Grounding/Earthing

Grounding is the foundation of safety in electrical systems—

Without it, chaos could spark.

(I don’t know who said it but it sounds cool!)

K, so… last week I told you that I was going to discuss a bunch of stuff that, on its surface, will make you call BS! This “Hippie medicine”, as my wife calls it, has been extensively studied!

IT'S SCIENCE!

The first thing that I will talk about is so simple that you are not going to believe it until you try it for a few weeks, but I promise you, it’s a thing!

That thing is grounding or Earthing. This simply involves touching the dirt. Without getting too “Hippie”, we are “Of the Earth”. We are made of the same material and share an electrical current. The frequency at which the Earth naturally vibrates is referred to as the Schumann Resonance.

 PubMed, which is the clearinghouse for all research studies documented by the National Institute of Health (NIH), lists 469 specific studies on the health benefits of grounding or Earthing. Including a paper called “Grounding – The universal anti-inflammatory remedy” by (Sinatra et al 2023) which states:

 “The fundamental frequency of the Schumann resonances vibrates at 7.83 Hz or roughly eight times per second. This key frequency of the grounding phenomenon is maintained by a global electrical circuit. This circuit has three main generators: the solar wind entering the magnetosphere; the ionospheric wind and in thunderstorms occurring predominantly around the equator as well as the rest of the globe with lightning strikes happening thousands of times per minute. This creates a constant current of thousands of amperes transferring positive charge to the upper atmosphere (ionosphere) and negative charge to the surface of the earth. The earth's surface is, therefore, inundated with enormous amounts of free electrons”.

Is that a little technical for a health blog? Probably, but I feel that it is important to understand WHY things happen. That makes it easier to understand what to do about it.

So, we have established that the Earth does have an electrical current and why. Now, to understand why it is important in the context of health, the same study also found that: “Such Earth electrons, when conducted to the human body, result in favorable and physiological changes”. “Previous research has demonstrated attenuation of the inflammatory response, decreased red blood cells RBC aggregation, improved heart rate variability (HRV) and a favorable impact on blood viscosity”.

A study from all the way back in 2015 states: “Multi-disciplinary research has revealed that electrically conductive contact of the human body with the surface of the Earth (grounding or earthing) produces intriguing effects on physiology and health. Such effects relate to inflammation, immune responses, wound healing, and prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases” (Oschman et al. 2015).

Okay, there is an electrical field and it does affect our health. How did we get to where it doesn't work right? As you may recall from my first post, “Cavemen in Fast Cars”, we evolved to have very specific needs related to the environment in which we developed. For 99% of human time on earth, we touched the dirt every day. We slept in caves or on the ground. We didn't have shoes. We swam in dirty, cold creek water, and we readily shared electrons with the Earth. We started wearing rubber-soled shoes in the 1920s and 30s. They did not become every day, indoor/outdoor footwear until the 1960s. Looking back, this was around the same time that we saw a dramatic upswing in chronic illnesses, including high blood pressure, cancer, heart disease and diabetes (The four horseman). The science behind this is relatively complex but understandable.

If you remember back in Junior high science class, they told us about cells. Inside your cells are mitochondria, which are the “powerhouse” of the cell. What they did not tell us is that we have 40 trillion cells in our bodies and each cell contains hundreds to thousands of mitochondria depending on the kind of cell it is. Our bodies generate a lot of electricity. In a wildly oversimplified description, what the mitochondria do is to convert oxygen and fuel (in the form of carbohydrates or fatty acids) into chemical electricity. Electricity is what makes your life happen. Now, switch gears and look at an electric cord going to your coffee maker. The process of transferring electricity is kind of sloppy. As the charge moves along the cord, you lose electrons. These electrons bounce around in the cord and create friction which creates heat. The heat causes fire. This is why they put that third prong on your electric cord. This is the ground wire. It collects all of those crazy electrons and flings them into the earth to rejoin our planet's natural electromagnetic field.

Your mitochondria do exactly the same thing. The electrons bust loose and bounce around inside your cell and cause heat in the form of inflammation. For 99% of man’s time on Earth, we touched the soil with bare skin every day. Those pesky electrons shot straight out of the bottoms of our feet, and we collected other electrons from the Earth that bonded with free radicals to render them electrically stable and all was right with the world. Until about 60 years ago, when we all started wearing rubber-soled shoes and stopped going outside. All of those electrons are now bouncing around inside you instead of going into the earth. This causes uncool things like high blood pressure, heart disease, strokes and general joint pain. To get rid of these annoying electrons, you either physically touch the ground every day for 20 minutes for free, or you can buy grounding mats and sheets that do the same thing.

So, how do we do this amazing thing? Go outside. Put your bare feet on the grass or dirt. If it is cold or raining and you have access to a cement floor that touches to soil (Think basement or garage floor) then that will work… not as well as touching dirt but better than a sharp stick in the eye. For the record, asphalt will not work.

It truly is that simple.

Next week, we will discuss breath work.

Class dismissed!