10 ms·

The effects of grounding on inflammation

57 points by RyanShook 4y ago

codefreeordie 4y ago
That's super weird and fascinating. I'm suddenly really curious if I would detect any change if I bought one of those grounded floor mats for my office.
- dvfjsdhgfv 4y ago
  I'm not sure if you're kidding but if not, you most certainly would.
  - skyyler 4y ago
    What can one expect?
- devb 4y ago
  You'll have to make sure you buy conductive footwear.
throwayyy479087 4y ago
I am truly shocked by this. What an amazing and nearly-unbelievable outcome!
- nradov 4y ago
  I wouldn't believe it until the results are independently reproduced.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
The pseudoscience around grounding or “earthing” is always funny because it would be trivial to measure any current flowing into or out of the patient, yet that is conveniently omitted in favor of vague statements about the Earth being an “abundant source of mobile electrons” Grounding is one of those pseudoscience topics that never seems to die because someone, somewhere will produce another study claiming dramatic positive results and the true believers will conveniently ignore any studies that don’t confirm their beliefs. Real researchers won’t touch these topics because they don’t want to be associated with such pseudoscience, so much of the published research comes from quack medicine practitioners.
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  > it would be trivial to measure any current flowing into or out of the patient How would one do this, assuming the patient isn't a sphere with uniform resistance and an evenly distributed charge density?
  - jfengel 4y ago
    Clamp a meter around the lead wire.
    - marginalia_nu 4y ago
      Yeah, good point, that would do it. I was thinking of measuring current between the patient and the interface somehow. That would be a lot less trivial.
      - perihelions 4y ago
        You could plug two hot wires into the patient and measure their current imbalance: the difference is ground-loop leakage. That's how GFCI breakers work!
        marginalia_nu 4y ago
        Seems close enough to an ECG that you might end up with a fairly noisy signal.
    - nomel 4y ago
      You would be attempting to measure very weak, probably DC, currents. Something that could clamp on wouldn’t be sensitive enough.
      - agumonkey 4y ago
        what's the smallest current the average dc meter can measure ?
airbreather 4y ago
What a load of shit, most people in the western world are "grounded" most of the time by virtue of being inside modern structures and directly grounded everytime the touch any non double insulated appliance, water tap, gas appliance etc. Plus if there was significant charge in your body, or structure you would feel it. Here is an experiment, your tongue is sensitive to less than a volt, touch you tongue to a water pipe, or your fridge or washing machine. Feel any sparks or tingles? If the answer is no then you were already very close to ground potential. If you are prone to accumulating static electricity then a pointy foil hat will help bleed it off more quickly (that's a joke, but it's not).
- dvfjsdhgfv 4y ago
  I have two types of floor in my house: one conducts electricity relatively well, the other - not so much (wood). I walk barefoot most of the time when I'm inside in the summer. No difference at all except that wood feels warmer and therefore cosier, that's all.
  - nikkwong 4y ago
    Ok sure.. but. Let's say you eat tuna every day for two months. You're likely to build up a significant amount of mercury in your body to the point where it's causing oxidative stress and antagonizing most major organ systems in your body. Are you going to notice that? Maybe your body will over the period of two months start to require maybe 15 more minutes of sleep to help cope with the new level of cellular burden it's experiencing. Are you realistically likely to be able to point to this subjectively? All of these actions we take as part of our lifestyle have a profound effect on our physiology on the macro level; but we're not likely to notice any single factor's contribution in isolation.
    - vorpalhex 4y ago
      Do you ever shower or bathe? Do you touch the faucet handle when doing so? Congrats - you just grounded yourself. Reset right back to neutral. If you want to test this go shuffle across carpet in your socks for a hot minute and then touch the faucet.
orzig 4y ago
Anecdata to counteract the file drawer effect: I read a little bit about grounding, shrugged my shoulders, and spent a week exercising barefoot in the backyard (I had previously done the same exercises with shoes on). No noticeable impact.
- readthenotes1 4y ago
  Were you doing low impact exercises? Something like burpees should have caused some indentation to the ground!
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
oifjsidjf 4y ago
- happyopossum 4y ago
