Part 2 (1/2)
Static electricity is nothing more than the spark or minor shock we all experience, for instance, when we touch a metal doork.n.o.b after walking across a carpeted room (see figure below) or slide across a car seat. No big deal.
But in some industries, it is a very big deal. Centuries ago, armed forces had to use static control measures to prevent ignition of gunpowder stores. Today, such measures are required in the petroleum industry, where a random spark can also cause an explosion. In today's electronic industry, electrostatic discharge (ESD) causes billions of dollars in damage annually by destroying highly sensitive electronic parts and microchips. ESD affects production yields, manufacturing costs, product quality, product reliability, and profitability.
A whole static control industry has emerged with products such as wristbands, shoes, and conductive flooring that are widely used by electronics makers. These measures are designed to discharge potentially destructive charges. (Figure 3-1) [image]
Figure 3-1: Finger to the doork.n.o.b, showing electrostatic discharge.
THE BEGINNING OF AN ADVENTURE.
Little did I know at the time, but my life was about to take a new and totally unexpected direction that would consume practically all my waking hours. It still continues to do so, a dozen years later.
It all started innocently with that one simple question: Could wearing rubber- or plastic-soled shoes, as we all do, and insulating ourselves from the ground, affect health? At the time I had a particular interest in health because earlier back surgeries had left me with constant back pain. I never slept well. I'd take Advil to go to bed, and in the morning I'd take Advil to get up and get through the day. I also took other pain medication, depending on how bad the pain was.
I knew that the body was conductive, that is, it conducts electricity. You don't have to know anything about electricity to understand that simple fact of life. Just go touch a doork.n.o.b on a very dry day and you can see or feel a spark every time. There's always a static charge on the body that builds up when you sit on fabric-covered furniture or walk on carpets.
An Amazing Experiment Sitting there watching the foot traffic I realized that most people, certainly in the industrialized world, had little or no connection to the ground. In other parts of the world, like in the tropics and in Asia, Africa, and South America, rural people walk barefoot and often sleep on the ground. They are grounded.
I decided to try to answer the question I had asked myself. I went back to the apartment I was renting and picked up my voltmeter. (A voltmeter is an instrument that measures the electrical potential differences between the Earth and any electrical object, or any two points in an electrical circuit.) I connected a 50-foot wire to it and ran the wire out the living room door and attached it to a simple ground rod I stuck in the Earth. Then I started walking around the house and measuring the electrical charges being created on my body from being insulated from the ground. It was easy to measure the static electricity, as it would vary with every step that I took. What I found most interesting was the amount of electromagnetic field (EMF) induced potential (in volts) on my body. When I walked toward a lamp, the voltage would go up. When I stepped back, the voltage went down. I tested this with all the electrical appliances in the living room and kitchen. The only appliances that did not create EMF voltage on my body were the refrigerator and my computer tower. They were grounded. From my background in the communications industry, this immediately made sense to me as we had to ground all of our electronic equipment to prevent electrical interference from EMFs.
Next I went to the bedroom, lay down on my bed, and registered the highest level of EMF voltage on my body. The bedroom was the most ”electrically active” area of the apartment. The bed was up against a wall full of hidden electrical wires. I wondered if these electric fields could be affecting my ability to fall asleep because sleep was always a big problem.
Now my curiosity was really stirred up. The next day I went to the hardware store and bought some metallized duct tape that is used for furnace ducting. I laid some of that tape out on the bed to form a crude kind of grid. I took an alligator clip and attached it to one end of the duct tape grid. I connected a wire to it, ran the wire out the window, and fastened it to another ground rod similar to the one that the voltmeter was connected to. I then lay down on the duct tape grid and noticed that the meter was now showing nearly zero, meaning that I was in sync, that is electrically equivalent, to lying directly on the ground outside. Like all the cable systems I had installed, I was physically grounded. I was lying there fooling around with the voltmeter and the next thing I knew it was morning. I had fallen asleep with the voltmeter on my chest. I hadn't needed a pill to fall asleep. I had slept soundly for the first time in years, and I had hardly moved at all during the night.
”Wow, this is fascinating,” I said to myself. Something interesting had happened, but I didn't really understand the meaning of it. So I repeated this experiment on myself the next night. I fell asleep without a pill. The same thing happened the next night and the next and the next.
Getting High Off the Ground After a few more days like this, I told a couple of friends about it and asked them if I could set up a similar kind of makes.h.i.+ft grid with metallic duct tape in their beds. That's how I started ”grounding” people. It was very innocent. One of the guys I grounded said to me, ”You know, something is going on here. My arthritis pain is way down.”
I didn't think too much about what he said, but a couple of days later I noticed that my own severe chronic pain had improved. I didn't need the pain pills anymore. I was also feeling much better overall.
