Whether you know it or not, you've been zapped.

Recluses who live in remote outposts with no electricity or wireless devices, they're not zapped. But the rest of us--we're all getting thoroughly zapped with electromagnetic fields (EMFs) generated by the numerous electrical and wireless devices in our homes, offices, schoolrooms, cars, restaurants, stores--just about everywhere.

And according to HSI Panelist Ann Louise Gittleman, Ph.D., this constant EMF immersion is nothing less than electropollution. As Ann Louise puts it, "Your body responds to it as though it were a cloud of toxic chemicals."

But there's good news here too.

Through ceilings and walls

I just got off the phone with Ann Louise. We talked about her newest book, "Zapped," which she describes as a handbook for recognizing EMF sources. More importantly, "Zapped" offers hundreds of invaluable tips on how to significantly reduce your electropollution exposure.

For instance: If you live in a two-story house and you have a ceiling fan downstairs, the fan's EMF filters up into the room above. So be sure you don't run that fan at night if the room above is a bedroom.

Your refrigerator also generates a very powerful EMF. So if there's a couch or an easy chair on the other side of the wall behind your refrigerator, anyone sitting there is cocooned in a powerful electromagnetic aura.

With just these two insights, you can immediately imagine the many ways your appliances fill your home with EMFs.

Wild & wireless

Of course, "Zapped" also closely examines the effects of our wireless world--multifunction cell phones, laptops, iPads, and all the other wonderful gadgets that bring new layers of electropollution to our daily rituals.

Especially the cell phone.

As I mentioned earlier this year, a series of international studies called Interphone, coordinated by the World Health Organization, revealed a very troubling link between heavy cell use and giloma, the type of brain tumor that ended Senator Kennedy's life.

Other studies have shown that extended cell use among young people sharply increases their risk of developing malignant brain tumors.

So what can you do to protect yourself?

Here are three essential steps Ann Louise offers in "Zapped"...

1) After dialing a number, hold the phone away from your head while the call connects--this is when the signal (and the EMF) is strongest

2) Don't sleep near your cordless phone charger--it emits radio frequency power even when it's not in use

3) Keep the calls you make from cars, elevators, trains, etc. to a minimum--enclosed spaces increase EMF power

If you've been an HSI member for a while, you know Ann Louise is a renowned nutrition specialist and the author of many books on health and healing, including "The Fat Flush Plan," a New York Times bestseller. No surprise, then, that she caps off her many excellent EMF avoidance tips with suggestions for foods and supplements that can help "zap-proof" your world.

"Zapped" is available now at amazon.com.

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