  Aside from the almost comically aggressive tone you've taken here, all you've brought to the table is a link to an image that claims to be of some value in comparing before/after grounding. Said image has a weird and rather unprofessional font, no point of reference to any scientific data to back it up, and appears to be hosted on a storefront intended to sell you grounded running shoes. Not sure that's how science works.
- jackmott42 4y ago
  I mean, taking your image at face value, sure. But I don't know if it is fraudulent, I don't know if it was properly controlled, I don't know anything at all about the procedure.
- swores 4y ago
  Is there a source for that image which confirms what you say it shows and from a legitimate experiment? This whole concept is new to me so I don't have a dog in this race, but sharing a single out of context image rather than the research it (hopefully) came from doesn't do much to prove your claims.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  Remember those pictures of water crystals that had been subjected to emotions and formed differently?
  - SanchoPanda 4y ago
    I was skeptical of those first as well, but seeing that paper and all the press it got, I did indeed feel sad. Must have been the crystals!
- 4y ago
nikkwong 4y ago
If you go to the disclosures statement at the bottom of the article, you'll learn that one of the authors on this paper—Gaetan Chevalier (a cell biology prof at UC Irvine)—has a financial interest in promoting grounding. His contributions make up a notable percentage of the published literature on grounding, maybe 10-20%? There are not many publications on the topic, since I assume there is a relatively weak level of financial incentive, and it reeks of pseudoscience. After some digging I have found papers of higher scientific veracity pointing to grounding being useful in reducing inflammation and potentially improving sleep quality. I remember seeing a meta-review come out in 2018-2020 which concluded that there is a warm-level of evidence pointing to a health-promoting effect of grounding on the human body. Some of the papers that met the inclusion criteria I think were assessed to have low quality of evidence, though. I don't have a strong enough background in science to know who's right here, but I do have sleep problems so I try to do everything I can to improve it. So I do ground my bed and the space near my keyboard so that I spend a decent amount of the day grounded; and I also consider it to be a completely effortless proposition with possibly a positive contribution to my health. Or, in the worst-case scenario, there's no benefit and I wasted maybe $10 on the copper wiring that I used to DIY it together. If I were a betting man my guess is that I will eventually throw this setup away when the science ends up being properly debunked; but I'm open to potentially investing more when the evidence becomes stronger.
- Aardwolf 4y ago
  Not sure if stupid question or not, but is there any danger if lightning strikes outside while you're grounded indoors? E.g. while wearing a grounding strap to work on some electronics project
  - amelius 4y ago
    Not if you add a highly conductive strip going from the location of the strap to the top of your head (lightning will take the path of the least resistance by approximation; make sure that the resistance is orders of magnitude lower than the resistance of your body). Note: it might take away the positive effects of the therapy, as there is now an antenna to ground that takes away the "antenna effect" of the body.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pbasista 4y ago
This is pseudoscience at large. This article itself cites ~60 other articles on the same subject. Unbelievable. If any of what they claim about "grounding" was true, the doctors would notice it a long time ago and they would be wiring patients to ground potential for decades already. This article is likely a deliberate attempt to trick and confuse people who are prone to believe almost any misinformation. Such people might believe that Covid vaccines contain chips or that Trump won the 2020 election or that there were no Moon landings or that the Earth is flat or that Putin is actually entitled to attack "nazis" in Ukraine. Unfortunately, the same people are prone to believe all these lies. And, also unfortunately, they are unlikely to believe any sane information which disproves them. It is in my opinion a dangerous state. Consider that there is a massive group of people who are completely brainwashed by these misinformation campaigns. They are easily manipulated by those who spread misinformation because in their eyes those people are the only ones who have an opinion that is compatible with their understanding of the world. Even when it is completely nuts, against any logic and against any science.
- nikkwong 4y ago
