EMF Exposure and Fragility

Diagnosing the Impacts of Radiation on our Physical and Emotional Well-being

Background

Years ago, back in 2008 to be exact, I began finding an explosion of alarming sensations on the radial pulse of many of my patients. And, in particular, it was in the younger population, pre-teens, teenagers and patients up to roughly 40 years of age. Specifically, I was finding significant Ropy pulses and a quality we now refer to as Leather-Hard. Of the roughly 90 pulse qualities and sensations within the Shen-Hammer pulse lineage, Ropy was generally confined to the elderly and those engaged in long-term aerobic exercises, and the Leather-Hard was never found in kids. Thus, my interest was piqued and I knew this trend was significant. Below is an image of the Ropy pulse from my text book: Heart Shock, Diagnosis and Treatment of Trauma with Shen-Hammer and Classical Chinese Medicine.

Heart Shock text

Ropy pulse: Reproduced with permission from Eastland Press

Leather-Hard and Ropy: Inflammation, Dryness, Toxicity

Leather-Hard is difficult to illustrate as it refers to the Hardness and Tension of the vessel wall, but often it is a further development and advancement that builds on the Ropy pulse. It is super important to understand the impact of what a Ropy pulse reveals. Ropy is a reflection of long-term inflammation in the vessels (and blood), wherein the heat/inflammation begins to cook the blood, making it more viscous and dense/thick. The vessel walls of course rely upon the moisture of the blood to keep it supple and elastic, and the heat from the inflammation dries out the blood making less nutrition/nourishment available for the vessels, and also, in and of itself, dries out the vessel wall. This vulcanization creates what western medicine would call atherosclerosis.

In Chinese medicine pulse diagnosis terms we see multiple effects: (1) blood deficiency (diminished volume of blood as the heat consumes it); (2) yin deficiency (decreased moisture content, which also points to a hormonal deficiency as hormones are reliant on, and essentially are, fluids); (3) heat/inflammation (which damages the qi-energy, and also sets the stage for multiple cascades of diseases and disorders related thereto); (4) blood stagnation (blood becomes harder to move as the blood gets thicker and more viscous; (5) stagnation of other elements due to the increased viscosity which creates ‘stickiness,’ eg, allowing for the aggregation of plaques/cholesterol, etc; (6) increases in calcium buildup (inflammation is acidic and the body’s response is to leech calcium from the bones into the blood to alkalize it); (7) taxation on the heart due to its need to propel thicker more viscous blood, and blood that is stagnating (potentially clotting) with increased plaque/cholesterol and calcium buildups; and a host of other downstream effects.

Now, the Leather-Hard pulse reflects a state beyond, where all of the foregoing processes are taking place behind the scenes, and an additional element of dryness toxicity emerges. Imagine a wet sponge that has been sitting out in the blazing sun as it dries and dries until it becomes smaller in size and eventually hard and brittle. This is what is happening to our vessels from radiation toxicity. Radiation is a heat source; it has the impact and effect of burning the internal landscape and terrain. It is especially problematic as our physiological landscape contains by most accounts at least 70% water. Water is required for all of our phsyiological activities and a diminishment therein will have significant impacts on our health. And this is exactly what I was seeing in my patients. Weird chronic debilitating curious diseases and signs and symptoms that patients would complain about, and that western medicine had found no diagnoses or explanations for. Back in 2009 I published a paper alerting the medical community about this troubling trend called The Pulse, The Electronic Age and Radiation: Early Detection. You can access it here:

The Pulse, The Electronic Age and Radiation: Early Detection

Choppy: Blood Stagnation and Toxicity

Importantly contemporaneous to the Leather-Hard and Ropy qualities we often see the Choppy quality. Choppy is the pulse quality associated to, and diagnostic of, blood stagnation in the tissues. You can see the graphic of Choppy that is excerpted from my book here:

Choppy pulse: Reproduced with permission from Eastland Press

The Choppy quality when found in individual pulse postions/anatomical areas is associated to blood being stagnant in those associated areas. When found over the entire pulse it is a sign of toxicity (toxins have the impact of stagnating the blood circulation, impacting oxygenation, creating waste products that cannot be excreted, etc.). This is significant in and of itself, but combined with the Ropy and Leather-Hard qualities, it represents a significant toxic overload and an inability to engage in proper physiological functioning. This is a scenario ripe for significant debilitating and life threatening illnesses.

Fragility

So, clearly we can see how this can create fragility in our overall health picture from a physiological perspective. But, it also creates fragility in our emotional and psychological lives as well.

What we are looking at essentially is friability in our boundaries. In Chinese medicine, besides the regular anatomical organs, we also catalogue the Curious Organs, some of which include the vessels, the bones, the brain, etc. The Curious organs have significant roles physiologically, and also from an evolutionary perspective. Physiologically, we can see the impact of structure (bones), circulation and nourishment (vessels) and mental-emotional-phsysiological regulatory functions (brain/nervous system).

The brain and nervous system are very much related to our emotional and psychological health. The nervous system is intimately connected to the mind and the Heart from a Chinese medical point of view, and from the Shen-Hammer lineage, the integrity of the nervous system is one of the most important factors in understanding whether a stress (something that disturbs homeostasis) will have physical or mental-emotional implications. If the nervous system is strong, the stress will be somatized creating physical symptoms. If weak, one is more likely to experience mental-emotional-psychological symptoms.

So, what does this have to do with the Leather-Hard pulse? Our nervous systems are in many respects a front-line defense mediating, amongst other things, our relationships to the external environment. The constant onslaught of stress weakens the integrity of said nervous system, and due to its intimate relationship to the mind, creates demand and triggers a response from our psychological well-being and homeostasis. With a constant barrage of insults, nervous system integrity degrades and becomes weaker if the internal landscape is not well equipped with adequate resources to meet the ever present demands on it. We’ve already detailed above how the Ropy and Leather-Hard pulses are a direct reflection of significant diminishment of said resources. Thus, once these qualities are emerge, we are woefully ill-equipped to handle the demands being placed upon us: physically and emotionally.

Take a a look at this short clip below from one of my recent talks on stress and homeostasis:

Leather-Hard results most often from radiation. Prior to 2008 this quality was only seen in cancer patients who had undergone radiation therapy, and that quality was confined to the local anatomical area of the treatment site. Now, we are seeing wide swaths of the population presenting with Leather-Hard pulses systemically, meaning found over their entire pulses, eg radiation toxicity. Children, in particular, are the most vulnerable to this assault because their exposures to radiation are consistent and constant these days. Children are born into a world where they cannot escape Wifi, cell phones, cell towers, smart homes etc. etc. It is no wonder that the fragility of children in the current era is commonly remarked upon. One can simply take a look at statistics of mental-emotional conditions like anxiety and depression, or the significant increases in suicide and suicidal ideations over the past decade in children; the exponential increase is staggering and sobering. Their nervous systems are being bombarded 24/7 before they even have a chance to develop or mature. And, over the years, the radiation has become more and more ubiquitous, more intense, with smaller and smaller waveforms of increased densities.

Now what?

This all leaves us in an on-going scenario wherein our boundaries are permeable and our defenses are down. In future posts I will discuss other mechanisms at play in weakening our nervous systems, and also strategies for protecting and rehabilitating it in the wake of this constant challenge and exposure to toxic radiation.