Is grounding real?

If you’ve been plagued with tight connective tissue, muscle pulls and/or tendonitis, you’ve probably wondered if it isn’t a warning sign of something wrong with you at a deeper level… I suffered for 15 years with these issues and have dug deeply into them. I’m going to share a couple of the most important opportunities that surfaced in my research. Here’s the thing, we all know people were healthier 30 or 50 years ago. Rates of cancer, autism, Alzheimer’s and plain old muscle and tendon problems have skyrocketed along with hundreds and hundreds of other illnesses.

So what’s changing? There are a few universal changes that are affecting nearly everyone – of course our environment is radically more toxic, not just the air and water, but your bedroom and your office and the food you eat. People are starting to think about those things, but what many have not considered, is that we are all wearing sunglasses, sunscreen and clothing which includes rubber soled shoes.

That means most of us physically touch the earth with our skin only rarely. Rubber soles insulate you electrically from the earth. We also get just a fraction of the sunshine on our skin that our ancestors did 500 years ago. I’ll talk about sunshine another time, because today I’m talking about contact with the earth. The thing is, we are electrical beings – our brain and heart are very delicate electrical organs sensitive to low voltages and interference from the kind of electromagnetic frequency pollution which is all around us today.

And that’s why someone may have already recommended you start sleeping with a grounding sheet, pillow or pad or working at your desk with a grounded mousepad and or universal mat.

We are also very sensitive to the electromagnetic properties of the earth. And since we evolved over millions of years in close contact with the earth, our bodies need that contact. Grounding is just that – connecting with the earth again physically and electrically. Most of us have been conditioned to think about either foods, vitamins and supplements or pharmaceuticals when we are ill, but there is mounting evidence that biophysics trumps biochemistry. That means light and electromagnetics may have far more impact on your health than your diet. Watch the video and listen to an MD say it in his own words.

But when any new idea comes along that threatens old thinking, it gets belittled and mocked. So you’ll find scads of skeptics peddling trash talk about grounding. These debunker websites are less scientific than the grounding proponents who’ve done actual research. The skeptic authors solicit donations and sell products too all the while complaining about the commercialization of grounding and every other new idea… Anything new that’s inexpensive, easy and effective gets this treatment. Ignore it, because there is good science behind grounding and I’m going to share it with you.

What I love about these skeptic authors and websites is that they really have no interest in knowing the truth or expending any effort to discover it (yeah, I’m talking about you Harriet Hall, M.D.) and the same time they cannot hide their glee at at the thought that everyone else might have been duped by a new technology. These skeptics ooze an air of easy superiority, but of course it’s baseless, because they’ve done no investigative work at all. They don’t even ask ‘What does earthing do?’ How arrogant!

I’m actually doing my own experiments, just to confirm that the experiments shown in the grounding documentary Grounded are repeatable. You can see that documentary and the experiments here:

And that’s why someone may have already recommended you start sleeping with a grounding sheet, pillow or pad or working at your desk with a grounded mousepad and or universal mat.

Here’s an experiment I’ve done on my own – I grew wheatgrass in two separate containers, one of which was grounded and the other wasn’t. The grounded container had stainless steel rods that ran underneath  the rows of growing medium which are connected to ground using wires with alligator clips. It only took two or three days before the wheatgrass from both containers reached up to the bottom of the windowsill in the picture.

I was disappointed because both containers full of wheatgrass looked about the same. But I knew that to be really scientific, I needed to weigh the wheatgrass. And I was right about that because the  output of the grounded container was 15% heavier by weight. Even as I was harvesting the wheatgrass, I could tell there was a significant difference – the grounded wheatgrass felt thicker and healthier.

Then another doubt occurred to me, what if I had accidentally miscounted the seeds. There were supposed to be four seeds per growth pellet/medium. But what if I had made a mistake? so I randomly grabbed 10 stalks of grass from the grounded pile and the ungrounded pile, and weighed the sets of 10. Again the grounded wheatgrass weighed significantly more!

I’m in the middle of another experiment now with cut flowers to see if the grounded flowers stay healthy longer or not. Results coming soon!

