Welcome to my blog post 'Grounding: What is it? How do you ground? Why do it?
What is Grounding?
Grounding, also known as Earthing, refers to direct skin contact with the surface of the Earth, such as with bare hands or feet.
What Are The Health Benefits Of Grounding?
Anecdotal reports that walking barefoot on the Earth enhances health and provides feelings of well-being can be found in the literature and practices of diverse cultures from around the world.
However, recently, researchers have been studying the physiological effects of grounding from a variety of perspectives. This research has led to more than a dozen studies published in peer-reviewed journals. The research has opened a new and promising frontier in inflammation research.
Grounding reduces or even prevents the cardinal signs of inflammation following injury: redness, heat, swelling, pain, and loss of function. Rapid resolution of painful chronic inflammation was confirmed in 20 case studies using medical infrared imaging.
Grounding has many benefits including:
Anti-inflammatory
Stress reduction
Pain reduction
Anti-ageing
Improves mitochondrial function = greater energy
Normalises day-night cortisol rhythm
Increase heart rate variability
Wound healing time
Shifts the autonomic nervous from sympathetic to parasympathetic nervous system
Reduces blood viscocity
The main hypothesis is that connecting the body to the Earth enables free electrons from the Earth’s surface to spread over and into the body, where they can have antioxidant effects. Specifically, we suggest that mobile electrons create an antioxidant microenvironment around the injury repair field, slowing or preventing reactive oxygen species (ROS) delivered by the oxidative burst from causing “collateral damage” to healthy tissue, and preventing or reducing the formation of the so-called “inflammatory barricade”.
It has also been hypothesised that electrons from the Earth may prevent or resolve so-called “silent” inflammation.
e route these electrons may take is via acupuncture points and meridians. The meridians are known to be ‘low resistance pathways’ for the flow of electrical currents. Another pathway proposed in the research is via the mucous membranes of the respiratory and digestive tracts, which are continuous with the skin surface.
Grounding: The Most Powerful Antioxidant
Modern lifestyle factors such as insulating footwear, high-rise buildings, and elevated beds separate most humans from direct skin connection with the Earth’s surface.
Researchers suggest that ‘the process of killing pathogens and clearing cellular debris from injury sites evolved to take advantage of the body’s constant access to the virtually limitless source of mobile electrons the Earth provides when we are in contact with it.’
Antioxidants are electron donors, and the best electron donor, we strongly believe, is right under our feet: the surface of the Earth, with its virtually unlimited storehouse of accessible electrons.
Our immune systems work beautifully as long as electrons are available to balance the reactive oxygen species (unstable molecules) used when dealing with infection and tissue injury. Our modern lifestyle has taken the body and the immune system by surprise by suddenly depriving it of its primordial electron source. This planetary separation began accelerating in the early 1950s with the advent of shoes made with insulating soles instead of the traditional leather.
A lack of electrons can also de-saturate the electron transport chains in mitochondria (where energy is created) , leading to chronic fatigue and slowing the cellular migrations and other essential activities of the cells of the immune system.
Summary:
Grounding is a simple, natural, and accessible health strategy against chronic inflammation, warranting the serious attention of clinicians and researchers.
The living matrix (or ground regulation or tissue tensegrity-matrix system), the very fabric of the body, appears to serve as one of our primary antioxidant defense systems. As this report explains, it is a system requiring occasional recharging by conductive contact with the Earth’s surface – the “battery” for all planetary life – to be optimally effective..
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