If you’ve ever wondered why so many people appear unaffected by synthetic field exposure, I think the answer lies not in immunity—but in habituation. This also helps explain why some ‘normal’ people become electrically sensitive (ES) in pristine environments, and why electro-sensitives can sometimes lose and later regain their sensitivity.
By now, the testimony of electro-sensitives is familiar: life was fine—until it wasn’t. Symptoms appeared. Patterns became clear. Synthetic field exposure tracked directly with suffering, and when exposures were reduced, suffering diminished. By rebuilding life around lower exposures, function returned.
My daily work as an EMF consultant has shown me the profound difference between environments that are merely “better than before” and those that are genuinely pristine—and how rare it is for people to be willing or able to do what’s required to reach exposure levels that truly support recovery.
For those who pass through this gauntlet, a central problem emerges: how should this situation be understood? Is electrical sensitivity (ES) an individual weakness—or normal avoidance behavior? If synthetic fields are as harmful as the research implies, and exposures continue to rise, why aren’t many more people affected?
I’m blessed to learn from the afflicted around the world, and from those who serve them with integrity. In 2024, I learned that Shannon Rowan’s partner recognized his own electrical sensitivity only after living for a time in a pristine environment [10], followed by a temporary return to high-exposure surroundings.
A similar pattern emerged several years ago in my own household: my wife remained asymptomatic until after living with me in a truly low-exposure setting. More recently, Christof Plothe, DO described how, after four days of extreme exposure, he temporarily lost his sensitivity—only to regain it, much to his relief, upon returning to a clean environment and finding his warning system intact once again [11].
These three cases—Shanon’s partner, my household experience, and Christof Plothe’s—form the core examples discussed below as Cases 1 through 3.
During my September 2025 interview with Professor Olle Johansson, I adopted his perspective that the general population could be electro-hyposensitive [7], and that what we call EHS may reflect normal avoidance behavior rather than pathology [8].
Then, in November of 2025, during my second interview with Christof Plothe [9], he spoke about habituation—the body’s way of adapting to continuous stimuli, whether environmental or emotional. He gives a simple example: when you encounter a strong scent, pleasant or unpleasant, your nose stops detecting it after a few minutes. The same neurological mechanism keeps us from becoming overstimulated by constant input. Without this built‑in reduction of sensory response, he notes, we’d be overwhelmed—driven to exhaustion by the unceasing flood of information from all our senses.
What these accounts suggest to me is not that some bodies react abnormally, but that prolonged exposure may silence the very signals meant to protect us, while reduced exposure sometimes allows those signals to re-emerge.
Taken together, these helped me begin forming a hypothesis about the true nature of electrical sensitivity (ES). These stories are not presented as proof but as windows into a process that normally goes unpublished. Few people today ever spend enough time in a genuinely low-exposure environment—one quiet enough, electromagnetically—to let the body recover or to clearly sense how exposure affects them.
Case 1
A married couple of thirty years had shared the same homes and daily exposures for decades. The husband first noticed his electrical sensitivity after their home underwent partial remediation. Only after they relocated to a much lower‑exposure environment did the wife—over the course of several months—recognize her own sensitivity, which gradually intensified. Interestingly, she sometimes reacted more strongly and quickly than he did. Their discoveries occurred at different times despite nearly identical circumstances and long familiarity with each other’s health patterns.
Case 2
A woman who had noticed her developing electrical sensitivity moved with her partner to a low‑exposure environment, and after several months there, her partner—previously symptom‑free despite sharing the same exposures—became ill whenever re‑exposed to synthetic electromagnetic fields and gradually realized his own sensitivity, which intensified over time.
Case 3
A man who had controlled his sensitivity for years by living in a low‑exposure area spent four days in a location with extremely high-exposure conditions. He became ill within days, but after about ten days his symptoms suddenly vanished. This alarmed him—his body had stopped warning him even though he was still being exposed. When he went home, the sensitivity quickly returned.
A Working Interpretation
These accounts suggest that electrical sensitivity is not a rare defect confined to a few individuals. Rather, repeated exposure dulls perception and fosters habituation, causing the body to stop warning about what it endures. It may be a universal capacity—present in everyone but unnoticed because continuous exposure keeps the signal muted. Prolonged electromagnetic contact appears to numb awareness and blur cause and effect. When exposure is sharply reduced, the body’s feedback—at least for some—becomes perceptible again. When exposure resumes, symptoms may reappear before the system readjusts and silences the warning once more. This apparent “improvement,” meaning the disappearance of symptoms, does not imply that adverse effects have ceased—only that the alarm has grown quiet.
The question, then, may not be why so few people are electrically sensitive—but why so many have learned, unknowingly, to live without hearing the warning at all. In some, that warning still sounds; in others, it has been gradually muted.
How It Might Work
Ongoing exposure to artificial electromagnetic fields could influence several basic biological pathways. It may alter calcium‑based cell signaling [1], affect voltage‑gated ion channels, promote oxidative stress [2], or disturb the natural electrical coherence inside cell structures such as microtubules [6], as first described in Fröhlich’s model of biological electrodynamics. These responses can adapt or desensitize under constant stimulation, similar to other well‑known habituation processes in the nervous system [3].
Evidence from related research supports this general picture. Kujawa and Liberman [4] showed that even temporary auditory overstimulation causes lasting nerve damage long after hearing seems to recover—a good parallel for hidden biological effects under chronic electromagnetic exposure. Rankin et al. [3] described habituation as a reversible drop in responsiveness, not a true absence of activity. Pall [1] and Yakymenko et al. [2] outlined calcium‑channel and oxidative mechanisms through which low‑level fields act on cells, while McCraty et al. [5] demonstrated measurable electromagnetic exchange between human bodies, showing that weak field interactions are part of normal physiology.
