What Earthing is Not
EARTHING (or Grounding) just won’t die and continues to kick up dirt drawing a lot of attention. Let us be clear first on what Earthing is not. It is not:
Liking to walk barefoot outside
Relaxing in the outdoors
Appreciating the beauty of God’s creation
Everything listed above is good and can be beneficial emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and physically simply due to the restfulness and relaxation one may find being outdoors. That is a normal reaction but has nothing to do with the claims of Earthing.
So What Is Earthing?
Earthing is based on specific beliefs in:
- Evolution — that man once walked barefoot and therefore is meant to walk barefoot and connect to the earth
- A pseudo-science claim about “free-flowing electrons,” “negative charges,” and “electric signals” that allegedly are healing to the body
These beliefs have no factual support and have been debunked.
Pseudo-science is the backbone of much of New Age “healing” but it uses scientific words and language to make it sound credible. But there are actually no facts or science supporting these views.
The Earthing book that spawned an industry has been roundly criticized and refuted for its pseudoscience. This is no surprise since Earthing was a New Age thing before it was noticed by others. Anything popular from the New Age with claims of healing or spirituality is always a sham and, in the hands of some (not necessarily New Agers) who want to make money, a scam.
The reason New Age “healing” is always invalid is due to the New Age worldview that sees everything as spiritual. Therefore, there are hidden spiritual causes and effects for illness and for ways to treat illness.
The New Age and the occult yearn to be accepted as credible, and the world of science is often where those attempts are made. However, by definition, the occult and New Age beliefs can never be scientific because the worldviews themselves preclude that.
Both the occult and the New Age:
- Deny the existence of objective truth
- Reject applying the scientific method or objective data to their methods
- Cast aspersion on the use of logic
- Are hostile to credible uses of medicine
Not People I Would Take My Dog To
When something new is suddenly the rage and seems to answer a lot of complex issues, or claims to cure many illnesses, or offers a technique with a big spiritual benefit, watch out! It is probably bunk.
Always examine things in light of truth: Objective data and if applicable, God’s word. You will often find questionable people behind such trends. For example, behind Earthing you find these people:
“Ober, the inventor of earthing, is a layman from the cable TV industry. Of course. Dr. Sinatra is a cardiologist who encouraged Ober, who specializes in so-called “integrative medicine” (which integrates superstition with science) and is a “certified bioenergetic psychotherapist.” Naturally. Zucker is a writer. Oschman is a notorious proponent of energy medicine who believes there is a scientific basis for it; most reputable scientists disagree.”
So we have a layman from the cable TV industry, a New Age doctor who calls himself a “bioenergetic psychotherapist” (watch out for words beginning with “bio” in the alternative health field), and an advocate for energy medicine (which is occultic and New Age). Like many New Agers, Sinatra embraced false ideas based on a misuse of the Schumann Resonance and the false belief in a “human energy field.”
I noticed several “research” papers for Earthing had Oschman, one of the three co-founders of Earthing, as the author or as one of the authors. These are not people I would take my dog to.
“Earthing is the usual sort of pseudo-science that only gets published in “alternative” journals, because the “studies” they produce only have the veneer of science. They simply don’t know what they are doing, scientifically. They don’t know how to properly provide controls; they don’t know how to do the statistics properly; they do their “experiments” in ways that get the results they already believe in.” – From “Eye on Ions” by Bob Neinast
Perceived benefits of “earthing” come from the placebo effect and the fact that people often feel more relaxed or calm if they are outside.
Papers offered by proponents that supposedly give scientfic evidence for Grounding so far are authored by people with stakes in the Grounding business. If you scroll down to look at some of the published studies, there is a disclamer stating that the study was either paid for by companies that sell “grounding products” or are made by people that own shares in those companies; often both. Also, a published study does not mean there is evidence; it is just a study that someone conducted.
Does the Burning Bush Mean Earthing is Valid?
Exodus 3:5 has been used to argue that this verse supports belief in Grounding or Earthing.
“When the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ Then He said, ‘Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’ He said also, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ Then Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.” Exodus 3:4-6
Exodus chapter 3 is when Moses encounters the presence of God in the burning bush. The ground is holy only because the Lord is making his presence known to Moses in that specific spot. What is holy is the Lord, and the ground is only holy because of the presence of the Lord. The earth itself has no sacred energy or powers.
Misusing scripture to support New Age beliefs is a serious error and is a mockery of God’s word. The ground at the burning bush supports Earthing/Grounding no more than does the thunder and lightning on Mt. Sinai support Earthing. In both cases it is God’s presence that makes a place holy because God is holy, not the ground itself.
Notice that Moses even hides his face at the burning bush. There is nothing in the earth or land that is holy because it was cursed by God when man sinned (Genesis 3:17, 18), and is corrupted.
Grounding/Earthing is just another variation on energy beliefs found in the occult and the New Age and in many pagan beliefs. It is empty of validation and as hollow as a chocolate egg.
