An Introduction to Pain
Millions of people suffer from chronic pain; I never thought I’d be one of them.
At age 37, after numerous doctors’ visits, I was diagnosed with three autoimmune conditions: rheumatoid arthritis (RA), which explained the severe pain in my ankles, wrists, and other joints; irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), hence my rollercoaster of indigestion, constipation, and diarrhea; and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which accounted for the dozens of excruciating ulcers that doctors found in my intestinal tract. I began experiencing poor sleep and various skin issues—acne, rashes, cysts, dandruff, flaky skin—around the same time.
Doctors told me that my body’s immune system was attacking its own tissue, but they didn’t know why. Maybe it was a shift in my microbiome, they said, or maybe it was stress or overuse of antibiotics. Regardless of the origin, my first thought was, “I shouldn’t have to deal with this!” It felt like my life was over. Although I was relatively young, I woke every morning with pain so extreme that I didn’t want to live.
Motivated to find a cure, I tried supplements, medications, yoga, stretching, acupuncture, trigger-point release, saunas, ice baths, and restrictive diets. Some of these treatments helped manage my symptoms (especially the last two, both of which reduced my inflammation), yet the pain and dysfunction continued daily.
Over the next two years, as I scoured online forums, health podcasts, and YouTube videos, I discovered legions of people suffering from similar autoimmune-related ailments. Some recommended new drugs, others touted cures involving dubious homeopathic remedies. I saw unfathomable hardships, but no long-term healing.
Eventually, I stumbled upon where I learned about something called “Earthing”—or “grounding” as it is often called—which had reportedly helped thousands of people afflicted with chronic disorders, including:
- Allergies
- Alzheimer’s
- ALS
- Anemia
- Arthritis
- Asthma
- Autism
- Cancer
- Cardiovascular disease
- Colitis
- Crohn’s
- Diabetes
- Diverticulitis
- Eczema
- Fibromyalgia
- Irritable bowel syndrome
- Kidney failure
- Lupus
- Lyme disease
- Multiple sclerosis
- Pancreatitis
- Psoriasis
Many of these sufferers proclaimed significant improvements after Earthing. Their testimonials were brimming with hope:
While these anecdotes sounded promising, particularly for those of us with chronic diseases, I still had no clue what Earthing actually was, so I dove deeper into the research.
WHAT Is Earthing?
According to , “Earthing is a therapeutic technique that involves doing activities that ‘ground’ or electrically reconnect you to the earth. … This practice relies on Earthing science and grounding physics to explain how electrical charges from the Earth can have positive effects on your body.”
At first, this so-called therapy sounded too “woo woo” for my analytical brain. Earthing? Give me a break! The name alone tripped my skeptic alarm. If healing was this simple, why didn’t my doctor tell me about it?
But my skepticism soon faded when I came across a mountain of evidence suggesting that a number of disorders are ameliorated by grounding the body. I found dozens of scientific studies that demonstrated the benefits of Earthing, including:
- Elimination of chronic pain
- Reduced inflammation
- Increased energy
- Deeper sleep
- Lowered stress
- Headache relief
- Improved circulation
- Decreased hormonal symptoms
As I read through the research, I realized that modern medicine is great at treating acute injuries like cuts and broken bones, yet its focus on pharmaceutical drugs to treat chronic disease is, at times, tantamount to nursing an axe wound with numbing cream. Sure, the pain is reduced, but the condition persists. In the same way, modern doctors want to help the chronically ill, so they prescribe medications to temporarily mitigate their symptoms, while the underlying cause—chronic inflammation—continues to run rampant.
That’s where Earthing enters the picture.
HOW Does Earthing Work?
Stated plainly, Earthing is nature’s original anti-inflammatory. It reduces inflammation—the common cause of disease—by remedying an electron deficiency in the body, which safely shifts the nervous system from a stress-dominant mode to one of calmness and healing.
“Whenever you are grounded, your body cannot be inflamed,“ says Clint Ober, founder of Earthing.comwho clarifies that “reconnecting to the Earth doesn’t cure you of any disease or condition; it restores your natural internal electrical stability and rhythms, which in turn promote normal functioning of the cardiovascular, respiratory, digestive, and immune systems.”
In layman’s terms, “Earthing sucks pain out of the body,” says Ober, who is widely praised as a pioneer in the study of grounding science. His seminal book, boldly declares that its namesake is “the most important health discovery ever.” Such a claim sounded hyperbolic to me—until I tried it myself.
On a random Wednesday, I quietly removed my shoes at a nearby park and stood on the grass. In less than an hour, I noticed a 10% reduction in pain. Of course, I still had my reservations. Was it just the placebo effect? Or was a remedy hiding under my feet?
So I started Earthing every day, simply connecting my feet to the ground outside. The more I did it, the better I felt—less pain, less inflammation. Then everything changed when I purchased a grounded mattress coverwhich plugged directly into the ground port of an electrical outlet near my bed, operating like an extension cord to the Earth that allowed me to stay grounded at night.
