Exploring EMF Sensitivity and Healing | Mike Bender

Michaela Host 00:00

Welcome to the Wave Forward, the podcast that dives deep into how technology shapes our health and well-being. From digital wellness to tech innovation, to the effects of electromagnetic fields, we cover the environmental, social and physical implications of technology. Ready to navigate the digital landscape with confidence, Set your dial to discovery and tune in. You're listening to the Wave Forward. Hey, Mike. Thanks so much for being here.

Mike Bender Guest 00:27

Thank you so much for having me.

Michaela Host 00:29

So let's start off with you just saying a little bit about yourself and give me a little background on who you are. Where'd you come from all the things?

Mike Bender Guest 00:37

Well, my name is Mike Bender and I was born in New Jersey and New Jersey for anyone that's born in New Jersey we know we have a lot of deer there and so my story sort of began in New Jersey, because that's where I got bit by a tick when I was about nine years old and I had no idea at that time that that meant anything. I remember my mom pulling it off of me and and just thinking, okay, well, that that's, that was weird, but that's done and and I didn't know that you know that I would sort of that story would continue and that journey would continue well into my 30s and 40s. So I had a very you know, I had a very normal, normal kind of life. I went to college in Vermont Middlebury College, studied English and then graduated, worked for Life Magazine right at the end of its kind of end of its journey, uh, and then.

01:44

But I was always really, really interested in film and so I worked for new line cinema uh, in new york city and everyone there at the time this was in like 1997 everybody they encouraged uh, their employees to write so very rare that a film studio would actually say like, hey, if you have a script like submitted to us because they kind of want you to just do your job. But at New Line everyone was writing, so like the guy in front of me, um, named Jeffrey Reddick, was writing Final Destination, a huge, a huge franchise, and so we were just like all trading our scripts, all the assistants, and it was kind of an amazing time and I wrote a script I was only 20, 21, 22 years old called Gigantic, which was a parody of Titanic, because Titanic had just come out and obviously it was massive.

Michaela Host 02:37

Yeah.

Mike Bender Guest 02:38

This was the story of a ship that was two and a half inches shorter. It didn't get the same press, but it was equally as devastating story, and so I wrote that and ended up selling it to New Line. Quit my job, came out to Los Angeles. The movie was in the process of getting made. We did a round table with all the Saturday Night Live writers, like Tina Fey.

Michaela Host 03:03

And it was crazy.

Mike Bender Guest 03:05

You know, I was 22, I had diarrhea the entire time because I was just um, I was so nervous and um. Anyway, the movie made it very far, uh. But then at the very last, sort of right at the end of the of the movie, like product pre-production the director got fired and the whole thing fell apart. And so I was suddenly now in Los Angeles and I started writing for the MTV Movie Awards, which I don't know if you remember, the Movie Awards, but they do all these little short films with Ben Stiller and Will Ferrell and all those guys. And so for a writer, it was an incredible opportunity because you could just have access to these people. And so I started writing on the movie awards, did it for almost seven years, and I wrote a short film with Ben Stiller and Tom Cruise, where Ben Stiller was his stunt double for Mission Impossible, and off of that I got the opportunity to write my first movie, which was called Not Another Teen Movie. I was about 23 or 24 at that time and then that really launched a kind of a career in screenwriting for about 10, 12 years.

04:20

And then, you know, as we were discussing, I randomly had this idea one day I went to my mom's, my parents' house in Santa Barbara and I saw that my mom was putting up a photo that I thought was a weird photo, an awkward photo, and I couldn't understand why she was like memorializing this particular photo and why she had paid to frame it, memorializing this particular photo, and why she had paid to frame it.

04:48

But then I went home and I was talking to an old friend and and someone that I was actually a writing partner with, a friend from high school, and I was just saying so weird that she was doing that. He was like, oh god, my house is like a shrine for those type of photos. And then we just kind of thought about it for a second, like well, if we have them, everybody must have it. For a second Well, if we have them, everybody must have them. And how cool would it be if we could sort of celebrate these photos and not just like hide them in drawers and boxes. It's like what if we did bring these photos out and said like, hey, you think you're awkward?

05:19

Like yeah, I got you beat yeah, exactly, I got you beat no-transcript magazine, new york times, like within a few days of posting it. It was bizarre and surreal and I'd like to say we were enjoying it, but we were so nervous because we didn't. We didn't know how to even keep a website up and running at that time and dealing with that much traffic. So, anyway, we're still here, we're still doing it. It's an, it's an Instagram page now um 2024. So it's incredible, it's been 15 years of doing that and um, yeah, so I, like I, I always gravitate towards comedy, awkwardness, um, which which plays well into my own life story.

Michaela Host 06:27

Nice. I'm a huge comedy fan and and. Austin is becoming. I live close to Austin and Austin's becoming like the comedy central now, like everybody's moving there and so it's so fun. We all go like our date nights me and my husband will go to the mothership and we'll and you never know who you're going to see Like Ron White just walks out and you're like that's awesome yeah.

