The Benefits of Earthing
Earthing Benefits for Inflammation and Healing - The Ultimate Antioxidant and Anti-Inflammatory
Medical research has found that many of the chronic and debilitating diseases of our time have the same cause: chronic inflammation. Scientists now realize that pain and disease arise in our bodies where an inflammatory response has taken place, but the inflammation has not completely stopped after the healing process. A low level of chronic inflammation can continue for years, damaging normal tissues and wasting energy. Inflammation has been linked to nearly every degenerative disease you can think of — cardiovascular disease, diabetes, arthritis, glaucoma, autoimmune disorders, cancer and many more , all of which have skyrocketed in modern societies. One overlooked reason for this situation is that the immune system began functioning less efficiently as humans increasingly separated from the Earth’s energy.
Inflammation is a natural complex biological response of the body to harmful agents such as pathogens, toxins and damaged tissue. It is a protective response of the body so that it can eliminate threatening agents as well as start the healing process. The white blood cells (WBCs) of the immune system use positively charged molecules, also known as free radicals, as a weapon to destroy harmful agents. Free radicals, in an attempt to balance their positive charge, will strip a negatively charged electron from any living organism in its vicinity, thus destroying it. As the remedial work winds down, excess free radicals produced during the immune response, should be neutralized by anti-oxidants in the diet or available free negatively charged electrons in our bodies. If there are not enough available, after the repair job is done, the free radicals will continue taking electrons but now from healthy tissue not the harmful agents which have now been eliminated. The immune system goes into overdrive sending in more WBCs that produce more free radicals that will take electrons from healthy tissue and on and on this vicious cycle continues. The acute inflammation which was needed for the original problem has now become chronic inflammation.
The Earth is a natural source of electrons and may actually be the most effective, essential, least expensive, and easiest to attain antioxidant. Link to this article
Earthing Benefits for Athletic Recovery and Healing
Earthing promotes better sleep and all the things associated with faster recovery from day to day activity. People have more energy, less pain, better function, and require less sleep. All these are indications that the body is repairing itself and functioning more efficiently.
For athletes, there is clearly a positive effect on biology, leading to heightened recovery from day-to-day activity that facilitates competing at a higher level. Recovery is everything. Competition and training tear the body down. Without adequate recovery, the body will eventually break down or the person sets himself or herself up for injury. If you can sleep less and respond better, and train harder, which is what we see from Earthing, than the assumption can be made that you are affecting the recovery mechanism and repairing the body better and faster.
Dr Jeff Spencer was awarded the 2004 International Chiropractic Association’s “Sports Chiropractor of the Year”. His view on Earthing: ‘My observations and feedback enable me to say, without any reservation, that Earthing is an indispensible healing and recovery tool, something even beyond significant, for any treatment or recovery regimen as it relates to injury, surgery, and maximum athletic performance. I tell my people to sleep grounded at night and ground themselves during the day as much as they can.
After injury, I have consistently found less scarring, pain, and redness among individuals who ground themselves in comparison to what you would normally expect to see. Scars are less red and tender, and smaller in size. They look more similar to the surrounding normal tissue than what you would expect from scarring. Visible external inflammation decreases rapidly. Internal inflammation, as seen through various imaging methods, does the same. From my experience, whether you are sick or injured, the more consistently you ground yourself and the more time you spend grounded, the greater your body’s ability to heal, repair, and regenerate, and operate optimally.
Athletes tell me frequently they are able to get into their previous “groove” and proper techniques quicker than expected after injury. Therapy and rehab go better and faster. They say their doctors are surprised at the rate of healing, restored function, and tissue repair. This consistent feedback confirms that Earthing is helping in some very significant ways.’
Earthing speeds up the healing of wounds, particularly if grounded electrode patches are placed around the lesion. These patches can also be placed directly on any painful or swollen area of the body.
The severe mental and physical strain experienced by professional athletes needs to dissipated during rest and sleep periods. many competitors have trouble sleeping because they are so over stimulated. Experiments conducted on cyclists participating in the Tour de France have shown that sleep is much improved and recovery from sprains, strains and injury is much quicker when the competitors spend their rest and sleep periods grounded.
Research Article: Differences in Blood Urea and Creatinine Concentrations in Earthed and Unearthed Subjects during Cycling Exercise and Recovery
Pilot Study on the Effect of Grounding on Delayed-Onset Muscle Soreness
The video features the use of Earthing’s healing power in action for top cyclists at past Tour de France by Jeff Spencer, D.C
Earthing Benefits for Cortisol Reduction and Sleep
Cortisol is known as the stress hormone. When you become worried, fearful or anxious your cortisol level increases and stimulates the sympathetic nervous system (SNS). The body shifts into fight-or-flight mode. Sympathetic overdrive is caused by prolonged and constant stress and is known to contribute to many health problems, for example, insomnia, hypertension, CVD, auto-immune.