I didn't understand anything about biology. I didn't understand how the nerves or muscles worked, but a concept was dawning. It occurred to me that there might be an a.n.a.logy between the human body and cable TV. Cable has hundreds of channels of information flowing through it. Similarly, the body has countless nerves, blood vessels, and other channels that conduct electrical signals. Maybe, I thought, when the body is grounded, it prevents the entry of ”noise”-environmental electrical interference-that could disturb the internal circuitry. I started to understand in a simple way that without Earth contact the body was always being charged by the electromagnetic fields and static electricity in the bedroom or office or wherever. When you're grounded, you don't have a charge. When I grounded myself and my friends, the charges were removed, and we all started sleeping better and feeling better.
After I grounded a half dozen or so people, consistently improving their sleep and reducing their pain, I started to get a real high. I became more and more excited. I came to the conclusion that I may have made a great discovery. I said to myself there's something very, very real here that needs to be further investigated.
I looked far and wide but didn't find much information on grounding and health. In 1999, the Internet wasn't nearly the information universe it is today. It was still fairly new and I didn't find anything there.
I checked out the excellent university medical libraries in Arizona but didn't come up with anything. There were a few anecdotal stories about Native Americans that were folklorish in nature. I was reminded of my younger days in Montana where many of my childhood friends were kids from the Indian reservation. I vividly remembered the time when the sister of one of my friends developed a bad case of scarlet fever. She was very sick. Their grandfather dug a pit in the ground and placed the girl in the pit. He built a fire, for warmth, near the pit, and sat next to it for a few days while the girl mostly slept. At the end of that time she was much better. I also remembered going to the home of one of my friends after school and hearing his mother tell him to remove his shoes. ”They will make you sick,” she said. This all seemed very odd to me at the time, but I remembered that most things the Native Americans did were different from what I was taught to be normal. I later realized that there was always a reason based on much greater knowledge of Nature than I was ever taught.
I found information about barefoot enthusiasts who have long championed the idea of going unshod because they feel better. Some enthusiasts have formed organizations, such as the worldwide Society for Barefoot Living that promotes the benefits of taking shoes and socks off and walking naturally on the Earth. Their experience, along with medical research in the field of biomechanics, strongly suggests that many foot and back problems are partly caused by stresses and strains created by wearing shoes that force us to stand and move in ways the human body was not designed for. One dramatic example of this appears to be the success of barefoot runners. The shod foot may explain the high injury frequency in North American runners, in contrast to the extremely low running-related injury frequency in barefoot populations. Researchers have found, for instance, less force on the joints, and less plantar fasciitis and s.h.i.+n splints. This, however, wasn't really the information I was looking for.
I did find considerable information about electrostatic discharge and how people working on computer components and electronic chips had to be grounded in order not to damage any of the components electrically. But that wasn't it either. I had to keep looking.
I also wanted to know whether there was any possibility that sleeping ”Earthed,” as I started to call grounding, could be harmful. Electronics experts rea.s.sured me that the concept was perfectly safe. If you think about it, being Earthed is the natural state of living systems throughout history. It is the separation from Earth that is unnatural.
Beyond these few things, however, I couldn't uncover any concrete information anywhere relating to the possible health effects due to loss of natural grounding.
CHAPTER 4.
Challenges of an Amateur Scientist Emotionally, I was on a roller coaster. I came to the conclusion that n.o.body-past or present-had researched the grounding/health connection. I couldn't find any relevant information. When I realized that n.o.body else knew about it, I felt it was like the best day in my life and that I had discovered something important with which to help society in a big way. I had found my mission. And I was the only one who knew anything about it.
The euphoria didn't last long. Maybe that's the way it is with discoveries. The self-doubt starts to creep in that comes from being alone with some important understanding or breakthrough before anybody accepts your idea.
In my case, anybody who I talked to thought I was nuts. n.o.body took me seriously. n.o.body knew anything. My enthusiasm would always be returned by blank stares of indifference or negative responses. Who said this was so? People wanted hard facts. They wanted science. I was just an ex-cable guy talking about how the ground could reduce your pain and let you sleep better. What did I know? What credentials did I have?
So I went quickly from the best day in my life to the worst day. I was feeling down in the dumps one day in 1999 as I was sitting and talking with one of the guys in Sedona whom I'd grounded. He was telling me how good he felt and how big the change was in his life. Hearing him say those words reignited a spark and lifted my spirits.
I said to him, ”I'm feeling good from this, too. Other people are telling me the same thing. This is real. I'm not making anything up. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. I've just got to find the answers.”