06:49

It's so cool. Okay, so you had no, what was your? What was your relationship with um, with health? Like, what did you? What was your mind around health at the time? Like, were you ever really my? My, my perception is very stereotypical, but my perception of writers is that, like they're barely eating. You know what I mean. It's just like a bag of Cheetos while they're at their computer yeah, that's pretty accurate, I'd say, up until my.

Mike Bender Guest 07:16

It's like I kind of like got away with abusing my, my body until I couldn't anymore. Um, when I was writing, I got really focused, super hyper focused, and so, yeah, I would like just eat anything like just bags of chips and cookies, but of course they were all from whole foods. So I thought, well, this is, it's all organic right, but it's still.

07:41

It's still a cookie yeah so, yeah, I I didn't eat well and I would often go long stretches, then I'd get like dizzy and I'd have to go like quickly eat something, and so it wasn't a good pattern that I was in. I had a lot of anxiety, always aware of, like, how sensitive I was. Like there was always a sensitivity and a sense that I was more sensitive than the other people around me. That always existed from a very, very early age. So, yeah, there was like an awareness, but I would say it was. It was kind of like a submarine ship of awareness. It was pretty low below the surface. I was still kind of just doing what I wanted to do.

08:22

I loved, I loved writing, but I also wrote till I was exhausted and I just didn't. I didn't have any, I just didn't have any sort of, like you know, tools, limitations, I mean, and I, of course, I was living in Los Angeles and everybody was doing detoxes and I tried them, knowing that, okay, that'd probably be good for my body. But I always did really, really terrible with detoxes Just made me feel worse, couldn't figure that out. I'd go to get massages and I'd get sick after a massage, just like weird stuff. But you know, outside of that I was normal. You know, I traveled, I I I drank alcohol. At that time I was. I was definitely just like you know. I tried to live what I thought was a normal life, but I think in many ways, you know, I was pretty asleep to what was, what was actually going on in my body.

Michaela Host 09:20

Okay. So then, what was the tipping point for me, for you? When did you actually get diagnosed with Lyme? When did all that happen?

Mike Bender Guest 09:27

Well, there are. There are a couple of tips.

Michaela Host 09:30

That's kind of how it works. You kind of ignore the first few.

Mike Bender Guest 09:33

Yeah, when you have a chronic Lyme and I only know this now, having met so many others and talked to so many others the story is very similar. It's like it's a slow drip, you know you, you the body starts to kind of do some weird stuff and then then it gets a little better and then it gets worse. It's just like it keeps coming back, and in my case in my thirties, a lot of digestive stuff, um, but I kind of addressed it with like antibiotics and all the things you're not supposed to. And then, uh, in my 40s, we moved into a house in los angeles and there was actually mold growing in the plenum of the air conditioning unit, um, and so it was pumping it out throughout the house, and so that when you have lime and then you combine it with mold, um, lime basically limits the body's ability to sort of detox itself and move the mold out, and so a lot of people that end up with that combination get very sick because the bucket gets full. You just lose your own ability to detox and then everything becomes an irritant and the nervous system then breaks down. And so in my case in my forties, that's, that was the tipping point, my nervous system just freaked and panic attacks and all the all the fun stuff that come with a nervous system that is no longer regulated, it's dysregulated, and so so that was when I knew like, okay, this is serious.

11:00

Like I had to move out of my house, you know, even when my parent, my wife and kids were still there and, and it was just madness, like didn't know where to go and everything was setting me off and just just mass confusion, I think, many years of confusion and frustration and doctors that had no idea what to do with me, and we're just trying to kind of treat, looking for sort of one cause for all of this, as opposed to seeing the whole picture, which was really a canvas that had been painted on for many, many, many years with many colors, so, um, so, yeah, so that that was, that was the tipping point.

11:41

And then, you know, when I moved to Santa Barbara in 2020, moved into a rental with more mold, and, and at that point, it was like, getting to the point where I was, I was not, I wasn't gonna. I was going to hit a wall one way or the other, my body was going to stop working or I was going to figure something out and I decided at that point that I and I was going to, I was in so much pain in so many different ways, but I was like and I and I had my kids and my wife and I just felt this is not what my life was meant for.

Michaela Host 12:20

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12:24

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12:37

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Mike Bender Guest 13:33

I definitely felt like I'm meant to learn from all this, and there was a shift that took place at that point, just that small kind of distinction of like this is not about my body fighting me and doing things to hurt me and not helping me along. This was my body trying to help me and trying to give me a message and trying to teach me something, and so that just opened up a whole different way of thinking and looking at it in perspective, and I would say, from that point on, things started to turn the other way.

Michaela Host 14:05

Yeah, it's like symptoms are like a language, like they're communicating to you.

Mike Bender Guest 14:10

Absolutely. And I think we, we all, just most of us think we, we get sick or we start getting sick and we think, well, that means I need to go take medicine or go to the doctor, when actually there's a much deeper message there about slow down, You're pushing too hard, You're not taking time to just do nothing. Yeah, body's not meant to be pushed. Push, push, push. You have to take breaks. And so I think, like you said, it is a language and it's meant to be heard and if, if you ignore it or you mute it or you try to muffle it, it will just keep coming back.

