#345 Grounding to Heal - It's Not a Hippie Thing
What does it mean to you to feel grounded?
The Merriam-Webster dictionary says it’s to be mentally and emotionally stable.
In Ayurveda, it means being connected with the Earth’s energy.
However you define it, western science is proving that the practice of grounding, or physically touching the earth may have some remarkable benefits that range from better sleep to wound healing.
In this episode, I’ll share what it means to practice grounding and some of the evidence that points to why you should be incorporating this free, easy, and enjoyable practice in your life.
It’s amazing how much of an impact simple things can have on your health when you stop and connect to the earth that sustains you.
Check out this episode now and you might be able to sleep better tonight.
Referred to in this episode:
Studies:
Grounding – The universal anti-inflammatory remedy
Earthing (grounding) the human body reduces blood viscosity-a major factor in cardiovascular disease
Effects of Grounding (Earthing) on Massage Therapists: An Exploratory Study
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Read the full transcript:
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You're listening to better than before breast cancer with the breast cancer recovery coach. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. I'm a certified life coach, and I'm a breast cancer thriver. In this podcast, I will give you the skills and the insights and the tools to move past the emotional and physical trauma of a breast cancer diagnosis. If you're looking for a way to create a life that's even better than before breast cancer, you've come to the right place. Let's get started.
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Hello, and welcome to episode 345 have better than before breast cancer. This is our Tuesday terrain talk. And I got a good one for you today. Because I am just back from a trip to Florida. I live in Southern California. And my husband and I went to a little place called Lithia, just kind of south east of Tampa. And we visited his youngest daughter, my bonus daughter and her three kids. And we celebrated one of my granddaughter's birthday, so she turned eight years old. And they live in this just gorgeous place. They have a little over five acres, I think it is a farmland. They've got pigs and cows and ducks and chickens and goats. And it's so cool to be there. One, it's cool because it's flippin freezing in Southern California. But I think that's relative, but we're still in the 50s. And 60s has been cold for some time. So it was super nice, because I love heat. And I love humidity. So it was wonderful to be in these 90 degree temperatures with humidity. But even better than that is just to be out on that farmland, with your feet in the grass. And we had a birthday party. So there was a big on the Saturday that there was that we were there, there was this giant waterslide Outback for the kids. And so you know we're in the water and on the grass and walking around barefoot and enjoying the day. And it really just got me to thinking like when I'm there, I just want to be outside and I know it's hot. And yes, I sweat but it to me, it's like a outdoors hot yoga class. And I love hot yoga. And I love that cleansing feeling of just getting it all out of you and sweating it out. So I was there on the farm and just outside and taking the trees and the quiet and just the peaceful, wonderful relaxing feeling of being there. And I got to thinking about how important it is to talk about what actually happens with us when we have our bare feet on the ground. Now this sounds like some hippie thing, but and maybe because it originally was but I'm going to give you some science behind this today. And by this I mean the science of grounding, or what you may have heard referred to as earthing that basically bare feet on the ground or your body laying on the ground. Think about going out into the mountains and laying on the floor and a sleeping bag on the earth or walk on the beach on a nearly daily basis and just how different that energy feels. Is it psychological? Maybe some of it? Is it physical? Yeah, it looks like there's evidence that it is physical. And grounding is free, because you can walk outside barefoot anytime. Now, I'll put a little caveat there unless it's of course freezing and you live in an actual really cold place where it snows. But they're all our alternatives. So if it is difficult for you to get outside during certain times of the year, there are things called grounding mats. And I'll talk to you about those and I'll put some links in the show notes for this episode, which you can find at the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash 345. And you can use those you know when it's too cold to go outside or even if you're not feeling well. You know, if you're you're not feeling good enough to get up and walk around, or even you don't have to walk around actually, you can just literally sit outside with your bare feet on the ground. But if it's not possible, then using a grounding mat or they're even grounding sheets, you can cover your bed with them. These can be super helpful and I'm gonna tell you why. So grounding or earthing. I'm just gonna keep calling it grounding because to me, it's an energetic potential. So just like we talked about electricity and things being grounded, so earthing grounding, same thing. But grounding is a therapeutic technique. And it involves walking barefoot outdoors laying on the ground, submerging yourself in water by physically connecting with the earth. Now scientifically we know that the Earth's surface has a near constant, negative energy potential, lots of electrons that that the earth is producing. And so theoretically, when we contact the Earth, with our body with our skin, and we come into contact with the earth, that those electrons can help to equalize the electrical potential between our body and the earth. So the theory is that electrons from the earth act as antioxidants, which neutralize these positively charged free radicals. I know you're familiar with the term free radicals. So it neutralizes these free radicals that are involved in the inflammatory process. And that the theory is that this can lead to reductions in inflammation, pain, stress, wound healing, all these things. And inflammation is a part of wound healing. So I went into PubMed, and like, let's make sure this isn't just hippie dippie, what is the science behind grounding, and I searched