Electrons as Antioxidants: A Key to HealthPosted on April 14, 2011 by WashingtonsBlog
Concepts that at first appear bizarre may later seem obvious.
One such idea is that we evolved in an environment rich in vitamins and omega 3s, but that they are not nearly as available from our modern environment.
Another is that our bodies evolved to use electrons from vitamin C and elsewhere, and that a lack of usable electrons may effect our health.
Inflammation and Electron Donors
It is now widely accepted by mainstream medicine that inflammation is a prime cause of a wide variety of diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, strokes, alzheimers and autoimmune disorders.
Inflammation is largely caused by too many “free radicals” in the body. A free radical is not a protesters who has gotten out of jail, but simply any atom or molecule that has a single unpaired electron in its outer shell.
With a single electron, free radicals are voracious “scavengers”, stealing electrons from healthy tissues, and thereby damaging them.
“Antioxidants” are literally “anti-oxidation”. “Oxidation”, in turn, is defined as:
The loss of electrons by a molecule, atom or ion.
Free radicals “oxidise” – i.e. steal electrons from – important constituents of our bodies such as “lipids” … i.e. good fats, waxes, sterols, fat-soluble vitamins, etc. which we need to stay healthy.
One of the primary ways antioxidants protect against free radicals is by donating an electron to the free radical, so it no longer acts as a hungry scavenger stealing electrons from our tissues.
As Richard Bowen – professor of Biomedical Sciences at the Colorado State University notes:
Life on Earth evolved in the presence of oxygen, and necessarily adapted by evolution of a large battery of antioxidant systems. Some of these antioxidant molecules are present in all lifeforms examined, from bacteria to mammals, indicating their appearance early in the history of life.
Many antioxidants work by transiently becoming radicals themselves.
In other words, many antioxidants donate an electron, thus neutralizing the free radical. They temporarily become radicals, but then are taken care of without causing any harm to us.
One important antioxidant is Vitamin C. As the Journal of the American College of Nutrition notes:
Vitamin C is an electron donor, and this property accounts for all its known functions. As an electron donor, vitamin C is a potent water-soluble antioxidant in humans.
(Most mammals make their own vitamin C. But humans – like monkeys, guinea pigs and bats – can’t. We have to get it from food or supplements.)
Well-known antioxidants like flavanoids are powerful electron donors as well.
Interestingly, melatonin is also a powerful electron donor. See this and this. Our bodies produce melatonin when it is dark. Some doctors – like Geraldine Mitton – claim that lack of sleep (and not enough exposure to dark) interferes with melatonin production. If true, this might be one reason that sleep is important to health.
So reducing free radicals – and thus reducing disease-causing inflammation – is largely a matter of getting enough electron-donors into our bodies to neutralize the free radicals. (However, it is an overstatement to say – as many alternative health promoters do – that all antioxidants are electron donors. In fact, some antioxidants work through enzymatic action by preventing the formation of free radicals in the first place, by disrupting harmful biochemical processes, or by blocking free radicals from getting at healthy tissues or by physically carrying them away like a bouncer escorting an unruly guest.)
Antioxidants don’t just come from fruits and vegetables. Several amino acids – the basic building blocks of life – are powerful antioxidants. These include glutathione, cysteine, tryptophan, and methionine).
We Use Electrons to Produce Energy
The human body also uses electrons to produce energy. The mitochondria inside each and every cell in our bodies use electrons to make ATP – which is the fuel which gives our cells energy.
So again, a ready supply of electrons is important for health.
Our Modern Environment
It turns out that wild game animals have much higher levels of essential Omega 3 fatty acids than domesticated animals. Indeed, leading nutritionists say that humans evolved to consume a lot of Omega 3 fatty acids in the wild game and fish which they ate (more), and that a low Omega 3 diet is a very new trend within the last 100 years or so.
In other words, while omega 3s have just now been discovered by modern science, we evolved to get a lot of omega 3s … and if we just eat a modern, fast food diet without getting enough omega 3s, it can cause all sorts of health problems.
So something just discovered by science can be a central fuel which our bodies evolved to use.
The same is true with antioxidants and electrons. We evolved eating foods which were high in vitamins and minerals, including foods high in electron donors.
