Earthing: The Most Important Health Discovery Ever?

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So I came to this book with an open but very sceptical mind and with the attitude that I would have to see a lot of impressive evidence and solid logic to be convinced that this concept was worth bothering with and worth supporting. At the end of the last century, experiments initiated independently by Ober in the USA [ 10] and K. Sokal and P. Sokal [ 11] in Poland revealed distinct physiological and health benefits with the use of conductive bed pads, mats, EKG- and TENS-type electrode patches, and plates connected indoors to the Earth outside. Ober, a retired cable television executive, found a similarity between the human body (a bioelectrical, signal-transmitting organism) and the cable used to transmit cable television signals. When cables are “grounded” to the Earth, interference is virtually eliminated from the signal. Furthermore, all electrical systems are stabilized by grounding them to the Earth. K. Sokal and P. Sokal, meanwhile, discovered that grounding the human body represents a “universal regulating factor in Nature” that strongly influences bioelectrical, bioenergetic, and biochemical processes and appears to offer a significant modulating effect on chronic illnesses encountered daily in their clinical practices.

People sometimes report feeling a tingling sensation in their body the first few times they are grounded at night. It is not unpleasant... You are simply feeling the Earth's natural, healing energy coming into your body." (!) This book has made me realize how truly disconnected from Mother I have been for so many years. Who would have thought the difference was simply the missing 'skin-on-skin' connection with the Earth? The book describes how Clint Ober, who worked in the cable-TV industry, discovered the benefits of Earthing, devised his own primitive Earthing products and tried them out on friends and acquaintances. Their healing effects were astounding. Sometimes dramatic improvement occurred after only 20 minutes or so. When I first heard about this concept I was very sceptical. I am a big supporter of orthomolecular and nutritional medicine and the not-very-popular idea of treating the causes of disease and not just suppressing symptoms with drugs...but earthing just sounds so completely eye-rollingly nuts at first!

‘Earthing’ by Clinton Ober

Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D., is a board-certified cardiologist and certified psychotherapist and the author of books including Reverse Heart Disease Now and Lower Your Blood Pressure in Eight Weeks. The Earth is a massive reservoir of negatively charged free electrons. Without a connection to this reservoir, the cells in our body are unable to balance the positive charge which results from things like electron-deficient free radicals. The effect of excess positive charge in the blood can be seen very clearly by the way in which the cells are attracted to clump together (see below). Within the earthing community there is bound to be some pantheistic silliness. I sort of cringed when earth and earthing were consistently capitalized.

The biggest problem with this sort of book is that there is hell to pay from the believers for saying the emperor has no clothes. And the funny thing is that people who would normally scoff at medical doctors suddenly defend this lunacy because the author has an M.D. at the end of his name. I don't get it. Clinton Ober and a medical doctor have put together a great, easy to read book on the physical benefits of being grounded. They look at a variety of modern life challenges from depression to heart disease and how the process can help to alleviate and speed up the cure process. Oh, that's the other thing. By his wording, the author seems to assume the reader wears shoes at all times including while at home. Also assumes that the reader knows next to nothing about the connectivity we have to Earth, and the energies on and around it. Personally, while I know people who are totally oblivious to this fact, many people I know are totally aware and knowledgeable in this matter. So to assume that I or anyone else is completely ignorant of the ideas presented is, quite frankly, ignorant. Written in the past tense, the book's stated purpose is to serve as a Baedeker travel guide for an alien civilization that discovers Earth after humanity has died out, most likely by its own hands. As such, Earth (The Book) attempts to chronicle the history of the planet and the human race from the beginning to the present day, and also tries to explain human concepts and emotions such as "love" and "work" for its alien readers. [2]EARTHING, the most eye-opening book to appear in decades, introduces the planet's powerful, amazing and overlooked natural healing energy and how people anywhere can readily connect to it. The never-before-told story filled with fascinating research and real-life testimonials chronicles a discovery of the first magnitude with potential to create a global health revolution. After watching a half dozen videos on the subject made by experts and reading about the same number of articles on earthing, I was quite intrigued but still far from convinced of its scientific merits. When we connect with the Earth, our body “becomes suffused with negative-charged free electrons abundantly present on the surface of the Earth.” Our modern way of life has created an electron deficiency in our bodies, thus disturbing both our immune system and all other body systems. One morning, during my long mending process, I awoke and looked outside and noticed the sky was a deeper blue and the trees were a more vibrant green than I had ever seen before. At that moment, I felt alive again but very much different from before. A stark realization came over me that I didn’t really own my home and the mountain of possessions I had. Rather, they owned me. My life had become all about taking care of my stuff. I’d spent my whole life accumulating, collecting, and taking care of it all, and trying to get more, perhaps to show off how big a success I was. I realized that I had become a slave to my possessions by my own making. At that moment, I decided to set myself free and find something to fill my life with other than possessions. ‘I don’t want anymore of this life’, I said out loud to myself. ‘I want to do something different. Whatever time I have left I want to dedicate it to something worthwhile and with purpose.’” -Clint Ober, during a turning point in his life before having the epiphany of Grounding/Earthing Eight healthy men ages 20–23 were put through a similar routine of toe raises while carrying on their shoulders a barbell equal to one-third of their body weight. Each participant was exercised individually on a Monday morning and then monitored for the rest of the week while following a similar eating, sleeping, and living schedule in a hotel. The group was randomly divided in half and either grounded or sham grounded with the use of a conductive patch placed at the sole of each foot during active hours and a conductive sheet at night. Complete blood counts, blood chemistry, enzyme chemistry, serum and saliva cortisol, magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy, and pain levels (a total of 48 parameters) were taken at the same time of day before the eccentric exercise and at 24, 48, and 72 hours afterwards. Parameters consistently differing by 10 percent or more, normalized to baseline, were considered worthy of further study.