Michaela Host 14:49

Yeah, I experienced that's kind of my my story of like figuring out, like, oh, I got to go a different route with, like I got. I got my wisdom teeth removed when I was like 17 and they left a hole connected to my nasal cavity and I started getting these chronic sinus infections and they just kept giving me steroids after steroids and then antibiotics after antibiotics. I think I had like five or six rounds of antibiotics and then they ended up doing sinus surgery and that didn't help and in the end my mom was like you realize that this doctor hasn't told you to stop eating sugar, hasn't told you to stop eating bread, Hasn't asked you about your diet at all? It hasn't, like it hasn't even asked you about your lifestyle, like they just keep throwing things at you and so it's it's.

15:30

I still struggle with sinus stuff to this day, if I'm not like super on my game with everything. And we had mold in this last house that we lived in and that really came up for me there. But it's just wild how like I just wish that more people could get this message before hitting their body with so many things Like cause my body struggled after all the rounds of antibiotics, like my gut really struggled and I got sick really easy after that for a long time yeah, it seems to be that people I mean, I think it's a human condition you kind of have to get hit over the head many times before you, like, wake up and, um, you know, that's, that's unfortunately.

Mike Bender Guest 16:09

You know, doctors, it's part of the reason, so I wrote. I wrote an article after, after being in that house in 2020 and then realizing that I had a, I really had to build my own not build a house from scratch, but move into a new home and really create an environment that I could heal in.

Michaela Host 16:29

Yeah.

Mike Bender Guest 16:30

I, I I pitched men's health at that time, the idea of this article, uh and at that time I didn't know it was going to work. I didn't know if I would be able to go into this house and heal. So I wrote an article for men's health magazine in uh, in 2022. And, um, it was all about my house and and trying to create a quiet house, a house that was human, healthy in every possible way, that would not trigger my nervous system and it would allow the healing process to take place. And what's interesting you know about what you just said, too, is like doctors, I've never had a doctor up until the doctors I've found now were just much more aware, but I've never had a doctor who's asked even about your living situation, right?

17:19

I mean, we're in these homes all day, we sleep here. It's a huge component to what's going on in our health, and so to just ignore that and send someone home with a bunch of medication but not address the root cause for what's creating the imbalance and what's going on in their body, it's just you can see how that can then create another problem, another problem, another, really, and really just all of.

17:44

I just had no idea about the level of toxicity and that we bring into our homes now it's. It's just incredible once you understand it and you kind of can't unsee it once you know.

Michaela Host 18:08

Okay, so when did you start really acknowledging like EMFs? Cause I think that I love this conversation so much because we were saying this before we started recording. But EMF is such a um, out of sight, out of mind topic. It's also a very tinfoil hat topic, which it's not really when you really get into it and you understand it and you start really looking at the research that's available. But that's what's so funny is that people are like, oh, there's no research. I'm like there's definitely research. There's no research on what's happening currently, but there's research on what's you know on on EMFs that we were experiencing back when we had like 2G phones and that's already not good.

Mike Bender Guest 18:47

Yeah, I try to put it in a way that's really simple for people, which is like so like I built my house using the kind of standards and rules of building biology. And building biology is all about like you want your indoor environment to mirror the the sort of natural world as close as possible. Obviously you can't, it can't be exact, but you try air quality, water quality, just like you want those things to mirror as much as possible. And so whenever you take, whenever humans have kind of moved away from the natural order of things, there's always an effect. There's always some effect from that, and so emf's to me are no different. Right, we've, we've created something that isn't natural to the body and the body is going to try to deal with it. But it's going to create other issues in the body and the body just wants to. We want to be out in nature, we want to be walking in the grass, like that's what our bodies crave.

19:41

And so what I realized is when I, when I started having all my issues, it was like everything was triggering me. It was, it was like everything was triggering me. It was, you know smells. I mean, I could smell detergent, tied detergent, from like a half, a block away. So I was like I was like a pregnant woman walking around the streets. Um, when I brought my kids to school I couldn't even cross the street where the crossing guard was because she had so much perfume on that it would make me sick. So I had to like find another way to get across the street.

Michaela Host 20:14

That's wild.

Mike Bender Guest 20:16

Yeah, it was, it was, it was. It was very bizarre, but I was aware that my nervous system and my brain had become so hypersensitive, trying to protect me, and so EMFs were just one of those things. I don't believe that we have an allergy to EMFs. I think that our nervous systems, when they become dysregulated, start becoming more alert and hypervigilant, and so EMFs are something that are constantly sort of pinging the body and the cells in the body, and so when the nervous system is hyped up, it's going to register those EMS and it's going to send signals to the rest of the body that we are not safe, that we need to release the fight or flight hormones, and that's that's really what's happening. It's, it's quite simple. When you think about it that way, it's like it's all just noise, you know. That's why the quiet house made sense to me, because the smells the shit in our food, like it's all noise, it all amounts to more noise and the body just wants quiet. So, like when I, when I what I focused on, a lot of people just focus on EMFs if they're having those issues, but, like for me, it was like no, it was.

