What is Earthing Grounding & Can it Transform Your Health?
Earthing or grounding is the act of bringing the earth’s free electrons into your body where they can reduce chronic pain and inflammation, help you sleep better, improve circulation, and more.
Have you ever walked barefoot on the grass or at the beach?
Can you recall the sensation of warmth or wellbeing?
That’s the earth’s subtle, natural energy flowing up through the soles of your feet.
Grounding is being in contact with the earth’s electrons. You can do it indoors with a conductive product or outdoors in nature. Studies have shown that grounding improves mood, and reduces muscle damage and pain.
The health benefits of grounding are surprisingly far-reaching.
It can enhance your immune system, reduce inflammation, and speed recovery from injury. Perhaps this is because the earth’s energy supports your body’s ability to heal or rebalance itself.
Find out more and read testimonials below.
How does earthing work?
You can think of the Earth as being like a giant battery that supports life on this planet.
The earth’s surface has a subtle, negative electrical charge due to lightning strikes and atmospheric pressure. On an atomic level, it is full of free electrons – the smallest unit of negative charge.
Connecting to mother earth helps us top up on energy and rebalance our body’s systems, which are by nature bioelectrical.
According to a report in the Journal of Environmental and Public Health:
“The Earth’s negative charge can create a stable internal bioelectrical environment for your body. This includes the normal functioning of all body systems such as your biological clock, regulating circadian rhythms, and balancing cortisol levels.”
Is there any evidence?
There is growing research including 18 studies and 3 review articles in peer-reviewed journals. While many of these studies are small in scale, they are double-blind and use objective tests to measure the physical responses of grounded subjects and faux-grounded subjects (who are not aware that they are not grounded).
These studies show positive results for:
- Improved sleep
- Stress reduction
- Pain relief
- Better blood flow & circulation
- Immune support
- Balanced cortisol levels, especially at night
- Improved cardiovascular function
- Reduced inflammation
- Normalised muscle tension
- Faster recovery from muscular strain
- Increased levels of energy during the day
- Reduced free radicals in the body
Download our ebook to visit our research page to find out more.
What do people say?
We’ve received 100s of testimonials from people who’ve experienced amazing health results. Here are 5 of the most recent ones.
You can put it to the test right now
Simply go outside and kick off your shoes. Take a barefoot walk on grass or unpainted concrete.
Take note of how you feel before and after. As little as 30-minutes may be enough to notice a difference in muscle fatigue, pain, stress, or mood.
Astonishingly, earthing has always been around, and yet we’ve overlooked it.
Many ancient peoples believe in the healing power of the earth – including Egyptian, Greek, Indigenous Australian, Indian, and Native American Indians. In the 19th century, German physiotherapist and naturalist Sebastian Kneipp argued that walking barefoot could help avoid disease.
How about inflammation?
It is more important than ever to adopt a healthy lifestyle that minimises unresolved or ongoing inflammation, otherwise known as chronic inflammation.
Chronic inflammation is a major factor in many serious health conditions including obesity, cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, depression.
Fortunately, our planet is a huge natural, anti-inflammatory!
When you connect with the earth, your body receives a dose of what’s known as “free electrons”.
These free electrons can help quench the fires of inflammation.
Free radicals and chronic inflammation
You have likely heard of free radicals in relation to disease or toxins in our environment or disease.
Actually, all your body’s normal processes – breathing, pumping blood around your body, digesting – create free radicals. That’s why free radicals have been linked to aging.
Negative energy from the earth (in the form of free electrons) may counter the accumulation of free radicals in our body according to Journal of Environmental and Public Health.
Free radicals lack an electron and are on a constant lookout for free electrons to nullify their positive charge. Read more in our article on earthing and antioxidants explained.
Sadly, your body cannot eliminate all the free radicals by itself. You can help it out by eating antioxidant foods like blueberries or by taking supplements like Vitamin E. However, it is hard to keep up with the rapid production of free radicals inside your body.
When your body is in conductive contact with earth, excess positive free radicals are neutralised by negatively charged free electrons. Postive + negative = neutral.
This gently stabilises your body’s systems, and inflammation reduces. This is especially important for chronic inflammation, where ongoing, unchecked inflammation smolders away and creates the conditions for disease.
How do I get grounded?
There are two main ways – indoors with a product or outdoors on the earth. Both give the same health benefits.
Outdoors
One of the easiest ways to start grounding regularly is to take a walk with bare feet.
Green grass or moist sand at the beach is perfect. Moist earth is more conductive than dry sand or dry dirt. The beach is one of the best places to ground yourself as the combination of sand and saltwater is highly conductive.
Ceramic tiles, unpainted concrete, and brick (when laid directly on the earth) are also conductive surfaces. They also allow the human body to earth effectively.
Around 30minutes should be enough to notice a change in stress levels or pain.
Research suggests that your body experiences physical changes within four seconds of earthing. Tense muscles relax and the nervous system calms down.
Indoors
You can ground yourself indoors (either at home or at the office) using an indoor grounding product.
This is just as effective as connecting to the earth with your bare feet outdoors. And you can experience many more hours grounding this way.
For example, You can ground for eight hours overnight when you sleep on an earthing sheet or underlay. Or you can get seven hours of grounding work in the office with an earthing mat.
Indoor earthing products are especially convenient during cooler months when the weather is too cool for walking barefoot outdoors.
What product should I start with?
Our most popular grounding product is our versatile fabric grounding mat. You can use it where you sit, sleep or work. Also popular are our mattress-sized earthing underlays.
Both products work the same way.
How do indoor grounding products work?
Earthing products are made from conductive materials such as stainless steel, silver, or carbon.
