Program: What on earth is grounding?!

Norman Swan: So, Tegan, you always struck me as a pretty grounded sort of person.

Tegan Taylor: Oh, really? What have I done to give you that misapprehension?

Norman Swan: Just sort of sensible, you know, together, walk barefoot through the grass.

Tegan Taylor: I do like walking barefoot through the grass. That is something I could say you have correct.

Norman Swan: Well, grounding is actually what this week's What's That Rash? is all about.

Tegan Taylor: Grounding, being grounded? I love it, I can't wait to get stuck into it, because we have had a lot of questions about it.

Norman Swan: You're listening to What's That Rash?, where we answer your health questions.

Tegan, 'grounding' is a big word, though, isn't it?

Tegan Taylor: It's a word that I think has different meanings in different contexts. I think today it's probably important for us to be clear as to what we're talking about. I think if you've had any brushes with psychology in the past, you might have heard of grounding exercises being breathing exercises or refocusing your mind.

Norman Swan: They bring you back to Earth with realistic thinking.

Tegan Taylor: Yeah, in a metaphorical sense, but this is bringing you back to Earth in a very physical sense, as in the discipline of physics. And to understand the claims around this type of grounding, we actually have to do a bit of a physics and a chemistry lesson.

Norman Swan: Yeah, and it's about electrical charge, electrical charge in the earth versus electrical charge in our body. And if we've got excess electrical charge in our body, the theory is it has to go somewhere. And if we're wearing rubber shoes or living in buildings, the charge has got nowhere to go, and that causes disease. 

Tegan Taylor: Well, that's the claims, anyway. So this week's question comes from Mitch and Lorraine and Jess. We have had a lot of questions about grounding or earthing. Mitch is saying that he used to use a fleecy fitted sheet with magnets on his bed. And then says, somehow the algorithm must have recognised this from 20 years ago because he saw an ad for a grounding bed sheet that fights inflammation. He says you plug it into the wall and somehow it cures all your ails. This can't be right. 'Please help,' says Mitch, 'I feel weak in the face of such claims.' 

Lorraine says, 'Hi, Rashies.' Hi, Lorraine. 'I've been hearing some good things about grounding sheets and mats, particularly relating to allergies and autoimmune diseases', from which she suffers. 'Is there any scientific reason to use these? Do they work? Or is it all just twaddle?' And then similarly, Jess says that she recently came across the concept of earthing and was wondering whether the science to reduce inflammation is real: 'should I stop wearing shoes?' So a lot of similarities in these questions, and products that are being sold on the promise that grounding is good for you and these products are the path towards it. I feel like we should start out with a bit of a tour of what the claims around it are.

Norman Swan: Well, it's the sense that there's an electrical difference, if I can summarise the theory, it's a sense that there is an electrical difference between us and the earth. But the idea here is that the unnaturalness of our daily lives, the separation from the earth beneath our feet, builds up a charge difference between us and the earth which is not released and that that they say causes chronic illness, causes inflammation, autoimmune disease and other problems as well, including mental health issues, that there's this electrical imbalance between us and the earth. 

Tegan Taylor: And so this idea of grounding or earthing in a sense of physics, or in the sense of kind of mechanics, is scientifically accurate. But those words are also quite…I was going to say charged…well, they are charged in a sense that we…you know, you said to me before that I seem like a grounded person, or that someone's down-to-earth, there is a sense of someone who's in balance, I suppose, or in touch with nature when we use those words. So there is a connotation there. And it is easy to see how you could go, 'I feel so disconnected from the planet.'

Norman Swan: Gosh, we're very, very metaphorical today.

Tegan Taylor: Well, but thinking about if you live in a really big, high-rise city, you can feel very far away from nature, even though we're all living on the same planet. It can feel like you're a very, very long way from that natural earth state.

Norman Swan: So that's true, and what's also true is that there is quite a lot of evidence to suggest that if you have natural elements in your nearby environment, you have parks, you have trees, you look onto vistas which look more natural than just concrete jungles, and you get out and about and recreate in those natural areas, that you feel better. But this theory goes to the idea that we somehow have a different electrical charge from the earth, and we need to drain that charge from our bodies. And they talk about electron deficiencies, for example, in our body. 

And some of this just doesn't make sense. For example, they focus on free radicals as the problem with aging and inflammation, oxidative stress in our bodies. Now, that's a thing, it's a real thing. When oxygen splits into two atoms, they become very energetic, they need to cling to something, and it's often very damaging. But it's actually because, funnily enough, of unpaired electrons, electrons that are floating in space, almost like excess electrons that need to attach to something else to stabilise. So in some senses, aging and inflammation is an excess of electrons, not a deficiency of electrons. 

And then it's just nonsensical to think that by draining electrons from our body, even if that was real, by walking barefoot in the grass, that that's going to change this intimate chemical process that's going on in our tissues that's neutralised more by what we eat and the bioactive compounds in our bloodstream than whether we're walking barefoot or not.