21:37

The focus had to be on getting the nervous system to calm down, because I could see it was, my issue was greater than just not being able to pick up a phone or touch my computer. It was a nervous system that was, across the board, systemically, you know, out of whack. And so in order to do that, I had to, you know, use paints in my house that weren't going to set me off. I had to do all the things and but EMFs were a component of that, because the the wiring in your walls, the routers that are blasting out Wi-Fi, those things are going to all just create more aggravation. So I wired my house with shielded wiring. I have ports in the house so we can hardwire everything in. We don't have Wi-Fi.

22:29

Those were things that I did again, again, to kind of create that quiet house, um healing environment. It was a huge piece of it because, if you know, if I, if I hadn't done that I would have, I just wouldn't. I wouldn't have been able to sleep. To be quite honest, I was so sensitive I mean I could, I could pick up on. If my wife and I were in the car, I'd be like your phone's on. She'd be like, no, that's, don't say that I turned it off, and I'd be like it's on and she would pull it out and be like damn it so like it was okay.

Michaela Host 22:59

So what was that like? What was the actual like? Feeling yes, like when you're, because I feel like I really feel that, like I cannot put a phone to my ear, I feel like, as the phone is coming to my ear, I feel the pressure and the heat, just like coming yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike Bender Guest 23:19

So what was it? Like with the computers and all that well, I experienced what you just said too. Even years before I really was like super sensitive to emfs. There was sensitivity, like I said, always existed, right um so because, because the lime had been in my body for so long, so like all of the nervous system was already out of whack even before I realized it, um, but were you sorry really quick.

Michaela Host 23:44

Were you diagnosed with lime as a kid or not? No, no we didn't even go.

Mike Bender Guest 23:49

No, like we, we didn't even even go to the doctor at that time. I was diagnosed when I was about 41. Finally, a doctor just was like we should test you. This is too weird, you've had too many things going on for too long. So, yeah, I had the same issue. I would never put a phone next to my ear. If I did, I'd have almost like a heat and I'd have a headache, just sort of in that section of my head. So I stopped doing that, actually long before I any of this other stuff. I just instinctually knew that wasn't good.

24:20

Um, but when, when the sensitivity got acute, you know, after the mold stuff, it was like the way I describe it is like a teapot boiling you.

24:34

You basically feel the boiling start to bubble up when you touch the phone or you turn on the wireless signal and it's just basically like uh, it's just basically like the fight or flight process being like kicked on, and so you feel process being like kicked on and so you feel really, really like intense kind of uh, anxiety bubbling up, um, and it's.

25:02

You know, at that time if I was exposed to it it would take me an entire day just to like come down from now. I know how to breathe and I know I have techniques to get my nervous system back into sort of into line and get back into parasympathetic. But at that time I didn't. So a lot of headaches, a lot of migraine kind of feelings and a lot of anxiety, and it could set set off a panic attack at a certain point too. So the computer when I touched the computer I just I just would feel almost like a buzzing throughout my entire body. If I touched a computer while I was like plugged in, I really could feel the electricity, and so it was so wild.

25:47

It was, you know, not subtle, let me put it that way. So, that.

Michaela Host 25:52

That's really crazy, because we were talking about this before we started recording that. You're like you're pretty much solely a writer. So were you writing on typewriters or were you just contending with it?

Mike Bender Guest 26:04

yeah, it was it. I mean, it was impossible, to be honest with you, it was an impossible situation. How do you write if you can't touch a keyboard? I mean, I, I will tell you, I tried a million different things. I tried actually like buying these, like little pointers with rubber tips and just like typing with the little pointer on the keyboard, because that the rubber would stop it, but I still felt it. I mean, electricity is amazing. It'll go around it and then up into your hand and your arm. So that didn't work into your, into your hand and your arm. So that didn't work.

26:36

Um, I, at one point, we, I hired somebody just to come and, um, she would type for me, um, and so that was the way I was writing. For a while. I actually had somebody who would type. I would, I would kind of print it out on the page and then write notes and then she could input it into the page. It really is surreal looking back, as I'm even saying this to you. But what do you do? You try to figure out a way to do it. I couldn't cheat it. There was no way to just sit there and be like I'm just going to push through it. My body was. It was hitting such a wall. There was not even, it wasn't even a possibility, and I was aware that if I kept pushing it I was really going to be less of a dad for my kids, like I had to get better and I wasn't going to risk it, so I kind of just stopped. I stopped because the truth is you can't be creative, you can't be in the flow when you're in fight or flight.

Michaela Host 27:37

I was just thinking that of, like how do you even yeah, it doesn't happen, yeah.

Mike Bender Guest 27:42

I had to address my body first, and then, when things started to calm down, when I moved in in fact, I wasn't going to even write the article for men's health my editor was going to even write the article for men's health. Um, my editor, uh, was going to write it. I was, I pitched it for him to write it and he was going to write the story about what I was going through. And then, when I moved into my new house, within like a week or two, I suddenly could touch a keyboard. That's how quickly my body started to.