Not only did my sleep improve, but my pain was radically reduced. Within six weeks, 70% of my joint pain was gone, my skin was noticeably clearer, my gut pain had decreased, and an endoscopy revealed that 100% of my gastrointestinal ulcers had disappeared.
I was astonished. Earthing was a fire extinguisher for my inflammation, dousing the firestorm that was raging inside my body.
What’s more, my wife, the healthiest person I know, experienced benefits, too: better sleep, less muscle soreness after workouts, quicker recovery time, faster wound healing, a drop in anxiety. With those improvements, we bought a grounded mattress cover for our young daughter, who immediately began sleeping through the night, often 11–12 hours straight without waking.
These improvements made me wonder: When did we become so disconnected from the Earth? And what damage has been caused by that disconnection?
WHEN Did We Disconnect?
Since the dawn of humanity, human beings have maintained a connection to the Earth by walking barefoot or with leather footwear. We also slept on the ground or on animal hides. Ergo, the Earth’s free electrons were able to enter our bodies throughout the day and night, which meant every part of our bodies were able to equilibrate with the electrical potential of the Earth, thereby stabilizing the electrical environment of all organs, tissues, cells, and molecules. This function is crucial for the operation of the immune system.
However, when rubber-soled shoes became popular around 1960, we accidentally separated ourselves from the ground itself. This disconnection was further exacerbated by our built environments—insulating materials such as carpet, fabricated wood, and other synthetics are great for our homes, but terrible for our connection to the Earth.
Because of these barriers, the average modern human is now ungrounded throughout the day. “Without grounding, the whole body gradually becomes electron depleted,” says Dr. Gaetan Chevalier, an engineering physicist and research scientist. This electron deficiency, according to Dr. Chevalier and other researchers, has led to a significant increase in health problems related to chronic inflammation.
Thanks to my ungrounded shoes, car, office, and home, I had unwittingly disconnected myself from the Earth for 99% of my life, which meant I’d gradually become electron deficient during my first four decades on this planet. To reconnect, I merely needed to remove the barriers that blocked the Earth’s electrons from entering my body.
WHY Does Earthing Promote Healing?
If our disconnection from the Earth was the inciting incident that has led to our collective health crisis, then it’s conceivable that reconnecting is a path to healing.
Dr. James Oschman, president of Nature’s Own Research Association, explains why so many people have improved their health with Earthing: “A grounded person is conductively coupled with the surface of the Earth and its abundant supply of electrons, which stabilizes the body’s internal electrical environment. When you are grounded, you absorb the Earth’s electrons like a sponge. They then move throughout your body, impacting it from top to bottom.”
Health writer Martin Zucker further clarifies that these electrons “reduce electrical imbalances and the oxidative free radicals involved in chronic inflammation and multiple diseases.” To corroborate this claim, multiple medical-thermal-imaging studies have demonstrated a significant reduction of inflammation in grounded individuals. For example:
The arrows in the left image above indicate areas of increased inflammation, which, according to researchers, is the source of pain and disease in the body. The image on the right confirms a 50% reduction after two nights of sleeping grounded. Dozens of similar case studies have yielded comparable results.
According to Dr. Stephen Sinatra, a board-certified cardiologist, “all you have to do is reconnect to the Earth’s natural energy, which balances your body at the deepest levels, draining it of inflammation, pain, stress, and fatigue. And it’s free. No pills, no prescriptions.”
This explains why I felt so much better after a few weeks: consistent grounding counteracted my inflammation—and thus my inflammation-related disorders—through the transfer of negatively charged electrons from the Earth’s surface into my body.
WHERE to Reconnect to the Earth?
Once I personally felt the benefits of reconnecting to the Earth, I formed an elementary hypothesis: .
Walking barefoot in the yard and sleeping grounded each night were great for my recovery, but as I improved, I looked for ways to stay grounded all day. So I acquired a Universal Earthing Mat to place under my feet at work and a grounded chair mat for lounging around the house with my family. For travel, I obtained an Earthing pillow cover so I could sleep grounded away from home. I even picked up a pair of grounded flip-flops for Earthing while walking in the city. Soon, I was grounded the vast majority of the day, and my symptoms continued to abate.
What to expect when you start grounding:
- Most people experience less inflammation, less pain, and better sleep.
- Benefits usually arrive quickly, though improvements can be gradual for some people.
- Certain people may not feel any benefits until they increase their grounding time.
- A few people feel a slight tingling, a sign of improved circulation, which subsides as the nervous system relaxes.
- Athletes often experience less muscle soreness and faster recovery after workouts.
- In rare cases, some sick people experience temporary flu-like symptoms, which are likely related to the body detoxifying.
- A person with radiant health and great sleep may not feel a big difference, but grounding still serves as a natural form of prevention for these people.
In conclusion, with the help of studies, researchers, testimonials, and my own experience, I’ve done my best to succinctly present the merits of Earthing in this essay. But if you walk away from this exploration with only one takeaway, let it be these words of wisdom from Olivia Ramirez Smith, author of : “One of the best things a person can do to lessen the likelihood of developing a chronic disease is spend at least part of their day connected to the Earth.” It really is that simple.
–JFM
