Dr. Mercola of Mercola.com writes (abridged):
Did you know the energy from the Earth can help you live a healthier life? The concept is known as earthing or grounding, which is no more complicated than walking barefoot.
In “Down to Earth”1 — which received the IndieFEST Award of Excellence for a documentary short in January 20172 — I speak alongside other experts to shed light on this super simple yet commonly overlooked way to protect and improve human health. As cardiologist Dr. Stephen Sinatra, author of “Earthing: The Most Important Health Discovery Ever?” explains in the film:
“[G]rounding is literally putting your bare feet on the ground. When you do that, you’re in contact with the Earth, and mother Earth is endowed with electrons, and these electrons are literally absorbed through your feet. It’s like taking handfuls of antioxidants, but you’re getting it through your feet.”
Your Body Needs Grounding
Research suggests a general lack of grounding, also referred to as “electron deficiency syndrome,” has a lot to do with the rise of modern diseases.
It’s not unusual for Americans to spend entire days without being grounded. But though it has become the norm, it’s completely unnatural, and didn’t really become widespread until the advent of shoes with artificial soles that prevent grounding. When you’re grounded, free electrons from the Earth are transferred into your body, and these free electrons are among the most potent antioxidants known to man.
As electrons are negatively charged and free radicals are positively charged, any free radicals encountered in your tissues are electrically neutralized or canceled out by these free electrons. This is why grounding is so effective against chronic inflammation.
Dr. Laura Koniver, who discovered grounding quite by accident after it seemed to soothe her crying infant, says in the film, “Grounding … supports the body as a whole but it specifically supports organ systems down to the tissues and the cellular function of the entire body.”
Also, while you may not think of your body as a generator of electricity, you are very much an electrical being, and this is in large part why it’s so important to use grounding to harness the electrical charge of the Earth. In the film, Gaetan Chevalier, Ph.D., an engineer/physicist who has studied grounding, explains:
“Unbeknownst to us, we live inside a battery. The surface of the Earth is charged negatively and the ionosphere, a layer of the atmosphere about 60 miles up, is ionized by the sun. The rays of the sun are so strong that they split the molecules in two, a positive charge and a negative charge.
The negative charges are transferred to the surface of the Earth, through lightening mainly, and the positive charges stay 60 miles up. The problem arises when we don’t have a negative charge. We need grounding just as we need air and we need sunshine.”
Grounding Reduces Electric Field Induction
There’s even evidence that grounding reduces the voltage induced on your body from electricity in your environment — a factor that has become increasingly important in the modern world. As noted in the 2012 review:3
“Applewhite, an electrical engineer and expert in the design of electrostatic discharge systems in the electronic industry, was both subject and author of the study.4 Measurements were taken while ungrounded and then grounded using a conductive patch and conductive bed pad …
Each method (patch and sheet) immediately reduced the common alternating current (AC) 60 Hz ambient voltage induced on the body by a highly significant factor of about 70 on average.
The study showed that when the body is grounded, its electrical potential becomes equalized with the Earth’s electrical potential … This, in turn, prevents the 60 Hz mode from producing an AC electric potential at the surface of the body and from producing perturbations of the electric charges of the molecules inside the body.
The study confirms the ‘umbrella’ effect of earthing the body explained by Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman in his lectures on electromagnetism. Feynman said that when the body potential is the same as the Earth’s electric potential (and thus grounded), it becomes an extension of the Earth’s gigantic electric system. The Earth’s potential thus becomes the ‘working agent that cancels, reduces, or pushes away electric fields from the body.'”
Read more here.