28:08

When I got out of the mold and I got out of the, that house was full of EMS too. And then, all of a sudden, I was like I think I'm going to try to write this, and so I ended up writing it and I was able to write it. So it the keyboard and the computer actually came back. As soon as the nervous system started to calm down. That did start to come back to me. Now, if I push it hard, even today, and I write for you know, like I used to, for six hours in a day, I will not feel so good.

Michaela Host 28:37

Yeah, I'm that way, it's not 100%. Yeah.

Mike Bender Guest 28:41

But I have the freedom now to write. I'm writing a movie again right now, so it's like I'm able to be creative. Which I realized I don't think I fully appreciated when I was younger is like a huge part of what my soul wants to do, and so so I don't want to, I don't want to risk that again. You know I want to, I want to continue to be able to do that, and part of that is respecting and listening to my body.

Michaela Host 29:10

I think that's so cool that you're setting that environment up for your kids too, because now they're going to go into the world and be like no, these are my body. I think that's so cool that you're setting that environment up for your kids too, because now they're going to go into the world and be like no, these are my expectations.

Mike Bender Guest 29:18

You know what I mean. Oh no, these kids are like on another level in terms of information they have. I had 0.11111% of the information that they have right now. It'll be really fascinating to see. Obviously, they're kids and they want a phone.

29:38

They want all the things that they see their friends having, but they have an awareness and they certainly see what happened to their dad, and so I think as adults they will be much more aware and certainly open to the ideas that you guys are putting out there and understanding that these things do have. There are consequences to the things, to these modern conveniences that we've created, and we have to accept that.

Michaela Host 30:11

I love the concept of the quiet house because, you know, I was having this conversation with Dr Kent, who's the president of Environmental Health Trust, and you know we were talking about the importance of this subject, about, you know, there's lots of other things. You know, everybody is out there saying this is why everybody's sick, and they all have a reason. And it's like, you know, the, the food or the, the jabs or like whatever it is. It's all these different things that are the reason that people are sick. And then we were talking about, like you know, how do you kind of choose, like what you educate on, and kind of like where you stand, and like what you talk about, what you don't talk about.

30:47

And I was saying how I feel like this topic really landed with me, because every a lot of other things that are definitely contributing to our health are things that we can educate ourself on and then do something about, and we can do something about EMF in our home. But it's also something that is an experiment that we're all a part of and that we need to recognize that we're a part of and like be aware that it's happening and it's something that's it's, you know, being deployed without choice. It's just everywhere now, it's everywhere all the time, and and that is you know, I guess if we all had to make the choice now, you would say, yeah, we want our phones, but it was all deployed before we really had that choice.

Mike Bender Guest 31:31

So for me. I wouldn't. I wouldn't I mean, I would give away my phone in a heartbeat. Um, I realized that I'm, that I needed it and, like you said, we're living in a world where, um, where it's very necessary now to have those things.

Michaela Host 31:46

Yeah.

Mike Bender Guest 31:47

I, I, I have, I, I and my wife will make fun of me for this, but like I want to go back, Like I have a, landline.

31:56

That's where I make my calls. I use the phone for what? I think the phone should be used for emergencies If I need to turn it on because I need some information, like I'm traveling or I'm on. You know I, whatever it might be, I'm using it for little things along the way, but I don't want to be on that phone all the time, and so I think that we, like you said, we have to recognize that this is the world we live in.

32:24

I know a lot of people that I spoke to after the article who are trying to, you know, go out into the woods and camp or just get away from it all, and I think you can do that stuff temporarily, but I don't. I did not want to live a life where I was hiding from the world. Personally, I want to travel, I want to. You know, those things make me happy. I'm going to come into contact with EMS. It's inevitable. So that's why my solution wasn't avoiding it. It was working to strengthen my body, to become more resilient to it, and using devices, you know, like the LifeTune devices, to help me as I'm going through the world and to keep, you know, to keep keep me as healthy as possible, but to avoid it completely is is, I think, an impossibility in the world.

Michaela Host 33:20

So did you try other devices before you did the Aries tech? So what? Like you don't have to say the brands, but like what kinds of things did you try? I?

Mike Bender Guest 33:28

mean, when you're in my position, you know it's like, it's like the person who's like hasn't had water in a week. You know you're going to drink out of the toilet. So yeah, you're, you're, you're, you're thirsty.

Michaela Host 33:46

Yeah.

Mike Bender Guest 33:46

So you're, you're going to look for anything that can help you, and I tried all kinds of stuff. I tried first I tried the blockers, which made things so much worse.

Michaela Host 33:57

Wow.

Mike Bender Guest 33:58

I can tell you from someone who feels things the blockers really are not effective because it just if you hold the blocker the wrong way, the phone has to pump out a bigger signal to try, and because what you're doing is you're kind of interrupting the signal, you're blocking it, but then the phone thinks it's got to work harder.