Tegan Taylor: Yeah, because the premise here is that we live up in cities, in high-rise buildings, we're wearing rubber-soled shoes, those electrons aren't able to go around. And then, in addition to the idea of reconnecting with nature, walking barefoot and that sort of thing, there's a raft of products that you can buy that people then profit from. 

Norman Swan: And isn't there always a raft of products.

Tegan Taylor: I remember people wearing copper bracelets back in the day, and then a couple of our letter writers talk about bed sheets with magnets and other things in it that promises to help ground you. How would they even work? 

Norman Swan: If you look at the people who publish in this area…I mean, when Shelby Traynor, our producer, was researching this, she found several published papers on earthing and grounding, and found an article on it on WebMD. Now, WebMD prides itself on being the source of reliable evidence-based health information. I was amazed when I read the WebMD article on this, supposedly checked by a doctor, quoting articles that are terrible science, often with the same author.

Tegan Taylor: Almost all of them were the same author.

Norman Swan: Who belongs to an institute devoted to earthing, and I'm not sure whether or not related to the products that are being sold here, but all roads lead to the same group of authors promoting this, and they are tiny studies where you don't understand the methodology that's been done, where the graphs are half-cocked, to be blunt, and they're quoting other articles where…for example, there was a study of neonates…

Tegan Taylor: Babies, you can just call them babies. 

Norman Swan: Yeah, premature babies actually in incubators, where they claimed to have found a benefit by earthing the incubators better, but that was in a situation where they noticed the electrical charge inside the incubators was high, and could that be having an adverse effect on the babies? Well, maybe. And by earthing it, they reduced that high electrical charge inside the incubators. That's a different story from daily life.

Tegan Taylor: I mean, putting the baby study aside, because that was a very small study, like you say, quite a specific situation, I think the thing with this is those studies, even though when you look at them closely they look like complete bunk, they're on the same databases as all of the other peer-reviewed stuff, at first glance they look indistinguishable, and you actually have to spend a fair bit of time and have quite a high level of health literacy to be able to pick that apart. Shelby and us, our job is being health journalists, that's our job, to sit and sift through this sort of thing, and it takes time and effort. It shouldn't be so hard for everyday people to be able to inform themselves well. It's pretty misleading. 

Norman Swan: It is, and it introduces a whole other topic into the conversation, which is, does, for example, the National Library of Medicine the United States have a responsibility to vet the journals that it puts onto its database? And I'm not sure what sort of vetting process goes but a lot get on. There are tens of thousands of medical journals, and they appear on the National Library of Medicine's PubMed database, and they're questionable. And you know before you start, in a sense…once you've read a lot of them, you…

Tegan Taylor: You know before you start, I think that's the thing. You've been doing this for 40 years, and you have a freaking medical degree. Most people don't have that luxury.

Norman Swan: Correct. But if you see an exclamation mark in a paper, you know you've got a problem. If you've got language in a paper which is boosting the theory…in other words, they've kind of given you the conclusion before they start because they're so enthusiastic about the theory…

Tegan Taylor: Yeah, most of the studies that I'm reading are so circumspect. Usually, the data is speaking for itself, and the researchers are going 'more research is required'.

Norman Swan: Yeah, and the process of peer review…peer review is questionable at the best of times, but the peer review in most remnant journals would tone down the language and not allow people to make assertions in their paper that go beyond the evidence. And here you see stuff that's just…there's no basis for it. And when you click on the reference, the reference is to a tiny study with the same set of authors. But as you say, this takes time, which is why we actually do the hard work for you on What's That Rash? and show what complete bloody bullshit this is. Haven't I been good? I've been holding myself back to now to be able to express my emotion on this one.

Tegan Taylor: You've been building to a crescendo, I love it. I mean, we can come from a pretty smug space when we're saying this sort of thing, but, to be fair, if this is something that you've read and you've maybe been taken in by, that's completely understandable. This stuff is hard and Shelby spent…Shelby will be filing a workers compensation claim for her mental health because of how much time she spent really trying to pick this apart. We tried to give it a fair hearing. And it takes time to pull this apart. 

Norman Swan: That's right, we spent several hours on it, which is the value on What's That Rash?, we do this research for you, which is why you ask the questions. We do the research. And in this case, what we find out is that it's complete bullshit! I feel better now. That's earthed me, that's grounded me.

Tegan Taylor: You've got those electrons out, or in, I can't remember which.

Norman Swan: And I want to make a plea for the humble proton. 

Tegan Taylor: Oh, okay. As in the car?

Norman Swan: No.

Tegan Taylor: The opposite to an electron, yes.

Norman Swan: The charged particle that balances the electron is the proton, and it's actually a hydrogen ion. It's H+. And why can't we have diseases of the proton? And in fact, we do have diseases of the proton.

Tegan Taylor: But you just said we didn't have diseases of the electron, so you're undermining your own argument here. 

Norman Swan: Sometimes I regret co-hosting What's That Rash?...

Tegan Taylor: No, finish your story, what's the proton disease?

