Grounding: The Big 3 (what happens when you ground?)
Hi there,
I’m creating this blog post as a follow up to my latest video on The Big 3.
To start off I went through a few statistics. This is what was read:
The age-adjusted US death rate attributable to cardiovascular disease (CVD), based on 2019 data, is 214.6 per 100,000.
On average, someone dies of CVD every 36.1 seconds in the US. There are 2,396 deaths from CVD each day, based on 2019 data.
On average, someone in the US has a stroke every 40 seconds. There are about 795,000 new or recurrent strokes each year, based on 1999 data.
On average, someone dies of a stroke every 3 minutes and 30 seconds in the US. There are about 411 deaths from stroke each day, based on 2019 data
121.5 million, or 47% of US adults have hypertension, based on 2015 to 2018 data.
https://professional.heart.org/en/science-news/-/media/B30CB2FA4E65480193A4E902BBAED88C.ashx
Low heart rate variability increases your vulnerability to stress and susceptibility to disease, and is a predictor of mortality from all causes. Research has shown that an increase from low to moderate heart rate variability decreases mortality by 400%.
https://www.drakeinstitute.com/heart-rate-variability
Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is the most prevalent and devastating bowel disease in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) affecting 6-10% of preterm infants, with a mortality rate of 15-25%, increasing to 50% in surgically-treated cases.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4416658/
More than three-quarters of adults report symptoms of stress, including headache, tiredness, or sleeping problems.
About one-third of people around the world reported feeling stressed, worried, and/or angry in 2019.
Approximately 284 million people worldwide have an anxiety disorder.
https://www.singlecare.com/blog/news/stress-statistics/
Nearly 70 million Americans have a sleep disorder.
Insomnia is the most common sleep disorder, with 30% of adults experiencing short-term insomnia.
About 10% of people have long-lasting insomnia.
Almost 40% of people report accidentally falling asleep during the day.
About 5% report falling asleep while driving.
Osteoporosis is responsible for approximately 1.5 million people in the U.S. suffering a fracture and $19 billion in related costs every year.
Every 3 seconds, someone in the world breaks a bone because of osteoporosis.
In the U.S., 1 in 2 women over the age of 50 will have an osteoporosis-related bone break in her lifetime.
The annual number of fractures due to osteoporosis is projected to increase from 1.9 million to 3.2 million – or 68 percent – from 2018 to 2040.
https://www.amgen.com/stories/2022/05/osteoporosis-by-the-numbers
37.3 million people have diabetes (11.3% of the US population).
Total: 96 million people aged 18 years or older have prediabetes (38.0% of the adult US population).
https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/data/statistics-report/index.html
20 million Americans have some form of thyroid disease and that more than 12% of the US population will develop a thyroid condition at some point in their life.
A search in PubMed (as of right now) approximately 469,375 results will populate with the search “inflammation” and “disease”. Searching “oxidative stress” and “disease” will populate around 116,338 results, with 10,726 results populating for “redox signaling” and “disease”. A combination search of “inflammation,” “oxidative stress” and “disease” will populate 32,162 results.
These statistics – why do I mention them? What do they all have in common? Grounding has an influence in all of them. Why is this? Because your body is electrical. You’ve evolved to be grounded to the earth 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Insulation has taken a lot of the grounding benefits (listed below) from you.
Grounding increases zeta potential (DOI 10.1089/acm.2011.0820) which improves blood flow and capillary action which reduces hypertension (PMID: 30982019).
It improves blood oxygenation (DOI: 10.1089=acm.2009.0278) and heart rate variability (Corpus ID: 2644535).
It improves vagal tone and autonomic balance (PMID: 28601861). This is shown by increased heart rate variability and measurements in EEG and EMG (Corpus ID: 26575302) and in skin conductance (DOI: 10.1089=acm.2009.0278).
This autonomic regulation is going to lead to better sleep and cortisol secretions (PMID: 15650465).
It helps regulate calcium homeostasis (DOI: 10.1089/acm.2010.0687), influences blood sugar regulation (DOI: 10.1089/acm.2010.0687), and influences thyroid function (DOI: 10.1089/acm.2010.0687).
It helps you recover quicker (PMCID: PMC6360250) and reduces exercise induced inflammation (PMCID: PMC3771483).