Finally, I’d like you to listen to Dr. Laura Koniver, MD or read the transcript of the video below. Dr. Koniver is a holistic physician featured in many films (including the award winning film Down To Earth, as well as The Grounded and Heal For Free):

What does earthing do? How much grounding do I need to do to make a difference?

Hi I’m Laura Conover MD, the intuition physician and today I want to answer your questions. One of the most frequently asked questions I get which is how much earthing do I have to do each day to make a difference. My answer is always anything makes a difference. There is no amount of earthing that is too quick or too small to make a noticeable impact on you and your body’s physiology. So never ever ever think I’m not going to bother slipping off my shoe for a minute or touching this tree for a second because it’s not long enough. That’s not true. It’s long enough. Instantaneous is long enough. Of course the benefits continue to extend the longer you do it and I want to go over the scientific literature to tell you exactly what you’re doing when you’re just connecting for a second and exactly what you’re doing when you’re connecting for years and years and years.

What if I only get a few minutes of grounding in?

Okay so let’s just go over that right now. So your muscle tension immediately drops and is measurable on electromyogram so that is a measurable, noticeable, instantaneous change as well as your ambient voltage of your entire body shifts. Your EEG brainwaves change and your skin conductance. So that’s instantaneous. So muscle, skin, brain and also levels of pain are instantly shifted. Sustaining it for a few minutes in medical studies has shown to have an impact on your organ function and on your vasculature. So blood viscosity changes. So we’re talking about this now we’re moving into studies that have gone on for 20 minutes 30 minutes in the range of several minutes. So just within minutes you’ve really affected your circulatory system and all the end organs that are targeted by your circulatory system because now you’ve increased circulation. You’ve increased blood viscosity. You’ve increased your respiratory rates so you’ve increased oxygenation and now you’ve stabilized your blood glucose so you have an immediate change in the metabolic function of your entire body.

What does a few hours of grounding do to your physiology?

Now let’s look at studies that have gone into hours. So one night is all it takes to change your indicators of osteoporosis. It affects your bones at this point. All right deep into your bones. You are affecting and changing your metabolic panel so all of your electrolytes and your minerals. Your calcium, your phosphorus, your potassium, your magnesium. Even your iron levels change after just one eight-hour session. So sleeping grounded for one night changes your osteoporosis indicators which show that bone metabolism and growth is actually affected.

The other thing that it affects now with just one night is thyroid function. So now you’re talking about something not just physiological immediate changes and not just talking about supporting the organs inside your body but now we’re talking about how they interrelate with each other. We’re talking about the structural support with your bones and we’re talking about the hormonal support with your thyroid.

Alright your cortisol levels can be affected by just one night of sleeping grounded. Your thyroid function panel changes and shifts dramatically so that thyroid function is actually boosted just in one night.

What can a few days of grounding do?

Now we’re moving into studies that talk about several days. If you earth and are connected to the earth for several days straight you actually are more resilient and more adaptable to life’s stress and to demands on the physical body. There’s one study in particular I’m thinking of where men were given a heavy load to lift.

A very very stressful amount of weight and then they were grounded, just one time, and then they were grounded for one, two, and three days afterwards and the grounded participants we’re not only able to meet that one challenge with less inflammation in their body and less stress on their body but they were able to recover easier. Meaning their body had less inflammatory markers afterwards.

They recovered quicker and they had less pain and less physiological damage after the stress. So now we’re talking about over a course of days earthing making you more resilient and more adaptable and more able to recover from stress. So now we’re talking about not just the physiological change, the organ change, the metabolic change, the function as a whole but now we’re talking about our ability to navigate life more effectively.

So we’re talking about stress recovery. We’re talking about increasing adaptability when we’re talking about earthing now for several days. We’re decreasing inflammation markers. We’re decreasing cortisol and stress on the body. We’re decreasing pain and we’re increasing our recovery.

How about a few years of grounding?

So now we’re at years out. All these other studies have from instantaneous changes to changes over days, weeks, and months shown the support to the human body but now we’re looking at studies over years. What do I anticipate over years? Over years I anticipate anti-aging benefits and anti-cancer benefits because turns out most of the diseases that we are confronted with as a society are from chronic inflammation.

Lots of cancers, lots of chronic diseases that we used to think was just a result of old aging is actually just either repetitive injury or repetitive inflammation and stress. So you know arthritic changes, dementia changes, stroke, heart attack, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and cancers that were thought to just increase with age are actually really just increasing with inflammation.