The foot is a kind of ‘radar sonic base’ that serves to extract energy from the Earth, similar to a plant root extracting moisture from the ground for nourishment. Such ground to root vibrations may thus be an important energizing power helping to serve the body’s life forces.” Grounding, or earthing, refers to connecting electrically with the Earth. A growing body of research is finding numerous health benefits as a result of the physical body being grounded. Modern lifestyle has increasingly separated humans from the primordial flow of Earth's electrons. For example, since the 1960s, we have increasingly worn insulating rubber or plastic soled shoes, instead of the traditional leather fashioned from hides. Rossi has lamented that the use of insulating materials in post-World War II shoes has separated us from the Earth's energy field [ 6]. Obviously, we no longer sleep on the ground as we did in times past.The idea of going barefoot on the Earth or using products that have a similar effect is no longer in the realm of new age or esoteric ideas. It has also received considerable attention from the academic and clinical research community. Studies have found that our body goes through significant measurable changes when we are in connection with the Earth. Some of these effects include changes in cortisol levels, blood pressure, and a quantifiable effect on depression and anxiety.

I do know I love to walk barefooted, but I also know I still have health issues despite walking barefooted every day for 18 months. Can't hurt to try, but I don't think it can fill all the claims he makes either. A multiparameter double-blind study was designed to reproduce and expand on previous electrophysiological and physiological parameters measured immediately after grounding with an improved methodology and state-of-the-art equipment [ 20]. Fourteen men and 14 women, in good health, ages 18–80, were tested while seated in a comfortable recliner during 2-hour grounding sessions, leaving time for signals to stabilize before, during, and after grounding (40 minutes for each period). Sham 2-hour grounding sessions were also recorded with the same subjects as controls. For each session, statistical analyses were performed on four 10-minute segments: before and after grounding (sham grounding for control sessions) and before and after ungrounding (sham ungrounding for control sessions). The following results were documented: At first, Ober’s idea was not well-received by the medical community. His experience was as a cable installer. He knew that to get a clear signal, you had to place a ground wire in the Earth so that the system and the Earth would exchange ions and reach a steady state. Ober also knew that as soon as the system reached a steady-state, the static would clear up. The theory is if humans ground in the same way that you ground a cable system, that we might be able to stabilize our electrical field and receive benefits. He knew that this principle had worked for him, and he conducted a roughly designed research study that also supported the principle. However, this was not enough to convince his early critics.People cut off from the electrical current of the earth for long periods of time develop all sorts of problems which are reversed by grounding, and studies have show the positive effects it has on sleep and also on red blood cells. The red blood cell before and after photos in the book are amazing as are the thermography images. At least some of the studies done were double blind as well. I'm still too ill to go into all the science and theory here, and you really need to read the whole book to fully understand it all anyway, but this is a brief sample of what the book contains. Persist he did. Eventually, Clint found open-minded experts in the fields of medicine, physiology, and biophysics and inspired a series of research projects showing that the surface of the Earth is like one gigantic anti-inflammatory, sleep booster, and energizer-all wrapped up in one. Exposure to sunlight produces vitamin D in the body. It's needed for health. Exposure to the ground provides an electrical `nutrient' in the form of electrons. Think of these electrons as vitamin G--G for ground. Just like vitamin D, you need vitamin G for your health as well."