What is grounding? Grounding is discharging to the same electrical potential of the earth. You’ve been electrically insulated from the earth for probably 99% of your time alive – This is extremely problematic given the body you occupy is very much electrical in nature. The homeostatic balance of electrical charges in your body is not optimal when insulated. The human body is a battery composed of a complex web of protein semiconductors and their attached hydration layers or coherence domains which creates a battery of negative charge and positive charge for your body to utilize. The spirit. Qi. Whatever you want to call it. This is a battery of electromagnetic energy that can be used in various different ways.
You need to ground because this returns to its natural electrical state. This is done by connecting to the earth’s electrical field and that’s done by conductive contact with the ground. Earth’s surface is negatively charged because of solar energy, ionospheric winds, and lightning strikes constantly discharging. This transfers negative charge to the earth’s surface and positive charge into the upper atmosphere.
What will happen when you ground your body? The body will start readjusting itself which will manifest in various ways largely in the cardiovascular system and the nervous system. Grounding affects redox balance and oxidative stress which is vastly intertwined with the inflammation response. The statistics provided at the beginning of this post will inform you of the ubiquity of these two processes in pretty much all metabolic, non-communicable disease (the greatest killer worldwide). Grounding allows your body a greater capacity to fight and manage oxidative stress and inflammation.
In my video I talk about the Big 3 – grounding’s mechanism of action. These are The Big 3:
1. Increases the density of negative charge in the body
2. Increases your capacity to manage oxidative stress and inflammation
3. Charges the water-protein matrix battery
Density of negative charges increase in the body by electrically connecting yourself to the earth - Free electrons make their way onto and into your body. This brings the body down to about -200mV. Basic physics will tell you that electrons are negatively charged sub-atomic particles. They can also act as a potent antioxidant. They are potentially more potent than even enzymatic or exogenous (dietary) antioxidant source (vitamin C, vitamin E, plant polyphenol, carotenoids, and glutathione) when it comes to combatting oxidative stress.
Oxidative stress occurs in your body due to reactive species (ROS, RNS, RCS) constantly being generated and leaked all around the body because of normal cellular metabolism and breathing. Specifically, this is mitochondrial respiration (the electron transport chain in the generation of adenosine triphosphate). ROS come about from the reduction of molecular oxygen and as a defense mechanism for the immune system. Some examples would include common radicals like Superoxide anion, hydrogen peroxide, hydroxyl radical, and peroxynitrite –
ROS/RNS/RCS are NOT bad. Bad things happen when they stick around after they’re needed. An important point in this is the respiratory burst/oxidative burst. This is what happens when immune cells body flood pathogens, tumorous, and damaged cells with reactive oxygen, nitrogen and chlorine species to destroy them. Free radicals are very potent killers. The oxidative burst can create pockets of inflammation which can persist long after that particular immune event and this can cause eventual systemic issues. At a fundamental level, ROS are molecules that have at least one oxygen atom and one or more unpaired electrons. This makes it very unstable.
The body can make and use reactive species against non-self or self. How does the body respond? It responds by donating electrons via antioxidants to reduce these free radicals. When I talk about density of negative charges increasing it means more electrons are available to the body. Literally more energy. The electrons act as antioxidants and they can reduce oxidative stress. Another important feature of electrical grounding is that these electrons can semiconduct through proteins and their hydration layers which is why they’re different from endogenous and non-enzymatic, dietary antioxidants. The Inflammatory pouch makes it difficult for the latter to target free radicals. Conducted antioxidants (through grounding) can go where the latter antioxidants can’t go, or at least cannot go easily – into the inflammatory barricade. This ties into number 2 of the Big 3 (Increases your capacity to manage oxidative stress and inflammation). Oxidative stress is heavily intertwined with inflammation.
A common feature of chronic, metabolic disease - cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, etc – is that inflammation is rampant and redox signaling is altered – It’s important to attenuate these processes in order to combat chronic ailments. We don’t want to eliminate them. We do, however, want to moderate both of them and there we have an excellent use of electrical grounding in fighting disease. Inflammation is not bad. Oxidative stress is not bad. Free radicals are not bad. These are wonderful processes and mechanisms your body utilizes to keep you alive. Eating more antioxidants isn’t necessarily going to help the situation either as a lot of medical literature shows detrimental effects of clinical antioxidant trials.
Number 3 of the Big 3 (Charges the water-protein matrix battery) is a big reason that I decided to write Earth and Water. Grounding has an impact on the water in your body which charges a natural battery and reservoir for energy which is stored in your body’s matrix. The matrix consists of hydrophilic protein and coherent water which, together, create a lot of energy for the body to use. This can drive blood blow, help in protein folding and the inflammatory response – Grounding is a crucial way that this battery gets charged.
There you have it. The Big 3.