Editor’s note: This article has been reprinted. Originally published May 28, 2023.
This interview was recorded at the Academy of Comprehensive Integrative Medicine (ACIM) Annual Convention in Orlando, Florida in November 2018, but was only published on the site last year. At the time, there were concerns that the topic was too controversial, but now that six years have passed and COVID-19 has changed the landscape of controversy, we thought it would be a good idea to release a video on this important topic.
I spoke to two experts on autism and dirty electricity: Peter Sullivan, who co-authored “The Autism Revolution: Whole-Body Strategies for Making Life It Can Be,” and Dr. I had the opportunity to interview Martha Herbert.1 Here we discuss some of the toxic factors that contribute to the development of autism, particularly the role of electromagnetic frequencies (EMFs) and dirty electricity.
Sullivan’s Journey
Sullivan struggled with electromagnetic hypersensitivity, and still does to some extent. This was his main motivation to learn more about electromagnetic hypersensitivity. As a result, he became a source of knowledge. He worked as a software engineer in Silicon Valley in the 1990s and had a great passion for personal technology.
“I studied at Stanford. I worked on all kinds of interactions between humans and computers. I worked at several companies. I worked as a problem solver, engineer, and software designer in Silicon Valley. I worked at Netflix and other companies that people know.” he says
The problem began to take root in the early 2000s. Fatigue and food allergies developed, and his children were struggling with developmental delays. He eventually realized he had toxic levels of mercury in his body.
“I eventually quit my job around 2005. I said it made no sense to have two people in my family working when all this was going on. I was focusing on my kids’ health and my health, and I had the time and energy to really dive in and find out what was out there in the world.
I had a great doctor, Dr. Raj Patel. He was an integrative doctor who talked about candida overgrowth, mercury and all that stuff. He guided us on the right path. In the end, the children gradually got better, but they didn’t get better even after detox. I got worse and worse.
I got down to 131 pounds. I became electrically sensitive. My brain kept saying ‘everything is safe and well tested’. I love technology.’ But my body was reacting like something was really wrong. I was holding myself back from just throwing away my phone. “When I connected my phone, it felt like a cell phone and a transformer.”
He eventually learned about dirty electricity and began addressing his exposure, regaining 10 pounds of weight along with his health within a few months. Today, he is passionate about sharing information about the dangers of EMF and dirty electricity, and how to address electromagnetic hypersensitivity.
“We’re just trying to share information, make the field credible, and make sure people don’t suffer,” he says.
He has also created an EMF-free tent to take to various seminars and conferences where people can sit. This is because many of these events are held in locations exposed to very high amounts of EMF. He also funded some of Herbert’s research.
Herbert’s Story
I first met Herbert in 2009 at a Cure Autism Now event (now Autism Speaks). Herbert’s two children struggled with symptoms of autism as children. Today they are both grown and fully recovered. She initially focused on mercury toxicity, exploring non-invasive testing methods for toxic metals.
A lifelong environmental activist, Herbert earned his doctorate and then went to medical school. He majored in the history of consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specialized in pediatric neurology and got into autism research after inheriting magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans from the first MRI study conducted on autistic children in 1989.
“I was one of the first people to identify white matter abnormalities in autism through brain imaging rather than gray tissue.” Herbert says: “It really violated the paradigm that behavior comes from the cortex. I was already kind of a telegrapher. I was seeing patients.”
(Several of them) had rare neurogenetic diseases for which they were trained in pediatric neurology. But everyone was suffering from diarrhea and eczema and couldn’t sleep. It was almost similar to primary care in neuropsychiatry. That’s where I move on to a full body approach.
I became enlightened in 1999. The idea is that everything you see in the patient can actually be connected to the environment. I started organizing and figuring out that this was actually a systems (biology) approach to these conditions.”
Systems biology approach to autism
Systems biology views everything in biology as a web, where everything is connected to everything else. Pulling on one part of the web changes the rest of the web. In conventional science, individual components and variables are studied separately. This is how clinical studies are designed.
“We’re looking for the disease in its purest form, but most of the time it’s confusing in these conditions we’re talking about.” Herbert says: “Everyone has different (symptoms), some of which are more pronounced than others. Early on in identifying autism as a systems problem, I was looking at specific language problems or developmental language disorders.
But if you look at these people carefully, there is a coordination problem. We see a subtle breakdown in the brain’s precision and fine-tuning. Finally… I found a great article about the brain’s networks being messed up by mental illness (not just autism, but schizophrenia, depression, etc.).
The hubs of these networks have very high gamma frequencies… These gamma frequencies were found to be driven by very high energy demanding mitochondrial core cells…
We now have enough research to show that the metabolic activity occurring in the brain corresponds to the networks occurring in the brain. “In some of these cases, the rate of network dysfunction appears to be proportional to the amount of mitochondrial dysfunction.”
