Comment by LiamPowell | Hacker News Reader

Comment by LiamPowell | Hacker News Reader

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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.

> 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

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

> 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).

> taping batteries to your skin

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

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