  > If any of what they claim about "grounding" was true, the doctors would notice it a long time ago and they would be wiring patients to ground potential for decades already. I'm not sure if this is how medicine works. There are many practices that 'should be obvious' as health promoting but weren't put into place clinically until recently. For example, bright, early morning sunlight for alleviating depression and anxiety; or using infrared light for reducing local inflammation and reducing pain. We've been able to use electromagnetism to our advantage for hundreds of years, but only within the last decade or so these two use cases which look incredibly obvious in retrospect have become common place. So I don't think doctors are always 'quick to notice'. However, I think most of your latter points are correct.
  - pbasista 4y ago
    > I'm not sure What I am saying is that medicine is a science and as such uses the scientific method. The people involved in it can develop vaccines, perform neurosurgery, etc. They do not need a bunch of misinformation spreaders to tell them that there is this great "life hack" that everyone has been missing all these years. If there was e.g. a considerable disproportion in the healing time of the same kind of wounds in patients from hospitals A and B, the doctors and other scientists would look into it, even decades ago. If "grounding" of hospital beds was to be the root cause, they would have noticed it and investigated it. Yet, no such "discovery" was ever made.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
datavirtue 4y ago
Hmmm...not sure if it's grounding related but the biggest relief from my back pain comes when I lie directly on the ground (grass/soil). Nothing else even comes close.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- eurasiantiger 4y ago
  Back pain is often a psychosomatic symptom of prolonged, inescapable stress.
amluto 4y ago
> Our main hypothesis is that connecting the body to the Earth enables free electrons from the Earth’s surface to spread over and into the body, where they can have antioxidant effects. Specifically, we suggest that mobile electrons create an antioxidant microenvironment around the injury repair field The Earth has special electrons. Yeah right. What I would believe is that, in a dry climate, one regularly picks up some static charge that dissipates through tiny discharges (shocks) when touching something sufficiently large at a different potential, e.g. anything grounded. Grounding oneself will change that to a more continuous very very tiny current and one moves around and accumulates charges. Maybe this has an effect?
- cush 4y ago
  > The Earth has special electrons Nowhere in the article is this stated. Walking barefoot on soil would ground the body, as opposed to being in shoes. That's it. It's not woo woo. Either your body is grounded or it isn't. Any electrician knows this. The article is stating that your body regularly may be carrying some charge (again talk to anyone who works on computers), and (according to their studies) yes it has an effect on your health.
swader999 4y ago
This is why I sleep on my stomach.
- raymondh 4y ago
  I use copper cookware and I feel great.
pazimzadeh 4y ago
Alternatively, contact with soil could stimulate immune sensors like TLR's which would influence the inflammatory cascade. But anyway, this theory could easily be tested by designing a special mouse cage which is grounded, and looking for differences in inflammation using standard models.
- asveikau 4y ago
  I did see the article starts with the claim that skin contact with the ground is helpful. And it seems to me that this, if true, certainly could have an explanation other than electrical grounding.
evmar 4y ago
I didn't have any particular expectation when I opened up this link, but because I was curious about the authors I clicked on one and found they had also published one titled: "Evidence for a connection between coronavirus disease-19 and exposure to radiofrequency radiation from wireless communications including 5G" Which I guess in some sense might also possibly be true, but I gotta say it's a pretty bad opening sign.
- pbasista 4y ago
  > in some sense might also possibly be true The article you cited mentions "evidence". If there was indeed "evidence", we would know it for a fact. These articles merely try to attract facts-ignoring audience to which they can then spread misinformation that cannot easily be disproved. While these people are busy theorizing about the plausibility of the suggested idea, they are easily manipulated. The reason is that they would only be trusting the misinformation spreaders because only their opinions would be compatible with their understanding of the world. It is, unfortunately, as simple as that. Create misinformation that cannot possibly be disproved. Spread it out. Watch as people waste years coming with crazy constructions of hypothetical worlds where whatever you claim might potentially be true. Profit off of their stupidity by having huge influence on their opinions. Rinse and repeat. This is how Putin's propaganda works. And this is also how Trump's lies work.
cush 4y ago
I also took a first year circuits course and disagree with the conclusions in this paper
la64710 4y ago
Why do pseudosciences like these still survives? Maybe the user experience is more positive than we think?

