In preparation for travel I stopped by a local electronics store to purchase a DC charger for our cellular telephone. “What’s that?” the salesman asked, referring to the blue button on my phone.

“A microwave absorber,” I replied.

“It doesn’t do anything,” he whispered as he lowered his six foot two inch frame toward my ear. “You wasted your money.”

“Oh really,” I responded, prepared to challenge his confident assertion that cell phone users need not fall victim to the purveyors of useless gadgets purported to safeguard them from dangers that do not exist.

He was taller and much stronger than I. When I called his cell phone and had him hold it up to his ear, however, he immediately became weak and could not resist my feeble attempt to lower his outstretched arm. Shock turned to incredulousness as we traded phones and he found that as he held the phone with the useless device to his ear he remained perfectly strong. He was still shaking his head as I walked out of the store with my purchase.

The salesman, like so many others before him, had fallen victim to the reassurance of statisticians. He had read or been told that studies “prove” that cell phone usage has no effect upon the human body, and he had chosen to do what people have done throughout history: He chose to discount and ridicule that which he did not understand.

I have spent most of my adult life reading scientific studies. I understand the value of putting a hypothesis to the test. Studies can be very useful when an issue is in doubt. Statistics, however, should never be used to replace logic and good judgment.

My experience with the electronics salesman is an excellent example. Cellular telephones operate by sending and receiving microwaves. Statistical studies do not show an increase in brain tumors among cell phone users at this time. Based on these statistics most people assume that cellular telephone usage has no adverse effect on health.

Logic and good judgment suggest otherwise. Microwaves excite water and in so doing create heat. The human brain is nearly 90 % water. Anyone who watches for the phenomenon will notice the ear and side of the head becoming warm while talking on a cellular phone. Logic, therefore, suggests that using a cell phone is very much like placing one’s head in a microwave oven and pressing Cook. Statistical analyses aside, good judgment dictates that microwaving one’s brain is not conducive to optimum health.

I understand the young salesman’s attitude. For years I also discounted the possibility that homeopathic remedies, crystals, magnets or other bioenergetic therapies could be of any benefit. There appeared to be no “scientific” rational that could explain their effectiveness.

One of my favorite quotes comes from John Wooden, who guided UCLA’s basketball program to a level of excellence that has not been duplicated. One of his tenets was, “It’s what you learn after you know it all that really counts.” I have certainly found that to be the case, and now constantly practice approaching life with what might be called a “beginner’s mind” always seeking to discover things that I don’t know that I don’t know.

Several years ago I discovered that I knew little, if anything, about how the body is designed energetically and how it interacts with the environment surrounding it. I had been taught anatomy, physiology, microbiology and biochemistry in medical school, but I had learned nothing about biophysics except that brain waves could be recorded by means of an electroencephalogram (EEG) and that the electrical impulses controlling the rhythm of the heart could be traced on an electrocardiogram (ECG). I subsequently learned that the body’s magnetic characteristics could be exploited to obtain detailed pictures of the brain and other internal structures through the use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines, but I still knew nothing of how the electromagnetic nature of the body affects health and well-being. I have since discovered that bioenergetic issues are integral pieces in the puzzle of what creates and maintains optimum wellness.

If the body were not bioelectrical it would be impossible to do electrocardiograms, electroencephalograms and electromyelograms. If it were not for the magnetic character of the body doctors would not be performing magnetic resonance images.

In the natural world energy is constantly moving toward a state of equilibrium, or balance. Lightening, for example, consists simply of electrical charges moving from a high energy area (cloud banks) to a low energy area (the ground). Therefore, as electromagnetic entities, we are either gaining energy from or losing energy to the electromagnetic field that surrounds us.

Science moves slowly from theory to discovery to practical application. It has been nearly a century since German scientist Albert Einstein advanced his theory of relativity, which he proved in 1919 by having observers photography the position of the stars during an eclipse of the sun. A comparison of the position of the stars to their nocturnal location showed the changes Einstein had predicted due to the gravitational effect of the sun on the light coming from the distant stars.

Einstein’s work was rejected by the Nazi regime as corrupt Jewish science, inferior to pure Arian science. Einstein fled to the United States, where he continued his work, laying the foundation for quantum physics and the nuclear age.

The fact that matter contains an incredible amount of energy (E=mc²) is perhaps most clearly demonstrated by the atomic bomb. The energy contained in a few teaspoons of uranium leveled the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, yet those bombs were but primitive prototypes of today’s nuclear weapons.

Today, some physicists and mathematicians are recognizing that Einstein’s equation, in its more complete form, explains much about the body’s magnetic character and the energetic phenomena that direct the healing process. Sin-Itiro Tomonaga’s pioneering work on electron spin and its relationship to magnetic resonance and relativity also is contributing greatly to the understanding of the energetic body and its interaction with the environment.

Much is yet to be learned, but it appears that the spin velocity of electrons and subatomic particles is a key factor in energetic issues. Living substances, including the human body, are designed with a counterclockwise electron spin. As velocity decreases the spin changes from counterclockwise to clockwise. The body must then provide energy to convert the spin back to the proper direction.

In the June 2000 issue of Health By Design I wrote about the irregularity of the earth’s electromagnetic field and how this phenomenon, referred to as geopathic stress, adversely affects human health. Over the past two years I have had the opportunity to visit the homes and often workplaces of many individuals with serious health challenges. I have not yet found an individual with cancer, chronic fatigue, chronic viral infection or fibromyalgia who is not sleeping or working in an area where the surrounding electromagnetic energy is below the level required to support life.

Add the effects of computer monitors, video games, cellular telephones, clock radios, and the endless number of other devices that have become part of our daily lives and the wonder is not that some people become ill – the wonder is that we are able to survive at all!

Fortunately, as energetic mechanisms have become better understood, practical applications have followed. The ability to energize drinking water, for example, has provided a way for individuals to provide a continuous source of natural energy to the body throughout the day. Silicon dioxide matrices are now being manufactured that organize and amplify the electromagnetic energy reaching the body, protecting it from energy drains.

Individuals interested in restoring and maintaining their health can no longer ignore energy issues. Reversing an energy drain may not in itself result in healing, but it does provide a sound foundation upon which to build. When the body’s energy is sufficient, when essential nutrients are provided, and when one is at peace with God and other people miracles can and do occur.