Norman Swan: Well, it's acid, ulcers. We produce too many hydrogen ions in the stomach in response to Helicobacter pylori, we produce too much acid, and the acid is based on the hydrogen ion, and we have all these drugs to soak up the protons.

Tegan Taylor: Proton pump inhibitors. I never thought that they actually…I never knew it actually meant proton. 

Norman Swan: It's the flip story to electron deficiency is too many protons, so let's hear it for the humble proton, which has caused indigestion to untold millions.

Tegan Taylor: So protons, bad electrons, don't worry about it. 

Norman Swan: No, well, not in this situation, no, just make sure that you're eating…I'm not going to say it because you're going to ring a bell…

Tegan Taylor: [Rings bell]

Norman Swan: Okay, so now you know what I mean. And diet, exercise, those sorts of things reduce our oxidative stress, our free radicals, and mop it up, almost certainly more effectively than lying on an electrical mat. 

Tegan Taylor: Well, thank you to everyone who sent in questions about grounding or earthing. We love answering them so much. You can always send your questions to [email protected], which is also where you can send us your thoughts on other things. And I would be quite interested, Norman, I think, to get people's pitches for pseudoscience. So come up with something that sounds vaguely scientific, and pitch us some sort of cure that you'd like to monetise.

Norman Swan: Yeah. So step one, give us the disease. Step two, give us the biological mechanism. And step three, give us the intervention, and go for it.

Tegan Taylor: And hopefully we don't spur anything that actually escapes the What's That Rash? comment section and goes out into the wild. 

Norman Swan: And as long as you don't mind me calling out bullshit at the end, then we're fine. 

Tegan Taylor: [email protected] is our email, and it's also where some people have written us some feedback this week, Norman.

Norman Swan: Yeah, a retired GP who suffers from chronic migraine, in researching this condition and its possible causes and exacerbators, she came across articles on monosodium glutamate, which was the subject of a recent What's That Rash?, and found (which is what we said) that MSG is not implicated in the cause of migraine or any other health conditions. However, the biochemical compound tyramine is implicated in certain individuals. And here's the interesting bit, she writes, tyramine tends to be found in the highest concentrations in foods which are also high in MSG, in other words they tend to co-occur. So maybe she's saying that we've got a confusion here between MSG and tyramine, and MSG is the innocent partner.

Tegan Taylor: Which actually is sort of contradicted by Janice, who's written in saying, 'I have migraines, diarrhea and loss of coordination whenever I eat food that contains MSG or its derivatives.' And Janice says she's miserable in not being able to eat a wide variety of foods, and is inviting us to help her make sense of the information. Because we really quite tidily last week said don't even worry about it, MSG is fine, it's all in your head…well, we didn't say it's all in your head. But for someone like Janice who has real symptoms, what does she do?

Norman Swan: We did say that there are some people who can get an acute allergy from MSG, but it's rare. In this situation…I mean, we're not here to give advice, but I'm going to give advice to Janice. Often consultant allergists will take you through a panel of substances to see why you're getting these reactions, which are not necessarily allergies, but maybe chemical, and it may be that tyramine is the problem here rather than MSG. Maybe it is MSG, but you can have systematic challenges which check out what exactly you're responding to. So there's no point in going through misery, wondering why you've got these symptoms but knowing it's something in food, find out what it is so that you can eliminate it. 

Tegan Taylor: Yeah, all the best to you, Janice. And Martin has written to me, Norman, saying: 'Hello, Tegan. I recently heard you say to Norman that MSG may be better for us than common salt if we're trying to reduce sodium. And Norman said it still has sodium in it, so it isn't.' But Martin says I'm right. 

Norman Swan: Oh, so he's throwing me under the bus. Okay, thanks Martin. 

Tegan Taylor: I think that Martin might have actually slightly misheard you, because you went on then to talk about potassium chloride. But let me have my moment in the sun. I think what Martin's saying is that monosodium glutamate is a bigger molecule than sodium chloride, NaCl, and so by weight there's more sodium in sodium chloride than there is in the same gram of MSG. 

Norman Swan: I don't want to take away your thunder or the immense praise that Martin's giving you, and he's offering actually to share a Nobel Prize with you on this one, and I'll happily stand back as long as I get a free trip to Stockholm. The essence here is there's an implication that sodium is somehow different in MSG from sodium chloride, and the only differences might be that on a weight-for-weight basis there's a lower concentration of sodium. But in fact for every molecule of MSG there's sodium, so molecule for molecule, there's just as much sodium. 

Tegan Taylor: All I'm hearing, Norman, is you just trying to glom onto Martin's and my Nobel Prize, and I won't have it. 

Norman Swan: I stand back and, as I say, I'll come to Stockholm and carry your bags for you.

Tegan Taylor: If you would like to give Norman a chemistry lesson, you can email us, [email protected], which is of course where you can also send your questions, your comments, your poems and your pseudoscience, and we will see you back here again next week. 

Norman Swan: See you then.