But as the Journal Current Opinion in Obstetrics and Gynecology notes:
With soil depletion, overfarming and transportation of foods over hundreds of miles with loss of nutrients en route, together with the increased use of convenience and fast foods, women can be over-fed, but under-nourished in our modern society.
The Nutrition Journal points out:
In 1927 a study at King’s College, University of London, of the chemical composition of foods was initiated … to assist with diabetic dietary guidance. The study evolved and was then broadened to determine all the important organic and mineral constituents of foods, it was financed by the Medical Research Council and eventually published in 1940. Over the next 51 years subsequent editions reflected changing national dietary habits and food laws as well as advances in analytical procedures. The most recent (5th Edition) published in 1991 has comprehensively analysed 14 different categories of foods and beverages. In order to provide some insight into any variation in the quality of the foods available to us as a nation between 1940 and 1991 it was possible to compare and contrast the mineral content of 27 varieties of vegetable, 17 varieties of fruit, 10 cuts of meat and some milk and cheese products. The results demonstrate that there has been a significant loss of minerals and trace elements in these foods over that period of time.
Scripps Howard News Service noted in 2006:
The nutritional content of America’s vegetables and fruits has declined during the past 50 years — in some cases dramatically.
Donald Davis, a biochemist at the University of Texas, said that of 13 major nutrients in fruits and vegetables tracked by the Agriculture Department from 1950 to 1999, six showed noticeable declines — protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin and vitamin C. The declines ranged from 6 percent for protein, 15 percent for iron, 20 percent for vitamin C, and 38 percent for riboflavin.
“It’s an amazing thing,” said Davis, adding that the decline in nutrient content has not been widely noticed.
Many other studies have reported ongoing soil depletion around the world.
Additionally, as Science Daily reported in 2002, research shows that organic oranges have more vitamin C than conventional oranges.
And many people eat highly processed foods in which most antioxidants have been destroyed.
So – just as with the low levels of omega 3s – there might be less antioxidants like vitamin C in the modern diet than the levels we evolved to run on.
What does a negative electric charge have to do with our health?
Well, electrons carry a negative electrical charge. In other words, since the Earth has a net negative charge, it means that it has an abundance of electrons.
(Indeed, the first telegraphs were apparently built by harnessing the negative electrical charge of the Earth.)
It is well-known that humans and animals have many electric currents inside of us, and that we interact with electric fields and electric currents outside of our bodies. For example, the pumping of our hearts is driven by an electrical system, and EKGs measure the electrical activity in our heart:
The [EKG]works mostly by detecting and amplifying the tiny electrical changes on the skin that are caused when the heart muscle “depolarizes” during each heart beat.
Electrocution can kill by disrupting the heart’s electrical system.
Our brains are also largely electrical systems, and EEGs measure electrical activity in our brain:
Electroencephalography (EEG) is the recording of electrical activity along the scalp produced by the firing of neurons within the brain.[2] In clinical contexts, EEG refers to the recording of the brain’s spontaneous electrical activity over a short period of time ….
Both EKGs and EEGs use sensors on the outside of our bodies (on the skin) to measure electrical activity occurring inside our bodies.
Health Effects of Grounding By Dr. MercolaHave you ever walked barefoot on a warm sandy beach? Or kicked off your shoes and raked your toes through the grass on a dewy morning? There’s something inherently rewarding about the feeling of your skin in direct contact with the Earth, your bare hands in the soil working your garden, for instance.
This rewarding feeling isn’t happenstance; it’s the result of electrically conductive contact of your body with the surface of the Earth, a phenomenon known as grounding or earthing.
The Earth carries an enormous negative charge. It's always electron-rich and can serve as a powerful and abundant supply of antioxidant and free-radical-busting electrons. Your body is finely tuned to "work" with the Earth in the sense that there's a constant flow of energy between your body and the Earth.
When you put your feet on the ground, you absorb large amounts of negative electrons through the soles of your feet. The effect is sufficient to maintain your body at the same negatively charged electrical potential as the Earth.
This simple process of grounding is one of the most potent antioxidants we know of. Grounding has been shown to relieve pain, reduce inflammation, improve sleep, enhance well being, and much, much more. Unfortunately, many living in developed countries are rarely grounded anymore.
James Oschman, who is an expert in the field of energy medicine, with a bachelor's degree in Biophysics and a PhD in Biology from the University of Pittsburgh, noted:1
“Subjective 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. For a variety of reasons, many individuals are reluctant to walk outside barefoot, unless they are on holiday at the beach.”