With new resolve, I packed up and drove to California in my RV, an amateur detective trying to solve a mystery. I figured I'd spend a few months out there and hopefully turn up some real expertise that I could tap into, some people to teach me more, or to figure out how to quantify what all this was about.
”STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND”
The first thing I did was try to interest sleep researchers in Southern California. I made phone calls. I knocked on doors. I introduced myself as a guy with an electrical background who has made some interesting observations about sleep and pain. I had seen dramatic results. I said I wanted to get some experts to validate my observations.
In pursuit of expertise, I felt like the hero of Robert Heinlein's old science fiction cla.s.sic, Stranger in a Strange Land. Stranger in a Strange Land. I felt I was on another planet. I didn't speak the language. They didn't speak mine. I felt I was on another planet. I didn't speak the language. They didn't speak mine.
Imagine how I felt walking into the office of a scientist or doctor, if I got that far. The office walls were full of awards and diplomas. These were individuals who had spent years becoming experts in their field. And here I was, with absolutely no formal training in the field. The experts used biological terms I never heard of. When I would turn the conversation to electrical concepts that I understood, like voltages, electric fields, grounding, and positive and negative charges in the body, they were about as clueless as I was hearing them talk about what they knew.
Communication was just one problem. Another was that most scientists or doctors had no desire to get involved or lend their name to anything out of left field like this, something with no scientific history or legitimacy.
One scientist sat back and laughed in my face. He asked if I expected him ”to believe that sticking a nail in the ground and connecting it to an iron bed pad and getting people to sleep on it will reduce pain.” He said he wouldn't believe it even if it were published in the New England Journal of Medicine. New England Journal of Medicine.
One doctor told me that even if what I was saying were true, why should he tell patients to take off their shoes and get well for free?
Another stated that I needed to provide him with all the published research related to grounding the body and he would then take a look at it. When I told him there was no research and that is why I was approaching him, he said to come back after someone substantiates the validity of grounding.
One amused researcher asked if I had any idea about what it takes to do research. He told me it would take five years and $5 million to put together a real scientific study and get it published, if it even got that far.
Most of the experts I spoke to were polite, but n.o.body took any interest. They sent me on my way and wished me good luck. That's when I decided to do the first study myself.
GETTING THE SCIENCE BALL ROLLING.
All wasn't lost though. At one university sleep clinic, I managed to talk to some friendly students. They said they would be willing to counsel me how to do a study. I didn't have a clue. One thing I had to figure out was how I could ground people for any length of time, long enough so that I could identify a measurable result. People are always moving around. They are busy.
So I went back to my own experience. The only way to do this, I realized, was when somebody was in bed, at night, when sleeping. That's the only time people are still. That seemed to be the most practical way to produce a measurement. So a bed pad of some sort seemed the best way to go. But I had to design something more substantial than the crude metallic duct tape grid I was using for myself and friends.
I contacted a company that makes protective equipment for the electronics industry. I had some special conductive fiber materials manufactured that I then bonded to 1-by-2-foot wool felt pads. The test subjects were to sleep directly on the pad placed on their bed. I fixed a metallic snap on each pad so I could connect it to a wire running to a ground rod stuck in the Earth outside the bedroom window. Now that I had a pad, I needed people for the experiment.
As you can imagine, no doctors would lend me patients for my little study. I was on my own. I got the inspiration for volunteers one day while getting my hair cut. I heard people in the salon talking about their health issues. I figured that a beauty salon could be a good source of volunteers. I convinced the woman who operated the salon to try grounding first. I set her up with a grounded bed pad. Her feedback was positive. She was sleeping better. She enthusiastically approached some of her clients to partic.i.p.ate in the study. I found others by leaving fliers in ten beauty shops in Ventura, California, where I was living at the time.
One of the people who stepped forward was a nurse. She was a great help, smoothing the way so I could enter the homes of strangers, explain the bed pads, actually place them in people's beds, and connect them to simple ground rods I stuck in the Earth outside their bedroom windows. What I was doing was not exactly your ordinary house call. In the end, I was able to enroll sixty people-thirty-eight women and twenty-two men-with sleep problems and a variety of joint and muscle pain.
Based on the advice I had received from the sleep clinic students, I divided the volunteers into two groups. Half slept on pads that were actually grounded. For comparison, the other half slept on bed pads that looked like they were connected to the ground rods, but I inserted a s.p.a.cer on the wire to block conduction. The volunteers did not know if they were actually connected or not. I was the only one who knew.
The nurse interacted with the people during the thirty days' experiment. Then she collected the data. We then wrote up the experiment as an anecdotal study and published it in 2000 on ESD, ESD, an online journal that provides articles, technical papers, news items, and book reviews on the subject of electrostatics. an online journal that provides articles, technical papers, news items, and book reviews on the subject of electrostatics.