05/09/2025
Bob Livingston Alerts, Barefoot and healthy?
It's easy to stay grounded. The ground is very close. And we walk on it every day. But walking barefoot, also called earthing or "grounding," has a potent antioxidant effect that helps alleviate inflammation throughout your body.
The human body appears to be finely tuned to "work" with the earth in the sense that there's a constant flow of energy between our bodies and the earth. When you put your feet on the ground, you absorb large amounts of negative electrons through the soles of your feet.
Grounding helps thin your blood by improving its zeta potential. This gives each blood cell a more negative charge, which helps them repel each other to keep your blood thin and less likely to clot. This can significantly reduce your risk of stroke.
My friend Dr. Mark Wiley wrote about it and has a lot of information and advice on how to let the Earth itself improve your health:
Electric Earth, Electric Body
While modern medicine has done an amazing job of eradicating a great many infectious diseases that once plagued us, it has been unable to "cure" the burden of modern lifestyle diseases. However, with a simple returning to the Earth, to a routine once extant and now nearly vanished, we can once again regain our health and thrive in wellness.
Researchers and scientists in the field of environmental medicine have rediscovered an essential yet nearly completely overlooked human health factor: Walking barefoot, or wearing simple animal skin foot coverings, connects you with the Earth's surface in a natural way that allows transfer of free electrons into your body.
This is important because humans are essentially electrical beings. Among other things, we are made up of water, minerals and electrons. We produce positive charges that produce oxidative stress on the body. But when we walk barefoot, a practice now called Earthing or Grounding, free negative electrons from the Earth are transferred back to us, acting as antioxidants, reducing a huge assortment of modern health concerns, including cardiovascular issues, autoimmune diseases, sleep disorders, pain and inflammation.
The Modern Human Illness Problem
Like the human body, the Earth's surface is also a conduit for electricity. When this current passes from the Earth's surface to humans, generally through the soles of the feet, health is sustained and maintained. However, since we ditched animal skin shoes and plant-based cloth for rubber-insulated shoes and mattresses, we have become increasingly sick. Chronic pain, systemic inflammation, cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases now reign.
According to research published in the Journal of Environmental and Public Health (JEPH): "Reconnection with the Earth's electrons has been found to promote intriguing physiological changes and subjective reports of well-being… Through direct contact or through perspiration-moistened animal skins used as footwear or sleeping mats, the ground's abundant free electrons were able to enter the body, which is electrically conductive. Through this mechanism, every part of the body could equilibrate with the electrical potential of the Earth, thereby stabilizing the electrical environment of all organs, tissues, and cells."
This research, as well as others, is also found in the book Earthing: The Most Important Health Discovery Ever? by Martin Zucker.
The Earthing Solution
According to the JEPH analysis, simply walking barefoot every day for a bit, or sleeping connected to an Earth-grounding apparatus, can vastly improve these conditions:
Sleep disturbances and chronic pain
Stress and pain linked to cortisol
Electric fields induced on the body
Overall stress levels
Problems shifting from sympathetic to parasympathetic activation
Immune cell and pain responses with delayed-onset muscle soreness
Heart rate variability
Improper pH levels
Inflammation
Immune system activity and response, lupus, MS, rheumatoid Arthritis
Blood viscosity
Osteoporosis, diabetes, blood pressure, thyroid dysfunction
According to the JEPH authors: "[T]he Earth's negative potential can create a stable internal bioelectrical environment for the normal functioning of all body systems… the influx of free electrons absorbed into the body through direct contact with the Earth likely neutralize reactive oxygen species [ROS, a particularly strong source of inflammation in the body] and thereby reduce acute and chronic inflammation."
In other words, the free electron exchange of Earth energy into the human body can regulate human biological and physiological functions that cause pain, disease, inflammation and accelerated aging.
How Earthing Works
Exactly how being connected to the Earth's surface affects our bodies is surprisingly simple. Earthing as a way of life or as a wellness practice is free in every way. Simply take off your shoes and walk the Earth. This simple change in daily habit need only last 40-60 minutes at a time to effect positive changes on human health. Since water conducts electricity, walking near water, on wet grass or on sandy beaches has been found to be among the more powerful and effective ways of exchanging Earth electrons to help combat the positive charged oxidative stress in our bodies.
The barefoot doctors of traditional cultures had something going for them. They stayed connected to the Earth's surface to keep their intrinsic energy flowing, and thus their ability to heal others. Yet we can heal ourselves, too. And one way to begin that process, which is free and easy, is to dedicate an hour or so each day to grounding ourselves to the Earth's surface. Take off your shoes and walk or sit in a chair and rest your bare feet on the ground.
As the JEPH article states, "Emerging evidence shows that contact with the Earth may be a simple, natural, and yet profoundly effective environmental strategy against chronic stress, ANS dysfunction, inflammation, pain, poor sleep, disturbed HRV, hypercoagulable blood, and many common health disorders, including cardiovascular disease."
So what are you waiting for? Go take a walk.
Yours for the truth,
Bob Livingston
Editor, The Bob Livingston Letter®
