Comment by jackschultz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jackschultz | Hacker News Reader

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Curious what people's thoughts here are on grounding as another benefit. Article talks about benefits of bacteria on the skin, but I'd say the other and maybe bigger benefit is discharge of electrical energy in our bodies to the ground. Which, can sounds weird depending. Some papers on the subject[0] talking about similar results as this article, almost implying that it's not the microbes, but grounding making the difference.

I also got a $30 "grounding mat" that you plug into the ground part of electrical socket, and I dunno, it feels amazing to have skin touching it. I put it in bed and literally slept the best I have in years in the last two night, by far. Comments online generally are snake oil, but many others are first person accounts saying that for whatever reason, the grounding mat worked for them. (I have theories that the people who it does nothing for are those who already have an outlet. Like a dog where you're in nature and on walks, and also a dog can do the discharge for you). Other comments online are stories of how when the mat is plugged to ground, their cats love sitting on it, but if unplugged, the mats are ignored. That seems like some study that would be interesting at animal shelter, seeing if animals can tell and prefer.

But anyway, wondering what others opinions on this topic are.

[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4378297/

Note that all of the authors of this paper work for a company that sells this snake oil.

This entire idea of charging or discharging your body for some physiological effect is fundamentally flawed. It is indeed true that touching the ground will change your electrical potential to that of the ground, however that's as far as it goes, the rest is just nonsensical.

Let's start with the very first part of that, specifically changing your electrical potential to match the ground. The problem with this is that the ground is 0V because we define it as 0V, not because of any sort of fundamental property. Between two points on the Earth you can see hundreds of kilovolts. So the obvious question is why should the electrical potential of a particular piece of soil where your grounding rod is installed be physiologically preferable to whatever potential your body happened to be at before?

Now lets go on to the next part of what these scam artists usually claim. That is that the Earth's electrons enter your body and do good things of some description. When you touch the ground some small charge does enter or leave your body, however that stops nearly instantly when the potentials equalise[1]. How is the Earth meant to to keep putting electrons into your body if there's no voltage? That's just simply not how electricity works.

As an aside, note that I said enter or leave. A positive static charge and a negative static charge can both easily build up in your body. Therefore any claims that specify that electrons enter your body (or leave you body) is immediately nonsensical because it could go either way.

I'll leave it to someone else to explain all the nonsensical biological claims that follow on from the already fundamentally wrong electrical side since that's not my area. I will however note that none of these sponsored papers actually show and measurable biological effect, they all just hand-wave about redox reactions.

[1]: Yes, you're coupled to mains wiring and other changing fields that are around, however that's getting too far into the weeds for a short comment. If the claim made by the snake oil salesmen was that a current going through your body is good then they'd also suggest wrapping yourself in an electrical cord to maximise the effect, or just taping batteries to your skin.

To play devil's advocate, as a species we've spent the vast majority of our existence sleeping on the literal ground. It seems plausible there may be some adaptation to the electrical properties of being at the surface vs ensconced in synthetic materials above it.

Granted there's no evidence for that as of yet, but there was a time when fiber in food was reasonably seen as just inefficient waste that couldn't be digested and so had no benefit, that's part of how we got Wonder Bread and the obesity epidemic.

> as a species we've spent the vast majority of our existence sleeping on the literal ground

This isn't true, though. For the majority of human history, humans set up grass and leaf bedding atop campfire ash, using animal furs for additional insulation when needed. Ash and leaves are electrical insulators.

Yeah, because sleeping directly on the ground leaches heat from your body too fast, because of said lack of insulation. Sleeping too directly on the ground is also particularly dangerous in survival scenarios, doubly so if you are cold or wet. A common mistake when assembling a temporary shelter is to spend all your time on the “roof” but very little on the “floor”.

All those materials with the exception of animal furs are commonly found on or in the ground. Given the relative lack of multistory buildings throughout our history, that's basically just making the ground a few inches taller. The ground itself is highly varied as well, with various combinations of rock, dirt, sand, etc.

I was thinking more that in the developed world most people have much more separation from anything resembling the ground, both in terms of materials and physical distance that would substantially alter any electrical characteristics.

In the off chance I win the lottery I intend to fund serious robust studies of minor stuff like this. Would be the easiest placebo ever, just internally disconnect some of the mats.

The only possible way for this to do anything measurable if it somehow reduces the 50/60Hz AC hum impressed on your body. But either way with the wavelength of 60Hz in meat being like earth sized I dont think any significant electric fields will arise within two points of your body to do anything meaningful (as long as you stay AC coupled, if you DC couple to mains health effects are guaranteed).

To play devil's prosecutor, charge resides on the surface of an object, and the electric field inside is zero.

> It seems plausible there may be some adaptation to the electrical properties of being at the surface

This is like saying it’s plausible that wearing a bracelet with a small magnet in it will have health benefits. It’s pure woo. There’s no reason to believe this from a scientific angle. It’s perhaps not impossible but it is certainly not plausible.

> there was a time when fiber in food was reasonably seen as just inefficient waste

When was this?

No, it fits an existing pattern. Something commonplace in our natural environment that we adapted to over millions of years and exerted a non-obvious influence that wasn't scientifically verified until recently. Dietary fiber is but one example.

I'm not saying that's "evidence", or that the posted study is valid, but I'm also not aware of any robust studies demonstrating no difference from placebo. A lack of good data is neither positive nor negative.

As for dietary fiber, it wasn't broadly seen as useful for anything other than constipation until the 1970s when it was shown that increased fiber intake reduced colon cancer risk

> taping batteries to your skin

Don’t give them more ideas. Someone will be selling bracelets with batteries in them soon.

This study had no control group and they didn't check for a placebo effect. Pretty big red flags.

If you live with someone, have them flip a coin every night to decide if your mat should be plugged in or not and log it in a private journal. Record your feelings in the morning. After a month, compare your reports to the state of the plug each night.

If you live alone, get 2 more identical cord. Have your mats cord and the unconnected ones going into a box. Blindly label the cords a b and c.

The unconnected ones end there, the real one continues to the mat. Cycle through your cords every evening. In the morning log your feelings and the cord used. After a month see which cord was the connected one and whether your feelings were correlated with that

> but many others are first person accounts saying that for whatever reason, the grounding mat worked for them.

We know the reason, and it has been studied extensively.

The placebo effect is very strong.

It's important to distinguish between spiritual energy like prana/chi and electricity.

Science will never show that grounding has any measurable effect on the chemistry of the human body. But it also can't show how conscious awareness may affect quantum wave function collapse probabilities, allowing free will to migrate to the deterministic timeline in the multiverse that most supports its well-being.

In other words, magic only doesn't exist if you don't believe in it.

> But it also can't show how conscious awareness may affect quantum wave function collapse probabilities, allowing free will to migrate to the deterministic timeline in the multiverse that most supports its well-being.

That’s true. Science can’t show a lot of things that aren’t real.

You're not wrong, but it's worth doing a deep dive into recent papers on multidimensional time and its relation to consciousness and free will.

It is 100% snake oil. No scientific basis whatsoever.

I'm a barefooter and the grounding thing sounds like bunk to me.

Now, my big caveat here would that one shouldn't confuse effects with explanations. Even if the explanations are pseudoscience, it could still work. But... you really do need to rule out placebo if you want to claim there's an effect.

(The other caveat is that if it's otherwise harmless, and works for you, then it doesn't actually matter if it's "just" the placebo effect.)

Do the people walking their dogs do it barefoot?

Wouldn't shoes ruin the effect?

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