wants to do. I don’t decide what it wants to do. I used to use audiovisual entrainment and I used to use all kinds of other entrainment factors, looking at what the ideal was but I could never figure out what the ideal was.
That changes from day to day, from night to night, from the beginning of the night to the end of the night. What I figured out over time, especially with neuroscience and having done some training with neurofeedback, is the brain is going to decide where it wants to be, but if I give the brain a pacemaker, a metronome, it’s going to listen and it’s going to then change its frequency patterns.
We can’t make the brain one frequency, it’s impossible, and not a good idea. If I give it 3 Hertz, the brain can’t ignore, and so wherever it’s hyperactive, it’s going to start listening and start slowing down into that 3-Hertz pattern. What you’re doing then is you’re bringing the brain down to 3 Hertz, which is deep sleep, and we need that, it’s very restorative sleep. It should last an hour to an hour and a half at night, but then most people don’t have a problem falling asleep. Most people have a problem staying asleep. More people have problems staying asleep than falling asleep, but this will work either way.
During the night, when you wake up, or you become aware that you’re awake, or you become aware of your dreams, you’re in what we call high theta. Theta is the frequency that we’re in most of the night, 75% to 80% of the night we’re in theta. When you’re high theta, you’re lucid dreaming, you’re aware of your dreams, and that means that you’re not sleeping. Are you aware? You’re partially aware, at least, and so you don’t think that you slept enough. You’re doing that when you have the theta, the delta down here, it’s coaxing the brainwaves down deeper, not as a delta anymore because the brain doesn’t want to be in delta anymore, it did delta already. Now it wants to be in theta, but you’re coaxing it down into the lower levels, so you don’t tend to drift up into the higher levels and be awake.
Then if you have other organic reasons to get up like your bladder’s full. Well, your bladder could be a little bit full, and you’ve got a signal, or your bladder can be very full. What happens is that you don’t want to go when the bladder is just a little full, you want to go when you need to go. What you’re doing then with delta when you’re quieting down the brain significantly, you don’t get the urge as much. If you have knee pain, or ankle pain, if you have arthritis or back problems, or if you’re anxious, your brain is abuzz before you go to bed, we’ll bring that down, just quiet it all down using that concept of delta entrainment.
When you’re trying to use multiple frequencies and telling the brain what you want it to do like it should do, then you’re presuming that you know what the brain should do. I don’t think we’re smart enough. That’s why I use delta, let the brain decide. I’ve just got to give it one frequency, it’s going to decide what it’s going to do with it.
Ari: Got it. Now, just out of curiosity, if there if there is some degree of uncertainty around optimum frequencies for different things, is there compelling evidence for why any frequency should be used, meaning why not use a static magnetic field? I know there are some mattress pads that offer just a static magnetic field. How would the benefits of that, if you believe those do have benefits, how would they compare with post electromagnetic field therapy?
Dr. Pawluk: I started out working with magnets. That’s how I started out, working with magnetic fields, is with the static magnets. Very quickly, within a year or two I worked with magnets, I discovered they were doing the job. They were good with superficial things like tennis elbow, like carpal tunnel. I had some really dramatic results with carpal tunnel with static magnets, so for very superficial problems, they’re okay. They’re hard to use because you have to fix them in place and carry them for extended periods of time. You can’t just put it on for five minutes and it’s going to help you.
If you’re going to do that, then you need a really powerful magnet to do that, that’d be that strong to grab those tissues and then do the action in those tissues. Magnets in many magnetic pads are scattered all over the place, and you’re moving around during the night. Since magnetic fields drop off extremely rapidly, it’s called the inverse square law. You have to determine the magnetic field that you need for where you need it in your body.
Static magnets can be helpful in certain situations. I have discovered over the years that pulse magnetic fields handily outdo static magnets. I still use static magnets. I wear a magnetic necklace actually to help to stimulate the acupuncture points and meridians around my neck because all the acupuncture points and meridians go up through the neck and head. If I use a magnetic necklace then it stabilizes those acupuncture points and meridians. They’re quieted down.