More Than a Dozen Studies Confirm the Physiological Effects of Grounding
Oschman, along with a dozen other researchers, has conducted research on the physiological effects of grounding. More than a dozen studies have been published in peer-reviewed journals showing its benefit for fighting inflammation, improving the immune response, wound healing, and the prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.2
According to a review published in the Journal of Inflammation Research:3
“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 …
Our 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.”
We also hypothesize that electrons from the Earth can prevent or resolve so-called “silent” or “smoldering” inflammation.”
Interestingly, grounding research has now discovered that if you place your feet on the ground after an injury (or on a grounded sheet, or place grounding patches on the balls of your feet), electrons will migrate into your body and spread through your tissues.
Any free radicals that leak into the healthy tissue will immediately be electrically neutralized. This occurs because the electrons are negative, while the free radicals are positive, so they cancel each other out.
Grounding May Improve Sleep, Reduce Pain, Support Heart Health, and More
In a summary of findings to date, Oschman and colleagues noted that grounding appear to have a number of beneficial effects on health, including:4
Improve sleep
Normalize the day-night cortisol rhythm
Reduce pain
Reduce stress
Shift the autonomic nervous system from sympathetic toward parasympathetic activation
Increase heart rate variability
Speed wound healing
Reduce blood viscosity
The concept of grounding was initially developed by Clint Ober, who began studying earthing in an effort to heal himself. In one study conducted by Ober in 2000, people who suffered from sleep disturbances and chronic muscle and joint pain were randomly divided to sleep either grounded or “sham” grounded.
Most who slept grounded reported symptomatic improvement in sleep and pain, and some also reported significant relief from asthmatic and respiratory conditions, rheumatoid arthritis, PMS, sleep apnea, and hypertension. According to the Journal of Environmental and Public Health:5 “These results indicated that the effects of earthing go beyond reduction of pain and improvements in sleep.”
Yet another study found that grounding during a single night of sleep led to significant changes in concentrations of minerals and electrolytes in the subjects’ blood, and grounding for 72 hours led to a decrease in fasting glucose among people with diabetes.6
In addition, grounding while sleeping was also determined to be the first intervention known to speed recovery from delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS), which is the pain and stiffness that occurs hours or days after strenuous exercise.7 Reduction in inflammation and stress as a result of grounding has also been documented.
According to Dr. Stephen Sinatra, a prominent cardiologist, inflammation thrives when your blood is thick and you have a lot of free radical stress, and a lot of positive charges in your body. Grounding effectively alleviates inflammation because it thins your blood and infuses you with negatively charged ions through the soles of your feet.
Grounding for Anti-Aging Benefits
One of the dominant theories on aging is the free radical theory, which is that aging occurs because of accumulative damage to your body caused by free radicals. You get free radicals when you have an injury or chronic inflammation, from breathing, and from the food you eat, among other things.
While you don't want to completely eliminate ALL free radicals, you do want to maintain a healthy balance of antioxidant electrons in your body to ensure the damage from free radicals doesn't get out of hand.
Earthing can help accomplish this delicate balance, as evidenced by its effects on inflammation. Medical infrared imaging shows that inflammation begins to subside within 30 minutes of being grounded. At the same time, metabolic activity increases as does oxygen consumption, pulse rate and respiratory rate, and a decrease in blood oxygenation, within 40 minutes of grounding.
Researchers refer to this as “filling” the charge reservoirs, which, once saturated, can quickly deliver antioxidant electrons to sites of injury. According to the Journal of Inflammation Research:8
“These considerations also imply anti-aging effects of earthing or grounding, since the dominant theory of aging emphasizes cumulative damage caused by ROS produced during normal metabolism or produced in response to pollutants, poisons, or injury.
We hypothesize an anti-aging effect of grounding that is based on a living matrix reaching every part of the body and that is capable of delivering antioxidant electrons to sites where tissue integrity might be compromised by reactive oxidants from any source.”
‘An Essential Element in the Health Equation’
Simply by getting outside, barefoot, touching the Earth, and allowing the excess charge in your body to discharge into the Earth, you can alleviate some of the stress continually put on your system.
Walking barefoot can help ameliorate the constant assault of electromagnetic fields and other types of radiation from cell phones, computers, and Wi-Fi. It's also thought that grounding may actually facilitate the formation of structured water in your body.
