Laptops on Your Lap | Fatal Conveniences™

Darin: It’s that time of the week for another fatal convenience. This is a bite-size segment that addresses some of society’s fatal conveniences and the steps you can take to avoid becoming a victim of them. I define fatal conveniences as the things we may be doing because the world we live in makes us believe we have to, tap water, shampoo, sunglasses, food. I dive into the hidden truths behind some of our everyday choices that could not only be harming us but even killing us, so let’s dive in.

Darin: Hey, everybody, welcome to the show. Fatal convenience coming at you. This is something so many people use, these are laptops. And this is specifically laptops on laps is a really bad idea, and we are going to explore that. So I think you can start understanding, and this is changing the culture, dare I say. The more awareness you have, the more ways that you’ll be able to find and perceive and see fatal conveniences. So what I want to ask you right now is when you have a fatal convenience that you have not seen me tackle, shoot me a note, shoot us a message, send me an email, make sure that you’re signing up for our fatal convenience newsletter, darinolien.com, fatalconvenience.com. Sign up for that newsletter. I want you to shoot me emails. I want you to shoot me messages, and tell me what the fatal convenience is. We need our tribe and our troops out there so that we can push back on these great inventions that we’ve created so much convenience in our lives for, but the ones that are causing us pain and challenges and health concerns, etc., we need to change. And there are great solutions. And so this is another one. Listen, I’m sitting on a laptop right now. I have a distance, it’s not directly on my lap, and I have a shield that’s been scientifically proven to shield from direct current of EMFs and heat, everything on my lap. So that’s jumping all the way to the end and giving you a little tidbit. So there are solutions, and I’m not saying throw your laptop out the window, but what I’m saying is use common sense. So obviously, laptops are amazing because they’ve allowed us to take with us, and chain us from desks, take us on trips, be anywhere in the world and get your work done, incredible. And now with the Covid stuff, more people are mobile than ever. And saw hell of a fatal convenience, hell of a convenience, but let’s just diving just for the fun of it. A little bit of the history of the portable computer. We know today that very few people are using desktop. We all have desktop computers and or just a laptop. But in 1979, a guy from Britain named William Moggridge for Grid Systems Corporation, he made 1/5 of the weight of the model equivalent and had the performance so that technically, so that they can bring it on the NASA‘s space shuttle, and this was in the early 1980s. So this is the first inching towards a more portable computer. And then by this company, Osborne Computer Corp, they created one that was about 24 pounds but did any of you know of the Osborne 1? No. It was a short-lived computer that never really became successful, so no one knew about it. And then in 1982, Epson HX-20. And from there, Radio Shack, IBM, Compaq released portable computers in the ‘80s. In 1988, the first notebook-style was released, and this was by NEC, Nec Ultralite. It was a laptop size computer that weighed under 5 pounds. And then here we go, the giant coming in 1989. The Apple computer released the first Macintosh portable computer and that one evolved into the power book. Since then, laptop innovation obviously has been exponential allowing the people to work anywhere having a huge amount of data and it really just exploded. And obviously, with Covid, the market just exploded, and I’m going to get into that. So for some other fun facts, not so fun on this one though that thieves steal one out of every 10 laptops. So we have people that literally are the hundreds of millions that are being sold. One out of every 10 are being stolen, refurbished, and then resold somewhere else. Old Apple notebooks, the logo used to be upside down, that was interesting, I didn’t know that. The first email from outer space was sent by the Mac portable, how cool is that? According to [00:05:47] in 2020, shipments of PC and laptop devices reached 79.2 million units during the quarter, an increase of 12.7% in sales continued to benefit usually from the Covid crisis. So anyone selling laptops, well, guess what? They benefited from COVID-19, One of other big conglomerates that just benefited by the sacrifice of many of us. Laptops accounted for the majority of sales and 64 million units shipped during the third quarter as more and more employees were scheduled to work at home. So that was a massive 28.3% increase over really just a year. Crazy, right? So obviously, do I even need to say it again? Why are laptops convenient? They are easy, they are portable, they fit on our backpacks, they’re easily brought around anywhere, you can work from anywhere, they have all the power and more and super easy to use obviously, just from a gadget perspective. We are totally fascinated by that. You can hook in external devices, different kind of powerful tools, an increased productivity and processor size and all of this stuff and it just goes on and on and on. So that’s the convenience, obviously. But here is where it gets crazy and here is where you need to be aware. Man, I’m going to start with you first, testicles, motility, sperm count plummets. 2005 study found that laptops can raise your lab temperatures. So now we are just talking about literally temperature on your lap, absolutely proven. Dr. Jesse Mill, human males have testicles outside their bodies that is for the reason of keeping the temperature lower in the testicles. So the body needs to keep the testicles slightly one, ideally 2 degrees cooler then the rest of the body. So if you’re putting a laptop on it, it definitely lowers the motility and affects the testicles and affects testosterone. Researchers in Argentina found that holding a laptop on the legs near the testicles damages also the DNA of the sperm cells. So that’s directly harming nature when these laptops and this radiation It’s on the male reproductive system. According to the study conducted by the American Society for reproductive medicine found that holding a laptop on your legs can affect fertility. To our knowledge, this is the first study to evaluate the direct impact of laptop use our human spermatozoa, example, vivo exposure of human spermatozoa to a wireless Internet-connected lab decreased motility and induced DNA fragmentation by a non-thermal effect. We are not talking temperature right now. You speculate that keeping a laptop connected wirelessly to the Internet on the lab near the testes may result in decreased male fertility and damage the DNA that I just said. The researchers