That’s one solution or one time that I use. I will sometimes use shoe inserts, but for the kinds of things that we’re wanting to deal with are bad arthritis, head injuries, mold exposures, autoimmune diseases, inflammation all over the body, cardiovascular disease, heart disease, arrhythmias, it doesn’t at all work. People want quick results, they want results now. That’s why those high-intensity magnetic fields that people have in the community can be very effective because high-intensity gets you results better faster. You just have to know how to use it and you have to determine the circumstances. The person who’s doing it needs to be skilled at doing it, but most of them haven’t read my book.
Ari: [chuckles] I can definitely tell that. The reason I only wanted to interview you on this topic is because I’ve listened to at least a dozen or so interviews with other people on this subject, and I have been very disappointed in the amount of pseudoscience that is being promoted from a lot of people talking on the subject of EMS. There’s a lot of woo woo wackiness, a lot of people who don’t seem to be very scientifically literate or well-read on the research on the subject.
I could tell that very easily because I’ve read your book and I would start to listen to these people and go, “I actually feel I could explain this a lot better and speak to the research a lot better than these people who are claiming to be experts on the subject.” You are clearly a cut above in terms of your knowledge, it’s amazing to listen to you. I’ve really enjoyed this. Let me ask you– [crosstalk] Sorry, go ahead.
Dr. Pawluk: Let me speak to this point about what you’re just saying.
Ari: Please.
Dr. Pawluk: The problem is that if your only tool is a hammer, you see every problem as a nail, right? One tool, all the pegs, you got one hole in your board, all the pegs got to fit in that hole. Now, over the years, I have accumulated a lot of different devices. I’ve tested and used. I don’t recommend anything to anybody that I haven’t tested and used myself.
At drpawluk.com, we have a lot of different choices. I do consultations with people, especially people who are sicker and have significant health issues to get the right equipment in their hands. Then they need to be explained how to use it in the right ways, understanding physiology, understanding anatomy, understanding pathology, understanding disease, understanding how the body heals. When you do that, then people are going to get much better results.
Ari: Yes, absolutely.
Dr. Pawluk: They’re going to stick with their equipment. Again, drpawluk.com, you can find out a lot more about this sort of thing. You really want to learn even more that are deeper than obviously the book.
Ari: Yes. I have two more questions for you. One is going to be a follow-up on what you just said. Before we go there, are there any other technologies, any other modalities that you feel are especially good to pair with post-electromagnetic fields?
Dr. Pawluk: Over the years, have tried so many different things because I’m always looking for a solution. I was looking for the next thing that you could do that’s going to give me another edge. I discovered over the years that from a value perspective, for the money that you invest, you’re better off owning your own equipment, and then you’ve got to know how to use it properly. What happens then is that laser has a value, ultrasound has a value, infrared has a value, red light has a value, ozone has a value, marijuana has a value, all these things have their values, but for the money spent magnetic field therapy does so much more.
You can go to a doctor’s office and get treatments, and that’s okay. That’s appropriate at certain times where it’s the best by going to a doctor’s offices, for an acute problem, something that’s going to resolve quickly. For example, if you have surgery and you have to heal your wound, you know it’s going to heal on its own, probably no matter what, but you can heal a lot faster using magnetic field therapy. In that circumstance is a short course of treatments and you’re done. If you have horrible back pain, you have spinal stenosis, you’re bone on bone in your knees or your hips, this is a lifer.
This is a lifetime problem unless you have a joint replacement. That means that you’re going to need to do magnetic field therapy on a daily basis at least once or twice a day. Even for aging purposes, for anti-aging, how many times a day do you need to do treatment?
Ari: I would guess at least once.
Dr. Pawluk: Aging never sleeps, so I recommend twice a day. First thing in the morning to clear out the cobwebs from the night before and then at the end of the day to clear out the stress of the day out of your body. Any even good day is a stress day, so obviously, a bad day, having a car accident or falling down or having an argument with somebody, that could be a more stressful day and then you certainly need the help but every single day you stress, no matter what. At the end of the day you’re balancing everything back out again. Now, if you have health issues on top of all that, then you need even more time and attention with the magnetic fields.