Additional Information
Article on Earthing:
Excerpts: “The flow of charge from one place to another is an electric current, measured in amperes. To put grounding into perspective, Livesey says appliances in our homes draw a maximum current of 63 amps. In comparison, one study found that a sleeping person connected to the Earth via grounding bedsheets produced a current of up to 10 nanoamps [Note: 1,000,000,000 nanoamps = one ampere] – that is, more than 1bn times smaller. ‘These tiny currents are almost undetectable,’ Livesey says.
Playing devil’s advocate, let’s say electrons from the Earth do make it into your body when you dig your heels into some sand. What effect would they have? One claim is that electrons from grounding can neutralise free radicals, the reactive molecules that cause damage to cells. It’s a claim that sounds good but doesn’t stack up.
‘The concept that electrons flow through the body and neutralise oxidative stress is really quite a vague concept,’ says Prof Judy de Haan, who leads the cardiovascular inflammation and redox biology laboratory at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne.
‘Not all free radicals are charged particles, so the idea of neutralising something which isn’t charged doesn’t always make sense. Indeed, in some instances the addition of electrons may exacerbate oxidative stress and cellular damage.’
De Haan says the body has its own natural mechanisms for dealing with oxidative stress, such as antioxidant enzymes.” End of excerpts
Article examining Earthing:
Excerpts: “The sites I looked at are full of talk about ‘beneficial electrons from the Earth’ and that sort of thing, which is garbled nonsense. Electrons are electrons are electrons– there’s nothing that singles out or sets apart an electron from the Earth as opposed to from some synthetic material, or, for that matter, an electron that came blasting in from outer space.
It’s simply not possible to build up and maintain a significant charge imbalance between your body and the rest of the world, because everything we interact with contains electrons, and they move back and forth between objects all the time. If nothing else, the charge on an object will eventually dissipate into the air– back when I was doing sticky tape experiments, I had to periodically recharge the tapes, because the charge goes away over time. A net positive charge will attract negative ions from the air, and eventually neutralize, and the same thing happens to your body….
…in order to get the same health benefit of one second of electron flow between you and the Earth due to direct contact– standing barefoot on the ground, for example– you would need to spend 100,000 seconds in contact with their mat. 100,000 seconds is about 27 hours, a bit more than a day. Their literature talks about the health benefits of multiple hours spent ‘Earthing’ yourself, which would require hundreds of thousands of hours on the protected mat, and 100,000 hours is over 11 years.
And that, right there, ought to be enough to, well, bury this whole silly idea. Their ‘safety’ precaution should obliterate the effectiveness of their devices. The fact that they advertise this as a positive feature indicates just how little real physics there is at work here.” End of excerpts
Another debunking of Earthing/Grounding:
Excerpt: “The reason electrical devices are grounded is to give electrons somewhere to go, in case of some source of overload (like lightening) or just to prevent them from building up. Even a small backup of current can create electrical noise in a sensitive system. And of course the amount of electricity we are talking about is massive compared to what our bodies experience. Further, even with rubber soles, we are far from electrically isolated. We easily share electrons with everything we touch. When you have a brief build up of electrical charge you usually find our right away, because you get a static electric shock the next time you touch something conductive (which, of course, neutralizes the charge). Just from the perspective of basic physics, earthing makes no sense. It sounds like the nonsense someone with only a partial understanding of the underlying science cooked up.
The intervention is mostly to spend time walking on the ground in bare feet. But of course, there are also dubious devices, such as grounding mats, that you can sit, stand, or sleep on, and that are in turn grounded to the Earth. There is no evidence that these devices do anything. There is also no research establishing the basic underlying claim – that there is an electrical homeostasis that has any effect on how the body functions, and that this is affected by grounding…<snip>
The last ten years of published clinical studies have been entirely unimpressive. Studies generally have small numbers of participants, focus on subjective outcomes (the usual suspects of pain, “well-being”, and stress), and are poorly controlled. Never do we see all features of rigor simultaneously.” End of excerpt
The Pseudoscience of Grounding/Earthing:
Excerpt: “Completely blowing the physics aside, Ober and his accomplices then go on to butcher biology. The earthing site claims, as in the quote above, that inflammation is caused by free radicals. This is simply not true. The relationship between free radicals and inflammation is a complex one. It is probably more true to say that inflammation (which is caused by specific cells and proteins produced in an inflammatory response) causes the production of free radicals, which are used to cause cell damage. Free radicals are part of the weapons the immune system uses to damage invading organisms, for example. This also causes damage to host tissue as a necessary byproduct. Abnormal inflammation, of course, can primarily cause tissue damage.
Further, reducing free radicals is not a panacea. Free radicals are part of normal physiology and are used not only as part of the necessary function of the immune system but in many regulatory systems. Suppressing free radicals may therefore cause more harm than good.” End of excerpt
Critique of Mercola Misinformaion on Grouding:
“One of the most egregious errors is the representation of electromagnetic fields.”
Short link: https://shorturl.at/zaqh9