Grounding - I was shocked!

[Rabby]

Heh, get it?

Anyway, this is one of those things I would have completely ignored as a concept. The idea that "grounding" or connecting to the planet electrically would have any measurable health effect. But apparently it does, and it appears to be pretty big.

I first came across this journal while researching vagal tone: grounding pre-term babies

(Side note: That article may even help explain several bits of research like this one related to babies: touch improves babies vagal tone

(Side side note: Parents! Ground your kids! They'll thank you later!)

Vagal tone is an important indicator of cardivascular health, stress response, and some other things, so it makes sense to try to understand it better.

Anyway, from that article I started finding others about grounding. It's funny, because I was already aware of the very powerful effects of tDCS and TMS on the brain, and electrical stimulation on wound healing and nerve growth, for example. There are quite a few biomedical technologies that exploit the body's conductivity and electric potentials, electric field effects, etc, for recovery or optimization. I guess I just wouldn't have thought about the misplaced electrical and chemical potentials in the body being mitigated by something as simple as grounding... of course, it makes sense in retrospect, but it sounds too simple. But it's not. It's just reality. LOL.

Some more journals (just as examples - I'm not endorsing these):
Earthing - JEPH
Grounding, sleep, cortisol - JACM

tldr: Grounding your body may in some cases actually relieve stress, alleviate oxidative stress, speed up recovery, reduce pain in some circumstances, and/or improve things that are indicators of health, resilience and longevity. And that's coming from researchers, not just yogis (no offense, yogis are ok with me) or alternative health advertisements.

EDIT: I actually was not trying to take this in a new age direction. It's fine if someone wants to, but please understand I'm not advocating pseudoscience or attempting to refer to the non-science parts of this seriously. The article that grabbed my attention was about premature babies in hospitals. Connecting them to ground helps them in an objectively measurable way - it increases vagal tone, which is a measure of the effects of the vagus nerve. "Poor" vagal tone results in increased resting heart rate and increased risk of "bad things." It is measured non-invasively by measuring "respiratory sinus arrhythmia," which is the tendency of the heart rate to speed up or slow down during the breathing cycle. This is a rather long way of explaining that, despite the corny title of this thread, I'm talking about the the objectively measurable science here.

 

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[biophase]

I make sure my bare feet touch the earth daily. I walk a lot in grass. Have no idea if grounding works, but I’ve been doing it for many years. Barefoot outdoor walking just feels good.

 

[s.wirat13]

I've been reading a lot of studies about grounding. Although it sounds like a good idea, I find most studies are full of bias and placebo effect. Grounding effect or not, I still recommend walking barefoot frequently. It can help strengthen your foot muscle and LE proprioception.

 

[Rabby]

@biophase I've always liked walking barefoot too.

@s.wirat13 Most studies on any topic are full of bias and placebo effect... I guess that's why we need objective methods and controls, right?

 

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[WabiSabi]

I'm pretty open-minded about the hippie stuff, but for most people they'd be better off quitting soda and cheeseburgers. Diet is probably the biggest factor on longevity, health and wellbeing.

 

[Rabby]

I'm pretty open-minded about the hippie stuff, but for most people they'd be better off quitting soda and cheeseburgers. Diet is probably the biggest factor on longevity, health and wellbeing.

True, but since the preemies are already incapable of consuming burgers and soda, their final appeal is a grounded button electrode in the hospital.

 

[Ravens_Shadow]

I make sure my bare feet touch the earth daily. I walk a lot in grass. Have no idea if grounding works, but I’ve been doing it for many years. Barefoot outdoor walking just feels good.

That's the way it's meant to be. Shoes are unnatural

 

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[Here]

Timely thread! I was just reading up on grounding today. I'm not sure how you do it though when the only nearby land is in the park.

 

[Rabby]

Timely thread! I was just reading up on grounding today. I'm not sure how you do it though when the only nearby land is in the park.