PubMed, which is a database of all kinds of published and peer reviewed articles. And a couple of dozen studies came up on grounding and earthing. But there were some that were particularly interesting. One of those was in the Journal of inflammation research. And this was a study that reviewed other research that had been done on the effects of grounding, where they were looking at how does grounding impact wound healing pain and inflammation. Now the studies that they looked at are small, most of the studies I found were small. So that's an important thing to remember, when we're looking at 16 people or 12 people compared to hundreds or 1000s, or 10s, of 1000s of people, it can give us good information. And it can say like, Hey, you know, maybe we should look more into this, because there's some positive outcomes here. So they looked at a lot of small studies in this one in that was published in the Journal of inflammation. I thought it was so interesting, because they showed these 20 different studies that they looked at comparing pain and inflammation. And they did scans of these people. And so you can actually see in the parts of their body where the like a PET scan, you know, shows red, blue, green, yellow, so you can see where the inflammation was showing really red. And then they did grounding exercises with these people, or they grounded these people. And then they show the follow up scans. And it's pretty remarkable the difference that you see in these bodies, so that one I particularly liked. And then there was also two different photographic kind of documentation of a wound one on a person's arm and another on a person's ankle, where they used grounding, to facilitate the healing of these wounds. Super interesting because these wounds healed very quickly. And it especially reduce the inflammation. So after reviewing all of these studies, and acknowledging that these are small studies, what this journal said in their conclusion was the grounding appear to improve sleep, to normalize the day and night cortisol rhythm, reduce pain, reduce stress, and shift of the autonomic nervous system. So that's our works automatically, right? That's the part of our nervous system that just works on its own, to shift it from sympathetic to parasympathetic. So sympathetic, more active fight or flight to parasympathetic, rest, and digest write, rest and relax. It increased heart rate variability, it sped up wound healing, and it reduced blood viscosity. And that's a really important piece of information that I'm going to touch more on in just a minute here. There was another study. And this was an interesting one. But I'm also going to give you some little caveats about this one. So this one was conducted at the Chopra Center here in Carlsbad, California, and I'm sure you've heard of Deepak Chopra, and he's got a healing center where they do your Vedic body practices and such things down in Carlsbad. So they did a study, again, very small 16 people was 16 massage therapists, they did a grounding exercise over a period of several weeks, and it was double blind. So this was a good part of it, meaning that the massage therapist didn't know whether they were being grounded or not. And the people conducting the study didn't know if they were being grounded or not, it was a third party person that had chords, and only that third party knew whether those chords that were going to connect the mat, were actually grounding chords or not grounding courts. So that's a good part. And that kind of supports the integrity of the study. But the full disclaimer, the study was conducted by the head of research for the Chopra center, and the grounding mats were provided by a grounding accompanied company that makes grounding mats. So you know, that can be a little bias built in there, but the double blind part of it is good. And they had these massage therapists stand on these mats. And then every single day they had a questionnaire they would go over different questions like were they tired, were they stressed? Are they anxious? Did they have pain and Just kind of measuring how physiologically and emotionally they were feeling. At the end of the study, they gathered all of their data. And then they combined, they analyzed all of their data. And then they also combined that data with another study that was done earlier by different organization that was also looking at grounding from more of a biomarker standard. So they were actually measuring people's biological markers like inflammatory markers, blood viscosity, again, another important point, heart rate variability. And so they took the Chopra Center took their own study, and combined the results of that other study and brought them together. And what they found was that grounding really did help, especially therapists who are experienced higher levels of pain, to become more relaxed, to have less anxiety and depression, and to have improved sleep. And then there was a third study that I thought was really cool, also linked to and that was published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine in 2013. And that study was titled earthing grounding. The human body reduces blood viscosity, a major factor in cardiovascular disease. So this study was looking at blood viscosity. So it's an interesting thing, they were looking at blood under a microscope, and you could see where red blood cells would kind of clump together. And then when people went through grounding exercises, over just a period of less than a couple of hours, you could see that the red blood cells kind of opened up they flowed more freely and they weren't clumping together and like we call it coagulation, right when blood coagulates for clots. And that's important because blood viscosity, so the thickness or the goofiness caught thick, sticky blood. thick, sticky blood is a contributor to cardiovascular disease, but it's also a contributor to angiogenesis, to the building of the blood supply to cancer as tumors in the body. So in the metabolic approach, we're always looking at markers in people's blood panels to see to look like they have this thick, sticky blood. And if so, we want to take measurements in their diet and hydration, exercise helps to get that blood moving, we want to get the blood moving, so it's not thick and sticky, but it's flowing nicely and not creating kind of like a scaffolding, you know, for cancer to grow on. So this study also looked at that I was looking at the blood viscosity and what their conclusion was that grounding and earthing is