HEALTHY LIVING

What on earth is grounding, and does it have any health benefits?

agood friend messaged me about grounding, also known as earthing, early this year: ‘Pretty amazing and well worth checking out,’ he enthused. ‘Many health benefits. I’ve been spending as much time barefoot as possible and feel better for it.’

A Google search revealed a vast alternative health movement, with websites for everything from a 2010 book (Earthing: The Most Important Health Discovery Ever? by Clinton Ober, Stephen Sinatra and Martin Zucker) to a 2019 documentary (The Earthing Movie by Josh and Rebecca Tickell), a fullon Earthing Institute in the US (earthinginstitute.net), and earthing products available even here in South Africa (groundlive.co.za).

All centre on a single premise: that we are designed to be connected directly to the earth and its electromagnetic field, and our wellness depends on it; yet we insulate ourselves in shoes with rubber or plastic soles, spend our time indoors with synthetic flooring and furniture, and travel in vehicles with rubber tyres.

Watching tourists in trainers getting off a bus in Sedona, Arizona, some 20 years ago, this suddenly struck Ober, a retired cableTV technician who had dealt daily with electricity and insulation, and was battling a liver problem and a midlife crisis. As he tells it on a number of platforms, he decided to experiment: he stuck a strip of metal duct tape across his bed, threw a wire out the window and attached it to a metal rod to ground him – and he felt and slept better than in ages. Inspired, Ober headed for the University of California, where research persuaded him, and eventually several academics and integrative medicine professionals, that he had made an important discovery. The book he went on to write with one of them (Stephen Sinatra is a cardiologist turned bioenergetic psychotherapist) consolidated the movement.

Its message is this: just by walking barefoot or sitting or lying on the ground for 30 to 40 minutes a day, or by ‘earthing’ ourselves while indoors, we can allow electrons to flow from the earth into our bodies again. And this, its proponents contend, enhances our biological processes, neutralises free radicals and provides a slew of benefits, including better immunity, digestion, circulation and sleep; and relief from pain, stress, depression and chronic inflammation, along with the ills associated with this – autoimmune diseases, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease (which my husband has, hence my friend’s message) and even cancer.

‘I got into grounding five years ago,’ says Marc Giot of the Cape Town online store Groundlive. He happens to be head coach for the Western Province Ice Hockey Association, the former head coach of the national U18/U20 team and a current player for Team SA, with two gold medals from the IIHF World Championship as a coach and player.

‘I was born with bilateral clubfoot, which causes serious ankle pain and poor sleeping patterns. After doing some research about the possible health benefits of earthing the body, I slept with a grounded wire for a couple of nights. With instantly improved sleep and reduced pain, I knew I was onto something.’

‘I slept with a grounded wire for a couple of nights. With instantly improved sleep and reduced pain, I knew I was onto something.’

‘The available research does suggest that earthing has a positive impact on human health, while also posing virtually no risk.’

Giot was convinced enough to start Groundlive and sell products in South Africa such as grounding sheets, grounding pillowcases, grounding mats (he has his feet on one at his computer) and even grounding socks. He says he gets amazing feedback from customers commenting about deeper sleep and waking refreshed.

‘Since lockdown, lots of people are looking for ways to boost their immune system healthily, but very few South Africans know about grounding,’ he says. ‘Or perhaps they’re just sceptical.’

Who could blame them? When something sounds so easy and is credited with relieving so much, how can it not raise eyebrows – and major doubts? Especially when there’s a product line attached.

WHAT DOES THE SCIENCE SAY?

The Earthing Institute’s response, like Giot’s, is simple: if you’re sceptical, put it to the test by simply sitting, standing or walking with bare feet on the ground outside. ‘If you have PMS or arthritic pain or a backache or indigestion or just plain fatigue, or feel highly stressed, note your level of discomfort at the start and then again after about a halfhour or so,’ says the institute’s website. ‘At the end you will feel better. You will realise that there is indeed something marvellous about the ground beneath your feet, something you’ve been missing all these years.’

To which the sceptic in me pipes up: But what of the placebo effect? What of the wellknown de-stressing, and therefore therapeutic, effects of taking a break in nature that have nothing to do with gaining electrons? And what of the many rural people in a country like ours who still go barefoot, sleep on a mud floor, and walk to school or work? Are they inherently healthier than their (synthetically) well-heeled urban counterparts? What, finally, of my older son, who suffered severe depression and generalised anxiety disorder, yet so seldom wore shoes that when we lost him at 25, his friends came to his memorial barefoot?

