by Dr.Harald Wiesendanger– Klartext
What the mainstream media is hiding
What is it like to be highly sensitive to electromagnetic fields? Hell. In Germany alone, tens of thousands of people suffer from this condition. Left unprotected by the state, labeled as psychos by doctors, misunderstood and marginalized by those around them, many see only one way out of their misery: suicide. In the following letter, one sufferer tries to explain what she is going through.
Dear Thomas,
I hesitated for a long time before writing this letter to you. Not because I don’t trust you, but because I find it difficult to talk about something that is as invisible to most people as radio waves – and yet has changed my whole life. But I feel that you really want to understand what it means to be electrosensitive. That’s why I want to describe to you what my everyday life feels like – from the perspective of someone whose body doesn’t simply ignore electromagnetic fields, but perceives them as if they were a loud noise or bright light burning the skin.
I fully understand how irrational this may seem to you. It sounds like hypochondria or imagination. That’s exactly what makes it so difficult to live with this sensitivity: you suffer in real life, but your suffering is invisible to others, so they can’t understand it, let alone take it seriously. Worse still, you are often not only ridiculed, but immediately labeled as mentally ill. The WHO calls it “Idiopathic Environmental Intolerance attributed to EMF” – and, despite all the evidence pointing to physiological causes, ultimately dismisses it as psychosomatic.
But for me, it’s very real. And it has nothing to do with hysteria. I used to be tech-savvy, had Wi-Fi, a cordless phone, my cell phone under my pillow – without ever having a problem with it. It was only years later that the symptoms began. Insidiously. And then, at some point, unmistakably.
“Out of nowhere”
What kind of symptoms? There’s a whole range of them – and they don’t always all come at once, but often enough out of nowhere:
· My head starts to throb and I feel a stabbing pressure, as if a jackhammer were hitting the inside of my skull.
· My skin itches, tingles, burns—especially on my face, arms, and neck. Like sunburn without the sun.
· My heart races, my pulse rises suddenly, seemingly for no apparent reason.
· I can no longer concentrate or orient myself, I can no longer think clearly. I lose my train of thought in conversations.
I can no longer read texts because my thoughts flicker as if someone had triggered a loose connection in my brain.
· I feel powerless, can hardly walk or grasp things with my hands.
· I feel dizzy and nauseous. My muscles twitch. My neck is tense. I have a metallic taste in my mouth.
· My hands are shaking, my eyes are burning.
· I can no longer filter what I hear; every sound becomes sensory overload.
· My chest hurts, I struggle to breathe.
· Suddenly, I hear “electrical noises” in my ears.
· My whole body feels “electrically charged” – almost as if I had a finger in a power socket.
· I get stomach cramps and diarrhea.
· Although I am exhausted, I cannot fall asleep—my body simply cannot relax. I lie awake for hours, wondering if someone is charging their cell phone somewhere in the house.
After such stress, I often need two or three days of complete silence to recover somewhat. Then I lie in the dark for hours, with a lead cap over my head, waiting for the symptoms to subside.
And these symptoms aren’t just unpleasant. They are debilitating. They wear you down. Like a constant attack on the nervous system. Imagine having to live in a room with a siren blaring at 80 decibels. You can’t escape. You can’t switch it off. It’s screaming inside you constantly. All you can do is try not to break down. Because every aspect of your life, absolutely every aspect, is at stake.
The radiation torture is omnipresent, as is the lack of understanding.
When I tell others about it, the reaction is often: “But that can’t be true. I don’t notice anything.” Or: “Maybe you just need a vacation.” Or: “Maybe you should get some proper sleep.” As if it were a luxury problem that could be solved with a little mindfulness. Some even make fun of it: “Buy yourself a tin foil hat, then you’ll be safe.” Some say it’s all ‘nocebo’: what’s tormenting me isn’t real, it’s just my strong belief that something is tormenting me. A “matter of attitude.” “You’re working yourself up,” they say. “Don’t be like that.”
I could laugh along with them if I didn’t feel like crying. It hits me hard. Not because of the mockery. But because it shows how deep the misunderstanding runs.
What I’m going through isn’t imaginary suffering. It’s so concrete that, without even knowing it, I can pinpoint exactly where a Wi-Fi router is hidden behind a wall in other people’s homes. I systematically removed all sources of interference from my bedroom, removed all electrical devices, shielded the walls—and then I was able to sleep for the first time in months. This is not imagination. This is experience. The radiation torture is omnipresent for me.
What does that mean for my everyday life? Perhaps you’ll understand better if I describe my typical daily routine:
I wake up around 4 or 5 a.m. Not because I’m rested, but because my body can’t sleep anymore. My bedroom is a shielded room, almost free of radio fields. No Wi-Fi, no DECT, no smart meter. I even have a timer that cuts off the power at night. It’s the only place where I feel reasonably safe.
