What’s the mechanism here? Doesn’t the thick skin on the bottoms of your feet prevent and microorganisms from entering your body? That’s what it’s for after all.
Hemlinths enter the body through contaminated food and water, not through the feet. They’re also pretty bad for you, and can make you very sick for years.
That sounds like ridiculous pseudoscientific babel. The idea that electrons from the ground as opposed to electrons from anywhere else have a special effect is unbelievable.
you technically don't need to have your feet touching the earth, but you could have say, a patch strapped onto your chest that is plugged into a building's electrical sockets 'ground' channel (bottom hole in North America).
If you really wanna dig deep, look up the latest research on electrophysiology and embryonic development. Heres an old example from 2011[0]
Our neuralcrest cells are also influenced by electrical charge [1][2]
That cells travel along electrical gradients is not news, or related to the claim that touching “ground” or “grounding” is beneficial for health. Your body has its own weak electromagnetic field.
These grounding claims smell seriously like bullshit.
"Recently scientists have been able to control and influence cell-differentiation via long-lifetime electric fields. (Although the electric potential was created chemically via ion pumps rather than externally)....
this kind of electrical signaling is likely the primary mechanism by which your cells know what to become and in which direction to grow" via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31238490
I'm bringing up the science of bioelectricity to point to that fact that our cells (and the cells of all our much more delicate microbiome neighbours in our stomachs) are affected by the electricity in our body. Could it at all be possible that when exposed to changes in electrical environment a biological electrical system can vary its the cell-level chemical reactions inside it, affecting cellular repair and growth? These studies all say yes. ___They made a worm grow two heads for crying out loud!!!____
Now after making a worm grow two heads from messing with bioelectrical stuff, is it that far of a leap to wonder if grounding your bioelectrical system would have some tiny effect on its cellular chemical state? your body is dying every second and regenerating cells in a complex chemical reaction.
Again, I’m totally unsurprised that electric or electromagnetic fields can influence biology. But none of that has anything to do with “touching dirt” or “grounding”. You’re literally always in the Earth’s magnetic field.
> Electrical systems are inherently powered by electricity. As electricity flows through them, however, it may build up to dangerous levels. This is why most electrical systems are grounded. Grounding ensures that any excess electricity will be discharged.
A biological system that is grounded has less excess charge inside it.
Its not about the surface of the skin, the skin/sweat can act as a conductor for the electrons to pass through into our body, and a wet ground helps even more. Our bodies are slightly positive due the oxidative effect occurring in our proteins, fats and other bodily tissues.(Oxidation is a chemical reaction in which atoms lose electrons)
>Unlike the epidermis and dermis layers of our skin — which are poor conductors of electricity — our sweat is rich with electrolytes such as sodium and chloride, which makes our sweat a surprisingly decent conductor of electricity (though not quite as good as metal).
>What’s more, our bodies don’t just sweat when we are hot. Every square inch of our skin is releasing traces amounts of sweat, regardless of temperature.
https://research-collective.com/biometrics_galvanic_skin_res...
Tissue is semi-conductive. Different tissues, more or less so. When earthing, your skin comes in contact with the relatively negative potential of the earth. The electrons will be drawn into the body due to the body's relatively positive charge. This is not quite the same thing as building up a high negative surface voltage such as from friction. Though I imagine over time this static charge could be drawn into the body.
Being a bit more speculative, I have read in sci studies that electron tunneling into positive holes (atoms with missing electrons in the outer shell) across proteins can typically occur in 10 to 20 angstrom hops. These hops range in speed from milli to nano seconds. Performing a little simple math it can be calculated ( roughly) that it will take about 2 minutes for electrons to travels an inch or so through the tissue (of course once into the blood stream they can be transferred at a different rate at the same time recharging depleted water soluble anti-oxidants eg.. vitamin c and uric acid). There are approx 12,700,000 hops per inch. Therefore, the process is not instantaneous, which goes along with how people report benefits (people talk about 20 to 30 minutes grounded to really start feeling the beneficial effects.
From my bio:
"The problem: We use logic, but on the basis that everything we know currently is all there is to know about this thing." I think that in 100-200 years our understanding of how electricity affects our cells will be transformed.
If I can't convince you that walking barefoot on wet soil or grass does nothing in terms of transferring electrons into the body, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
The body isn't positively charged on net. The interior of most cells is negatively charges and the surrounding fluid is OFTEN slightly positively charged which is part of the normal mechanism for material crossing cell boundaries. The whole thing on net is basically neutral. If you're starting from a different position, then the whole idea is baseless out of the gate.
If you had any net charge you'd discharge that into the environment if negatively charged, or vice versa. Usually there's enough humidity in the air to do the trick, but in extremely dry environments static electricity builds up until you touch something like a metal door knob.
If you just wanted some electrons, then generating some static electricity on a rug would be even better.
Even still the amount of current flowing between a person and the earth will be at best minuscule, almost unmeasurable[1]. The idea that "electrons going into your body" this way has any effect on your health is frankly not something that should be taken seriously.
Domestic fecal matter? Someone shits on the floor in my house, and I step into it? Yes that could present some problems, such as slipping on the stairs.