The 3rd prong of an electrical outlet (US style) is connected to one or more grounding spikes outside the building. So, if sitting in the shallows of the beach for a few hours is not an option, you can connect to ground right in the comfort of your home

Your description is different from where I live though... are you surrounded by concrete?

 

[Jon L]

so when my parents grounded me, it wasn't just a punishment...

 

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[Rabby]

so when my parents grounded me, it wasn't just a punishment...

Exactly. "You'll thank me for this some day!" Bet you didn't expect you really would...

 

[AceVentures]

I've been walking barefoot for about a month now - best thing I've ever done. I bought the Vibram five fingers KSO original and it's such an incredible investment.

Would you wear boxing gloves all day? Then why would you put what biological evolution has granted you with inside a box? Your feet, your toes, the palm of your feet, all of it, is integrated with the rest of your being. Look at someone that performs any athletic feat that you admire, from gymnastics, martial arts, any form of dance, any type of movement really - you'll notice the importance that feet have on the organization of the rest of the body.

How do you distribute your weight in the field of gravity? You've genetically had to do it for billions of years - and now we put a shiny box over them, and wonder why we develop all sorts of chronic pains throughout the rest of the body. Neck pains, hip pains, headaches. Most of it can be linked to a poor distribution of weight throughout the skeleton, thus requiring muscle contraction for the purpose of support instead of movement, therefore causing long term strain on the rest of the body.

 

[Here]

The 3rd prong of an electrical outlet (US style) is connected to one or more grounding spikes outside the building. So, if sitting in the shallows of the beach for a few hours is not an option, you can connect to ground right in the comfort of your home

Your description is different from where I live though... are you surrounded by concrete?

I live downtown. Postage stamp lawns. Mostly concrete, yeah. I hate it here but I’m stuck here for now. Even the nearby park is just a strip of trees with a path winding through.
There’s a nice park a 15 min drive away

 

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[Here]

Omg I thought the grounding prong was a joke. But apparently it's legit and you can buy a mat that connects to the grounding prong? Check out this product Amazon.com : EARTH AND MOON Grounding Mat - Large Universal Grounding Mats Plus Grounding Cord. Grounded Therapy, EMF and ESD Protection, Reduce Inflammation, Sleep Assist, Less Anxiety, Great for Meditation : Sports & Outdoors
It's not as good as actual earth obviously but it may be a solution for me. It's crazy now that I'm thinking about it. I don't have a patch of earth to call my own.

 

[SteveO]

Omg I thought the grounding prong was a joke. But apparently it's legit and you can buy a mat that connects to the grounding prong? Check out this product Amazon.com : EARTH AND MOON Grounding Mat - Large Universal Grounding Mats Plus Grounding Cord. Grounded Therapy, EMF and ESD Protection, Reduce Inflammation, Sleep Assist, Less Anxiety, Great for Meditation : Sports & Outdoors
It's not as good as actual earth obviously but it may be a solution for me. It's crazy now that I'm thinking about it. I don't have a patch of earth to call my own.

If the idea is simply to remove the charged particles from your body, this should work well. You can also get straps for your wrist that connect to ground. Standing on concrete will do the same thing as standing on dirt.

 

[Rabby]

Omg I thought the grounding prong was a joke. But apparently it's legit and you can buy a mat that connects to the grounding prong? Check out this product Amazon.com : EARTH AND MOON Grounding Mat - Large Universal Grounding Mats Plus Grounding Cord. Grounded Therapy, EMF and ESD Protection, Reduce Inflammation, Sleep Assist, Less Anxiety, Great for Meditation : Sports & Outdoors
It's not as good as actual earth obviously but it may be a solution for me. It's crazy now that I'm thinking about it. I don't have a patch of earth to call my own.

Literally with the babies, the medical staff was just plugging them into the "ground" prong of the hospital plug sockets (..."and this is how we charge up the babies...") They used a glue-on button electrode to remove the charge from them (via ground plug) that was apparently interfering with vagus nerve signals, or whatever the causality was that made them have poor vagal tone in that environment when they were not electrically grounded.

