Is Vitamin G a load of B? Debunking the ‘grounding’ trend

After a long day, there’s little doubt that walking through nature or sitting in a park can be restorative.

But according to proponents of “grounding”, it’s not the environment that makes you feel better, but the current from the Earth instead.

Also known as “earthing”, grounding is a growing practice that suggests putting your bare feet on the earth balances your electrical charge, helping fix inflammation, mood problems and lots more.

But is there any science behind this?

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Norman Swan recently called the practice “complete bloody bullshit” and the health claims “nonsensical” on ABC Radio National’s What’s That Rash?

Grounding is a word used by scientists — just not in the health-rebalancing way.

According to Karen Livesey, a theoretical physicist at the University of Newcastle, “grounding” has long been used as a physics term, where it refers to the process of removing a build-up of too much positive or negative charge.

But a lack of grounding is unlikely to make a human sick.

“The fact that we’ve been building up charge for many thousands of years through human history seems to indicate that it’s not going be harmful to us,” Dr Livesey said.

Grounding requires a conductor

Most people will have experienced static electricity, which occurs when negative or positive charges build up on your skin.

This is a pretty regular occurrence, and it happens due to the friction from two objects sliding against each other, with one object gaining electrons and the other losing them. This creates one object that’s slightly positive and one that’s slightly negative.

Walking on carpets, playing with balloons or slipping down playground slides can all result in these charges, which can sometimes lead to your hair standing on end.

We’ve known about static electricity since at least ancient Greece.

“They didn’t have balloons back then,” Dr Livesey said.

“They had rabbit fur and sticks of amber, and they knew they could rub them together and create this magic static electricity to impress three-year-olds.”

But these excess charges don’t stick around forever.

These extra electrons try to get away from each other by spreading out as far as possible, ending up in your hair, which causes it to stand up.

And at some point it will zap out of you when you touch a conductor, which could be anything from a piece of metal to an unsuspecting friend. This is what physicists mean when they talk about grounding.

But it’s not just metal or other objects that can work like a conductor. The Earth itself does this as well.

“The Earth has an overall negative electric charge … and because the overall Earth atmosphere system has to be neutral, that means there’s positive electric charges up in the atmosphere,” Dr Livesey said.

“When we touch the Earth, there’ll be a transfer of electrons so that we have the same electric potential.”

What about the practice of grounding? 

For grounding proponents, it’s Earth’s ability to wick away extra electrons — which they call “vitamin G” — that supposedly produces the positive effects of the practice.

While going outside and spending time in nature have been linked to mental health benefits, the idea that chronic illness could be caused by an electrical imbalance between us and the Earth “makes no sense”, Dr Swan said.

Those who practice grounding believe you can also take the benefits inside by using a number of different products, including what’s known as a grounding mat.

These are plastic mats that plug into the power point, but only connect to the third, bottom hole.

In a house, that bottom hole on a power point doesn’t provide electricity, but instead connects to the Earth to protect against electrical faults.

But Dr Livesey said the practice of grounding — using a mat or anything else — was unlikely to have any health benefit at all.

“From a physics point of view, there is no process I can think of where a surplus or lack of electrons on the surface of our body could influence our health,” she said.

“There are 10 octillion [a 1 with 28 zeros after it] electrons in our body. Being short by a few electrons — when compared to the charge of the Earth — is highly unlikely to change how our bodies use electricity to work.”

Electrical charges exist in nature too

Nature has been working with positive and negative charges long before humans invented a way to make it power our modern lives.

The interaction between bees and flowers is one example.

Flowers, being part of the Earth, are slightly negative, while bees flying produces a positive charge.

Bees can sense the electrical field of the flower, and it’s this static electricity that causes bees to end up covered in pollen.

When the bee visits the next flower, that now-positively-charged pollen jumps back on to the plant.

“A flower is a little lightning rod,” Dr Livesey said.

“[Bees] actually have to fly around for a long time to get back their positive charge so that they can go and be attracted to a flower again.”. 

Electrical charges also play a vital role in the human body.

“How our cells talk to each other, how they have immune responses, how neurons fire in the brain, it’s all by sending electrical charges,” Dr Livesey said.

Positive elements or “ions” like potassium and sodium, along with negative ones like chloride, exist in different concentrations inside and outside the cell.

As the cell undertakes different functions, these ions switch places, which allows nutrients in and out, helps transport and regulates the size of the cell.

While Dr Livesey says it takes more than static electricity to unbalance this system, there are certain diseases and poisons that can.

Epilepsy is caused by an excess burst of electrical activity in the brain, and spider and snake neurotoxins can interfere with the movement of electrical charges, which can damage or even kill neurons.

Listen to Dr Norman Swan and Tegan Taylor unpack why the scientific studies on grounding are so hard to parse on What’s That Rash? And subscribe to the podcast for more.