Ari: Yes, got it. I have to say I want to get you recommendations for specific devices. I got this which is one of the key devices that you recommend, the FlexPulse, and I’ve been using it for a while now and I’ve used it for a number of things. I’ve used it for some neck strain as I’ve been traveling round with my family, staying in different Airbnbs. I’ve been in lots of different workstations and depending on the ergonomics of my desk situation, my computer situation, oftentimes I get neck problems and my traps and a little neck strains and other things going on or my mid-back.
I had one day where I had a random toothache which is something that almost never happens and my wife had a migraine one day and I had a few little injuries here and there from playing soccer and frisbee with my son. Little ankle strains and things like that. I have been enormously impressed with extremely noticeable effects as far as pain reduction and how fast it speeds the healing of that.
I also want to say just I think it was maybe a month and a half ago, maybe two months ago, my mother who I think she’s 76 or 70– maybe she’s 78 years old now. No, I think 76, she, who’d got a hip replacement just a couple of months ago and this is not an exaggeration at all. This is the actual truth, it’s almost unbelievable to say. I probably wouldn’t believe it if I was hearing it, that she only had to use pain killers, the medication that she was received after a full hip replacement surgery.
She only used two doses of painkillers, two, and after two days had basically zero pain and my mom is not the most pain-tolerant person in the world. She’s not an athlete, she doesn’t have enormous toughness and ability to deal with physical pain or anything like that. She literally had no pain, after a full hip replacement surgery. I was in shock and the reason why– I think the only reasonable explanation is that she was using this FlexPulse pretty much all day.
Dr. Pawluk: Yes, that’s the key right there.
Ari: Yes, right after that hip replacement surgery. I’m absolutely blown away by how effective it is and having come into this whole thing around PMF, like I said earlier with so much skepticism and wariness, I’ve now been converted into pretty much a full believer in the power of this technology to help heal tissues and have all these different benefits that we’ve been talking about but let me ask you, I’m also aware that there seems to be a lot of different devices with a lot of different wacky claims and they all use different technologies and intensities.
I am still very wary of trusting pretty much anyone else’s device except the ones that you’re recommending because I trust that you know all the specific nuances and specifications of these different devices to discern which are good and which are junk. Obviously, you recommend the FlexPulse which is the one you recommended to me and are there any other devices that you recommend? I would also like to request, and I don’t know what your answer to this is going to be because we didn’t talk about it beforehand, but I’m hoping you might be able to offer somewhat of a discount for my listeners.
Dr. Pawluk: We certainly can. We can offer a 10% discount for your listeners-
Ari: Awesome. Thank you for that.
Dr. Pawluk: -but they’re going to have to purchase within the next month and then we need to come up with a coupon code that they could use.
Ari: Okay, let’s do energy blueprint.
Dr. Pawluk: Energy blueprint is fine. Energy blueprint.
Ari: Great.
Dr. Pawluk: Okay, done.
Ari: Wonderful. What specific devices would you recommend and are there distinctions of what problems you’d use for one or another device?
Dr. Pawluk: Well, I’m going to– I didn’t want to do this but I’m going to do it anyway. I’ve got a new book coming out. The book that you’re reading there, The Power Tools for Health book is a more fundamental book and it provides you with a lot of the signs. For those people who want that kind of information, that’s the book to get. Basically, that book is going to be a companion to the new book which is called Supercharge Your Health, [unintelligible 01:15:04] In the supercharge book, we’re talking about you’ve got this problem, what devices should you consider for that problem because there is no single solution to a problem and some things work better than others.
The basic distinctions people have to get is do you want to do local or do you want to do whole body? Do you want to do local? Do you want to treat the chest or do you want to treat the whole body? You need to make those 3 decisions, local, regional or whole body, and we lay out for 80 different health conditions, lay out the magnetic devices that are best for those conditions. I can’t say that this one is better than another. Ideally, you tailor it to what you need. In the long run, if you’re going to make the investment because the flex balls is inexpensive, relatively speaking. It retails at 1,290. All right, now some of the– I have devices that are not quite like the one that [unintelligible 01:16:03] girlfriend used, which is $35,000.
Ari: Wow.