Furthermore, grounding also calms your sympathetic nervous system, which supports your heart rate variability. When you support heart rate variability, this promotes homeostasis, or balance, in your autonomic nervous system. This is important because anytime you improve your heart rate variability, you're improving your entire body and all its functions. If you want to learn more, check out the Grounded documentary (in which I actually appear).
You'll hear first-hand accounts from residents of Haines, Alaska who have overcome chronic pain, sleep apnea, and much more simply by getting grounded. According to the Journal of Environmental and Public Health, grounding is very much an essential element of human health:9
“Earthing research, observations, and related theories raise an intriguing possibility about the Earth’s surface electrons as an untapped health resource—the Earth as a ‘global treatment table.’ Emerging evidence shows that contact with the Earth—whether being outside barefoot or indoors connected to grounded conductive systems—may be a simple, natural, and yet profoundly effective environmental strategy against chronic stress, ANS dysfunction, inflammation, pain, poor sleep, disturbed HRV, hypercoagulable blood, and many common health disorders, including cardiovascular disease.
The research done to date supports the concept that grounding or earthing the human body may be an essential element in the health equation along with sunshine, clean air and water, nutritious food, and physical activity.”
Simple Ways to Get Grounded
Many Americans spend most of their waking hours wearing shoes with rubber or plastic soles. These materials are very effective insulators, which is precisely why they're used to insulate electrical wires. Yet, they also effectively disconnect you from the Earth's natural electron flow. Wearing leather-soled shoes will allow you to stay grounded with the Earth, as will walking barefoot, but you'll need to do so on the proper surface. Good grounding surfaces include:
“From a practical standpoint, clinicians could recommend outdoor ‘barefoot sessions’ to patients, weather, and conditions permitting. Ober et al. have observed that going barefoot as little as 30 or 40 minutes daily can significantly reduce pain and stress… Obviously, there is no cost for barefoot grounding. However, the use of conductive systems while sleeping, working, or relaxing indoors offer a more convenient and routine-friendly approach.”
Concepts that at first appear bizarre may later seem obvious.
One such idea is that we evolved in an environment rich in vitamins and omega 3s, but that they are not nearly as available from our modern environment.
Another is that our bodies evolved to use electrons from vitamin C and elsewhere, and that a lack of usable electrons may effect our health.
Inflammation and Electron Donors
It is now widely accepted by mainstream medicine that inflammation is a prime cause of a wide variety of diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, strokes, alzheimers and autoimmune disorders.
Inflammation is largely caused by too many “free radicals” in the body. A free radical is not a protesters who has gotten out of jail, but simply any atom or molecule that has a single unpaired electron in its outer shell.
With a single electron, free radicals are voracious “scavengers”, stealing electrons from healthy tissues, and thereby damaging them.
“Antioxidants” are literally “anti-oxidation”. “Oxidation”, in turn, is defined as:
The loss of electrons by a molecule, atom or ion.
Free radicals “oxidise” – i.e. steal electrons from – important constituents of our bodies such as “lipids” … i.e. good fats, waxes, sterols, fat-soluble vitamins, etc. which we need to stay healthy.
One of the primary ways antioxidants protect against free radicals is by donating an electron to the free radical, so it no longer acts as a hungry scavenger stealing electrons from our tissues.
As Richard Bowen – professor of Biomedical Sciences at the Colorado State University notes:
Life on Earth evolved in the presence of oxygen, and necessarily adapted by evolution of a large battery of antioxidant systems. Some of these antioxidant molecules are present in all lifeforms examined, from bacteria to mammals, indicating their appearance early in the history of life.
Many antioxidants work by transiently becoming radicals themselves.
In other words, many antioxidants donate an electron, thus neutralizing the free radical. They temporarily become radicals, but then are taken care of without causing any harm to us.
One important antioxidant is Vitamin C. As the Journal of the American College of Nutrition notes:
Vitamin C is an electron donor, and this property accounts for all its known functions. As an electron donor, vitamin C is a potent water-soluble antioxidant in humans.
(Most mammals make their own vitamin C. But humans – like monkeys, guinea pigs and bats – can’t. We have to get it from food or supplements.)
Well-known antioxidants like flavanoids are powerful electron donors as well.