 

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[Rabby]

If the idea is simply to remove the charged particles from your body, this should work well. You can also get straps for your wrist that connect to ground. Standing on concrete will do the same thing as standing on dirt.

Yes... the first thing it made me think of was those anti-esd grounding straps we use when working with sensitive electronics. Made me wonder if there are health benefits to being a nerd

 

[WillHurtDontCare]

Have any of you tried those strange shoes, like toe shoes, that are supposed to just provide extra protection from things that might cut your feet? Nassim Taleb talked about feet having memory of the places that they've walked over. It seems like an interesting idea.

 

[FierceRacoon]

Just as @WabiSabi I used to believe and practice a lot of stuff, particularly when I was studying a lot of yoga and Alexander Technique (which does work), meditating a lot etc. Then it slowly started to dawn on me that there were other people who weren't doing any of this stuff, just spent the same time and energy on other pursuits, and apparently they were also doing OK. My body was not as fragile as I had previously thought and didn't require as much care (though I still wouldn't use wireless headphones).

A big change came after I had been doing a certain Chinese meditation for a long time, diligently, for up to 2 hours a day. It seemed to do miracles, as it had for others. Then I had a particularly bad bout of laryngitis. My expert friend advised me to persevere. The thing was, however, that the meditation involved recitation out loud. As you may imagine, as I was recovering my voice, I would keep pushing it with at least an hour of daily recitation. Suffices to say, it did not help at all and probably extended my silent stay at home for another week.

That day I realized that just because I really want to believe something works, it doesn't mean that it actually does.

I have experimented with countless other techniques, and with mixed results. Do eye exercises improve vision? Do, sometimes, depending on the nature of the problem. I have witnessed my eye improving from -1.75 to -1.25, undoubtedly due to exercises, but not an ounce more.

Nowadays my default assumption is that things don't work, unless there is a specific mechanism explaining why it should and how to quantify it. The Internet and the stores are full of marketing noise, and most of it are just feel-good narratives not unlike the Slowlane and the compound interest. "Grounding" appears to be from this category, if only because usually authors do not quantify the amount of barefoot walking necessary, nor do they explicitly state the benefits other than the vague "feeling good," without even at least using mood diaries or suggesting their use.

Not every technique is easily quantifiable. However, given the plethora of things that can be measured or explained, subjective and objective, from pulse and temperature and pressure to mood, memory and reaction time, to running speed, weight, bioelectrical impedance — you name it! — there is every reason to stick with approaches that produce at least some measurable benefits and have at least some theoretical underpinnings.

I do allow for a few exceptions of the disciplines that I have already explored, however, such as the Alexander Technique, so everyone has their biases.

 

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[Rabby]

Nowadays my default assumption is that things don't work, unless there is a specific mechanism explaining why it should and how to quantify it.

That was pretty much my original point. I mostly disregarded this specific phenomenon until I came across science that carefully studied proximate correlation and offered at least a reasonable hypothesis for causality. Regarding how to quantify it:

The background MFD [environmental magnetic flux density ] in the NICU was below 0.5 mG, but it ranged between 1.5 and 12.7 mG in the closed incubator. A 60-Hz oscillating potential was recorded on the skin of all infants. With EG [electrical grounding], the skin volt-age dropped by about 95%. Pre-grounding VT [vagal tone] was inversely correlated with the skin potential. VT increased by 67% with EG.

As far as walking barefoot is concerned, some people just like to do it. The electrical resistance of the foot pads probably keeps any electrical grounding to a minimum, so you would have to do it "a lot" if you happened to decide that grounding yourself was a fun experiment. Or you could sit for a few minutes in your salt-water swimming pool, and you'd be guaranteed to be electrically grounded. With the pre-term infants, they used a button electrode with conductive gel (standard EEG and EKG equipment) connected to ground through the hospital's electrical system.

Also, the infants were already barefoot... but they couldn't walk... how to solve this dilemma?