Transcend Research Program
Herbert created a brain research program at Harvard called TRANSCEND.2 (Treatment, Research, and Neuroscience Evaluation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders). They use MRI, magnetoencephalography (MEG), and electroencephalography (EEG). MEG measures the brain’s magnetic activity, while EEG measures electrical activity.
“When there is electrical activity, the magnetic field is at 90 degrees. They measure the same thing, but in a somewhat different way,” explains Herbert. Her hypothesis is that autism is not innate. It develops in response to environmental factors.
“To study that, I started studying babies when they were in the womb. We took biological samples from the mothers. We took biological samples at birth, and then we took biological samples from the babies until the mothers stopped breastfeeding, and we used EEG and autonomic… wrist bands to see how the condition worsened in children who developed autism.
What we discovered could be interpreted in many different ways. We are working to publish this. We use EEG data from two-week-old babies to predict outcomes at 13 months.
Now, I think autism is something you develop. It sounds like you’re born with it, but that doesn’t mean you have autism. The way I think about it is, is their brain really getting excited and irritated? So what is likely to happen (in the initial environment) is very important.”
A Whole Body Health Approach Can Minimize Autism Risk
Using this early predictive power, a small number of primary care pediatricians are beginning to implement a whole-body approach to parents and children, showing that once systemic lifestyle modifications, such as avoidance of toxins and allergens, are implemented, very few of these predisposed babies actually develop autism.
“What we need are public health interventions that teach people how to stay healthy before conception, through pregnancy and through infancy. If you get an EEG that says your brain is hyperactive, you don’t want to use drugs. You want to do things that are safe and healthy because (drugs and toxins) are the problem in the first place.” Herbert says:
There are many anecdotes from families with autistic children who say EMFs are causing problems, and Herbert and Sullivan are working to set up an online database to collect this data.
“It is said that reducing the Wi-Fi connection significantly reduces the symptoms. A child I know was irritating like crazy. He liked stimulating next to the dishwasher. Well, I guess there was dirty electricity in this dishwasher. I fixed it and his symptoms improved a lot.” Herbert says:
Common Risk Factors
Essentially, Herbert believes that autism can be predicted by observing a child’s level of brain irritability. But what causes this kind of hypersensitivity? Sullivan believes mercury, EMF and glyphosate are the three main triggers, even more so than vaccines.
Herbert believes processed foods are another major culprit. “Simply reducing allergens in a mother’s diet from before conception through pregnancy is a really big deal,” says Herbert. That is, what really matters is the total load, not the specific elements.
“There are 10,000 ways to damage your mitochondria. They all add up. All of these seemingly innocuous exposures add to the pile, so they’re all important,” she says. Sullivan created a video lecture and booklet called “Improving Autism and Simplifying Recovery.”3,4 This includes a list of suspects for parents to consider.
One of the biggest problems that few people consider is the new mutations caused by sperm exposure to wireless radiation from cell phones and laptops. Men who want to have healthy children are advised not to put their cell phones in their pants pockets while they are turned on. This is because cell phone radiation can cause mutations in sperm genes. If you want to keep it in your pocket, make sure it’s turned off or in airplane mode.
Herbert is currently enrolling patients in the Child Health Inventory for Resilience and Prevention (CHIRP) study, which will collect information on the associations between environmental stressors and exposures and the total burden of chronic disease in children. You can apply if you have children between the ages of 1 and 15.5 By completing two pre-screening questionnaires to determine your eligibility.
Most parents start therapy for the wrong reasons.
Herbert and Sullivan have worked with children with autism and have been advising parents for a long time. What are some common mistakes people make? Sullivan responds:
“People assume it’s something wrong with the child. They jump in and start treating the child. They assume it’s genetic or whatever, and they’re doing behavioral therapy. If I could do it over again, I’d start with the environment. I’d start with EMF, especially at night.
We turn off the baby monitor, wireless phone base station, Wi-Fi, and sometimes even the circuit breakers in the bedroom. Wired baby monitors are safe. Plug everything into a power strip. Place the strip into the wall. Just take out the power strip when you go to bed. Try connecting again in the morning. It’s not difficult. Or try setting a timer.
I would say that not only the kids but the whole family is overloaded. There is (a lot) work to be done (to clean up the environment). The key is in order. Do the easiest thing that will have the biggest impact.
That’s why we start with EMF. Because once you cut back on that, you start sleeping better and feel more capable. You want to build the capacity of the spiral. You begin your upward spiral…
Martin Paul’s Papers6 Research on the neuropsychological effects of microwaves and EMFs shows that this is a big factor, as is sleep. Because sleep and (lowering) inflammation are fundamental to good mental health.”
Additional information
For more information about autism and wireless radiation, how EMFs affect sleep, EMF meter recommendations, and EMF safety tips, visit Sullivan’s website at ClearLightVentures.com. On Herbert’s site, drmarthaherbert.com, you’ll find information on how to improve your overall health and lower the stress burden on your body for a healthy pregnancy and baby.