Interestingly, melatonin is also a powerful electron donor. See this and this. Our bodies produce melatonin when it is dark. Some doctors – like Geraldine Mitton – claim that lack of sleep (and not enough exposure to dark) interferes with melatonin production. If true, this might be one reason that sleep is important to health.
So reducing free radicals – and thus reducing disease-causing inflammation – is largely a matter of getting enough electron-donors into our bodies to neutralize the free radicals. (However, it is an overstatement to say – as many alternative health promoters do – that all antioxidants are electron donors. In fact, some antioxidants work through enzymatic action by preventing the formation of free radicals in the first place, by disrupting harmful biochemical processes, or by blocking free radicals from getting at healthy tissues or by physically carrying them away like a bouncer escorting an unruly guest.)
Antioxidants don’t just come from fruits and vegetables. Several amino acids – the basic building blocks of life – are powerful antioxidants. These include glutathione, cysteine, tryptophan, and methionine).
We Use Electrons to Produce Energy
The human body also uses electrons to produce energy. The mitochondria inside each and every cell in our bodies use electrons to make ATP – which is the fuel which gives our cells energy.
So again, a ready supply of electrons is important for health.
Our Modern Environment
It turns out that wild game animals have much higher levels of essential Omega 3 fatty acids than domesticated animals. Indeed, leading nutritionists say that humans evolved to consume a lot of Omega 3 fatty acids in the wild game and fish which they ate (more), and that a low Omega 3 diet is a very new trend within the last 100 years or so.
In other words, while omega 3s have just now been discovered by modern science, we evolved to get a lot of omega 3s … and if we just eat a modern, fast food diet without getting enough omega 3s, it can cause all sorts of health problems.
So something just discovered by science can be a central fuel which our bodies evolved to use.
The same is true with antioxidants and electrons. We evolved eating foods which were high in vitamins and minerals, including foods high in electron donors.
But as the Journal Current Opinion in Obstetrics and Gynecology notes:
With soil depletion, overfarming and transportation of foods over hundreds of miles with loss of nutrients en route, together with the increased use of convenience and fast foods, women can be over-fed, but under-nourished in our modern society.
The Nutrition Journal points out:
In 1927 a study at King’s College, University of London, of the chemical composition of foods was initiated … to assist with diabetic dietary guidance. The study evolved and was then broadened to determine all the important organic and mineral constituents of foods, it was financed by the Medical Research Council and eventually published in 1940. Over the next 51 years subsequent editions reflected changing national dietary habits and food laws as well as advances in analytical procedures. The most recent (5th Edition) published in 1991 has comprehensively analysed 14 different categories of foods and beverages. In order to provide some insight into any variation in the quality of the foods available to us as a nation between 1940 and 1991 it was possible to compare and contrast the mineral content of 27 varieties of vegetable, 17 varieties of fruit, 10 cuts of meat and some milk and cheese products. The results demonstrate that there has been a significant loss of minerals and trace elements in these foods over that period of time.
Scripps Howard News Service noted in 2006:
The nutritional content of America’s vegetables and fruits has declined during the past 50 years — in some cases dramatically.
Donald Davis, a biochemist at the University of Texas, said that of 13 major nutrients in fruits and vegetables tracked by the Agriculture Department from 1950 to 1999, six showed noticeable declines — protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin and vitamin C. The declines ranged from 6 percent for protein, 15 percent for iron, 20 percent for vitamin C, and 38 percent for riboflavin.
“It’s an amazing thing,” said Davis, adding that the decline in nutrient content has not been widely noticed.
Many other studies have reported ongoing soil depletion around the world.
Additionally, as Science Daily reported in 2002, research shows that organic oranges have more vitamin C than conventional oranges.
And many people eat highly processed foods in which most antioxidants have been destroyed.
So – just as with the low levels of omega 3s – there might be less antioxidants like vitamin C in the modern diet than the levels we evolved to run on.
What does a negative electric charge have to do with our health?
Well, electrons carry a negative electrical charge. In other words, since the Earth has a net negative charge, it means that it has an abundance of electrons.
(Indeed, the first telegraphs were apparently built by harnessing the negative electrical charge of the Earth.)