completely harmless to the body. And even though to that day in 2013, there hadn't been any systematic studies of grounding like large systematic studies, so they're still not really any large ones. They're pretty small ones. They said that however, this is a quote however, there are anecdotal reports that patients using blood thinning drugs such as warfarin or Coumadin, need to have their clotting time monitored, when they begin to make more frequent conductive contact with the earth meaning they've got to watch those blood thinners to make sure that bloods not getting too thin, because they're getting that effect, that blood viscosity thinning effect when they increase their contact with Earth. How cool is that? And it goes on to say when physicians recommend evidence based harmless and simple natural interventions, alleviation of human suffering, and improved quality of life can be realized. So the cool thing about these studies and others that I read over were, even though they're small, overall, they were pretty well conducted. And even though I saw some definitely that could lead lead to some biases or give you the indication, there were some biases, they still had enough evidence that, like the reviews say that it's anecdotally there's enough there, it tells enough of a story, that it would be good to do more research in this area that we're seeing helpful things happening. And that using grounding or even doing more research into grounding can be very beneficial. And I want to talk about it because you got nothing to lose, it's totally free. Put your bare feet on the ground with your bare feet in the water, lay in the water, right, do something like that. See if it helps you or if you want to make a small investment into something, I think my grounding mat it was like $89 or something for one you could put on it's pretty long you put on the bed. If you're sitting at the office a lot if you think I should never get outside, you can put a grounding mat at your feet under your desk and put your bare feet on the grounding mat. So you're getting that nice exchange have that negative potential and you're kind of you know, balancing out the energy of your body. So you can use grounding, that's the really not that expensive, and there are grounding sheets but I think even for I saw like king sized beds that were less than a couple of $100 but you could start with just a small grounding mat for like 45 bucks or something. See what you think. See if it helps you or start by just making a point of 10 minutes a day getting outside and putting your bare feet in the ground and see how it helps you emotionally and physically, you know, something that I did read and one of the studies was talking about how women who are going through menopause, hot flashes, experienced improved sleep and more solid and peaceful sleep when they slept on a grounding mat. That's pretty interesting because I know I deal with a lot of clients. And for years, I went through this myself, were as important as sleep is us, it was nearly impossible to get uninterrupted sleep because of hot flushes. So if you can find something that's kind of inexpensive, and try it out and see if it helps you over a period of couple of weeks. I mean, why not? Right? Like the study, say, it's not going to harm you to do some grounding. So I wanted to share that information with you. Because I think so many, so much of the time, we get caught up in the high level stuff, you know, the hyperbaric oxygen treatments, the high dose, vitamin C therapies, all of these therapies, ozone therapies, and things that can cost 1000s of dollars, and we overlook, or we think, because it's so simple, these simple, natural free things, we don't do them. But what if you did, like, what have you stopped? And I hear this from people often I tried that, and it didn't work, right. But what if you tried it with some consistency? What if you did it for 10 to 15 minutes a day for a few weeks, and really trumped how you felt in your own clinical study and see what it does for you. But I personally, am a huge believer in grounding. I know how good I feel when I have my bare feet on the ground. And I'm a believer in the grounding mats. Because of that exchange of energy, I highly recommend that you check out some of the studies that you read them, especially the one that I talked about, that shows you the actual images of the reduction in inflammation in the people's body, and the wound healing after grounding. I thought that was really fantastic. And again, even though it's not a large study, when I see something like that, I think, okay, there's some value there. And that's definitely worth and hopefully there will be more study in this area. But there's already some science behind it. And again, also, when you get enough anecdotal evidence, in my opinion, that's worth a try, right? Doing a scientific study is very involved and very expensive and very complicated. And kind of why would someone invest that much money in a big study to prove that it will benefit your health to go outside and do something for free. So we do have to think about that, because I'm not a conspiracy theorists. But that is the way science works. So check out some grounding, and see what you think. And put the links below to the studies that I referred to, and to the grounding mats that I use, so you can check them out. Again, they're not very expensive. And you know, if you're ready to take that dive in, you want to go a little bit deeper, into just really the natural ways of supporting your health, small changes. I have an excellent program, 90 days of wellness, you can get that on my website, the breast cancer recovery coach.com and just go to coaching and programs and scroll all the way to the bottom and you'll see standalone programs and 90 days of wellness is really cool because I really talk about a heart centered approach to health. It is a 90 day program. And it covers so many things. It covers the way that you eat and how mindful eating can change things. I talk a little bit about fasting kind of touches on everything, stress reduction, circadian rhythms. And the beautiful thing about it is that when you're in it, you get access to the group coaching calls that I do on a monthly basis so you can ask your questions and get coached on how to implement some of these heart centered wellness practices into your life. It doesn't have to cost a lot of money to take good care of your health. All right, friends, I will talk to you again soon. And until then, take care
