It’s a bit controversial, but you should know that using a microwave oven could be damaging your health. Swiss scientist Hans Hertel did independent research on microwave cooking that was once banned from publication by a court gag order demanded by an industry association. He was told to recant or be arrested. His findings were not favorable for microwave-oven users.

Hertel’s research corroborated early Soviet Russian research that led to a ban on microwave ovens, which was lifted after the “iron curtain” fell to increase microwave oven sales.

Both Hans Hertel’s research and the Soviet Russian research went beyond the commonly accepted dangers of microwaves leaking into the immediate environment and lowering nutritional value of microwave-cooked foods – two very real consequences of using a microwave oven.

Check out this extensive article on how microwaves are damaging your health, as well as links to numerous research pieces. Be sure to read the comments to see both sides of the argument.

Molecules are Agitated and Damaged

Hertel explains how heat is produced from the inside out in microwaves:

“Technically produced microwaves are based on the principle of alternating current. Atoms, molecules and cells hit by this hard electromagnetic radiation are forced to reverse polarity 1 to 100 billion times a second.”

Hertel is quick to point out that microwaves from the sun don’t cause the same type of molecular damage because the sun emits direct current (DC) pulses, where microwave ovens are generated by alternating current (AC) that causes the rapid polarity shifts in molecules to torque and tear them.

“There are no atoms, molecules or cells of any organic system able to withstand such a violent, destructive power for any extended period of time, not even in the low energy range of milliwatts.” Hertel continues, “This is how microwave cooking heat is generated – friction from this violence in water molecules. Structures of molecules are torn apart, molecules are forcefully deformed (called structural isomerism) and thus become impaired in quality.”

So it’s the water molecules in foods that are directly agitated first to produce frictional heat. Even worse, using a microwave oven for heating water for coffee or tea or for warming baby’s formula will create severely damaged molecules, which are carcinogenic. More on that later.

Gene Damage from Microwave Cooking

Besides these thermal modifications, there is direct damage to cell walls and genes from microwaves. Gene altering technology, which includes the biotech food industry, alters genes by weakening them with microwaves.

Hertel explained further, “… the cells are actually broken, thereby neutralizing the electrical potentials – the very life of the cells – between the outer and inner sides of the cell membranes.”

Strange and unknown compounds are created by microwave energy’s penetration into organic matter. They’ve been called radiolytic compounds. Some scientists argue that normal cooking creates these as well. However, Hertel’s research has indicated that far more radiolytic compounds are created by microwave cooking.

Hertel used human trials to demonstrate that the food and liquids damaged from microwaving modifies the cellular activity in humans consuming them. In addition to creating lower red blood cell counts and white blood cell (immune system “killer cells”) damage, one’s normal cells can be forced by the damaged molecules and radiolytic compounds to adapt into an emergency mode of energy production.

Cells are forced from normal cellular oxidation of glucose into the anaerobic energy production of glucose fermentation. This is a cancerous condition. Anaerobic glucose fermentation is how cancer cells survive and thrive.

It almost seems impossible to omit microwaves completely in today’s fast-paced world. But reducing the use of microwave ovens will help, and that’s something you can feel good about.