Grounding: Part I | Dr. Stephen Sinatra's Heart MD Institute

Alternative Healing

Grounding: Part I
The Barefoot Revolution

“Earthing" (a.k.a. “grounding”) is an amazingly simple, yet powerful, therapy by which we reconnect to the earth’s gentle, negatively-charged surface to restore and maintain the body’s most natural electrical balance. We can ground ourselves by simply walking barefoot, or sitting / laying down, on the earth, as well as through connective devices that deliver the natural healing energy of the earth into our bodies. “Earthing,” or “grounding,” may very well be the solution for the cause of most common modern diseases: chronic inflammation.

What is Earthing?

Since the dawn of time, humans have walked barefoot and slept on the ground, oblivious to the subtle electrical signal helping regulate their bodies’ intricate mechanisms. Somewhere in human evolution, it became too uncivilized, unfashionable, or unsanitary to connect with the earth’s primordial healing force. Modern life, with heavily insulated multistory buildings, airplanes, and even rubber or plastic soled shoes has distanced us from the earth’s healing power, and may have resulted in the inflammatory aches and pains, fatigue, stress, and poor sleep we generally attribute to aging. It has become clear that we need to get back to the basics.

Our bioelectric nature

We are bioelectric beings in constant interaction with our environments. Collectively, cells form a living matrix through which the body conducts electrical impulses. Our cells resonate to particular frequencies and are in continual transmission and receipt of energy. We owe our hearts’ rhythmic beating, in part, to electrical impulses sent by the sinoatrial node, or pacemaker. Nervous and immune system, as well as muscular, activity also involves electrical currents. Additionally, electric fields regulate the movement of nutrients and water into our cells.

For years, doctors have utilized instruments which measure electrical currents through biological pathways in our bodies as diagnostic tools. Some of the more common ones include electrocardiograms (EKG), electroencepthalograms (EEG), and electromyograms (EMG). We’ve understood for years how electricity regulates our internal mechanisms, that the earth is negatively charged with electrons, and that gravity keeps us "down to earth," but are just starting to understand the whole “Earthing” connection and what it means to be "grounded."

Why is the earth’s energy healing?

The amount and type of electricity in our environment influences our bodies’ natural internal electrical stability and internal rhythms, and can affect our health for better or worse. The earth’s electromagnetic layer protects our bioelectrical circuitry against static electrical charges and interference, as well as excess free-radical activity in the body. Free radicals, generated through normal metabolic processes involving oxygen as well as exposure to environmental toxins, damage cells by stealing their electrons.

As the earth’s surface is abundant with negatively charged free electrons, grounding quenches free radicals. This supply of electrons is constantly replenished by solar radiation and lightning strikes. Through direct contact with the earth, we absorb these electrons through the skin, and neutralize free radical activity within our bodies. Grounding, like ingesting antioxidants through food, is another one of Nature’s protective mechanisms against chronic inflammation and degenerative disease caused by excess free-radical activity.

How do I get grounded?

It’s as simple as the ground beneath your feet… If you live in or near a warm, rural area, such as the beach, open fields, the woods, or mountains, grounding is an incredibly convenient and easy practice. All you have to do is take off your shoes and walk barefoot on the grass, sand, or dirt. While the rich nerve endings in your feet make them ideal conductors of electrons, you can also get grounded by sitting or lying down on the earth. Camping, hiking, gardening, and "beaching" (especially if you swim in the ocean - moisture enhances conductivity) are great activities for getting back to your earthy roots.

If you live in a city or otherwise don’t have regular access to the great and natural outdoors, you can use conductive bed or floor pads that are either linked by a wire to a ground rod outside your house or plugged into a wall outlet with a modern Earth ground system. Grounding on your time and in your space are the benefits of plugging in, especially for helping regenerate and repair your body while you sleep at night.

Specific health benefits of grounding

By restoring the body’s natural internal electrical stability and rhythms, grounding helps improve cardiovascular, respiratory, digestive, nervous, and immune system function and restore the body’s natural healing potential. According to research and observation, daily grounding activity can, for many:

Prevent inflammation as well as assuage its physical symptoms
Reduce or eliminate chronic pain
Improve sleep
Increase energy
Thin blood and improve blood pressure and flow
Relieve muscle tension and headaches
Lessen hormonal and menstrual symptoms
Dramatically speed healing and prevent bedsores
Reduce or eliminate jet-lag
Protect body against potentially health-disturbing environmental electromagnetic fields (EMF’s)
Accelerate recovery from intense athletic activity; and
Balance the autonomic nervous system (ANS) by decreasing sympathetic, and increasing parasympathetic, nervous activity.

Coming soon

Stay tuned for The Barefoot Revolution: Grounding Part 2. We'll explore the profound, extraordinary cardiovascular effects of grounding on blood viscosity/zeta potential, heart rate variability (HRV), and the autonomic nervous system (ANS).

Additional resources

For more information on grounding, be sure to check out Earthing: The Most Important Health Discovery Ever? by Dr. Sinatra and co-authors Clinton Ober and Martin Zucker.

To order a copy of Earthing and grounding products, contact Optimum Health International, LLC. at (800) 228-1507.

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