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.
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.
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.
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!
10mA is enough to lose control of your muscles. 4mA is incredibly insensitive [1] compared to a more direct measurement, with volts from electrons, rather than trying to measure their weak magnetic field, at a distance, as they zip by. With a sense resistor, you can use a bench top voltmeter [2] to measure nA.
I’ll try to estimate the most current we could expect. Some googling throws up that a human body has ~30pF of capacitance, and that static electricity can be up to 20kV in very dry conditions. That’s 600 nanocoulombs of charge. If we guess that you’re building that up once once every minute (what a terrible existence, getting a big shock 60 times an hour!), then the grounding strap would be carrying ~10nA continuously.
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).
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.
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.
No argument from me; but I think the debate around this research is focused on what the biological effects are when one undergoes a prolonged period of grounding; i.e. for 8 hours during sleep, or several hours during the day, rather than for momentary periods.
But the whole point is grounding is relative, and this context just refers to a body with larger volume than you that can absorb your charge (if there is a difference) with relatively little change.
It is assumed that body has a balance of negative and positive charges, but not necessarily, because the purpose of "grounding" in any practical sense is to equalise the charge between two objects so there is no potential difference so the will be no current flow.
All sorts of BS arguments then start emerging, "but what about if the outside of your body is +ve and inside is -ve ?", Well where does the energy for that come from? Or do you have a little charge daemon in there splitting out charges and pushing them to the exterior?
I've heard them all and they are all BS from people that understand little to nothing about charge and electricity.
Would love to be proven wrong by someone that did, because that would mean I would learn something, maybe something very interesting, but still waiting.
mercury is a bad example since it is lifetime-accumulative .. my reaction to this discussion is that not enough regard is held for odd or extreme living conditions, but that the subject is actually as most critics say.. contact with water, water bodies and cool earth in some way are trivially common for a vast majority of people.. Now, working with computers specifically adds a source .. but doesnt change the above..
Mercury does accumulate in the body but I was more pointing out that serum mercury levels can fluctuate greatly in a relatively short period. My mom eats a ton of that tuna from costco and had blood levels far above the reference range; which dropped into the reference range 4 months after consumption cessation. She saunas and exercises; so that may have something to do with it. I agree mercury is a bad example for the reason because the actual levels of mercury burden an individual carries can be nuanced (serum + housed into organs etc). I'm not sure I follow your final sentence.
Mercury just settles down inside cells (the parts that are not eliminated), where it’s hard to detect without using a chelator. Serum levels are not a good indicator in the long term.
All of my modern furniture, flooring, and clothing is plastic. They all result in massive static buildup. I’ve lived in dry places where you would get a significant zap every time you touched a faucet. If you work with electronics, you’ll know that ground straps aren’t optional, in dry climates. Your perspective may be limited to a humid climate.
Static buildup is all on the outside of a body, because the body is conductive and the charges repel each other. The static buildup doesn't affect chemical reactions in your cells; e.g. with electrons that occupy positions, hindering electron movement.
I think that's the essence of what this pseudo-scientific nonsense is trying to assert, which is false.
I'm an electrical engineer and well versed in the theory and practice of electrical phenomena of most known kinds, plus did a deep dive specifically into body static a number of times, for assorted reasons.
First one was related to ignition sources for explosive atmospheres, I have recognised certification for classification and design of equipment for explosive atmospheres and depending on the gas/liquid sometimes such things need to be considered.
Secondly, my ex wife got a fibromyalgia diagnosis, along with a thyroid problem and this made her skin very dry and she had a lot of static problems (problems were sparks when she reached out to touch metallic objects, basically). The dry skin limited the normal rate of bleed off that occurs of static.
If you know someone always getting static shocks when others don't, have them get their thyroid checked.
There is a whole raft of issues associated, like atmospheric electricity etc.
But, one thing to consider is any body charge someone does have is a result of the triboelectric effect, which is charge seperation, no charge is created, it's just shuffled around and concentrations of +ve or -ve charges accumulate in one place, but the tendancy is always to try and even out, like water finding level.
If you want to really see a report of static so extreme it acted as an invisible wall, or force field, read the following link, but no associated reports of harm were ever made.
> Plus if there was significant charge in your body, or structure you would feel it.
The point of my comment was that you probably come from a humid climate, because in dry climates, with plastic everywhere (as you correctly say, charge buildup from triboelectric effects), you do feel it, often. The whole industry behind ESD testing, protection, straps, sensors, and equipment wouldn't exist if charge buildup on humans were rare. As an electrical engineer, you should certainly know about the human body model [1] and have possibly even used an ESD gun to meet the relevant ESD standards (probably MIL-STD-883H for you, ANSI for my line of work).
