Why ALS is an electrical illness
Mitochondria | Neurons | How statins impair nerve signaling
Here’s what we’ll learn in this article:
2. Why is ALS increasing in non-athletes and everyday adults?
3. How does EMF affect our immune system?
4. How are our mitochondria controlled by voltage?
5. How circadian rhythms control the death of neurons
6. What is the “glue” of our nervous system?
7. How POMC and UV helps us counter neuroinflammation
8. Can statins cause ALS?
Has anyone noticed a trend in the amount of middle-aged adults in wheelchairs?
I certainly have noticed an uptick, which inspired me to write this article.
Often called Lou Gehrig's disease, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is characterized by progressive degeneration of nerve cells in the spinal cord and brain. ALS is a fatal type of motor neuron disease, where a person eventually loses their ability to breathe, suffocating to death.
Here are some statistics:
Every 90 minutes someone is diagnosed and passes from ALS
90% of cases occur without a family history
Onset is usually between the ages of 40 & 70 years
Life expectancy is 2 to 4 years
By 2040 ALS incidence is predicted to increase worldwide by 70%1
Veterans are twice as likely to develop ALS
Most of the medical community is baffled with this disease. As with many other neurodegenerative illnesses like Parksinson’s or Alzheimer’s, there is officially no known cause, and no known cure.
Fortunately there are many clues we can ask in the form of questions.
Why are veterans and athletes most susceptible?
Many athletes such as the football player Steve Gleason, and combat veterans, often have head trauma. When injuries like these happen, damage to nerves occur, which can increase permeability of the blood-spinal cord barrier2, allowing more environmental toxins to enter.
Why the sudden increase in ALS in non-veterans and non-athletes?
Traumas can come in the form of front end collisions, or any wound that is continuously incurred. Most adults experience a different type of head trauma as they persistently irradiate their eyes, brain, and thyroid with the cell phones. Our central nervous system is consistently in close proximity to this form of biologically-damaging frequency.
If you google “is non-ionizing radiation harmful?”, you’ll get a reply saying that cell phones are generally regarded as safe. However this statement is based on acute exposure, and the heating of skin tissue (thermal government safety limits), not on chronic exposure to biological effects. As far back as 1960, neuroscientist Allan Frey, then with Cornell University’s General Electric Advanced Electronics Center, showed that even weak electromagnetic fields can open up the blood-brain barrier. 3 4
How could this trauma then go on to cause ALS?
Our electrical immune system
Low levels of EMF release large amounts of MCP-1, a key protein that acts like a “traffic cop” (thank you Jack Kruse for that analogy) for our immune system, controlling how many white blood cells will be able to cross the road, so that we can combat inflammation. However, when we have too high of a level of MCP-15 by being exposed to EMF, this can disrupt6 our repair mechanism.
Too many artificial electromagnetic frequencies create confusion, as we have too many MCP traffic cops on patrol - giving our immune system mixed signals:
You may be asking, how is a cell phone capable of doing this?
Voltage controls our mitochondria
If you’ve ever gotten an electroencephalogram (EEG), you know that our brain’s health can be assessed by measuring miniscule electrical signals. Our motor neurons, which are impaired in ALS, have more mitochondria than our sensory neurons. Our mitochondria are our bodies’ factories of life, and produce the energy molecule ATP, which also helps stabilize proteins. Think of it this way: If you pour corn oil into your car’s fuel tank rather than use corn ethanol, you’d have an unstable protein and fuel source. What would cause our mitochondria to not be able to produce enough ATP?
It turns out that our mitochondria are also controlled by voltage7 e.g. EMF. Our mitochondria contain what are known as voltage-dependent anion channels (VDAC). When exposed to EMF, VDACs reduce the ATP available for our nervous system to use.
Our mitochondrial membrane also controls how much calcium gets in and out of our cells. Calcium ions initiate and regulate responses of central nervous tissues to injury. However, the amount of calcium our mitochondria need can also be altered when EMFs can disrupt our voltage-gated calcium channels.8
For more info on the relationship between calcium and EMF, check out this guest post by The Minerals Professor:
The first steps to creating a sleep sanctuary
Our bodies heal and regenerate while we sleep in two ways - using the Earth’s restorative magnetic field, paired with the absence of light. No matter what type of damage we may do to our bodies during the day, we always have a chance to repair at night. While some of you may think of yourselves as night owls, ultimately we’re all a diurnal species. The rhythms of health follow the frequency of light and dark.