Michaela Host 34:21

Yeah, energy cannot be destroyed, it has to go somewhere.

Mike Bender Guest 34:24

It has to go somewhere, and so that's not a good solution. And then you know, I tried, I tried. I tried things that were like gloves. It was a glove that you put on when you're holding the device. I think it was. I can't remember what they call it, faraday.

34:41

Yeah Kind of a Faraday cage thing. Awful, that put me in fight or flight so fast. Same thing, yes, because what happens is when you're holding the device, it won't go into the hand where the glove is, it just travels over it and then it goes into your arm.

Michaela Host 34:57

It's so crazy that you can just feel all of that.

Mike Bender Guest 35:00

I could feel it instantaneously, and so that did not work.

35:08

Intrigued by the idea of not blocking but harmonizing, sort of you know working with your body working with the body and say, like, okay, these things exist in our environment, how do we clean them up? How do we run them through a filter? The same way, in my house I have a you know, I have a HEPA filtration system that's cleaning out the air, right? If I didn't have that, I would be breathing in a lot of dust and that would eventually not be so good. So I think the same thing applies for EMS, and so I did try some other harmonizing things that were kind of like mildly successful. But I remember the day that I put the Lifetune device on my phone and it was like I went from oh, I can hold this thing for a few minutes to like I can just hold this thing, it's not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm just my body's just not registering it. In the same way, my wife and I did a video, which which you guys posted um, explaining our story of how it kind of helped in our own relationship, because I, you know, she couldn't be on her phone around me and it was a real problem.

36:20

Um so yeah, so I think I think that there's a lot of stuff out there and it's important for people to know that not all of it works. Um and unfortunately um, some of unfortunately, some of it is just kind of junk, but at the same time, there's really great research and stuff going on, like what's going on with the Lifetune devices, and so I would encourage people at the same time to try it, try it, see how you feel. I mean, I have had several people that I've turned on to it that I just for my own experiments and curiosity, see how they feel, and everybody has seen improvement.

Michaela Host 37:06

Same yeah.

Mike Bender Guest 37:09

So I think that's a really really good sign. I think that's, I think that's that's a really, really a really good sign, and I am excited to pass it on to people that you know are going through what I went through, because they, you know you really are so desperate for help.

Michaela Host 37:23

Yeah, my sister saw your video and she called me and she was like I think I have this. I think I have hypersensitivity. She was telling me all of her symptoms. I'm like you got to use these products.

37:35

That's awesome that she it's bad to get excited when someone tells you they have these symptoms, because you never want to, like you know, be excited that someone's sick, but like it also is exciting when someone is very sensitive, like that Cause she's extremely and she does. She's a singer, songwriter and she does a lot of her stuff online. And she does, she's a singer, songwriter and she does a lot of her stuff online and so she's on her devices a lot and she can. She can feel the same Like if it's around her, she can feel it. I'm the same way, like after cause I'm on, I'm doing media coordination, I'm on my phone here all day, I have to, like take a 30 minute shower, for whatever reason. The water really helps like just I don't know, like regulate me, and then I have to go sit outside for a good 30 minutes the shower, when the water hits the top of your head yeah, that is um extremely calming.

Mike Bender Guest 38:23

So that's why showers showers are a go-to for anyone who's an artist. If you get stuck, you go take a shower suddenly everything.

Michaela Host 38:32

Oh yeah, I have one of those like notepads in my shower where you can. It has the pen you can write.

Mike Bender Guest 38:36

That is where I go.

Michaela Host 38:38

Well, the first thing I know I need to do whenever I'm not feeling creative or like I'm losing my creative flow, is get away from all the electronics. I have to get away, and it's not even the distraction of social media. It's like if it's in my, my facility, if it's anywhere near me, I can feel it.

Mike Bender Guest 38:54

it's like get it away yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no so grateful. It lets me work from home and be with my kids and all the things, but also but also give me, yeah, give me a break for a little bit, like, yeah, for me it's showering, um. And then the other thing if I really really get like I could feel my body, just my body feels unhappy, I just I'll go lay full, full body just in the grass for 10 minutes and that for anybody who's experiencing it, go lay in the grass for 10 minutes and tell me you don't feel better it's.

39:28

It is pretty incredible that that that it's one of our biggest healing tools is right outside the door and so don't spray stuff on your grass and then lay in it. Don't spray stuff in your grass, please, and don't lay on a fake grass that you put in and expect that to happen the same response yeah.

Michaela Host 39:51

Okay, so it has the life tune Like have you had the same effect? Like long term, like have you felt it working over time?

Mike Bender Guest 40:00

yeah, I mean it's, it's, there's no question like it. Just, all of these things buy me more freedom, right, and so, like my goal now and I'm not I'm not 100 better I can tell you that I'm not getting on planes yet and doing things like that but, um, but it is. It has. It has opened up more freedom again to me to be able to do more things, and so that's really awesome very grateful every little bit of freedom I get.

