alt Hacker NewsCurious what people's thoughts here are on grounding as another benefit. Article talks about benefits of bacteria on the skin, but I'd say the other and maybe bigger benefit is discharge of electrical energy in our bodies to the ground. Which, can sounds weird depending. Some papers on the subject[0] talking about similar results as this article, almost implying that it's not the microbes, but grounding making the difference.
I also got a $30 "grounding mat" that you plug into the ground part of electrical socket, and I dunno, it feels amazing to have skin touching it. I put it in bed and literally slept the best I have in years in the last two night, by far. Comments online generally are snake oil, but many others are first person accounts saying that for whatever reason, the grounding mat worked for them. (I have theories that the people who it does nothing for are those who already have an outlet. Like a dog where you're in nature and on walks, and also a dog can do the discharge for you). Other comments online are stories of how when the mat is plugged to ground, their cats love sitting on it, but if unplugged, the mats are ignored. That seems like some study that would be interesting at animal shelter, seeing if animals can tell and prefer.
But anyway, wondering what others opinions on this topic are.
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This study had no control group and they didn't check for a placebo effect. Pretty big red flags.
It's important to distinguish between spiritual energy like prana/chi and electricity.
Science will never show that grounding has any measurable effect on the chemistry of the human body. But it also can't show how conscious awareness may affect quantum wave function collapse probabilities, allowing free will to migrate to the deterministic timeline in the multiverse that most supports its well-being.
In other words, magic only doesn't exist if you don't believe in it.
Do the people walking their dogs do it barefoot?
Wouldn't shoes ruin the effect?
It is 100% snake oil. No scientific basis whatsoever.
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Note that all of the authors of this paper work for a company that sells this snake oil.
This entire idea of charging or discharging your body for some physiological effect is fundamentally flawed. It is indeed true that touching the ground will change your electrical potential to that of the ground, however that's as far as it goes, the rest is just nonsensical.
Let's start with the very first part of that, specifically changing your electrical potential to match the ground. The problem with this is that the ground is 0V because we define it as 0V, not because of any sort of fundamental property. Between two points on the Earth you can see hundreds of kilovolts. So the obvious question is why should the electrical potential of a particular piece of soil where your grounding rod is installed be physiologically preferable to whatever potential your body happened to be at before?
Now lets go on to the next part of what these scam artists usually claim. That is that the Earth's electrons enter your body and do good things of some description. When you touch the ground some small charge does enter or leave your body, however that stops nearly instantly when the potentials equalise[1]. How is the Earth meant to to keep putting electrons into your body if there's no voltage? That's just simply not how electricity works.
As an aside, note that I said enter or leave. A positive static charge and a negative static charge can both easily build up in your body. Therefore any claims that specify that electrons enter your body (or leave you body) is immediately nonsensical because it could go either way.
I'll leave it to someone else to explain all the nonsensical biological claims that follow on from the already fundamentally wrong electrical side since that's not my area. I will however note that none of these sponsored papers actually show and measurable biological effect, they all just hand-wave about redox reactions.
[1]: Yes, you're coupled to mains wiring and other changing fields that are around, however that's getting too far into the weeds for a short comment. If the claim made by the snake oil salesmen was that a current going through your body is good then they'd also suggest wrapping yourself in an electrical cord to maximise the effect, or just taping batteries to your skin.