A study has been conducted on the effects of Earthing during sleep. It was shown that cortisol secretion is resynchronized to align with its natural rhythm, i.e. highest output at 8.00am and lowest output at midnight. Many of the same study participants experienced increases in the levels of melatonin which is an important hormone that regulates sleep and other biological rhythms. It is also a powerful anti-oxidant with anti-cancer properties.
Another side effect of grounding is better sleep. A study from The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicineiii found that when subjects—especially females—slept in their own beds with conducive mattress pads, their night-time cortisol levels dropped, they experienced better sleep, and were in less pain than they were before the study began. Better sleep may mean higher energy levels throughout the day, another perk that comes from grounding. Another studyii showed that grounding could improve heart rate variability, reduced stress and decreased anxiety and depression. Lowered stress levels could mean fewer headaches and even recovery from adrenal fatigue.
Earthing Benefits for the Blood
One of the most dramatic demonstrations of the benefits of grounding is the effect it has on the blood. When our bodies are unable to balance the positive charge that results from things like electron-deficient free radicals, the effect o in the blood can be seen very clearly by the way in which the cells are attracted to clump together.
(L) Blood Cells before grounding (R) Blood cells after grounding for 40 mins.
Darkfield microscope images of blood taken from three individuals just before and after forty minutes of grounding. The pictures clearly show blood viscosity changes dramatically after relatively short periods of Earthing. There is much less clumping and clotting of the red blood cells (RBCs). RBCs have a much greater negative charge when the body is Earthed and will tend to repel each other more readily (Like charges repel and opposite charges attract) and therefore will not clump together.
Less viscous blood flows much better and will enhance oxygen and nutrient delivery to the cells. Thinner blood benefits anyone with cardiovascular disease and diabetes ,and greatly reduces the risk of heart attack and stroke. The blood samples were taken during research into grounding by Dr Stephen Sinatra MD.-
Earthing Benefits for Blood Pressure
Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is a description as well as a diagnosis. Medical research cites many contributing factors, and among them a heightened or chronic state of stress is high on the list. So it is easy to understand why Earthing can benefit hypertension. In our day and age, there is no shortage of factors in daily life that can lead to chronic stress. The most dramatic drops in blood pressure we have observed after people start Earthing have been associated with reduction of pain and the anxiety and fear of chronic illness.
Earthing book co-author and cardiologist Stephen Sinatra remarks: “I am convinced that grounding does indeed lower blood pressure. And, if you are hypertensive and taking medication for it, and you want to ground to reduce inflammation, you need to tell your physician. He or she may need to adjust and lower your medication accordingly. Track your own blood pressure with a monitoring device at home and bring to your doctor a written record of your readings before and after grounding sessions.”
Main causes of hypertension:
- Hardening of the blood vessels caused by inflammation and free-radical damage
- Acidifiucaton of the blood caused by loss of negative electrons and too many positive ions
- Sympathetic nervous system overdrive which causes the blood vessels to constrict
The potential to improve blood pressure comes from several different mechanisms:
- Earthing generates a shift in the nervous system away from sympathetic (the vigilant, fight-or-flight mode) mode associated with stress and toward the parasympathetic calming, relaxing) mode.
- Earthing exerts a normalizing effect on cortisol, the stress hormone.
- It promotes better sleep and reduces inflammation and pain.
All of these, and likely other factors as well, can benefit blood pressure. If we can reduce inflammation and free radical damage, increase the alkalinity of the blood with negative electrons, and rebalance the SNS and PNS, we can reduce the likelihood of hypertension developing as we age. We can achieve all these objectives simply by Earthing ourselves as often as we can.
Metabolic syndrome in humans is a widespread, and rapidly growing,precursor to obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Metabolic syndrome is characterized by health factors that include the following:
- excessive fat tissue in and around the abdomen
- blood fat disorders — high triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol and high LDL cholesterol — that contribute to plaque buildup in arterial walls
- elevated blood pressure
- insulin resistance or glucose intolerance
- tendency to form clots in the blood
Preliminary results from animal studies reveal that Earthing provides significant improvement in several biochemical factors associated with metabolic syndrome
Earthing Benefits for Animals
Veterinarians who treat both indoor and outdoor animals note that outdoor animals seem to recover naturally and quickly from sickness and wounds when their indoor counterparts often require medication and take longer to recover. The outdoor animals get more sunshine and are connected to the Earth 24/7. It has been observed that housebound pets seem to seek out grounded sleeping pads if made available to them rather than their usual sleeping places.
The use of a grounded perch may help to minimize the common psychoses of caged birds, screaming, pacing, biting and self-mutilation. Chickens kept in coops need to be protected from the elements and need antibiotics in order to survive their unnatural living conditions.
Earthing Benefits for Women
Many women report feeling more grounded physically, emotionally and spiritually when Earthing. Not only do women need to be synchronized with the Earth and the Moon’s circadian rhythms to have a stable menstrual cycle but also this cycle is easily disrupted by the stress hormone, cortisol. As we saw before, normal levels of cortisol are often restored with regular Earthing. Earthing may also help with the relief of the symptoms of PMS and menopause, and may also increase fertility.