40:30

I'm so appreciative of it because I know what it's like to have none of it, to really be down to nothing. And so it was. You know, I got to a place that was so raw, so raw. I couldn't take medication, I couldn't take anti-anxiety medication, I couldn't take anti-depression medication. I truly had to just be with myself in that pain and that that either is going to break you or it's going to build you like a resolve and strength that you didn't know you have, and so so that, anyway, that's that's.

Michaela Host 41:09

I definitely think like being a creative too, you do have like being able to measure your creativity is really has so much correlation to like your health and wellbeing in your life, like how your life is functioning on the daily, really does equal the amount of creativity you have. So I do think you even that makes you more like sense, sensible or sensitive to what's going on in your world.

Mike Bender Guest 41:35

If you're creative, you're, you're sensitive by nature because you have to be to sort of be opening up the opportunities for new ideas and ideas Like you have to be open. So to do that, you have to be sensitive. If you're, if you're insensitive, you, you, you're never going to receive any of that stuff. So I think it makes sense that your sister feels like that.

41:56

And the other thing I was just going to say is from something you said was the reality of the world that we all live in right now is that the majority of people have dysregulated nervous systems. This isn't any more. It's not about, you know, people like me who had chronic Lyme or are dealing with some chronic illness. It's really about like a, a, a absolutely like mass level of dysregulated nervous systems and kids who are growing up with devices, who are now having dysregulated nervous systems, you know, at the age of four or five, because they've been on a device for so long. Like this is the. To me, this is the pandemic, that the true pandemic is trying to learn how to regulate our nervous systems again so we can exist and live in this world in a way where we're still, you know, feel joy and happiness and thriving and all the things we're meant to do here. So that's why I think like something like the Lifetune device is really important in helping you regulate your nervous system.

43:09

It is a tool, one tool of many, but the other one I was going to mention to people, because this is the first thing I recommend to people. Somebody comes to me and says I can't go anywhere. Everything I smell makes me sick. You know, when I hear that, the first thing I say to people isn't go to a doctor, it's look for one of these limbic retraining systems. There's one called primal trust, which I really like. Primal trust is just simply. It's all rooted in science and somatic therapies, but it's basically about retraining the brain, a brain that has has sort of become where fight or flight is your default mode.

Michaela Host 43:53

Okay, so is it like what? What is? Is it a? Is it just like a, a course, or is it what is it? It's an online course.

Mike Bender Guest 44:00

So primal stress you can go to the website. It's an online course. You can go as fast or slow as you want. Anybody can do it. I recommend it for anyone, not just people who are sick, for people that are just living in this world. It allows you to regulate your nervous system when you need to, to observe yourself in a way that you become much more aware of what's actually happening to you and in your body and in the environment around you. It's just an incredible tool to allow you to self-regulate your own nervous system and it teaches you quite a bit about your brain and how the brain also affects the rest of the body. So it's incredible.

44:44

Some people have dramatic changes, like all their symptoms go away. This is this is true. I'm not just I'm not just, you know spouting something I've I've spoken to these people I've experienced. I experienced a big shift For me. It didn't make everything go away, but it definitely improved the situation and it gave me a tool that I know I always have to to deal with stuff, because we're all going to come into situations that are stressful, we're all going to have panic, panicky moments, and so you have that tool. You just have a reassurance that, okay, I know what to do when these things happen.

Michaela Host 45:26

Yeah, I love everything and anything that just like brings you back to like being present with your body.

45:34

Cause I think you know people are going to listen to this and some people are gonna be like, well, I don't have any of those symptoms, I don't.

45:39

I think we have so many things that we aren't even attuned to anymore because we've just, we've just like grown accustomed to it. Or we've also just been like convinced ourselves that, oh, it's because I'm a mom and I have kids and I'm tired and all of these things, or, you know, it's because I'm getting older, or we just kind of brush off all these things until it hits that boiling point where it's like, oh crap, like I'm sick, I'm really sick, but it takes a lot to see that. So don't let yourself get to that place before you really start getting like, start building a relationship with your own body. Because, like now, I like I feel like I've been going through this journey and I'm still on the journey and I'm still learning and I still get disconnected all the time and I go into my like stressful, not eating throughout the day because I'm like super hyper focused on work, and now I feel like I'm about to pass out. I still, I still do that, I try, but I still do that.

Mike Bender Guest 46:29

I try, but I still do that. But that's normal.

Michaela Host 46:33

Yeah, that's normal.

Mike Bender Guest 46:34

You're not going to, you're never going to be perfect all the time.

Michaela Host 46:37

Right, but starting that relationship with yourself. I feel like I'm so quick to recognize when something's off, like I knew there was mold in the house. I knew there was mold in the house. No one believed me. I took my kids to see the doctor and was asking them if they could do mold testing. He was like no, we don't do that, we don't like the. You know, insurance doesn't cover it. It's not really that big of a deal, like literally just completely brushing it off.

47:02

And in the meantime my kids are getting back to back sick and I'm like this is not normal. They don't eat. You know what I mean? Like it's just they don't go to school, they don't eat those types of foods. Like they should not be getting sick like this.