57 points by RyanShook 4y ago

That's super weird and fascinating. I'm suddenly really curious if I would detect any change if I bought one of those grounded floor mats for my office.

dvfjsdhgfv 4y ago
I'm not sure if you're kidding but if not, you most certainly would.
- skyyler 4y ago
  What can one expect?
devb 4y ago
You'll have to make sure you buy conductive footwear.

throwayyy479087 4y ago

I am truly shocked by this. What an amazing and nearly-unbelievable outcome!

nradov 4y ago
I wouldn't believe it until the results are independently reproduced.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

The pseudoscience around grounding or “earthing” is always funny because it would be trivial to measure any current flowing into or out of the patient, yet that is conveniently omitted in favor of vague statements about the Earth being an “abundant source of mobile electrons” Grounding is one of those pseudoscience topics that never seems to die because someone, somewhere will produce another study claiming dramatic positive results and the true believers will conveniently ignore any studies that don’t confirm their beliefs. Real researchers won’t touch these topics because they don’t want to be associated with such pseudoscience, so much of the published research comes from quack medicine practitioners.

marginalia_nu 4y ago
> it would be trivial to measure any current flowing into or out of the patient How would one do this, assuming the patient isn't a sphere with uniform resistance and an evenly distributed charge density?
- jfengel 4y ago
  Clamp a meter around the lead wire.
  - marginalia_nu 4y ago
    Yeah, good point, that would do it. I was thinking of measuring current between the patient and the interface somehow. That would be a lot less trivial.
    - perihelions 4y ago
      You could plug two hot wires into the patient and measure their current imbalance: the difference is ground-loop leakage. That's how GFCI breakers work!
      - marginalia_nu 4y ago
        Seems close enough to an ECG that you might end up with a fairly noisy signal.
  - nomel 4y ago
    You would be attempting to measure very weak, probably DC, currents. Something that could clamp on wouldn’t be sensitive enough.
    - agumonkey 4y ago
      what's the smallest current the average dc meter can measure ?

airbreather 4y ago

What a load of shit, most people in the western world are "grounded" most of the time by virtue of being inside modern structures and directly grounded everytime the touch any non double insulated appliance, water tap, gas appliance etc. Plus if there was significant charge in your body, or structure you would feel it. Here is an experiment, your tongue is sensitive to less than a volt, touch you tongue to a water pipe, or your fridge or washing machine. Feel any sparks or tingles? If the answer is no then you were already very close to ground potential. If you are prone to accumulating static electricity then a pointy foil hat will help bleed it off more quickly (that's a joke, but it's not).

dvfjsdhgfv 4y ago
I have two types of floor in my house: one conducts electricity relatively well, the other - not so much (wood). I walk barefoot most of the time when I'm inside in the summer. No difference at all except that wood feels warmer and therefore cosier, that's all.
- nikkwong 4y ago
  Ok sure.. but. Let's say you eat tuna every day for two months. You're likely to build up a significant amount of mercury in your body to the point where it's causing oxidative stress and antagonizing most major organ systems in your body. Are you going to notice that? Maybe your body will over the period of two months start to require maybe 15 more minutes of sleep to help cope with the new level of cellular burden it's experiencing. Are you realistically likely to be able to point to this subjectively? All of these actions we take as part of our lifestyle have a profound effect on our physiology on the macro level; but we're not likely to notice any single factor's contribution in isolation.
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    Do you ever shower or bathe? Do you touch the faucet handle when doing so? Congrats - you just grounded yourself. Reset right back to neutral. If you want to test this go shuffle across carpet in your socks for a hot minute and then touch the faucet.

orzig 4y ago

Anecdata to counteract the file drawer effect: I read a little bit about grounding, shrugged my shoulders, and spent a week exercising barefoot in the backyard (I had previously done the same exercises with shoes on). No noticeable impact.

readthenotes1 4y ago
Were you doing low impact exercises? Something like burpees should have caused some indentation to the ground!

