Part 13 (2/2)

”My sleep pattern changed as well. I recognized quickly that I was sleeping deeper. I also noticed something with my daughter that was quite interesting. She always used to fall asleep in a curled, fetal position. She would typically roll around the bed until she found the perfect curved position to sleep in. Then, at age two, when she started to sleep grounded, she fell asleep straight as a board-the very first night. It was like a magnet pulled her into the sheets, and she slept totally relaxed. She also functions at a level way above her age group, and I believe strongly that has a lot to do with sleeping grounded. She is four now with great concentration and does things that second graders do.

”At my office, we use grounded floor pads. There are computers, printers, telephones, and electronic equipment, which probably emit a lot of electromagnetic pollution. I myself used to get tired. Not after I began working grounded. I grounded the whole office and there has been a tremendous increase in productivity and in terms of being alert, not having computer drain, staying with the game, and getting it done.”

A PREGNANCY STORY.

Stephanie Okeafor, thirty-three, Paradise Valley, Arizona, personal trainer and microcurrent therapist: ”My husband and I have been sleeping grounded for more than five years, and sleeping better as a result. The most dramatic thing for me has been the effect on my pregnancy, and particularly the first trimester. This was my first pregnancy. ”My husband and I have been sleeping grounded for more than five years, and sleeping better as a result. The most dramatic thing for me has been the effect on my pregnancy, and particularly the first trimester. This was my first pregnancy.

”I am a very active person and follow a rigorous fitness routine. When I became pregnant, I didn't run as much, but I was still doing the same intensity of lifting, lunges, and cross-training activities. I realized quickly that I was okay in the moment doing these workouts, but afterward-within the next hour or so-I would feel pretty exhausted.

”I would go home and say okay, I'm pregnant, I'll take a nap. I need to take care of myself. But I never really needed a big nap. I would lie down on the grounding sheet, and after twenty minutes I would get up, feeling completely alert and rested, and ready to go.

Is There an Earthing-Pregnancy Connection?

Russell Whitten, D.C., forty, Santa Barbara, California, chiropractor: ”I started grounding patients back in 2000, and I had some great feedback from many of them. A few told me, however, they didn't know if it was working or not. I began to realize they no longer had pain and had forgotten they had it before, unless I mentioned it. ”I started grounding patients back in 2000, and I had some great feedback from many of them. A few told me, however, they didn't know if it was working or not. I began to realize they no longer had pain and had forgotten they had it before, unless I mentioned it.

”My patients have frequently told me that their dreams become more vivid when they start to sleep grounded and, in some cases, almost psychedelic-like. ”Perhaps the most amazing Earthing story I have witnessed involves my own wife, Joey. She had not been able to get pregnant during the eight years of her first marriage. Then, for the first six years of our relations.h.i.+p, she was still unable to conceive. From a medical standpoint, everything appeared normal, but it just never happened. In 2000, we started sleeping grounded, and within a month she became pregnant, for the first time, at the age of thirty-five.

”Perhaps the most amazing Earthing story I have witnessed involves my own wife, Joey. She had not been able to get pregnant during the eight years of her first marriage. Then, for the first six years of our relations.h.i.+p, she was still unable to conceive. From a medical standpoint, everything appeared normal, but it just never happened. In 2000, we started sleeping grounded, and within a month she became pregnant, for the first time, at the age of thirty-five.

”In my opinion, there was nothing else but grounding that could explain it. I had been giving her chiropractic adjustments for a couple of years at that point so that wasn't what made the difference.

”Within six months of meeting Clint Ober, I had grounded roughly fifty of my patients' beds. It was soon reported back to me that several of my patients who were in their forties had become pregnant after starting to sleep grounded. Each had had their children in their twenties and now years later were able to conceive again. It seemed like more than just a coincidence to me. I also heard that women's periods became less symptomatic and their hormonal systems seemed to normalize. There may be great potential here for the fertility industry.

