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How are grounding products supposed to help you, and are they legit?
Through the electromagnetic connection they promise to provide, grounding mats, bed sheets, and other devices purport to help you improve just about every facet of your health by improving sleep, reducing inflammation, easing chronic pain, increasing energy, lowering stress, relieving headaches, balancing hormones, and more.
But any practice or treatment that’s billed as a cure-all for a long list of vague symptoms is worth scrutiny — and there isn’t much scientific evidence to suggest that grounding is particularly effective. In a post on Science-Based Medicine, Yale professor of neurology Dr. Steven Novella points out that there is no research establishing grounding’s underlying claim “that there is an electrical homeostasis that has any effect on how the body functions” in the first place. And when I asked Dr. Greta Raglan, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan’s medical school, about existing studies on grounding and grounding products, she mentioned a range of methodological concerns and was generally skeptical: “It wasn’t like everybody [in the research I reviewed] had insomnia and then was magically recovered because they used these devices,” Raglan says. “From a face validity perspective, it seems a little bit strange that putting this device between your body and your sleeping surface, for instance, would make a massive change in your closeness to the electrical current of the Earth.”
Dr. John Saito a pediatric pulmonologist at the Children’s Hospital of Orange County who is also board-certified in sleep medicine and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, didn’t dismiss the possibility that grounding products could be effective, but echoed Raglan’s doubts. “In the world of sleep, we talk about things like light and dark exposure, and how it affects our circadian rhythm. So it’s not too far of a reach to say our electrical exposure plays a role,” Saito explained, before acknowledging a lack of evidence to link grounding devices to a concrete measure of improved sleep, like changes in brain-wave patterns, or that would rule out the placebo effect or other potential causes of sleep issues.
It’s also worth noting that in the studies of earthing available on Google Scholar, there are a few recurring names amongst the researchers — including Ober, who still sells a variety of grounding products through his website, and Gaétan Chevalier, director of the Earthing Institute, which sells courses to become “certified” in earthing.
But can it hurt to try?
If you really want to try grounding sheets, Saito says, there aren’t many risks to worry about. However, there’s also no simple way to prove they are doing anything, aside from your own subjective experience of whether you “feel better.” To that end, Saito suggests that anyone who’s grounding-curious start with the toes-in-the-dirt variety; if it helps, great, and if it doesn’t, at least you didn’t spend any money on it. He also emphasizes that if you’re having sleep problems, you should go see your doctor. “If you are missing the elephant in the room that you have severe sleep apnea and you’re not getting enough oxygen,” he says, new bedsheets won’t be the fix. Saito also recommends focusing on the basics of good sleep: a routine bedtime and sleeping in a dark, cool, and quiet place.
“My general stance is that devices intended to assist with sleep buy into this idea that our bodies aren’t inherently capable of sleeping on their own,” Raglan cautions. “And it can actually make our sleep problems worse if we feel like we need all of these accoutrements to get to bed.”
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