Dr. Pawluk: I have several devices on my website that are $20,000. There are other devices on the website that are like 13,000. They’re higher intensity. The higher the cost typically means the higher the intensity is going to be. Right now as we speak, as we’re working with PMF systems, most of the very high-intensity systems are-they cost over $13,000 are now being, in a sense, over-shadowed by another set of devices that we have from Israel that are high intensity and much lower cost but they’re whole body and local. You could do the whole-body treatment and use local applicators for more specific, faster results.
Intensity matters and that’s an important point that I was making in the power tools for health book. Intensity matters a lot because magnetic fields drop off very rapidly. For example, a 4000-volt-magnetic field, 4 inches away, that magnetic field 4 inches away will be down– 4,000 Gs will be down to 15 Gs.
Ari: Wow.
Dr. Pawluk: If you need 15 Gs, there’s a blog on my website about adenosine, which is not in the Power Tools book and I do describe it in the Supercharge Your Health book. What that blog tells us is that adenosine is critical for insulation of the body and you need 15 Gs optimally to address the adenosine receptor but there are adenosine receptors all over the body. If you need 15 Gs at the skin on your wrist, then what do you need for your heart? What do you need for your brain? [crosstalk]
Ari: Just to clarify that, are you saying exactly 15 Gs or you need at least 15 Gs?
Dr. Pawluk: It’s going to be optimally 15 Gs. If you were less than that then it’s still going to provide some benefit to you but you’re going to have to do longer treatment times.
Ari: What if you’re at 4,000 Gs?
Dr. Pawluk: If you have 4,000 Gs it will work much faster, 20 minutes, 30 minutes.
Ari: It’ll still do the job, it won’t create a–
Dr. Pawluk: 4,000 Gs will, depending on how deep you need to treat. If you’re treating from the front to the back of the brain, the head, how long is the head, front to back? It’s about 9 inches. It’s about 6 inches across. You have to judge the distance where you’re trying to treat and ideally what you want to do is to treat the whole body. If you have a tumor or had a blow to the head that’s right here, it’s very superficial, you don’t need as much intensity but for concussions, you don’t know where the damage is. You need a strong enough magnetic field to go through the whole brain.
The same thing, say for example, a hip is a big joint. If you have to treat the whole hip, then you’re talking about a pretty significant distance front to back for that hip. Again, it could be bigger depending on the person. That blog, the adenosine blog, if you go to drpawluk.com and on the search box to the right side, type in adenosine, it’ll pull up that blog, explain why and there’s a table in there on the intensities you need at the distance you’re trying to treat.
Ari: Got it.
Dr. Pawluk: To optimize that intensity of 15 Gs.
Ari: Maybe if I give some specific scenarios maybe we can break it down a little bit easier. Let’s say, first of all, I’ve got less than $10,000 to spend because most people are going to be in that situation. There’s going to be a subset of people who are wealthy and they don’t mind spending huge chunks of money.
Dr. Pawluk: Quite frankly, these days with the Flash devices, they’re called Flash. There’s Multi Flash, Premium Flash and Ultra Flash. They’re made in Israel. Those are the most cost-effective devices that we have right now.
Ari: Okay. [crosstalk]
Dr. Pawluk: High enough intensity and a very reasonable price.
Ari: Got it. Let’s say I’ve got less than $10,000 to spend. I want to treat whole body, I’m interested in anti-aging longevity and just keeping all of my tissues in tip-top shape. I want to use it every day for anti-aging a whole body device. What specific device would you recommend?
Dr. Pawluk: Several considerations. If you’re very healthy and you just want basic health maintenance, something like a BioBalance could work very well. It’s only 10Gs. What these load tests, these systems are doing, one of the key actions of magnetic fields is to stimulate acupuncture points and meridians. The BioBalance will stimulate all the acupuncture points, meridians in the body. That’ll help to rebalance you. If you have bad arthritis and you want anti-aging, if you’re a performance athlete and you’ve got every performance athlete has all kinds of injuries, there is denial, but they have all kinds of injuries.
Ari: Yes. I’ve been an athlete all my life. I can definitely attest to that.
