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Get Grounded!

There is a natural health trend that is spreading like wildfire in the United States called Earthing, also known as grounding.  The concept of Earthing is really simple, so I’ll give you a little background first.  Each of our bodies is electromagnetic in nature and thus we react to and respond to other electromagnetic energies in our environment.  In the modern world, we are exposed to far more harmful than beneficial energy and it explains, in part, why so many people are suffering from chronic pain, disease and cancer.  Unhealthy frequencies are given off by electrical devices and create a phenomenon called electrosmog or electropollution.  Although you can’t see it, many of us energy-sensitive people can feel it.  Electrosmog is incredibly stressful to the body, causing it to shut down many of its self-healing mechanisms.

Exposure to electrosmog causes an excess of positively charged free radicals to accumulate in our bodies.  In animal tissues, this reactivity can damage cells and is believed to accelerate the progression of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and age-related diseases.  The end result is inflammation, which of course contributes to chronic pain.  That is why you’ll want to pay attention to how you can reduce free radicals levels in your body.  Anti-oxidants such as glutathione, vitamin C, and beta-carotene are known to reduce free radicals in the body.  Earthing is now another way you can get rid of excess free radicals and you can do it while you sleep!

Earthing is the epitome of the term “getting grounded”.  Literally, it means connecting our bare skin to mother earth.  When our skin connects with the earth, the positively charged free radicals that are running amok in our bodies get neutralized by the relatively huge dose of negatively charged electrons that flow up from the earth.  When this happens, free radical activity diminishes and the body can heal itself again.  In the book Earthing, by Clint Ober, Stephen T.  Sinatra, M.D. and Martin Zucker, several studies document the benefit of Earthing on the stress-handling system of the body.  Stress hormones such as cortisone and youth hormones such as DHEA normalized in individuals who were “earthed” while they slept.  Many people even had improved levels of melatonin, a hormone necessary for restful sleep.

Now at this point you’re probably wondering if you’re going to have to lie outside naked on the ground every night.  The answer, thankfully, is no.  Clint Ober, a former cable television executive, discovered a way for us to connect to mother earth’s energy without having to go outside.  He fabricated a simple Earthing sheet made of conductive material and a wire that connects to the grounding port in your electrical outlets.  As long as the electricity in your house is properly grounded, just plugging in this sheet and lying on it at night has the same grounding effect as touching the earth with your bare skin. 

Very old homes may not be properly grounded, but there are ways you can still use the grounding sheet. You can purchase the Earthing kit that allows you to string the wire outside your home through a small hole in your window or wall, and ground it to the earth using a metal rod.  The Earthing company now markets several products available in different sizes and shapes so that you can “earth” or ground yourself practically anywhere as long as you’re not moving.  Go to www.Earthing.com to view the different products available.

 

Earthing Naturally

The best way to earth is going outside and planting your bare feet on the ground.  Walking barefoot, especially on the beach, is highly beneficial although I have to admit that this practice was highly discouraged in my household when I was growing up.  My feet are pretty sensitive to rocks and prickly things, so I am just as likely to sit on my lawn chair on a beautiful day, plant my bare feet on the warm grass and read for hours.  It is such a treat that I miss it during the winter months!  For those of you who love going barefoot, now you have another reason to do it.

My patient Kaitlin is extremely sensitive.  She can’t stand going into shopping malls. The accumulated energy from a crowd of people coupled with the electromagnetic stress generated by security systems, computers and other electrical equipment leaves her anxious and exhausted.  When I told her about Earthing, she realized that throughout her life, she had always loved sleeping on the ground.  She loves to garden and will often just lie on the ground next to her flowers and nap.  We both now realize that her sensitivity to everything can be transmuted through regular grounding.

 

The Benefits of Sleeping Grounded

When we sleep, are bodies are supposed to be restoring and rejuvenating.  If you don’t sleep well, you can’t really heal.  According to many experts, our energy fields are highly vulnerable to energy input while we are sleeping.  Thus, if you have surrounded your bed with clock radios, cell phones or cordless phones, you are literally zapping your body with harmful energy as you sleep at night.  I believe that the advent of wireless internet has created a whole generation of post-menopausal women with dysfunctional sleep cycles.  Like I said before, if you don’t sleep well, you can’t really heal. 

Being grounded at night while you sleep not only protects you to some degree from the negative influences of electrosmog; it allows your body to receive the beneficial electrons from the earth during a time of restoration and rejuvenation.  There was an anecdotal case in the Earthing book that described an elderly man riddled with arthritis.  He was practically bedridden, yet within a few weeks of sleeping on an Earthing bed sheet, he was able to get up and do things around the house.  Months later, he had returned to functioning independently in society.  In the Earthing book, you’ll see thermal photographs of people with various pain conditions.  Like with the LifeWave patches, the photos show that inflammation decreases dramatically after Earthing. 

What I have found personally is that the Earthing sheet needs to be touching the painful body for optimal pain relief.  Recovery bags have been used very successfully on athletes.  Although more pricey than a half sheet, it envelopes almost your entire body.  You can also purchase Earthing bands to go around your arms, legs or torso near painful areas of your body.  Just remember to be careful not to trip on the wires if you get up in the middle of the night when the bands are on! 

Earthing nightly is necessary to maintain pain relief and other benefits, such as improved sleep and hormonal regulation.  The fitted bed sheets are of very high quality despite their conductive nature, and are perfect for both bed partners to Earth at night.  They cost between $229 and $299 US.  The half sheet, however, is perfect for single people or people who want a more affordable bed sheet.  The cost is around $169, although most people choose the Earthing Premium Starter Kit for $199 that includes both a half sheet as well as a portable Earthing Universal Mat and outlet checker.  I love using the Earthing Universal Mat while I work at the computer as I find that I feel pleasant energy flowing in my lower body when I have my bare feet on it.  For people who use the computer a lot, I highly recommend investing in an Earthing Universal Mat.

Decreasing the stress response is another fantastic benefit of sleeping grounded.  As seen in the images below, grounding the body during sleep led to normalization of cortisol secretion profiles, and more dramatically so in female subjects.  Younger females tended to have more elevated cortisol levels while older females tended to have reduced levels pre-grounding.  As a group, cortisol secretion in female subjects synchronized and approximated normal after grounding, as shown in the charts below. 

As seen in charts below, after sleeping grounded, subjects with elevated secretion levels decreased and those with lower secretion levels increased. As a group, cortisol secretion improved and began approximating normal circadian secretion profiles.  Although the results did not reach statistical significance due to the changes in secretion being both higher and lower as compared with the baseline, the investigators concluded that sleeping grounded produced clinically significant improvements in circadian cortisol secretion.