But even getting up is a balancing act. When my neighbor turns on his router at 6 a.m., I can feel it. No joke. My head starts to ache, my heart stumbles, my skin itches. I eat breakfast in semi-darkness because even LED light can cause pressure in my head. My cell phone is turned off—I use an old corded phone with buttons. My only contact with the outside world is via landline – or by letter, as is currently the case.
“Going outside is an adventure”
Going outside is an adventure. For me, a visit to the city is like a walk through flowering meadows and fields for someone with hay fever. I often wear a hat with silver threads to shield my head – it looks funny, I know. But it helps. Sometimes. A little.
Shopping? Only in small shops, at off-peak times. Large supermarkets are littered with self-scan checkouts, Wi-Fi, and LED spotlights—I get headaches after a few minutes in there.
Doctor’s appointments? Hardly possible. Waiting rooms full of smartphones, reception monitors, Bluetooth. Even many rural doctors now have DECT phones, Wi-Fi, and glowing monitors in their consultation rooms – torture for patients like me.
How do I get anywhere? I can’t use public transportation – too many cell phones, too many Wi-Fi signals. So, in my own car? It used to be freedom for me – today it’s a gauntlet through an electromagnetic minefield. Hardly anyone knows how much radiation modern cars emit: the on-board electronics, the infotainment system, the automatic door opener, the Bluetooth hands-free system, the GPS antenna, sometimes even a Wi-Fi hotspot. I can no longer use a car that is less than ten years old – and even with older models, I have to pull fuses, disconnect antennas, and remove the car radio. As soon as I get into a “smarter” car, my head starts to throb and my heart races. I get tingling in my hands, a metallic burning sensation on my tongue, and my concentration wanes. Once, I pulled over to the right because I thought I was losing control. I’ve even considered giving up driving altogether. But how else am I supposed to get out of my retreat?
So I remain dependent on an old, low-pollution vehicle. I keep the windows slightly open to reduce the “traffic jam” of radiation. I put a blanket over the center console so I’m not sitting directly over the electrical wires.
When I tell people about this, they look at me as if I’m crazy. Some say, “Just ride a bike.” Others say, “You’re not made of sugar.” But I realize they’re not listening. They judge because they don’t feel what I feel. Because they can’t imagine that the world that is completely normal for them is torture for others.
I don’t want to complain. I just want to explain what it’s like to live in a world full of invisible sources of irritation – which hardly anyone else notices except you. For me, these stimuli are like loud music for someone with migraine.
I react to them – my body rebels. And I can’t escape them unless I withdraw completely. That is precisely what burdens many EHS sufferers the most: the loss of participation. The feeling of being excluded from the brave new digital world. Not out of defiance – but out of necessity. Believe me, I have tried many things to save myself.
I turned off the Wi-Fi, gave away my DECT phones, sold my cell phone. I shielded my bedroom, put a canopy made of silver and copper threads over my bed, painted the walls with graphite paint, and disconnected the power circuit at night using a mains isolator. I tested grounding beds, bought shielding clothing, and wore silver yarn hats. I slept on the kitchen floor because that’s where the cell phone signal was weakest. I moved out of the city to an old stone house far away from the nearest cell tower.
I traveled to find places with no radio waves. I stayed at an electromagnetic pollution protection camp in Switzerland, in the Pyrenees, and in forest cabins in Sweden. I learned to “feel” Wi-Fi with my own body, like a radio detector. I practiced self-regulation techniques, from meditation to autosuggestion to breath therapy. I consulted naturopaths, environmental doctors, and building biologists. I tried everything. And a lot of it helped. In the short term. But the world is faster than me.
No longer welcome anywhere
Because what does it mean when even the last dead zone is closed? For me, it means total expulsion. No place left to escape to. No refuge. No safe haven. Headlines like “5G now even in the last village” sound to me like “You are no longer welcome anywhere.”
And it’s not just the physical pressure. It’s the social isolation. All personal contact becomes difficult. I used to be sociable. Now I turn down invitations because I know there will be cell phones buzzing, smartwatches beeping, Wi-Fi routers emitting radiation. My friends don’t understand. “Come on, Karin, it’s all in your head.” Or: “You just need to relax, you’re thinking too much about it.” The withdrawal begins gradually – until at some point you realize that you communicate more with your houseplants than with people.
Neighbors whisper when I wear my shielding cap or turn off the power box at night. Some grin, others avoid me. I am the “electro-nut.” Colleagues don’t understand why I can’t work in the open-plan office. Employers wave me away. I lost my job because I couldn’t work in rooms with Wi-Fi anymore. And no, working from home isn’t an option as long as all the wiring there emits radiation too.
