Healthy circulation of your blood is one of those very fundamental aspects of our body and is critical throughout. Good blood flow affects our digestion system, heart health, brain function, clear thinking, and energy.
Boosting your circulation can benefit your entire body including your mind!
When our blood is circulating properly, oxygen and nutrients travel into our organs and tissues. At the same time, carbon dioxide and other waste products are removed. This prevents the buildup of cellular waste, which can stagnant in the body influencing weight gain and inflammation.
This is one of the reasons why people with “sticky blood” or poor flow can struggle with energy. It may be that earthing can alter this by improving blood circulation and energy levels.
Poor circulation is all too common and can be the cause of a wide variety of health problems that may range from leg pain, high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, coronary artery disease, fatigue and a whole lot more.
What causes poor blood circulation? Plaque build-up from cholesterol and fat deposits in the blood vessel walls is one reason. Hormone imbalances involving the thyroid can be a factor as the thyroid is the master of the metabolism and influences your heart rate. Adrenal glands are another trigger. Stress can affect adrenal function, which in turn influences blood circulation.
Lifestyle factors such as smoking, a high-sugar diet, excess weight, emotional stress, and anxiety are all risk factors and can impede healthy blood flow. and make it harder for your circulatory system.
There are many lifestyle changes you can make to support your blood circulation. Regular, moderate exercise supports healthy circulation. As does dietary changes like cutting back on caffeine and sugar, and eliminating those artery-clogging trans fats and saturated fats.
Earthing is another and it is especially simple to do.
Earthing for Improved Blood Flow
The above image shows one subject’s blood flow before and after earthing as part of a 2013 pilot study published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. The top image is before earthing. The lower image is after earthing. The researchers placed one drop of blood in an electric field under a dark field microscope to record blood cell movement.
When Red Blood Cells (RBC) clump together in large clusters (or aggregates), blood flow becomes thick and slow-moving and is more prone to clots and blocks. Blood thickness is a factor in high blood pressure, as the body has to work harder to pump the blood around the body.
What influences this clumping behaviour? In a word, zeta potential.
Zeta potential is the negative surface charge that repels blood cells and keeps them separate. Red blood cells are less likely to form large clumps or clusters if zeta potential is high.
Earthing brings negatively charged free electrons from the earth into your body and to the surface of your blood cells. In this study, the zeta potential of the 10 subjects increased by an average of 2.7 times after just two hours of earthing. That’s a marked improvement.
You can also see the behavior of red blood cells before and after earthing in this video made by Dr Cimmone who uses earthing in his holistic medical practice.
Blood Viscosity and Disease
The link between blood viscosity and cardiovascular disease is well-established. Drs Ralph E. Holsworth, Jr. and Jonathan V. Wright state that:
A quick search on the PubMed database reveals nearly 1,000 scientific papers linking blood viscosity to cardiovascular disease events and risk factors. In fact, increased blood viscosity is the only biological parameter that has been linked with all of the other major cardiovascular risk factors, including high blood pressure, elevated LDL cholesterol, low HDL, type-II diabetes, metabolic syndrome, obesity, smoking, age, and male gender.
Increased blood viscosity is also a factor in diabetes mellitus. A study on the zeta potential of red blood cells among patients with diabetes found that red blood flow was even more sluggish and viscose for those with cardiovascular disease.
Some doctors believe that anything that lowers the zeta potential of your blood creates the conditions for disease. As Dr Sinatra explained in a 2012 interview:
early (and some current) birth control pills were notorious for causing heart attacks in women. One of the mechanisms that causes this increased risk is that synthetic estrogens and progesterones increase blood viscosity, i.e., they decrease the zeta potential of your blood….[Earthing or Grounding] is the most incredible discovery, because if you can increase the thinning of your blood naturally by grounding, you can fight off disease. Not only heart disease and stroke, but I’m thinking cancer, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, or any illness that requires good oxygenation to the tissues.
How to Improve Your Blood Viscosity
Regular moderate exercise, dietary practices including eliminating trans fats and reducing sugar, quitting smoking and taking additional omega 3 essential fatty acids, are all established ways you can reduce blood viscosity and support your circulation.
Earthing is a surprising simple intervention that actually doesn’t require a major lifestyle change.
All you need is to be in conductive contact with the earth and let those health-enhancing free electrons flow into your body. New to earthing? Find out what earthing is and how it works.
Lie down on the grass, go for a walk on the beach or use an earthing product indoors while you sleep or relax. 30-120 minutes of earthing each day will support your cardiovascular system, improve blood flow, and healthy circulation.
Earthing is a natural blood thinner. So if you are taking medication such as Warfarin or Coumadin to improve your circulation, speak to your doctor first so that they can monitor your blood clotting time and adjust your medication dosage (if needed) once you begin regular conductive contact with the earth.
Research:
Chevalier, G et al. ‘Earthing (Grounding) the Human Body Reduces Blood Viscosity – A Major Factor in Cardiovascular Disease’ The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 2013. 19 (2): 102-110.