Even though many of us don’t have the necessary healing architecture of a sleep sanctuary free of artificial EMF, we can still drastically improve our ability to repair by removing artificial light at night. We’ll recap some basic tactics we can all employ toward the end of the article.
First - how can a modern light environment alter one’s outcome with ALS?
What we do reverberates in eternity
Rev-erbα, is a nuclear transcription factor that is part of our molecular clock, which encodes circadian rhythms. Put another way, Rev-erbα translates what our DNA ultimately tells our bodies’ nervous, immune, and hormonal systems on how to function by expressing certain genes.
How can express our genes to optimize our health?
By syncing their “notes” to the melodies of visible sunlight while tuning out discordant invisible light. When expressed correctly, Rev-erbα can effectively regulate inflammatory and immune responses through apoptosis, which destroys cells our bodies no longer need.
“Circadian disruption in the anterior motor neurons causes a paralysis like effect that we normally see in REM sleep. In ALS, the circadian disruption shows up when we’re awake and it has gone unrecognized as a completely disrupted rhythm disorder.”
~ Jack Kruse
When out of alignment with the natural variability of our light environment, processes like apoptosis run amuck, killing healthy cells and leading to the atrophy of motor neurons as well as a loss of communication to other brain cells called astrocytes.9
The Glial Glue of our Neuroimmune System
Astrocytes make up the majority of cells in the human central nervous system (CNS), and perform metabolic, structural, homeostatic, and neuroprotective tasks such as clearing excess neurotransmitters, stabilizing and regulating the blood-brain barrier, and promoting synapse formation.10
Microglia are our brain’s protectors, and facilitate communication of immune cells across our blood-brain barrier so that they can clean up toxins. For example, microglia remove neurons that don’t communicate properly, thus ensuring that information transfer between neurons isn’t interrupted. These also help clean up clumps of abnormally shaped proteins that accumulate and are associated with neurodegenerative diseases.
Rev-erbα acts like the referee of our brain’s immune system, by regulating how many microglia become activated when we have any type of neuroinflammation between the CNS and our gut.
UV builds POMC
When we expose ourselves to AM Sunlight, along with the UV that comes later in the day, we’re able to make a critical protein precursor (makes other proteins) known as POMC.
POMC creates melanin from what are known as neuroectodermal derivates:
Why is this important?
Melanin helps us fight inflammation, along with chronic diseases such as cancer. These neuroectodermal derivatives directly connect to the mitochondria in the brain.
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When we expose ourselves to UV sunlight, our bodies also create nitric oxide.
No - not like the nitrites found in slimy deli meat, or the nitrous oxide used in Fast and Furious.
The miraculous nitric oxide molecule dilates our blood vessels, aids our immune system, and can even increase brain function.11 When we stay indoors too long, our circulation is hampered and we wind up with proteins that are slow down and clog the healthy flow of blood.
Can statins cause ALS?
Not directly - but they can certainly contribute to this disease. Statins work by decreasing cholesterol. However, the synapses (where nerve communication happens) of our nervous system are made mostly of cholesterol!
Cholesterol is required to maintain the health of our myelin sheath, which surrounds and protects neurons. Glial cells in the brain, like the microglia mentioned above, sustain the myelin sheath by synthesizing their own cholesterol and transferring it across to neurons.
The two most widely prescribed statins are simvastatin and atorvastatin. Atorvastatin increases risk for ALS seventeen fold, and simvastatin twenty three fold. There’s even one statin, Lovastatin, that increases the risk for ALS 107 times!12
The chart below is based on a 2018 study published in the Journal Drug Safety. ‘Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Associated with Statin Use A Disproportionality Analysis of the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System:
Doctor Malcolm Kendrick is a Scottish doctor, author, and speaker, who has been investigating the reckless use of statins and the false narrative of cholesterol. Dr. Kendrick made the following point regarding the statin-ALS statistics, which I find notable:
“It is often said that association does not mean causation. However, this is only true up to a point. Most statisticians agree that an odds ratio > 6 represents proof of causation. When you find that people taking atorvastatin have a seventeen-fold increase in risk of ALS, this is proof of causation. The effect is too massive to be due to anything else.”