It is well-known that humans and animals have many electric currents inside of us, and that we interact with electric fields and electric currents outside of our bodies. For example, the pumping of our hearts is driven by an electrical system, and EKGs measure the electrical activity in our heart:
The [EKG]works mostly by detecting and amplifying the tiny electrical changes on the skin that are caused when the heart muscle “depolarizes” during each heart beat.
Electrocution can kill by disrupting the heart’s electrical system.
Our brains are also largely electrical systems, and EEGs measure electrical activity in our brain:
Electroencephalography (EEG) is the recording of electrical activity along the scalp produced by the firing of neurons within the brain.[2] In clinical contexts, EEG refers to the recording of the brain’s spontaneous electrical activity over a short period of time ….
Both EKGs and EEGs use sensors on the outside of our bodies (on the skin) to measure electrical activity occurring inside our bodies.
Health Effects of Grounding By Dr. MercolaHave you ever walked barefoot on a warm sandy beach? Or kicked off your shoes and raked your toes through the grass on a dewy morning? There’s something inherently rewarding about the feeling of your skin in direct contact with the Earth, your bare hands in the soil working your garden, for instance.
This rewarding feeling isn’t happenstance; it’s the result of electrically conductive contact of your body with the surface of the Earth, a phenomenon known as grounding or earthing.
The Earth carries an enormous negative charge. It's always electron-rich and can serve as a powerful and abundant supply of antioxidant and free-radical-busting electrons. Your body is finely tuned to "work" with the Earth in the sense that there's a constant flow of energy between your body and the Earth.
When you put your feet on the ground, you absorb large amounts of negative electrons through the soles of your feet. The effect is sufficient to maintain your body at the same negatively charged electrical potential as the Earth.
This simple process of grounding is one of the most potent antioxidants we know of. Grounding has been shown to relieve pain, reduce inflammation, improve sleep, enhance well being, and much, much more. Unfortunately, many living in developed countries are rarely grounded anymore.
James Oschman, who is an expert in the field of energy medicine, with a bachelor's degree in Biophysics and a PhD in Biology from the University of Pittsburgh, noted:1
“Subjective 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. For a variety of reasons, many individuals are reluctant to walk outside barefoot, unless they are on holiday at the beach.”
More Than a Dozen Studies Confirm the Physiological Effects of Grounding
Oschman, along with a dozen other researchers, has conducted research on the physiological effects of grounding. More than a dozen studies have been published in peer-reviewed journals showing its benefit for fighting inflammation, improving the immune response, wound healing, and the prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.2
According to a review published in the Journal of Inflammation Research:3
“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 …
Our 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.”
We also hypothesize that electrons from the Earth can prevent or resolve so-called “silent” or “smoldering” inflammation.”
Interestingly, grounding research has now discovered that if you place your feet on the ground after an injury (or on a grounded sheet, or place grounding patches on the balls of your feet), electrons will migrate into your body and spread through your tissues.
Any free radicals that leak into the healthy tissue will immediately be electrically neutralized. This occurs because the electrons are negative, while the free radicals are positive, so they cancel each other out.
Grounding May Improve Sleep, Reduce Pain, Support Heart Health, and More
In a summary of findings to date, Oschman and colleagues noted that grounding appear to have a number of beneficial effects on health, including:4
Improve sleep
Normalize the day-night cortisol rhythm
Reduce pain
Reduce stress
Shift the autonomic nervous system from sympathetic toward parasympathetic activation
Increase heart rate variability
Speed wound healing
Reduce blood viscosity
The concept of grounding was initially developed by Clint Ober, who began studying earthing in an effort to heal himself. In one study conducted by Ober in 2000, people who suffered from sleep disturbances and chronic muscle and joint pain were randomly divided to sleep either grounded or “sham” grounded.
Most who slept grounded reported symptomatic improvement in sleep and pain, and some also reported significant relief from asthmatic and respiratory conditions, rheumatoid arthritis, PMS, sleep apnea, and hypertension. According to the Journal of Environmental and Public Health:5 “These results indicated that the effects of earthing go beyond reduction of pain and improvements in sleep.”
Yet another study found that grounding during a single night of sleep led to significant changes in concentrations of minerals and electrolytes in the subjects’ blood, and grounding for 72 hours led to a decrease in fasting glucose among people with diabetes.6
In addition, grounding while sleeping was also determined to be the first intervention known to speed recovery from delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS), which is the pain and stiffness that occurs hours or days after strenuous exercise.7 Reduction in inflammation and stress as a result of grounding has also been documented.
