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Studies have found that spending 30-40 minutes walking barefoot or sitting on the ground provides substantial health benefits including improved immune responses and faster healing of wounds.
Scientists have found that a connection to the earth is healthy, and not just in terms of psychological benefits. The respected Journal of Environmental and Public Health examined more than a dozen peer-reviewed articles that describe the many health benefits of earthing.
“Earthing” or “grounding” refers to practices that connect people with the earth, such as walking barefoot outside, sitting on the ground or sleeping outside. Traditionally people slept outside and, according to the study’s authors, “the ground’s abundant free electrons were able to enter the body, which is electrically conductive. Through this mechanism, every part of the body could equilibrate with the electrical potential of the Earth, thereby stabilizing the electrical environment of all organs, tissues, and cells.” The electrons, like many compounds in healthy foods, act as antioxidants in the body.
Various studies have found that spending 30-40 minutes walking barefoot or sitting on the ground provides substantial health benefits including improved immune responses and faster healing of wounds. Earthing led to reductions in the following: sleep disorders, chronic pain, hypertension, asthma, chronic inflammation and many other problems.
You don’t even have to sleep right on the ground to get the benefit. In one study, participants slept on carbon fibre mattress pads connected to an earth ground outside each subject’s bedroom window (or to a control ‘sham’ ground). The people with the true ground felt “significant relief from asthmatic and respiratory conditions, rheumatoid arthritis, PMS, sleep apnea, and hypertension.”
Source: Earthing: Health Implications of Reconnecting the Human Body to the Earth's Surface Electrons. Gaétan Chevalier, Stephen T. Sinatra, James L. Oschman, Karol Sokal and Pawel Sokal. Journal of Environmental and Public Health. Volume 2012, Article ID 291541, 8 pages. 2012.
- Janet Wallace