Chronic electromagnetic exposure can therefore be compared to background noise: over time people stop noticing it, yet physical fatigue continues beneath awareness [4]. Electrical sensitivity may be the body’s early‑warning system—an internal alarm that modern environments have put to sleep.
Electrical sensitivity can therefore be understood not as an abnormal reaction but as a form of natural avoidance behavior [8]—a protective response that re‑emerges when perception of environmental stressors is restored. Just as pain prompts withdrawal from heat, or sharp pressure, the sensations and discomfort some experience around synthetic electromagnetic fields may represent the body’s effort to steer itself away from harmful exposure. In this view, de‑habituation simply unmasks a normal biological warning system that most people have learned, unknowingly, to ignore.
If this model is correct, then the absence of recognized electrical sensitivity in most people does not imply the absence of biological effect. Rather, early warning signals may be experienced and then “blown through”—normalized, misattributed, or absorbed into daily life without ever being linked to electromagnetic exposure as the cause.
Symptoms such as fatigue, headaches, irritability, sleep disruption, anxiety, or cognitive dulling are common and non-specific. In an environment of constant exposure, they are easily attributed to stress, aging, workload, or circumstance. When exposure is continuous, correlation becomes difficult to perceive: the signal may be present, but its meaning is lost. Habituation does not eliminate the underlying interaction—it merely quiets awareness of it.
Framing and Purpose
Understanding these dynamics calls for the widespread establishment of exclusion facilities, where short‑term stays can verify whether symptoms lessen under reduced exposure, and for the development of larger, deliberately low‑exposure communities, protected by law that allow rigorous epidemiological study of how chronic synthetic electromagnetic exposure influences health. The question is no longer whether electrical sensitivity exists, but rather how thoroughly modern exposure levels obscure an innate protective sensitivity—one that, when suppressed, weakens the human body’s ability to recognize and avoid harm.
Acknowledgment
With grateful thanks to Professor Olle Johansson, Christof Plothe, and Shannon Rowan, whose research and conversations have deepened my understanding of the consequences of forced synthetic field exposures on populations around the world.
Notes and References
Terminology note: I use “electrical sensitivity (ES)” for brevity. Clinically, the term “functional impairment electrohypersensitivity” is more precise, because it recognizes the observable loss of normal function in modern electromagnetic environments, regardless of cause.
[1] Pall, M. L. (2013). Electromagnetic fields act via activation of voltage‑gated calcium channels to produce beneficial or adverse effects. Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, 17(8), 958–965. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcmm.12088
[2] Yakymenko, I., et al. (2016). Oxidative mechanisms of biological activity of low‑intensity radiofrequency radiation. Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine, 35(2), 186–202. https://doi.org/10.3109/15368378.2015.1043557
[3] Rankin, C.H., et al. (2009). Habituation revisited: An updated and revised description of the behavioral characteristics of habituation. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 92(2), 135–138. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nlm.2008.09.012
[4] Kujawa, S.G., & Liberman, M.C. (2009). Adding insult to injury: Cochlear nerve degeneration after “temporary” noise‑induced hearing loss. Journal of Neuroscience, 29(45), 14077–14085. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2845‑09.2009
[5] McCraty, R., Zayas, M.A., & Atkinson, M. (2021). The electricity of touch: Detection and measurement of cardiac energy exchange between people. In The Energy Healing Experiments (pp. 145‑178). HCI Books.
[6] Fröhlich, H. (1968). Long‑range coherence and energy storage in biological systems. International Journal of Quantum Chemistry, 2(5), 641–649. https://doi.org/10.1002/qua.560020505
[7] Johansson, O. (2025). Hyposensitives or Hypersensitives — Who Inherits the Earth? [Video segment, beginning at 10:03, in interview with Professor Olle Johansson]. YouTube. Retrieved from
[8] Johansson, O. (2025). EHS as Normal Avoidance Behavior. [Video segment in interview series with Professor Olle Johansson]. YouTube. Retrieved from
[9] The EMF Remedy Premium Podcast, Episode 162, “Losing and Regaining EHS,” interview with Christof Plothe, DO, November 18, 2025.
[10] YouTube Video, “Becoming EHS Through Low EMF Living (De‑habituation),” published on the channel EMF Remedy, 1 min 49 sec,
[11] YouTube Video, “Losing and Regaining EHS – Christof Plothe,” published on the channel EMF Remedy,
By replacing electromagnetic exposure with “psychological harassment,” or “domestic violence,” or “cult environment,” we can find similar phenomena.
When we are constantly subjected to these pressures, they become the norm, a habit, and we find ways internally and physically to “deal with” them, we “put up with” them - and sometimes we even find a justifiable reason for them! We “become desensitized” in order to survive... It works for a while. Longer for some than for others.
And it is only once you have been out of the toxic environment long enough that you realize, when you return, how harmful, exhausting, and damaging it is...
The expression that seems appropriate to me, in addition to “electromagnetic poisoning,” is “electromagnetic harassment.”
A form of biological harassment, with physical, psychological, social, and ultimately life-threatening consequences.
I heard you say: one step at a time. This is not negating anything you described, just adding to the next steps. I've noticed that the better the metabolic health, the less hypersensitivity. If there are infections, some hidden digestive, hormonal sugar imbalances, toxic load, high heavy metals, immune system weakness as you insinuated, genetic differences that can affect detox, etc., all contribute to less resilience in resisting oxidative stress in the body. The metabolically imbalanced person will feel it more, if they pay attention, when they use up their reserves. It also explains why someone could habituate sometimes and not other times. Signals are not always apparent or noticed, as with someone walking around with hidden cancer, also flared by oxidative stress. As with poisoning, if your detox system and oxidation system are working better, you will have less damage long-term. You are still being poisoned but have more resilience.