Dr. Pawluk: You want to just put that aside? I don’t want to admit that I have these problems. If that’s the case, you need higher intensity. With higher intensity, the devices that I would recommend again, are those flash devices. The Multi Flash is about 4,000Gs and you get a whole body pad and then you get a smaller applicator, the pre-local areas. Now, if you have, if you do that, then you have to treat separately because it only allows one applicator at a time. That machine costs you about $5,800, $5,600 for just the two applicators. That’s giving you 4,000Gs. That’s pretty strong.
By comparison to others, there are other low-intensity devices that are available in the market that are $6,000 and you’re getting 1Gs or less. Shall I name names?
Ari: Please, yes, it doesn’t hurt my feelings.
Dr. Pawluk: There’s a whole bunch of them. There’s like the Beamer, the IMRs the QRS, the [unintelligible 01:22:12] there are others that are– oh, I forget some of the [unintelligible 01:22:20], OMI. They’re very popular. They’re very popular because they’re very inexpensive, but again, you’re getting less than a gauss.
Ari: Wow.
Dr. Pawluk: You’re really not doing a whole lot. If you’re treating a problem, it’s not going to do anything for you, but because it helps the acupuncture points [unintelligible 01:22:36] people feel better. They feel good because when you stimulate the acupuncture system, it releases endorphins and enkephalins and you feel good. You haven’t healed anything, but you feel good. For the health maintenance, again, BioBalance is adequate.
There’s another device, also in the Parmeds family of devices that’s about 75Gs for the whole body panel. It’s about 7 times stronger, and it’s only about 35– Only, he says $3,500. It’s got a smaller applicator. That’s about 200Gs, which is still pretty decent. The downside of that machine is it only runs 30 minute cycles. You can’t run it forever. FlexPulse you could run until the battery dies. Most of these devices are time-limited, how long they’ll work for. The Multi Flash is 4,000Gs, premium flash is 7,000Gs, same features as the Multi Flash, but its must stronger magnetic field.
Then you end up at the cat’s meow which is the Ultra Flash. The Ultra Flash is about 8,000Gs, muscle contractions, like very high expense, high-intensity expensive machines do. A full system of that is only he says only, only about $8,300. You’re getting a lot of power there and you have four applicators. You can run two whole body pads at the same time, you could run a whole body pad and a smaller applicator at the same time, creating what we call the magnetic sandwich, or you could use two small applicators at the same time, different parts of the body.
Ari: Got it. Then you have the FlexPulse for treating smaller areas. If someone’s got a neck strain or a tennis elbow or a knee, an ankle sprain or knee pain or something like that, they can.
Dr. Pawluk: Very active people, most of us are very active, we don’t want to be tied to an outlet because all these other pieces of equipment need power from the wall. You’re locked in, you’re plugged in. You have to sit there and do your treatment. If you want– and I do this, a number of people ended up buying, say, something like a Multi Flash, which is reasonably affordable and high enough intensity most of the time, they’ll add a local treatment machine. If you have fatter fasciitis, or if you have a bum knee and your knee is just flared up now and you’ve got lots of things you got to be doing, you can’t be sitting in the house doing a treatment, then you could use your FlexPulse.
Ari: Got it. I have one final question for you. You’ve mentioned the adenosine ATP mechanism. I’m wondering on a big picture level, have you worked with people who are dealing with chronic fatigue and where you’ve experienced, where you’ve seen tremendous improvement using this technology?
Dr. Pawluk: Constantly, there’s a whole field of research that’s coming out now. Most of the research now that’s being done with magnetic field therapies is actually being done usually very high-intensity magnetic fields called RTMS or TMS Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. They’re very high intensity and they treat a whole range of problems like chronic pain. For example, you should be treating the brain as well as where you have your pain because the brain is part of the problem. Now it’s actually part of the problem. These people have what’s called allodynia. Once the brain starts to kick in as part of the pain process, even touching the hairs on the back of your hand can cause pain. The brain is interpreting all, any signals coming from the periphery, even simple signals as potential pain signals. Go back to your question.
Ari: Chronic fatigue.