Questions like these are clearly impossible to quantify; specific tests of the purported benefits of grounding using grounding equipment rather than exposure to nature would seem the way to go. And the Earthing Institute site references a large number of these.

There’s no question that the earth has electric currents – as the

Nasa website explains it, the flow of liquid iron in our planet’s core ‘creates electric currents, which in turn create the magnetic field’ – but whether these can have any impact on our health is less clear.

In one study the institute cites, published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, subjects’ cortisol levels were tracked before and after sleeping on a conductive mattress pad for eight weeks. Results showed their cortisol rhythms balanced out, suggesting relief of stress and better sleep, and the subjects fell asleep more quickly and reported less anxiety and depression, and greater energy.

In another study, published in the Journal of Sports Medicine, researchers put men through a squatting routine, attaching some to grounding equipment (a mat and patches linked to a grounding rod), and others to identical-looking fake equipment. All the men reported muscle pain, but those attached to the genuine grounding equipment scored higher in some measures linked to less inflammation and faster recovery.

But in response to these and most other grounding studies to date, sceptics have been quick to point out that the numbers of subjects have been small, funding has tended to come from earthing companies, and those doing the studies have often been from the same small group of researchers connected with the earthing movement – including Gaétan Chevalier, director of the Earthing Institute, and members of its board of advisors. The findings of most studies have not been replicated in follow-up research either, and the mechanisms behind the reported health improvements have not been explained clearly.

Some of the physics claims about grounding have been dismissed out of hand. Medical biophysicist Dr Sarah Ballantyne, who has done award-winning medical research in the US on innate immunity and inflammation, says, ‘Even if we walk around in insulated shoes, we can still receive electrons every day from touching other objects that touch the earth, or from taking showers in water that has passed through metal pipes underground. Although the idea of being out of “electrical homeostasis” due to disconnection from earth sounds intriguing on the surface, it’s unlikely to convince anyone who’s well versed in physics, despite the use of science-y words!’

Physics Central – a site run by the American Physical Society, an NPO for professionals in physics – is not buying it either. It states that while houses are electrically grounded by conductive pipes and wires sunk in soil to provide a path for electrons to flow between the electronics in your home and the earth, and prevent you from getting a serious shock if devices malfunction, there can be no medical benefits to grounding your body.

‘Your insides are literally inside you, but the charges affected by grounding you are exclusively on the outside,’ it continues, describing the human body as the electrical equivalent of a large bag of salt water. Electrical charges can move around in salt water because it’s a conductor – the water itself is neutral. If an excess electron is put in the bag, it can move randomly. If another electron is added, the two charges would repel each other (because like charges repel each other), and both charges would end up on the outer surface of the bag. Alternatively, if a positive and a negative charge are placed in the bag, they would attract each other (because opposites attract), and cancel each other out. ‘The end result is that no matter how many charges you put in a bag of salt water, the inside is completely neutral and all excess charges are on the outside. That means excess charge can’t affect anything inside you. And neither can taking that excess charge away.’

The Earthing Institute itself is careful to carry a medical disclaimer, urging that you should ‘never disregard the advice of your doctor or delay seeking medical treatment because of something you have read on or accessed through this website’, and emphasising that it is ‘not responsible or liable for any advice or other information that you obtain through this website’.

TO SHED YOUR SHOES OR NOT?

Yet Dr Ballantyne doesn’t dismiss the effects of earthing or grounding. ‘Even if we haven’t fully dialled in the mechanisms to explain why, the available research does suggest that earthing has a positive impact on human health, while also posing virtually no risk,’ she says. Although earthing products like sheets and mats have seemed effective in earthing studies, she adds, there’s a far wider potential health benefit to be had from getting out in fresh air and nature, and enjoying the sensory stimulation of going barefoot, lying on the grass, burying your feet in beach sand or paddling in the sea.

My husband buys that and may give it a go. Meanwhile, my second son, an engineering student and sceptic, has just done a berg hike barefoot in tribute to his brother.

‘I liked feeling the damp earth,’ he says simply. ‘The cold rungs of the chain ladder, the pebbles in a stream. It keeps you aware.’

Just as well. You could step on a puff adder…