What is Earthing and Can it Benefit your Health?

When you were a child, did you ever shuffle a socked foot along the carpet and then zap your younger sibling with just a light touch.

Probably not. After all, children never do that.

If you hypothetically did it, you have probably experienced the effects of grounding or earthing.

It is very likely that this article’s content sounds a bit hippy dippy. You might have pictured a person standing barefoot outside to be one with the energy of the earth and probably wonder what the point is.

Is there actually any science behind earthing? Yes. Read on to learn more about the benefits of earthing as well as how grounding mats, earthing shoes, grounding sheets, and the great outdoors to reset your body systems.

What is Earthing?

Before getting into the specifics of what earthing actually is, there is a basic physics premise that will help it all make a but more sense: you, plants, other people, animals, and inanimate objects are electrical entities living in an electrical world. Everything made of atoms has a net charge, which is either negative, positive, or neutral.

All chemical reactions, any rearrangement of molecules that happens anywhere involves electrical charges, repulsion, and attraction. Without the strong attraction of atoms to one other through the energetic bonds, you as well as the device being used to read this would simply disintegrate into particles.

So, once the overall charge of the body is off, chemical reactions that should not will happen while reactions don’t happen when they actually should. A growing body of evidence proves that the disruption of the body’s charge is a health concern and doctors need to start paying attention. More on how your charge can easily get messed up shortly.

The cyclical pulsed negative charge of Earth

The planet Earth has a naturally limitless supply of negative electrons pulsing out in a pattern. Natural rhythms of radiation from the earth’s orbit, lightning, and the sun recharge this supply in a cycle.

The surface of the earth conducts energy, except for very arid desert areas. It is the reason why electricity would like to find the ground via the path of least resistance. Imagine touching a metal pole and getting a bit of shock. That surge is in fact the static electricity that’s leaving the body, moving down the pole before finally getting into the ground. Grounding refers to the discharging of built-up static electricity either via a conductor or into the earth directly before finally getting into the ground. Earthing is a bit more specific. When the body is in contact with the earth directly without a barrier such as carpet or shoes you are earthing.

When should you ground yourself? The Benefits of Earthing

Your regular day-to-day builds up a positive charge in your body. Until the last several centuries, people spent lots of time in contact with the bare ground (earth), either sleeping or walking on the ground without anything to block the transfer of electrons. It was a natural mechanism to help them get back to neutral throughout the day as well as when they slept.

Today, this almost always never happens. Things like walking around in buildings and wearing shoes prevents your body from actually discharging the charge that you have built up into the ground.

Benefits of Grounding the Body

So, why should anyone bother with earthing? The benefits of grounding that are backed by science include:

–           Reducing stress

–           Reducing inflammation

–           Shifting the body from the stressed flight-or-fight more to the restorative rest-and-digest mode

–           Reducing pain

–           Reducing some risk factors of cardiovascular disease

–           Improving sleep quality

–           Reducing inflammation

–           Neutralizing free radicals (Highly reactive molecules that cause cell damage)

Grounding Techniques

The ideal way to ground the body is to simply go outside in the sand or dirt while barefoot. If you have a ceramic tile or concrete floor in your basement, it can work too as long as it sits on a concrete slab and not insulators such as plywood boards from Cut My Plastic. If you would like a bit more earthing action, or live in a large city where soil may be scarce, several options are available to you.

Earthing Sheet

Every house has a network of grounding wires that connect the electrical source to the ground. It helps complete the circuit using the ground rather than the body, which means that you can touch your blenders and TVs or other electronics without getting electrocuted.

An earthing sheet plugs into a regular outlet and connects to the grounding wires in the wiring of your home. Since all the energy is conducted all the way into the ground, it is actually possible for you to get a full night of earthing in without having to sleep in the grass. It is typically made of fine silver and cotton thread for conductivity, which means that the sheet delivers negative electrons from the earth to the body while neutralizing the positive charges in the process.

Earthing Shoes

Earth shoes feature a small conductor in part of the sole, typically the ball thus providing an electric path to the ground. They are popular as casual shoes for providing grounding all-day or as minimalist workout shoes to enhance endurance. However, not all minimalist shoes are actually earthing shoes. Rubber soles provide insulation, which means that you need to have a conductive material either woven into your sole or as an embedded disc connecting the soles of the feet to the ground.

Earthing Mat

All electronic devices produce EMFs that can disrupt your charge. It is possible to use an earthing mat under the forearms or under the bare feet when working on your computer to limit rattling your system with EMF exposure.

So, is it effective?

According to preliminary evidence, yes. Honestly though, do you require absolute certainty before kicking off your shoes. Going outdoors and running around barefoot is guaranteed to make you feel great. If you start noticing positive changes over time, the better.