They connect to the ground outside via a cord or lead that passes the earth’s electrons through to the product, and then to you.
To connect to the ground outside you can either use:
1/ A grounding rod or ground rod.
This is a thin metal stake that you plant in the dirt outside. A long lead is then attached from the rod to your product.
We supply a 15metre UV-resistant outdoor lead with our grounding rod kits.
You can connect multiple products to a single rod with a splitter. See our kits for multiple products.
However, this method may not be convenient if you live in an apartment or multi-story home.
2/ An easier option is to use our specially designed adapter and lead.
The adapter has a metal pin that fits into the third ‘earth’ port of your power point. It conducts earth, not electricity. It allows free electrons from the earth to flow right up through the grounding wire into your product.
Common questions people ask
1) Is it safe to ground myself via the power point?
Yes, it is but only if you are using an especially designed earthing adapter.
Better Earthing adapters have two plastic prongs at the top so no electrical current can pass through. Only the third ‘earth’ pin is metal to allow free electrons to pass through.
Furthermore, our lead has 50,000 Ohm safety resistor, plus fine wire like fuse wire. This protects against the very rare event of a power surge via a building’s earth wiring.
2) Does the power need to be switched on?
No, grounding products work perfectly with the power point turned off. That’s because they only conduct free electrons from the earth. However, you can have the power point switched on if you wish to share the socket with an electrical appliance. You can even use a double adapter or powerboard.
3) Will grounding increase my exposure to EMFs?
Short for electromagnetic fields, EMFs are energy areas around electronic devices, wiring, powerlines, mobile phones, solar transducers, and more.
The human body is bioelectrical. Our heart, brain, and other organs in the body function via tiny electrical impulses. Excessive exposure to EMFs can interfere with our body’s normal functioning. Symptoms can appear, such as fatigue, sleep disturbances, pains, depression, and even cellular damage.
One way to protect yourself from this toxic onslaught is earthing.
Research shows that grounding shields the body from low-frequency A/C electrical EMFs. These include EMFs from your air conditioner, fridge, hairdryer, computer, and more. When you are grounding the levels of A/C electrical EMFs induced in your body reduces. It becomes too low to produce negative effects on the human body.
The most important benefit is that it supports your body’s innate healing systems. So that you can thrive in our increasingly urban and EMF dense world.
All of the research on grounding has been done in urban environments, where the participants were surrounded by EMFs. This includes the medical testing equipment that was directly placed on the subject. For example, the electrode patches used in ECG monitoring.
The participants experienced better blood flow or circulation, less pain, improved mood, reduced muscle tension with earthing in an EMF saturated environment.
These experiences have been echoed in the countless reviews from people living in suburban, rural, and city environments around the globe.
Earthing your body is a smart practice and could help give you an edge on healing.
4) How do I know if my product is working properly?
The best way to test if your product is properly grounded is to use a multimeter (watch test here). This will measure your body voltage and determine how much electric current is being induced on you while sitting or standing, and how much electric charge decreases when you are earthed.
Better Earthing multimeters come with a custom extension lead that fits into our adapter. To use the device, set up the multimeter by plugging the green lead into the meter’s middle socket called COM. Plug the black lead into the VQmA socket. Plug the other end of the green lead into the earthing adapter. Turn the dial on to V~ to measure the AC current in your body.
Grab the metal end of the black lead, making sure that the metal is in direct contact with the skin. Take note of the voltage reading while unearthed.
While still holding the metal end of the meter, touch your earthing sheet or mat, and you will see the voltage reading drop. The decrease in number in the body voltage meter confirms that the product is working and free electrons are coming into your body.
What grounding is not
It is not a fad nor a magic remedy. It is not a medicine or a supplement that you have to remember to take or swallow every day for months before you notice any effect. It does not require long clinic visits or treatments.
It is a safe and healthy lifestyle practice that can have a transformative effect on your health. If you have a medical condition and are on blood-thinning medication, consult with your doctor before starting. Regular grounding can act as a natural blood thinner, and it may be necessary to reduce your medication dosage.
Grounding for health – the missing link?
Our earliest ancestors were grounded as they walked, sat, and slept. They walked barefoot, slept on animal hides, and made use of natural conductive materials like leather, clay, metal, animal skins, and stone.
Our modern lifestyle has taken us away from the earth.
Today we live in high-rise buildings, wear rubber-soled shoes (instead of leather), and are surrounded by insulating materials such as plastics, synthetics, tar, asphalt that disconnect us from the earth.
We deprived ourselves of the earth’s electrons in the earth’s natural electric field, the nourishment that is right beneath our feet. More and more we are exposed to EMF radiation from wifi, mobile phones, household appliances, electrical substations, and more.
Researchers have repeatedly linked the rise in diseases in recent years to environmental factors. Could our disconnect from the earth be the cause?
How to incorporate grounding into your life
If you enjoy walking outdoors, just skip the footwear and go barefoot.
Or choose the convenience of an indoor product. You can place it on your desk, on your sofa, in bed, or under your bare feet where you sit.
Earthing products come in many sizes and materials. So there’s one to fit most needs and budgets. Please contact our friendly team to discuss what products are right for you or browse our shop.
Having the earth’s healing energy as part of your daily life can help with a raft of health problems. The more you do it, the more benefits you are likely to feel. Benefits can accumulate over time. Try it for yourself and see if Mother Earth boosts your health and wellbeing.
Medical advice
If you have a medical condition and are on blood-thinning medication, thyroid medication, or blood-glucose medications, consult with your doctor before starting earthing regularly as it is know to interact with these medications. In particular, earthing is a natural blood thinner and it may be necessary to reduce your medication dosage. You might like to print and share the following study on how grounding reduces blood viscosity with your doctor.