healingways
BAREFOOTIN’: IT GROUNDS US Reap Earth’s Energy for Wellness by Debra Melani
Imagine feeling the surge of well-being that comes from strolling barefoot on a moist, sandy beach or sinking all 10 toes into a cool, lush lawn on a warm summer day. Both comprise an experience known as “grounding” or “earthing”. Recent research suggests that these tempting life experiences offer more than feel-good frolics; they might help reboot health.
“B
y the end of the day, I could hardly walk. My feet would be screaming,” relates Lynn Deen, 66, of Mio, Michigan, describing dealing with Achilles tendonitis and plantar fasciitis in both heels. “I struggled with it for four years. I tried everything, from conventional treatments to complementary therapies. Nothing touched it.”
Then Deen listened to an online interview about earthing, a therapy that involves connecting with the Earth’s electrical field, either through skin-to-ground contact (barefoot strolls) or by using home grounding products available online. Motivated by a yearning to maintain her active lifestyle, she decided to try it. Three months later, she attested, “My heels were completely
normal.” And because she opted to use a special earthing bedsheet, Deen says her husband benefited, too. “We have better sleep, less snoring and a better sense of well-being,” she reports. Theoretically, because the waterabundant human body is a good electrical conductor, such grounding allows negatively charged free electrons, which are rife on the Earth’s surface, to enter the body and scour it for free radicals: those positively charged particles that may cause disease and inflammation. “Most of the diseases today are related to chronic inflammation,” says Dr. Martin Gallagher, a physician and chiropractor who heads Medical Wellness Associates, a large integrative medicine clinic in Jeannette, Pennsylvania. “That inflammation is considered to be the buildup of positive electrons. The Earth’s free electrons neutralize these chemical buzz bombs, called free radicals, bringing the body back to homeostasis. It is that state of equilibrium that allows the body to heal.” Today’s lifestyles have nearly eliminated that natural healing effect, says James Oschman, director of the Nature’s Own Research Association, in Dover, New Hampshire. “When I was a kid, my shoes came off in the spring and didn’t come back on until fall,” Oschman recalls. Today, almost everybody wears plastic-soled shoes, rides in vehicles and hangs out indoors on carpet and wood or tiled floors, completely blocking these free electrons, which Oschman maintains are the most effective and efficient antioxidants available. He states, “We’ve experienced a total disconnect.” His claim is supported by small studies that are beginning to accumulate, indicating the potential benefits of grounding. Here is a sampling of the findings, from The Journal of
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August 2012
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