Earthing Benefits for Aging
The two main causes of aging are free radical oxidative damage and the damage done to the DNA. There is no way to prevent the formation of free radicals in the body because every breath we take and the food we ingest feeds the natural production of energy with free radicals being a natural by-product of this process. Because of the constant threat of damage from free radicals, we are encouraged to eat foods naturally high in anti-oxidants.
Earthing will allow the entry into our bodies of free electrons which will counteract the free radicals before they cause damage to healthy tissue and the DNA. Free radicals are some of the biggest offendersvi when it comes to aging, and if grounding is bringing balance to the body and neutralizing them, you’ll also be slowing down the aging process. Grounding’s effects on inflammation will also reduce premature aging, since inflammation is linked to not only the way you age on the outside, but a number of diseases that a lot of people accept as a normal, albeit heartbreaking, part of getting older.
The Earthing Face Lift
Improved facial circulation (right image) after 20 minutes of grounding, as documented by a Speckle Contrast Laser Imager (dark blue = lowest circulation; dark red = highest circulation).
A 2014 study published in the online Journal of Cosmetics, Dermatological Sciences and Applications,has demonstrated, an improvement in facial blood flow, one of the likely ways that Earthing can potentially , and quickly, improve how you look.
Better facial blood flow was documented within one hour, according to the study. Such improvement implies enhanced nourishment of facial tissues and functions, and, based on Earthing observations over the years, one can expect that continued grounding would generate continuing benefits to skin, complexion, and vitality – in essence, an “Earthing facelift.”
The e natural slowdown occurring in cells and tissues with advancing age are responsible for an increased risk of disease and death. Part of this process involves the aging of the immune system – called immunosenescence – characterized by a chronic low-grade inflammatory status of the whole aging organism. This process has been referred to by some researchers as inflamm-aging. More than 300 theories have been put forward to explain the reduced functionality associated with aging but none fully explain the immunobiology (physiological functioning of the immune system) of senescence.
So what are some of the current recommendations of researchers to delay the process?
- Healthier nutrition and maintaining a robust population of beneficial bacteria (microflora) in the gut, a major element of the immune system. Part of a healthier diet has to include caloric restriction. People tend to overeat, particularly the wrong kinds of food, and put on belly fat, an actual source of increased inflammation in the body.
- Exercise. You’ve heard this many times before, so I won’t dwell on the subject. Exercise, even a minimum, is good for your body and spirits.
- Antioxidants have been heralded as having the potential to increase longevity by curtailing the effect of oxidative stress on the body. Oxidative stress means rampant free-radicals that damage healthy tissue throughout the body. Such damage creates chronic inflammation.
Earthing Benefits for Headaches
Over the years many people have reported that Earthing has helped reduce the intensity and/or frequency of their headaches and so it is something worth trying. We don’t know how the body will react in each and every case, because we haven’t done research on the subject, and moreover, headaches come in different forms: migraine, tension, and cluster, just to name a few. What we do know is that Earthing reduces inflammation, has a calming influence on the nervous system and a normalizing effect on the stress hormone cortisol, improves blood flow, and promotes better sleep. One or more of these effects are likely involved in counteracting headaches.
Our Recommendations:
The range of Earthing products that are usually helpful for headaches. You may get the fastest relief by using a grounded pillowcase at night, or applying an Earthing patch on the K1 acupuncture point on the bottom of your feet (on one foot or both). Clint Ober reports that he has had the best overall results by grounding people on the K1 point.
You may also apply a patch to one or both palms of the hands, or directly on the forehead. Since we are all different, you may need to experiment to see which location gives you the best relief.
Earthing Benefits for Protecting against EMR
Our modern environment is full of a wide spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, from computers, mobile phones & masts, radio & TV broadcasts, WiFi, Bluetooth, power lines, domestic wiring, and other electrical appliances. This electromagnetic radiation induces voltages in our bodies, disrupting the trillions of subtle electrical communications which are a vital part of the function of our body's systems. By being grounded to the Earth we greatly reduce the levels of these induced voltages, as we are then effectively shielded by the Earth's large electrical mass.
Since the human body is a conductor of electrical charges, when you are not grounded, you will have an electrical current continually flowing on the surface of the body from head to foot when exposed to any EMFs. The higher you are off the ground, e.g. any multi-story building or an aircraft, the higher your electrical potential will be compared to ground. Grounding essentially eliminates the ambient voltage induced on our bodies from common electrical sources.
When you stand barefoot on the ground you are at the electrical potential of the Earth. That means all of you from head to foot will have an electrical potential of zero volts and no EMF can charge you up because you are now a part of the ground. Nothing can change your zero volt electrical potential unless you disconnect from the Earth.
When you are grounded your internal organs are shielded from any outside electromagnetic influence and nothing can disrupt the minute bioelectric circuits of the body. This will ensure a quiet internal electrical environment and allows the body to maintain homeostasis and health.
Link to Earthing the Human Organism Influences Bioelectrical Processes