So when we increase inflammation, either through poor diet or stress on the body, EMF, and that kind of thing, then we’re accelerating all of those conditions and when we decrease inflammation on the body and stress on the body, then we are relieving, I anticipate finding, relieving the incidence of these kinds of illnesses.

But what we understand now is that there’s instantaneous change. What we understand now is that is there is immediate effect, an immediate benefit to you when you ground for a split second. So what we’re at now is there is no time that’s too short. So get out there and touch one leaf for one minute or walk barefoot just to get your mail. Or just to go pick up the kids from the school bus stop or just to stand out there on your way up to bed for a minute barefoot and look up at the stars and see what the moon looks like tonight. You know that’s like a tradition, just go see what the moon looks like and then go to bed. That one second has made a difference in your physiology and in your body and in your health and in your well-being.

What we’re going to grow into over time, and as we have longer and longer studies, generational studies, is that there’s no amount of time being connected to the earth that’s too long. So right now we know there’s no time too short and, I believe, an entire lifetime is not too long to live connected to the earth and in our best, most optimal, optimized state of well-being. That is the medical literature that I will continue to keep you updated on.

OK, now the Research

The biologic effects of grounding the human body during sleep as measured by cortisol levels and subjective reporting of sleep, pain, and stress.  Results indicate that grounding the human body to earth (“earthing”) during sleep reduces night-time levels of cortisol and resynchronizes cortisol hormone secretion more in alignment with the natural 24-hour circadian rhythm profile. Changes were most apparent in females. Furthermore, subjective reporting indicates that grounding the human body to earth during sleep improves sleep and reduces pain and stress. Full text.

The effects of grounding (earthing) on inflammation, the immune response, wound healing, and prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases Accumulating experiences and research on earthing, or grounding, point to the emergence of a simple, natural, and accessible health strategy against chronic inflammation, warranting the serious attention of clinicians and researchers.

Earthing the Human Body Influences Physiologic Processes Earthing the human body influences human physiologic processes through the aqueous environment of the Earth and the aqueous environment of the human organism via a copper conductor in a building with reinforced concrete construction. This influence is observed during night relaxation and during physical activity. The effect of earthing the human body on calcium–phosphate homeostasis is the opposite of that which occurs in states of weightlessness. It also increases the activity of catabolic processes. It may be the primary factor regulating the endocrine and nervous systems.

Chronic Disease: Are We Missing Something? With respect to chronic diseases, a plausible, testable, and refutable hypothesis is that all chronic diseases have a single underlying cause: the stresses that produce and maintain chronic inflammation. Such stresses include environmental factors of various kinds including those that disturb physiology and those whose absence is disruptive. In this editorial, both sunlight and contact with the earth have been mentioned as essential environmental requirements for health. A corollary to the hypothesis is that the thousands of so-called diseases that have been named may actually be an elaborate classification system of the various symptoms that can arise from a single underlying condition: inflammation.

Grounding the human body to earth reduces chronic inflammation and related chronic pain – ESD Journal Due to the modern day loss of natural grounding (wearing synthetic soled shoes and living in environments that insulate the body from the earth), exposure to 50-60 Hz electric fields creates measurable induced voltage in the body. This unnatural voltage consists of electrons of the body that are “held hostage” during exposure and held away from their normal functions. In effect, this creates a shortage of electrons in the body in terms of normal functioning. This results in increased free radical levels that promote chronic inflammation (oxidative stress) and related chronic pain. Grounding the human body to earth shields it from environmental electric fields and restores the body’s natural bioelectrical homeostasis. Research findings support this conclusion, as follows: when the human body is grounded (1) induced body voltage is significantly reduced; (2) cortisol, a well-known biomarker for stress and inflammation, normalizes; (3) test subjects experience a significant reduction in chronic inflammation and related chronic pain; and, (4) current research (see reference list below) confirms that exposure to environmental 50-60 Hz electromagnetic fields increases free radicals and lengthens their life span in the body.

There’s loads scholarly research more which you will find easily searching Google.

I’m going to leave you with one last video worth watching  where Dr. Mercola interviews Clint Ober about earthing research: