You may have heard that getting back in contact with nature can be good for you. You might have even felt more relaxed after sitting on the lawn or taking an ocean swim. But is this just a nice feeling brought on by taking some time to chill outdoors, or is there something more going on?
Grounding (or earthing) is a genuine phenomenon involving direct physical contact with the ground to reset your body's electrical balance.
If that sounds like it might be interesting, in this article, we're going to take a look at all the benefits of earthing. These can include reduced inflammation, better sleep quality, less pain from chronic disease, and lower blood pressure and stress, amongst many other valuable advantages.
What Are the Benefits of Earthing for the Human Body?
You can try the benefits of grounding outdoors by walking barefoot, resting on the ground, immersing yourself in a river or the sea, or anything that puts you in contact with the earth. Or you can ground yourself indoors using specific equipment like an earthing pad, working out on an earthed yoga mat or sleeping on grounding sheets.
Whichever techniques you try, you'll allow free electrons and unnatural static electricity built-up to be discharged to rebalance your body with the earth and its natural negative electric charge.
Earthing itself doesn't sound that tricky, but you'll want to know about the positive effects you may expect to fit a walk around outside with bare feet into your busy schedule. Fortunately, there are plenty of grounding benefits that can make a massive difference to your health and wellbeing.
Reduce Chronic Inflammation
The first of our benefits may well be the major factor from which many others may originate. Doctors believe that at least 90% of the chronic diseases and syndromes we experience in modern life stem from inflammation. Whether the cause is environmental irritation, physical damage, a pathogen, or stress, inflammation is the start of numerous physiological problems.
Chronic diseases are the ones that medicine can't cure and are suffered by approximately half the people on earth. Examples of chronic diseases include heart conditions, cancer, diabetes, and arthritis. Anything we can do to reduce their effects can bring considerable benefits to many people, and studies have shown that grounding can dramatically lower inflammation.
Earthing delivers negatively-charged electrons to your body. These work as antioxidants and tackle the free radicals you can become overrun with when your immune system attacks inflammation.
Doctors have measured blood markers before and after earthing, and many studies have shown significant reductions in inflammation levels. This drop could significantly improve life quality and even diminish or remove the effects of chronic diseases.
Provide Chronic Pain Relief
Lowering inflammation by solving the body's free electron deficiency can relieve pain, swelling, feelings of heat, redness and even recover loss of function. Studies have shown that chronic disease sufferers, who regularly use grounding mats, noticed a measurable amount of pain reduction.
Correct Our Primary Biological Rhythms
Circadian rhythms are our body's internal clocks. They coordinate our normal physiological processes, including sleep, wakefulness, immune function, and digestion.
Earthing's healing energy is believed to reset those whose timing has been disrupted by the influence of a modern lifestyle. Properly functioning circadian rhythms helps correct the production of the stress hormone cortisol, which can yield healthy body functions.
Promote Better Sleep
Grounding the human body with the earth's surface through specific sheets has been found to reduce insomnia and improve rest quality and duration in tests, resulting in a more refreshing night's sleep. Night-time cortisol levels have been measurably affected, and research participants sleeping grounded have noted a reduction in sleep-related stress, disturbances and anxiety.
Reduce Chronic Fatigue
Sleeping on a grounding mat should help noticeably lower the effects of chronic fatigue after four weeks of consistent use. Participants found they woke feeling less groggy and had improved energy throughout the day.
Reduce Stress (Lower Cortisol Levels), Anxiety and Depression
Studies into the benefits of this practice have shown that even relatively short sessions can lead to anxiety, depression and stress reduction.
Normalising cortisol levels by earthing is connected to a lower feeling of stress by decreasing inflammation and controlling blood sugar levels. Correcting the body's electrical balance with the earth can restore a more natural parasympathetic state for anyone whose nervous system is in the so-called "fight or flight" state.
Improve Mood
Tests have shown that the benefits of grounding didn't just relieve stress; they also boosted their mood. Participants found that their positive mindsets improved noticeably with consistent practice.
Reduce High Blood Pressure (Hypertension) And Risks of Cardiovascular Disease
Tests with hypertension patients have found that grounding techniques significantly decrease their systolic blood pressure. Thanks to this, the risk of cardiovascular diseases may also be possibly reduced with long-term earthing.
Studies have shown that heart rate variability, which measures the healthy function of our autonomic nervous system and is associated with overall wellbeing, increases favourable when grounding.
Reduces Blood Viscosity and Improves Circulation
A further cardiovascular benefit of earthing is improved circulation and blood flow of nutrients and oxygen around the body. Doctors have used flow-sensing laser contrast cameras and have noted significant increases in facial blood flow in patients after just half an hour of practice.
Improved surface charge on red blood cells is thought to reduce blood viscosity allowing it to flow more smoothly through capillaries.
Enhance Our Immune Response
By lowering the presence of free radicals, our immune systems can focus their energies where needed. As it does not have to clean up unnecessary inflammation, it can ready itself to manage genuine threats.
Reduce the Effects of Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (Doms) After Exercise
Studies have demonstrated that earthing after exercise can significantly help with muscle soreness and speed up recovery. Blood tests from participants showed that inflammatory and repair markers in the blood decreased noticeably, and they reported less pain.
Help With Weight Loss
While improving sleep, reducing emotional stress and critically removing inflammation, earthing can help you with weight loss. For many people, weight gain and overeating are linked to feeling unwell, being anxious, sleeping poorly and the related cortisol and adrenaline.
Balancing stress hormones and improving your sleep makes it common to experience noticeable weight loss - especially when following a consistent earthing practice.
Promote Faster Wound Healing
Researchers have discovered that newly formed and existing, stubborn chronic wounds can heal faster with grounding. By reducing inflammation and improving circulation, earthing is thought to encourage positive differences in the amounts of white blood cells, cytokines, and other healing molecules that promote faster healing of wounds.
Improve Cognitive Functions
Chronic inflammation is known to affect cognition negatively. Sufferers experience brain fog, irritability and problems with memory. Introducing the antioxidant electrons by earthing helps to promote a normally functioning brain.
Doctors have even observed rapid changes in the electrical activity in the brain almost as soon as subjects started earthing. So, you don't need to ground for very long to feel the effects as it normalises the nervous system and neurological function.
Enhance Our Overall Wellbeing
It's common for people to report feeling more centred, less tense, and generally more positive when they start a committed practice.
Even if you don't suffer from any chronic illness, it's a good idea to keep a journal where you start to record any positive effects and changes you feel. You may be very pleasantly surprised by the benefits of grounding!
Try Earthing for Your Well-Being
There are numerous human health benefits of earthing, and they're reaching broad acceptance in alternative and complementary medicine. The lucky thing is that all it takes to experience these is to sit in direct contact with the soil outdoors or use an indoor grounding system for 30 minutes or more each day.
By practising earthing, inflammation, which is the cause of almost all chronic diseases and syndromes, is reduced, and many people report dramatic and quite surprisingly positive health implications for their wellbeing and quality of life.