~ Dr. Malcolm Kendrick
Where do we go from here?
Just as we tear muscle down in the gym during the day, and build it up as we relax and repair, we also can’t get stronger or more resilient to environmental stress by guzzling vitamins or pushing harder. The fastest way to recover is during sleep.
While many of you who have been with us for a while are aware of EMF mitigation tactics, here’s a recap of some very basic steps most of us can take to begin building a regeneration room at night:
✔️ Remove electronics that contain blue light
✔️ Buy translucent red tape and stick over electronics like smoke detectors
✔️ Install blackout blinds
✔️ Turn off Wi-Fi at night
✔️ Turn off power at night
During the waking hours, there are daytime mitigation technologies that can assist with EMF reduction like filters, along with “neutralizers” that often don’t work. We’ll be writing about some of those devices in the near future.
Until then…
👉 P.S. Need help mitigating your EMF environment? Let’s chat!
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Echeverry S, Shi XQ, Rivest S, Zhang J. Peripheral nerve injury alters blood-spinal cord barrier functional and molecular integrity through a selective inflammatory pathway. J Neurosci. 2011 Jul 27;31(30):10819-28. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1642-11.2011. PMID: 21795534; PMCID: PMC6623085.
Magri A., Messina A. Interactions of VDAC with proteins involved in neurodegenerative aggregation: An opportunity for advancement on therapeutic molecules. Curr. Med. Chem. 2017;24:4470–4487. doi: 10.2174/0929867324666170601073920.
Pall ML. Electromagnetic fields act via activation of voltage-gated calcium channels to produce beneficial or adverse effects. J Cell Mol Med. 2013 Aug;17(8):958-65. doi: 10.1111/jcmm.12088. Epub 2013 Jun 26. PMID: 23802593; PMCID: PMC3780531.
Killoy KM, Harlan BA, Pehar M, Vargas MR. NR1D1 downregulation in astrocytes induces a phenotype that is detrimental to cocultured motor neurons. FASEB J. 2022 Apr;36(4):e22262. doi: 10.1096/fj.202101275R. PMID: 35319791; PMCID: PMC9223394.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK545142/
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2018/04/09/statins-and-amyotrophic-lateral-sclerosis/
You’re definitely on target with all this. As a retired veteran who was medically retired partially due to traumatic brain injury, I can attest that all of the sleep hygiene items you listed at the end work, as I had to implement them after I spent 30 days at a TBI clinic trying to figure out what was wrong with me. The big thing with veterans is that we are in environments that are almost always toxic, I spent most of my special operations career operating exclusively at night, and as a JTAC had 2-3 radios attached to my body during operations to control assets, talk to the ground force and other units involved in operations (EMF saturation). Not to mention the crappy food, senseless vaccinations etc. I look back thinking how the heck did I used to do that job… it was toxic. I took a 39mm grenade to the face in 2012 but it wasn’t till 4 deployments later when I was too close to a VBIED going off that the light switch in my head flipped. The straw that broke the camels back… migraines that would make me vomit.. but that was the start of my healing journey… finding Christ, getting sober.. its been a wild ride but its worth the bumps and bruises! Hopefully 🙏 others will take these baby steps on their healing journey.
In the last year we have changed our lightning in our house (no leds) and have red lights in the bedrooms… one small win at a time. Thanks for the well researched article!
Great article! One aspect of darkened sleeping space I've always wondered about is living in the Far North. During summer, when it is light for 24 hours, I've not worried about trying to darken a bedroom. Likewise, when camping. We just learn to shut our eyes and sleep when we're tired, regardless of the light. On occasion, I have used a sleep mask (like the ones you get on international flights). At times, it helps me sleep longer. What is your view on sleeping under natural light vs. trying to black out the light with curtains, etc. (with no other man-made sources of light around)? Thank you!