found that just four hours of exposure to Wi-Fi radiation from a laptop lead to decreased sperm motility, a key indicator of sperm health, and a notebook increase in DNA fragmentation of sperm. We are talking about life itself being altered. Your ability to move life forward is being directly affected by your laptop, by the EMF, by the Wi-Fi, by the radiation. If you don’t realize that this is a fatal convenience at the most primal level, this is an unnatural process that is destroying life, the ability for us to move life forward, this is destroying it. Is there ways to protect you? Yes, there are some but we need to be aware of this. Putting your laptop connected to the plug-in, connected to Wi-Fi signals on your lap, on your genitals, and for women, near your babies, near your unborn child, near your ovaries, near your digestion, all of that stuff, horrible idea. Prolonged laptop for women, women’s fertility and ability to reproduce severely affected the delay of egg production and can make extra difficult for them to conceive if they have successfully conceived yet continue to use the laptop on their labs or tummy. The EMF radiation can cause health issues of the fetus they’re carrying, hear me? When these babies are born, they may show signs of congenital and developmental problems. The environmental and occupational health publication found that the mother and fetus are exposed to higher amounts of EMR‘s by laptops, type of radiation from the laptop, they found in close proximity of high voltage power lines or video screens. These pregnant women who use laptops in close contact with the body or at risk of detectable impairment to the health of their offspring. This is not just throwing information out. This is published peer-reviewed research. It’s not me just sitting here babbling. This is real stuff. So from the heat of the actual laptop on your body is harmful, we already know that. They have done tests in 2005 that scrotal temperatures in 29 healthy volunteers comma to separate 60-minute sessions using the laptop and only testing for this test for temperature increase, we knew that, and this is the quote, “The heat factor is well known negative impact on fertility as we wanted to know if scrotal temperatures really increased with the laptop,” by Dr. Shenkin, an associate professor of urology at SUNY Stony Brook who co-authored the study in 2005, and I have all this in the show notes on laptops and heat they generate, we found that the laptops used the scrotal temperatures did increase quite significantly. After an hour of use, scrotal temperatures jumped by 5 degrees, this is significant because remember, just from the testicles alone by going up by 2 degrees affects the fertility in men. So the Swiss researchers, Dr. Andreas Arnold and Peter Eaton from University Hospital Basel found that a hot laptop could lead to skin damage on your lap and it even could develop into skin cancer. That’s just heat, that’s just heat alone. The EMF exposure is a whole nother thing. American Center of reproductive medicine at Cleveland clinic exposed semen samples to sell strength EMS in the laboratory. Dr. Agarwal found evidence of oxidative stress as well as significant drops in sperm motility and viability. The same is true with EMF related to fertility in women, one hotly debated and much-criticized paper 2007 study from the department of life sciences in Hanyang University in Seoul found device strength EMF could extend or otherwise mess with female reproductive cycles. And now it’s messing with your own reproductive cycling, at least in mice that they showed. Well, if it’s in mice and you’re having the same thing biologically, you know where that’s going. Okay, so here’s the thing, distance matters. The distance of the laptop off of your lap matters. At least work on 8 inches, put something in between your lap. I use all the time on my lap, these little great stands that you click into place, you can put them exactly where you want it, the angle you want it. I use it all the time. They fold down. You can bring them anywhere. Perfect. You can use that off your lap completely. These things are great. So they found that the study, the FCC office, mobile devices and transmitters, the distance of at least 20 centimeters or 8 inches is a good starting distance of radiation. Most of the harmful effects of a strong EMF energy happens when you are streaming videos and when it’s plugged in. So keep in mind when your phone is plugged or your laptop’s plugged in, that’s when it’s the strongest and then when you’re using it, your downloading or you’re streaming a video. So keep it away from you. Use a desk, stand up, use a stand, all of that. Standing desks are amazing. And then there are some great laptop shielding devices. They have not only for your protection EMF shielding devices for your cellphone, they also have one and I’m using it right now, I have a distance of at least 8 inches off of my lap with my stand, as well as I have a shielding device for my laptop as we speak. So that’s how we need to approach. We need to keep this stuff off our laps and it’s also better ergonomically. If you use a stand and you move it up and it’s better for your eye position so your head’s not pointing down in a bad angle. We have a lot of reliable sources here, a lot of great articles in the show notes, so take a look. This is incredible. This is easy. I’m not getting rid of my laptop, either are you but you can get it off your lap, women. Get it off your children’s lap. Easy to do. So that’s the point, solutions for the things that we’re finding that are not good for us. Guess what? Have the best day ever and I love you.

Darin: Thanks for tuning in everyone. I hope that left you feeling inspired to take a closer look at the everyday choices you’re making and how they could be impacting your health and even the planet. If you want to learn more about life’s fatal conveniences, head over to fatalconveniences.com. You can sign up for the exclusive access to Fatal Conveniences episodes, news, insights, and more. And all this great stuff gets sent each week straight to your inbox, making it really easy. Now, that’s a convenience without the negative side effects. It only takes a few seconds to join. Just fill in the form and take that amazing step towards making better choices. Remember, small changes can have big impact. So, keep diving my friends, keep diving. And if you haven’t had a chance to check out the interview, I released earlier on the week, here’s what you missed:

Darin: This episode is produced by my team at Must Amplify, an audio marketing company that specializes in giving a voice to a brand and making sure the right people hear it. If you would like or are thinking about doing a podcast or even would like a strategy session to add your voice to your brand in a powerful way, go to www.mustamplify.com/darin. That’s www.mustamplify.com/darin.