But the worst thing is that you become dehumanized. I’m no longer Karin, the friend, the musician, the funny colleague, the nice neighbor. I’m a walking symptom. A two-legged disorder. A burden. An imposition. I notice how people distance themselves internally because I make them uncomfortable. Because I make visible a reality that they would rather ignore.
“You’re exaggerating.”
Perhaps it will help you understand my situation better if I tell you about a few episodes that have particularly affected me. For example, my nephew’s birthday. I had been looking forward to it so much. But when I entered the living room, there were two tablets on the table, Alexa was playing in the corner, and all the guests had their cell phones in their pockets or on the table, of course. After ten minutes, my head started to throb, after twenty minutes my skin started to burn, and after thirty minutes I had to say goodbye. My brother looked at me as if I had insulted him. “That’s not normal, Karin,” he said. “You’re exaggerating.”
Or the incident with the neighbor who complained that I asked her to turn off her new Wi-Fi router at night. She said I was a “troublemaker,” a “backward person.” She said she didn’t want to live in a world where people had to give up modern technology because of the sensitivities of individuals. I asked her if she would react the same way if someone with a fragrance allergy asked her not to wear perfume. She just laughed. Understanding? Zero.
And then there was my ex-boyfriend, Martin. At first, he tried to be considerate. He calmly accepted that I wore a silver chain to calm myself down and refrained from making disparaging remarks when I touched a tree to ground myself before coming home. But over time, it became too much for him. No movies, no hotel vacations, no spontaneous coffee dates—I couldn’t go to the city with him, to his apartment, or to family gatherings. “You’re like a whiny limitation on two legs,” he said one evening. I understood him. Still, it hurt terribly. In the end, we broke up because our lives had become so incompatible, as if we were from different planets.
I often feel like a ridiculous relic from the day before yesterday. I can’t use e-tickets, do my banking via an app, or use public transportation because even trains have Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 5G. I travel with aluminum foil in my bag so I can shield myself if necessary. I can’t even go to the government office or the bank without risking symptoms—even there, there are now digital queues and “smart” terminals.
Shopping is a logistical feat. I avoid supermarkets with self-checkout counters and LED floodlights, and look for small organic shops where I can still pay in cash. But even there I’m never safe – the cashier with the Apple Watch is enough to send my nervous system into overdrive.
What’s wrong with me?
Of course, I constantly ask myself why I react this way – and others don’t. What’s different about my body? Why can my neighbor live peacefully with four routers in his house, while I get a headache just from turning them on? Naturally, I’ve researched, read, asked questions – and found some answers. They’re not simple or definitive, but at least they’re explanations from scientists who take the phenomenon seriously and are trying to get to the bottom of it.
Maybe it’s a genetic predisposition – certain detoxification enzymes that don’t work as well in my body. Or it could be a disturbance in the brain’s processing of stimuli, similar to what people with tinnitus or fibromyalgia experience. Some scientists suspect a kind of “central sensitization,” in which the nervous system reacts like a hypersensitive smoke detector to stimuli that others do not even perceive.
Others speak of chronic oxidative stress, a permanent overload of the cells caused by silent inflammation. Some environmental physicians report damage to the blood-brain barrier caused by high-frequency fields. And then there is the theory that we all live in an electromagnetic “test laboratory” – and some bodies simply react to it earlier and more strongly than others.
What I can say for sure is that I wasn’t always like this. At some point, my body started to fight back. Maybe it was a gradual accumulation of too many years with constant Wi-Fi, with my smartphone under my pillow, with Bluetooth headphones, with constant stress at work. Maybe it was the moment when the new cell phone tower three houses down went into operation—and I felt myself glowing from the inside for the first time at night.
What I know for sure is that it’s not my imagination. My body is reacting. Not always in the same way, not always predictably – but definitely. I wish it weren’t so. But it is.
Let down by medicine, unprotected by the state
I feel let down by medicine. Most doctors are unfamiliar with electrosensitivity – or dismiss it. I was sent to psychiatrists and prescribed antidepressants, even though I was never depressed. Just exhausted. Worn out. And desperate. The official healthcare system has no category for people like me. Without an ICD code, there is no diagnostic pigeonhole in which to file people like me.
And the government? It acts as if we don’t exist. Electrosensitive people do not appear in any official statistics. There are virtually no radio-free zones left, no legally regulated consideration, no building protection requirements, no barrier-free public spaces. Even judges rule against radio masts only in exceptional cases. Everything is subordinated to progress. Digitalization above all else. Criticism of technology is a brake on growth.
In doing so, the state and society are violating fundamental duties of protection. Article 2 of our Basic Law states clearly and unequivocally that “everyone has the right to life and physical integrity” – where is mine? Article 1 states that “human dignity is inviolable.” “To respect and protect it is the duty of all state authority.” When people with electromagnetic hypersensitivity are forced to live in conditions that make them ill and have no place of refuge, does that not violate their human dignity? Do they deserve less attention, solidarity, and support than blind people, wheelchair users, queer people, and asylum seekers?
