Your body’s amazing EMF-sensors

March 4, 2025

Plants have them. Insects have them. Animals have them, and so do you.

Amazing, microscopic EMF sensors that detect vanishingly small signals.

They’re called voltage-gated ion channels (VGICs) and exist in all cell membranes in animal and even plant cells. They allow the entrance and exit of ions (electrically charged molecules) in the cells and they open/close by electric forces on their voltage-sensors. They respond to membrane voltage changes and they also respond to forces from ions inside them, forced to oscillate by external fields.

The composition of ions (calcium, sodium, potassium and so on) inside the cell controls the state of the cell and all cellular functions.

Leading EMF-biophysicist Dr Dimitris J. Panagopoulos says that VGICs play a key role in the ability to sense electric and magnetic fields in the environment. In his recent paper, he and his co-workers describe the biophysical mechanism for how migrating animals use the VGICs to sense the intensity and direction of the Earth’s geomagnetic field in order to orient and navigate.

He says, ‘… all animals and plants/trees are equipped with the most sensitive EMF-sensors, in large numbers in all membranes of each of their trillions of cells, which are no other that the VGICs, the most abundant class of transmembrane proteins forming ion channels in the cell membranes in all cells of all animals.’

Panagopoulos and co-workers have shown that these VGICs are extraordinarily sensitive and can detect even minute electromagnetic fields.

Moreover, they have demonstrated that VGICs can even detect differences between the horizontal and vertical components of the geomagnetic field.

‘These effects on animals take place through the variations in the force exerted on their VGIC sensors due to corresponding variations in their velocity,’ Panagopoulos says.

‘It seems that a migrating animal senses zero stress and has a most relaxed journey when it moves along the north–south direction of the GMF [geomagnetic field] ... The migrating animal receives a mild stress when it moves in any other direction, with this mild stress increasing … and becoming maximum … when the animal moves vertically… This automatically provides the animal with the sense of direction in its motion.’

‘This biophysical mechanism explains all known EMF-bioeffects including magnetoreception.’

It also explains why humans are able to detect even very weak man-made fields with particular characteristics (polarized, coherent and varying).

Panagopoulos points out that ‘VGICs exist in great numbers in all cell membranes of all living cells. Moreover, … their numbers/percentages are significantly greater in neurons (nerve cells) as the Na+ [sodium] and K+ [potassium] VGICs are necessary for the transmission of the nerve impulses, and especially in brain neurons.’

‘This study resolves one of the greatest enigmas in science that had remained unexplained till today: How migrating animals orient and navigate on Earth, traveling many thousands of kilometers and finding exact locations. In other words, how animals sense the GMF intensity and direction, and finally how they can sense electromagnetic fields (EMFs) in general,’ he says.

Panagopoulos DJ, Karabarbounis A, and Chrousos GP, (2024): Biophysical mechanism of animal magnetoreception, orientation and navigation. Nature, Scientific Reports 14, 30053. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-77883-9,