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

oifjsidjf 4y ago

happyopossum 4y ago
Aside from the almost comically aggressive tone you've taken here, all you've brought to the table is a link to an image that claims to be of some value in comparing before/after grounding. Said image has a weird and rather unprofessional font, no point of reference to any scientific data to back it up, and appears to be hosted on a storefront intended to sell you grounded running shoes. Not sure that's how science works.
jackmott42 4y ago
I mean, taking your image at face value, sure. But I don't know if it is fraudulent, I don't know if it was properly controlled, I don't know anything at all about the procedure.
swores 4y ago
Is there a source for that image which confirms what you say it shows and from a legitimate experiment? This whole concept is new to me so I don't have a dog in this race, but sharing a single out of context image rather than the research it (hopefully) came from doesn't do much to prove your claims.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
Remember those pictures of water crystals that had been subjected to emotions and formed differently?
- SanchoPanda 4y ago
  I was skeptical of those first as well, but seeing that paper and all the press it got, I did indeed feel sad. Must have been the crystals!
4y ago

nikkwong 4y ago

If you go to the disclosures statement at the bottom of the article, you'll learn that one of the authors on this paper—Gaetan Chevalier (a cell biology prof at UC Irvine)—has a financial interest in promoting grounding. His contributions make up a notable percentage of the published literature on grounding, maybe 10-20%? There are not many publications on the topic, since I assume there is a relatively weak level of financial incentive, and it reeks of pseudoscience. After some digging I have found papers of higher scientific veracity pointing to grounding being useful in reducing inflammation and potentially improving sleep quality. I remember seeing a meta-review come out in 2018-2020 which concluded that there is a warm-level of evidence pointing to a health-promoting effect of grounding on the human body. Some of the papers that met the inclusion criteria I think were assessed to have low quality of evidence, though. I don't have a strong enough background in science to know who's right here, but I do have sleep problems so I try to do everything I can to improve it. So I do ground my bed and the space near my keyboard so that I spend a decent amount of the day grounded; and I also consider it to be a completely effortless proposition with possibly a positive contribution to my health. Or, in the worst-case scenario, there's no benefit and I wasted maybe $10 on the copper wiring that I used to DIY it together. If I were a betting man my guess is that I will eventually throw this setup away when the science ends up being properly debunked; but I'm open to potentially investing more when the evidence becomes stronger.

Aardwolf 4y ago
Not sure if stupid question or not, but is there any danger if lightning strikes outside while you're grounded indoors? E.g. while wearing a grounding strap to work on some electronics project
- amelius 4y ago
  Not if you add a highly conductive strip going from the location of the strap to the top of your head (lightning will take the path of the least resistance by approximation; make sure that the resistance is orders of magnitude lower than the resistance of your body). Note: it might take away the positive effects of the therapy, as there is now an antenna to ground that takes away the "antenna effect" of the body.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

pbasista 4y ago

This is pseudoscience at large. This article itself cites ~60 other articles on the same subject. Unbelievable. If any of what they claim about "grounding" was true, the doctors would notice it a long time ago and they would be wiring patients to ground potential for decades already. This article is likely a deliberate attempt to trick and confuse people who are prone to believe almost any misinformation. Such people might believe that Covid vaccines contain chips or that Trump won the 2020 election or that there were no Moon landings or that the Earth is flat or that Putin is actually entitled to attack "nazis" in Ukraine. Unfortunately, the same people are prone to believe all these lies. And, also unfortunately, they are unlikely to believe any sane information which disproves them. It is in my opinion a dangerous state. Consider that there is a massive group of people who are completely brainwashed by these misinformation campaigns. They are easily manipulated by those who spread misinformation because in their eyes those people are the only ones who have an opinion that is compatible with their understanding of the world. Even when it is completely nuts, against any logic and against any science.