> any body charge someone does have is a result of the triboelectric effect, which is charge seperation, no charge is created
I don't think this is relevant, since I'm not aware of a power source that creates charges, that a human would be intentionally exposed to. But, that doesn't matter, in this context. Where the +ve is at the time is irrelevant if the accumulation of -ve (or visa versa, I don't know anything about "grounding" stuff) on the body is what is claimed to cause the problems. The separation of that charge appears to be the the problem, with the "grounding" acting as a way to keep the "water level", rather than "eventually level".
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah my expectations for this comment thread were low, but it's funny to see people with literally zero background in biology skim a paper and suddenly become experts in physiology and experimental design
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.
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
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.
The danger occurs when a human body is touching surfaces at different potentials. In fact, shorting all electric points together during a strike (using gas discharge tubes or something else similar) is the way to avoid accidents. You could ensure that the same applies to you when you're grounded - that is, anything else you're touching is also grounded.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
74 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 134 ms ] threadGrounding 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.
How would one do this, assuming the patient isn't a sphere with uniform resistance and an evenly distributed charge density?
You wouldn’t use a clamp for something like this. You would use a sense resistor.
You wouldn’t clamp something on, you would use a sense resistor.
1. 10fA resolution, over 400 billion times more sensitive: https://smt.at/en/products/electrometer-nv-meter/picoamperem...
2. > 1 million times more sensitive, with GΩ sense resistor: https://www.keysight.com/us/en/assets/7018-06774/data-sheets...
I’ll try to estimate the most current we could expect. Some googling throws up that a human body has ~30pF of capacitance, and that static electricity can be up to 20kV in very dry conditions. That’s 600 nanocoulombs of charge. If we guess that you’re building that up once once every minute (what a terrible existence, getting a big shock 60 times an hour!), then the grounding strap would be carrying ~10nA continuously.
https://cysticfibrosisnewstoday.com/cystic-fibrosis-diagnosi....
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).
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.
If you want to test this go shuffle across carpet in your socks for a hot minute and then touch the faucet.
It is assumed that body has a balance of negative and positive charges, but not necessarily, because the purpose of "grounding" in any practical sense is to equalise the charge between two objects so there is no potential difference so the will be no current flow.
All sorts of BS arguments then start emerging, "but what about if the outside of your body is +ve and inside is -ve ?", Well where does the energy for that come from? Or do you have a little charge daemon in there splitting out charges and pushing them to the exterior?
I've heard them all and they are all BS from people that understand little to nothing about charge and electricity.
Would love to be proven wrong by someone that did, because that would mean I would learn something, maybe something very interesting, but still waiting.
I think that's the essence of what this pseudo-scientific nonsense is trying to assert, which is false.
I agree, but it's important to fight pseudoscience with actual facts.
First one was related to ignition sources for explosive atmospheres, I have recognised certification for classification and design of equipment for explosive atmospheres and depending on the gas/liquid sometimes such things need to be considered.
Secondly, my ex wife got a fibromyalgia diagnosis, along with a thyroid problem and this made her skin very dry and she had a lot of static problems (problems were sparks when she reached out to touch metallic objects, basically). The dry skin limited the normal rate of bleed off that occurs of static. If you know someone always getting static shocks when others don't, have them get their thyroid checked.
There is a whole raft of issues associated, like atmospheric electricity etc.
But, one thing to consider is any body charge someone does have is a result of the triboelectric effect, which is charge seperation, no charge is created, it's just shuffled around and concentrations of +ve or -ve charges accumulate in one place, but the tendancy is always to try and even out, like water finding level.
If you want to really see a report of static so extreme it acted as an invisible wall, or force field, read the following link, but no associated reports of harm were ever made.
http://amasci.com/weird/unusual/e-wall.html
The point of my comment was that you probably come from a humid climate, because in dry climates, with plastic everywhere (as you correctly say, charge buildup from triboelectric effects), you do feel it, often. The whole industry behind ESD testing, protection, straps, sensors, and equipment wouldn't exist if charge buildup on humans were rare. As an electrical engineer, you should certainly know about the human body model [1] and have possibly even used an ESD gun to meet the relevant ESD standards (probably MIL-STD-883H for you, ANSI for my line of work).
> any body charge someone does have is a result of the triboelectric effect, which is charge seperation, no charge is created
I don't think this is relevant, since I'm not aware of a power source that creates charges, that a human would be intentionally exposed to. But, that doesn't matter, in this context. Where the +ve is at the time is irrelevant if the accumulation of -ve (or visa versa, I don't know anything about "grounding" stuff) on the body is what is claimed to cause the problems. The separation of that charge appears to be the the problem, with the "grounding" acting as a way to keep the "water level", rather than "eventually level".
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-body_model
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.
Something like burpees should have caused some indentation to the ground!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Nothing else even comes close.
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?
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.
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.
And it seems to me that this, if true, certainly could have an explanation other than electrical grounding.
"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.
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.