Earthing: Implications of Reconnecting the Body to Earth's Surface Electrons | Hacker News Reader

Earthing: Implications of Reconnecting the Body to Earth's Surface Electrons

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

13 pointsmiobrien10 comments

Smells like quackery, but then something does feel strangely good about laying on soil. Not necessarily with bare skin, but always supposed it's psychological. That intuitive feeling that something about it feels right is probably why the grift works.

Maybe one day we'll conclusively find some mechanism at work for that, but this paper doesn't bring us any closer to that day.

See: "Disclosure: G. Chevalier, S. T. Sinatra, and J. L. Oschman are independent contractors for Earthx L. Inc., the company sponsoring earthing research, and own a small percentage of shares in the company."

I’m entirely willing to believe that there’s reason to research electrical+chemical+biological effects coming from skin contact with the ground. That there might be measurable biological effects is plausible enough, although the much simpler explanation is that feeling nice walking around on bare feet has small positive effects on health.

Flowers, for example, specially use electric charge to attract and interact with bees.

The people writing this paper however, write like they don’t even have freshman physics levels of understanding of electricity.

    The people writing this paper however, 
    write like they don’t even have freshman 
    physics levels of understanding of electricity.

Agreed. If you can get past the absolutely dreadful introduction, however, the remainder of the paper is a review of other studies. Some of which seem kind of decent, though I wouldn't get excited until they are replicated.

    although the much simpler explanation is that 
    feeling nice walking around on bare feet has 
    small positive effects on health.

The "grounding" studies in the linked article (which are of varying quality) seem to try to separate the "being outdoors in nature" aspect from the "grounding" aspect by using grounding pads indoors.

This seems wise, because the positive benefits of time spent outdoors in nature are pretty well documented.[1]

---

[1] The positive effects of spending time in nature (not the grounding part) are pretty well documented: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2020/04/nurtured-nature

I can tell that the authors do not understand how electricity works.

What I get from this is that cooling your feet is probably good for you (it is the evolutionary norm) so Einstein was right to wear sandals all the time, even to the White House.

This is a joke, right? If only it didn't come from the National Library of Medicine

It's tempting to dismiss this, but it's a bona fide randomized double blind study that found significant improvements in inflammation and pain versus placebos. And the sacrifice required amounts to wearing a patch on your foot when you sleep. I'd prefer to know the mechanism, but it sounds like no risk and low effort for a reasonable benefit, if it replicates.

I wonder if it would help to have a conductive patch through shoes and socks, for grounding during normal daily perambulation.

> randomized double blind study

Always the first thing you got to ask when you encounter these is this: What is the size of the study, and what was the effect size?

The linked paper (if you can get past the intro paragraphs which are full of babble) is a review that answers those questions. As you suspect, the studies are not huge, and some are not double blind.

I don't want to defend the experiments by any means because all of my pseudoscience alarms are ringing. However, some of them are... kind of intriguing. I wouldn't hold my breath for this panning out. But would be curious to know if any of them have been replicated since this review was published in 2012.

I had the same reaction. The positive mental health effects of time spent in nature are pretty well documented and, I think, well accepted. Certainly my own personal experience matches with this.

But... "grounding?"

The introductory section seems like the purest of nonsense. I clicked the link to have a laugh. But at least some of the studies seemed... promising? If replicable, obviously.

    randomized double blind study

Some were double blind. Others were single blind. Some had no control groups at all.

    And the sacrifice required amounts to wearing a patch on your foot when you sleep

I see there are no shortage of new-agey grounding products on Amazon.

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