nikkwong 4y ago
> If any of what they claim about "grounding" was true, the doctors would notice it a long time ago and they would be wiring patients to ground potential for decades already. I'm not sure if this is how medicine works. There are many practices that 'should be obvious' as health promoting but weren't put into place clinically until recently. For example, bright, early morning sunlight for alleviating depression and anxiety; or using infrared light for reducing local inflammation and reducing pain. We've been able to use electromagnetism to our advantage for hundreds of years, but only within the last decade or so these two use cases which look incredibly obvious in retrospect have become common place. So I don't think doctors are always 'quick to notice'. However, I think most of your latter points are correct.
- pbasista 4y ago
  > I'm not sure What I am saying is that medicine is a science and as such uses the scientific method. The people involved in it can develop vaccines, perform neurosurgery, etc. They do not need a bunch of misinformation spreaders to tell them that there is this great "life hack" that everyone has been missing all these years. If there was e.g. a considerable disproportion in the healing time of the same kind of wounds in patients from hospitals A and B, the doctors and other scientists would look into it, even decades ago. If "grounding" of hospital beds was to be the root cause, they would have noticed it and investigated it. Yet, no such "discovery" was ever made.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

datavirtue 4y ago

Hmmm...not sure if it's grounding related but the biggest relief from my back pain comes when I lie directly on the ground (grass/soil). Nothing else even comes close.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
eurasiantiger 4y ago
Back pain is often a psychosomatic symptom of prolonged, inescapable stress.

amluto 4y ago

> Our main hypothesis is that connecting the body to the Earth enables free electrons from the Earth’s surface to spread over and into the body, where they can have antioxidant effects. Specifically, we suggest that mobile electrons create an antioxidant microenvironment around the injury repair field The Earth has special electrons. Yeah right. What I would believe is that, in a dry climate, one regularly picks up some static charge that dissipates through tiny discharges (shocks) when touching something sufficiently large at a different potential, e.g. anything grounded. Grounding oneself will change that to a more continuous very very tiny current and one moves around and accumulates charges. Maybe this has an effect?

cush 4y ago
> The Earth has special electrons Nowhere in the article is this stated. Walking barefoot on soil would ground the body, as opposed to being in shoes. That's it. It's not woo woo. Either your body is grounded or it isn't. Any electrician knows this. The article is stating that your body regularly may be carrying some charge (again talk to anyone who works on computers), and (according to their studies) yes it has an effect on your health.

swader999 4y ago

This is why I sleep on my stomach.

raymondh 4y ago
I use copper cookware and I feel great.

pazimzadeh 4y ago

Alternatively, contact with soil could stimulate immune sensors like TLR's which would influence the inflammatory cascade. But anyway, this theory could easily be tested by designing a special mouse cage which is grounded, and looking for differences in inflammation using standard models.

asveikau 4y ago
I did see the article starts with the claim that skin contact with the ground is helpful. And it seems to me that this, if true, certainly could have an explanation other than electrical grounding.

evmar 4y ago

I didn't have any particular expectation when I opened up this link, but because I was curious about the authors I clicked on one and found they had also published one titled: "Evidence for a connection between coronavirus disease-19 and exposure to radiofrequency radiation from wireless communications including 5G" Which I guess in some sense might also possibly be true, but I gotta say it's a pretty bad opening sign.

pbasista 4y ago
> in some sense might also possibly be true The article you cited mentions "evidence". If there was indeed "evidence", we would know it for a fact. These articles merely try to attract facts-ignoring audience to which they can then spread misinformation that cannot easily be disproved. While these people are busy theorizing about the plausibility of the suggested idea, they are easily manipulated. The reason is that they would only be trusting the misinformation spreaders because only their opinions would be compatible with their understanding of the world. It is, unfortunately, as simple as that. Create misinformation that cannot possibly be disproved. Spread it out. Watch as people waste years coming with crazy constructions of hypothetical worlds where whatever you claim might potentially be true. Profit off of their stupidity by having huge influence on their opinions. Rinse and repeat. This is how Putin's propaganda works. And this is also how Trump's lies work.

cush 4y ago

I also took a first year circuits course and disagree with the conclusions in this paper

la64710 4y ago

Why do pseudosciences like these still survives? Maybe the user experience is more positive than we think?