47:12

So I went to my I think I went to my chiropractor. That's where we got my the mold test and I just tested my youngest, my kid, because he had been in that house his whole life. So I was like if he has high mold levels, then we know that we all have high mold levels because he's been in that house. His levels were off the roof like so high and I was like dang. But we caught it super early because, like, there really wasn't that much mold, like when we finally found it in the closet, like connected to our bathroom, it wasn't that much, but we only caught it because it was like, oh, I can see, my kids are irritable and they're not usually. You know what I mean. So it's like getting that relationship with yourself and your family and your kids and really starting to take that log of, like, what is normal for me, what is homeostasis for me, so that I can catch it when it's kind of falling off and do what I need to do. I'm like, oh, I'm not drinking enough water.

Mike Bender Guest 48:06

Okay, I need to, and also checking in with your own intuition, right. I've heard from a lot of moms stories about moms who are dealing with kids that have mast cell and all of these different things that people end up getting when they're chronically exposed to mold, and they always know it and you know. It's like we go to doctors looking for that validation or that person in authority to tell us this is happening. But you know it's happening and so it's really important when you, when you are out of fight or flight you got to get yourself out of fight or flight because then you're just you're just constantly getting messages. You're unsafe when you're in fight or flight.

Michaela Host 48:50

Right, but when you?

Mike Bender Guest 48:51

get out of fight or flight, you can really key into your own intuition in a way where I don't need a doctor to tell me that this particular thing is an issue, because I already know what it is.

Michaela Host 49:03

I can yeah.

Mike Bender Guest 49:04

Use the doctors for what they're good for. There are so many things that doctors are useful for and I feel like the way I look at doctors now is like each doctor is going to have a nugget of gold for me of information. It may be small, but I'm going to get something from them. But if I go in with the expectation that they're going to solve all my problems, I'm going to be really disappointed. So just by changing again that perspective of like, going from like I expect so much from this person and I'm going to be disappointed and angry. No, I'm going to go in and just say like I'm just going to appreciate whatever little nugget this person can offer me and I'm going to take it and I'm going to grow from that, and then I might need to go on to the next person to get the next nugget.

49:49

But, I think that's important, that you really trust yourself, have to trust yourself because we are built with systems that allow us to become very aware of these things around us, and so the more you observe yourself, the more you, like you said, become aware of when you're going too far, when you need to take, aware of when you're going too far, when you need to take a break. You're going to always push it, but if you're aware of it, you're also going to take the break that allows you to recalibrate. I, I just am a believer in like the more tools I can empower myself with, the stronger I become, the less dependent I become on anybody else. It's just like it's, it's a win-win all around. So, you know, life tune, these, these, these nervous system regulation kind of practices and tools, like they're just, they just, they truly make you uh, you know, it's like some people go to the gym for me.

50:49

Like I want to have like a nervous system that's just like ripped.

Michaela Host 50:55

Yeah, cause then your creativity is ripped. Yeah, thank you so much, Mike. I really appreciate it. Tell everybody where they can find you. How can they connect?

Mike Bender Guest 51:04

You can find me at uh, on Instagram, mostly at. I am Mike Bender. I try not to do too much social media because, as you know, that will also drive you crazy, so I focus mostly on Instagram and I am. I just wrote a children's book. That actually actually the book that's the most applicable to our conversation. When I was going through the Lyme disease stuff, when I found out about that, I wrote a book called the End is Just the Beginning, which is a children's picture book, and it's all about the end not really being the end. I wanted to write a book for kids about how we should not look at the end as something scary or something to mourn. But the end is truly like transformational. It just means you're going into the beginning of something else, and so so that's. That's the book I think I'll mention.

Michaela Host 51:59

He also has a book about farts. You should check out.

Mike Bender Guest 52:02

Now that that was more. You know, when I got to a more joyful place and I was healing, I said you know, I just want to write a book that celebrates silliness. Yeah, so that book is all about a fart who, by the way, likes Beethoven very serious fart, it's called the Most Serious Fart and he is just a very, very serious fart and he wants to change everything that a fart is, but learns to embrace himself and his fartness and also to smile and laugh every now and then.

Michaela Host 52:35

So that's awesome. I think that's such a good like tribute to your journey actually, and I think that's a really cool full circle moment because I can kind of see just at like your life as you were telling your story, like, wow, you've come a long way and you seem really clear and healthy and I'm really happy that that happened, that you found your way.

Mike Bender Guest 52:57

I thank you, I appreciate it and, um and, like I said, I'm very grateful that I discovered, uh, the Lifetune devices.

Michaela Host 53:04

So um, Mike Bender did a guest post on Aries tech. Guys go read it. It's wave.ariestech.com. He's right there on the homepage because we love his story, so thanks, Mike.

Mike Bender Guest 53:15

Thank you.

Michaela Host 53:16

Yay, thank you guys. If you want to learn more about any of this, go to wave.ariestech.com and we'll have a little overview of this podcast episode. Join the community, share your EMF story if you have.