According to Dr. Stephen Sinatra, a prominent cardiologist, inflammation thrives when your blood is thick and you have a lot of free radical stress, and a lot of positive charges in your body. Grounding effectively alleviates inflammation because it thins your blood and infuses you with negatively charged ions through the soles of your feet.
Grounding for Anti-Aging Benefits
One of the dominant theories on aging is the free radical theory, which is that aging occurs because of accumulative damage to your body caused by free radicals. You get free radicals when you have an injury or chronic inflammation, from breathing, and from the food you eat, among other things.
While you don't want to completely eliminate ALL free radicals, you do want to maintain a healthy balance of antioxidant electrons in your body to ensure the damage from free radicals doesn't get out of hand.
Earthing can help accomplish this delicate balance, as evidenced by its effects on inflammation. Medical infrared imaging shows that inflammation begins to subside within 30 minutes of being grounded. At the same time, metabolic activity increases as does oxygen consumption, pulse rate and respiratory rate, and a decrease in blood oxygenation, within 40 minutes of grounding.
Researchers refer to this as “filling” the charge reservoirs, which, once saturated, can quickly deliver antioxidant electrons to sites of injury. According to the Journal of Inflammation Research:8
“These considerations also imply anti-aging effects of earthing or grounding, since the dominant theory of aging emphasizes cumulative damage caused by ROS produced during normal metabolism or produced in response to pollutants, poisons, or injury.
We hypothesize an anti-aging effect of grounding that is based on a living matrix reaching every part of the body and that is capable of delivering antioxidant electrons to sites where tissue integrity might be compromised by reactive oxidants from any source.”
‘An Essential Element in the Health Equation’
Simply by getting outside, barefoot, touching the Earth, and allowing the excess charge in your body to discharge into the Earth, you can alleviate some of the stress continually put on your system.
Walking barefoot can help ameliorate the constant assault of electromagnetic fields and other types of radiation from cell phones, computers, and Wi-Fi. It's also thought that grounding may actually facilitate the formation of structured water in your body.
Furthermore, grounding also calms your sympathetic nervous system, which supports your heart rate variability. When you support heart rate variability, this promotes homeostasis, or balance, in your autonomic nervous system. This is important because anytime you improve your heart rate variability, you're improving your entire body and all its functions. If you want to learn more, check out the Grounded documentary (in which I actually appear).
You'll hear first-hand accounts from residents of Haines, Alaska who have overcome chronic pain, sleep apnea, and much more simply by getting grounded. According to the Journal of Environmental and Public Health, grounding is very much an essential element of human health:9
“Earthing research, observations, and related theories raise an intriguing possibility about the Earth’s surface electrons as an untapped health resource—the Earth as a ‘global treatment table.’ Emerging evidence shows that contact with the Earth—whether being outside barefoot or indoors connected to grounded conductive systems—may be a simple, natural, and yet profoundly effective environmental strategy against chronic stress, ANS dysfunction, inflammation, pain, poor sleep, disturbed HRV, hypercoagulable blood, and many common health disorders, including cardiovascular disease.
The research done to date supports the concept that grounding or earthing the human body may be an essential element in the health equation along with sunshine, clean air and water, nutritious food, and physical activity.”
Simple Ways to Get Grounded
Many Americans spend most of their waking hours wearing shoes with rubber or plastic soles. These materials are very effective insulators, which is precisely why they're used to insulate electrical wires. Yet, they also effectively disconnect you from the Earth's natural electron flow. Wearing leather-soled shoes will allow you to stay grounded with the Earth, as will walking barefoot, but you'll need to do so on the proper surface. Good grounding surfaces include:
- Sand (beach)
- Grass (preferably moist)
- Bare soil
- Concrete and brick (as long as it's not painted or sealed)
- Ceramic tile
- Asphalt
- Wood
- Rubber and plastic
- Vinyl
- Tar or tarmac
“From a practical standpoint, clinicians could recommend outdoor ‘barefoot sessions’ to patients, weather, and conditions permitting. Ober et al. have observed that going barefoot as little as 30 or 40 minutes daily can significantly reduce pain and stress… Obviously, there is no cost for barefoot grounding. However, the use of conductive systems while sleeping, working, or relaxing indoors offer a more convenient and routine-friendly approach.”