Dr. Pawluk: Chronic fatigue. Now you got mold toxicities. If you have other environmental toxicities that are poisoning your metabolic cells, metabolic processes in your cells, then yes, mitochondria, mitochondrial disease is a mitochondrial deficiency. Our whole body, all the mitochondria in the body are being affected, but where are the most common mitochondria–[crosstalk]
Ari: Sorry, repeat your question. Where we have the most– [crosstalk]
Dr. Pawluk: What mitochondria are the most needed and are the most active in the body?
Ari: We have the highest density of them in the brain and heart.
Dr. Pawluk: Brain and heart and muscles. When we’re using our muscles, muscles need the mitochondria to be functioning and you need the ATP. If it’s basic, whole body, then you need whole body ATP, but there’s a problem with ATP. We produce our body weight in ATP every day. Every ATP molecule in the body recycles about 200 to 500 times a day. Every molecule. We’re constantly recycling. When you’re doing magnetic field therapy, you’ll feel really great for a while. Then it falls off, depending on what your supply of ATP is already. If it’s already a really, really, really deficient, you’re going to need a lot more work to get yourself up, but again, you still have to deal with the cause as much as you possibly can.
Chronic inflammation, autoimmune diseases are some of the major causes of chronic fatigue. Again, they cause peripheral muscle problems because of all the inflammation in the body, but they also, chronic inflammation dramatically affects the brain. People who are significantly overweight are producing a lot of cytokines. They’re producing a lot of inflammation in their belly fat. Where do those cytokines go? The brain. You have to treat the brain if you have to quiet down the cytokines in the belt and the body, which then quiets it down in the brain.
Ari: Very, very interesting. In your experience, you’ve worked with chronic fatigue patients and seen big improvements.
Dr. Pawluk: Yes, so chronic fatigue patients are one of those groups of patients that you have to go really low and slow because they don’t have the reserves to deal with adding more stimuli, more stress to the body. You have to do repair work. You have to gradually decrease the inflammation in the body until finally– and ultimately you know that you’ve arrived when you’ve used the highest intensities for the longest time without a problem. It’s like training. Once you get to that peak, you’re there. What do you need to do to maintain? That could be a very, very, very slow road to get there.
What happens in my experience has been the people who do pulse systems, pulse devices, even though they’re more powerful if you control the process of increasing the intensity at the time, you do that right, you should repair it faster. The frequencies, the frequency-based devices– people are preoccupied with frequencies because the internet is loaded with that. You’ve talked about rife and micro frequency-specific micro-currents, and all of these– people talk about frequency. With too many frequencies, the body becomes jangled. The nervous system just becomes too overwhelmed.
The simpler you can keep it, if you just basically do a pulse with the energy field, goes through the body without jangling things, then you produce better results faster, generally.
Ari: Awesome. Dr. Pawluk, this has been so fun, so insightful. I really, really enjoyed doing this interview with you. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with my audience. Your website where people can go to get these devices. They can get them right on the website, right?
Dr. Pawluk: They can get them on drpawluk.com.
Ari: It’s spelled D-R-P-A-W-L-U-K, correct?
Dr. Pawluk: Yes, dot com. It’s like Paw and luck, but luck without the C.
Ari: Okay, perfect. Thank you so much, Dr. Pawluk. I really, really enjoyed it.
Dr. Pawluk: My pleasure.
Ari: I hope that we can do another one soon. Maybe when your new book comes up.
Dr. Pawluk: I hope so too.
Ari: Wonderful.
Dr. Pawluk: You certainly might want to after the new book comes out in the late fall.
Ari: Wonderful. To everybody listening, highly recommend grabbing one of these devices if you can afford it. Get one of the big fancy ones that he talked about. I can tell you the cheapest one they offer in the FlexPulse has been enormously beneficial for me and my mother. Even these don’t feel like you have to get the $10,000 device in order to get any benefits from this. You can absolutely get amazing benefits from the lower price unit of the FlexPulse. I highly endorse it personally and I can tell you my mom definitely endorses it [chuckles] given the results she’s had.
Dr. Pawluk, I thank you again so much. Hope you guys, everybody listening I hope you enjoyed this and I will see you again very soon.
Show Notes
What is PEMF? (02:19)
How PEMFs may affect different health problems (16:35)
How PEMF differs from EMF (19:28)
Potential risks of using PEMFs (47:14)
How frequency affects your health (54:16)