What needs to happen? It’s simple:
• Create legally protected radio-free zones, for example in forests or high mountain valleys – does every dead spot have to be filled in at all costs?
• Mandatory labeling of radiation sources in public spaces;
• Freedom of choice between wired and wireless infrastructure;
• Funding for research to determine the biological effects of low-frequency fields – and to find out what factors make people like me electrosensitive;
• Medical training for environmental doctors, general practitioners, and psychiatrists – most of whom are currently clueless;
• Protective guidelines based on biological effects and not solely on thermal limits.
But nothing of the sort is happening. Why? Because there is no lobby behind it. Because radio frequencies are worth billions. Because it is easier to discredit us as “cranks” than to lower limits. Because the radio industry influences research, legislation, and education. Because those affected are unable to fight for their human rights in lengthy legal battles. And because a society that has committed itself to total connectivity is not prepared to reflect on the price that some of us are paying for it.
“I don’t need pity, I need understanding and protection.”
What do I want? No pity. No special treatment. Just spaces where people like me can exist without having to fight all the time. Without having to constantly apologize and justify ourselves.
I wish we would stop talking about progress without considering its victims. That we would stop blindly forging ahead without checking who we are leaving behind. I wish people would listen, even if they don’t understand everything. That they would acknowledge that there are other realities of life. That consideration is not a weakness, but a form of humanity.
Sometimes I wonder how long I can take it. I hate complaining. But there are days when I think: If I have nowhere left where I feel safe, what then? If my nervous system can no longer find peace, if I can no longer sleep, think, live? Is that still a life? Or just a joyless, agonizing, meaningless existence?
I talk to trees and animals because they don’t think I’m crazy. I avoid train stations, city centers, supermarkets, doctors’ offices, cafés, hotels, and movie theaters because they drive me crazy, make my skin burn, and my heart race. I live in a cocoon. My home is my last refuge in a world that has become hostile – and gradually even that is disappearing. I know other people who have been affected in the same way, who have had a new cell phone mast erected near their homes and now prefer to live homeless in the forest, in tents.
Yes, I have thought about suicide. Not out of anger, but out of exhaustion and despair. Because living under constant radiation exposure is like being in a permanent state of alarm for me. Like a war against my own body. I want to live – but not under constant attack. I want to breathe – but not through lead vests. I want to belong – but not at the expense of my health.
I’m not writing this to you because I’m looking for sympathy. I don’t need it, it doesn’t make me feel any better. I just want to be seen. Heard. Understood.
If you like, come visit me sometime. Here, in my dead zone – as long as I still have one. Don’t bring your cell phone, just your ears. It’s quiet here. Maybe then you’ll hear what I mean.
Thank you for your attention, it means a lot to me.
With love
Your Karin
Help and support for electrosensible people in Germany Rat und Hilfe für Elektrosensible bieten:
Verein für Elektrosensible und Mobilfunkgeschädigte e. V. (München)
- Bietet: Beratung, Erfahrungsaustausch, Hilfe zur Selbsthilfe
- Aktive Vertretung im Bereich rechtlicher Anerkennung (z. B. Mobilfunkfreie Wohngebiete, Schutz am Arbeitsplatz etc.) (elektrosensibel-muenchen.de)
Diagnose:funk / Bürgerwelle e. V.
- Plattform für Aufklärung, Webinare (z. B. zum Welttag der Elektrohypersensibilität am 16. Juni) und Vernetzung
- Engagiert sich für öffentliche Sensibilisierung und politische Maßnahmen (diagnose-funk.org)
Lokale & regionale Selbsthilfegruppen
- z. B. Odenwälder Interessengemeinschaft für ein gesundes Leben, Bürgerforum Karlsruhe, Weisse Zone Rhön e. V., Initiative Flieden etc.
- Fokus: Unterstützung vor Ort, Erfahrungsaustausch, regionale Aktionen zur Reduzierung von EMF (elektro-sensibel.de, Elektrosensibilität)
Fachberatungen & Messungen:
IBES – Institut für biologische Elektrotechnik
- Fachliche Messungen und Gutachten zu EMF in Wohn- und Arbeitsräumen
- Beratung zu Schutzmaßnahmen, Alltagsempfehlungen oder Abschirmmaßnahmen (TINY and small HOUSES)
Baubiologische Beratungsstellen (z. B. IBN Berlin)
- Analysen, Abschirmungsstrategien, baubiologische Sanierungen (z. B. Abschirmfarben, Gewebeverkleidung, spezielle Baustoffe) (TINY and small HOUSES)