Health and Energetic Environment

Dear Colleagues,

We are organizing a Special Issue of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. This issue will address the global interconnectivity between people and the Earth’s energetic environment as well as its impact on emotional and cognitive processes, health and behavior. The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes articles and communications in the interdisciplinary area of environmental health sciences and public health. For detailed information on the journal, please see: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph.

Historically, many cultures believed that their collective behavior could be influenced by the sun and other external cycles and influences. This belief has proven to be true. On a larger societal scale, increased violence, crime rates, social unrest, revolutions and the frequency of terrorist attacks have been linked to the solar cycle and the resulting disturbances in the geomagnetic field. Importantly, solar activity not only has been associated with social unrest, but also with the periods of greatest human flourishing, including clear spurts of innovation and creativity in architecture, arts and science as well as periods of positive social change.

The energetic environment, which includes the geomagnetic field, Schumann resonances, solar activity and cosmic rays, has been shown to have a significant impact on mental and emotional processes, health and behavior. The branch of science that studies how solar and geomagnetic activity affects living organisms, especially humans, is called heliobiology. The human body is designed to adapt to daily and seasonal climatic and geomagnetic variations, but environmental factors like geomagnetic storms can alter the hormone balance of the body, such as the melatonin/serotonin balance. These factors affect many physiological functions, including blood pressure, breathing, the immune system and reproductive, cardiac and neurological processes. Geomagnetic disturbances are associated with significant increases in hospital admissions for depression, mental disorders, psychiatric issues, suicide attempts, homicides and traffic accidents.

In this Special Issue, we invite research that explores relationships between global behaviors and the synchronization of numerous physiological rhythms with solar and geomagnetic activity. The majority of research conducted thus far has focused on how disruptions in the Earth’s magnetic fields are associated with adverse effects on health and behaviors. Other research offers growing evidence suggesting that the Earth’s magnetic fields helps to synchronize, energize and nonlocally interconnect living systems. Growing evidence also suggests that some solar and magnetic energy influxes can also be utilized as a source of energy that has positive biological and behavorial effects.

This Special Issue welcomes theoretical and empirical contributions and is open to any subject area related to the effects of solar, geomagnetic and cosmic environments on health, mental and emotional processes, behavior and interconnectivity.

Dr. Rollin McCraty
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• heliobiology
• geomagnetic field
• Schumann resonance
• solar wind
• cosmic rays
• solar radio flux
• energetic environment
• magnetic field
• Earth
• synchronization
• entrainment
• nonlinear dynamical systems
• global interconnectivity