”Joey gave birth in April 2001 to a boy. He was born at home on our grounded bed. We named him Tiger because my wife had had a vivid dream while pregnant that she had a tiger in her belly. We wanted to create a name that said something about him and his spirit.

”Tiger has slept grounded from the start and has had excellent health. As a toddler he was considerably taller than most kids his age, while both my wife and I are of average size. He was speaking much earlier than expected. By eighteen months, he had a vocabulary of a couple of hundred words and was making short sentences. It could be that the Earthing had something to do with all that as well.”

”I have had a very easy pregnancy compared to most women I've talked to. It's my first so I don't have anything for personal comparison. I haven't had any sickness at all. I've worked out the entire time. I've had excellent energy except for after the workouts. My friends comment about my energy and activity level. Also, it's been over 100 degrees every day for the last half of my pregnancy. People wonder how I'm doing so well with all the heat.

”I'm absolutely sure that being fit helps the situation. Conceiving when you're in good shape puts you ahead in the game compared to someone who starts out her pregnancy not in shape. However, I have a lot of friends who are in great shape, and they've had a hard time throughout their pregnancy. I know each pregnancy is different, but getting great sleep and grounding for an extra twenty minutes here and there during the day I'm sure is a big reason for my energy level.”

Note: Stephanie had a home birth in October 2009. The rest of her story was filled in by her husband Chike, a professional football player: ”It all went beautifully. Stephanie rocketed through it. She was very powerful. I was awestruck. Our midwife was very impressed. I was able to catch my daughter and cut the umbilical cord. She came out and her eyes were clear and alert. She started feeding pretty much right away. Stephanie is six foot and I am six foot five, and Anaya Louise, our daughter, weighed in at 10 pounds, 4 ounces. Mother and baby are doing very well. Both are staying grounded.”

CHAPTER 13.

The Sports Connection: Earthing in Action Biophysicist James Oschman tells the story of a friend who ran in a marathon. Part of the way through the race, he developed a very painful blister on his foot. Recalling the great barefoot runners from Africa, who have dominated the marathon-racing scene for years, he yanked off his shoes and pushed on without them. Not only was he able to finish the race without pain, he was also very surprised at the end to find that his blister was completely gone.

If that seems hard to believe, consider the most dramatic application of Earthing: the experience of recent victorious U.S.-sponsored teams in cycling's premier event, the Tour de France. The success of grounding in one of the most challenging racing compet.i.tions in the world is extra ordinary.

The grounding-cycling story starts in 2003, when Jeff Spencer, D.C., a prominent sports medicine specialist based in Pasadena, California, contacted Clint Ober. He had heard about Earthing from a San Diego doctor and was intrigued by the concept. Dr. Spencer, a former Olympic cyclist, works with elite athletes functioning at the highest level of performance and applies cutting-edge methods to support optimum health and enhance recovery from exertion and injury. This was his a.s.signment during five Tour de France compet.i.tions. During four of them, 2003 to 2005, and again in 2007, he utilized Earthing.

EARTHING AT THE TOUR DE FRANCE.

”I've had the good fortune of working with many athletes at the highest level in terms of getting them to the top of their game and keeping them there. You can't imagine what a challenge that is when the sports event is the Tour de France. My No. 1 job was to make sure that the riders showed up everyday, at the starting line, 100 percent mentally and physically ready for the rides of their lives. On the other side of that was to make sure that we had very aggressive recovery strategies so that they could survive this inhumane event called the Tour de France. In doing so, I had to develop as compressed a timeline for injury and full-body recovery as possible. The challenge gave me tremendous flexibility in putting together a 'tool kit' that would give us a compet.i.tive advantage. In the Tours that I worked, we lost only four riders-one to a broken arm, one to severe tendonitis, another to a broken arm, and the other to a broken hand. Otherwise, all the other riders finished, which is really unheard of in this sport.

”Le Tour Terrible”

The Tour de France is among the most brutal athletic events in the world-comparable to running three marathons a day for twenty-one straight days. Racers may climb as much as a total of 30,000 feet in a single day's stage. That's six miles straight up. The race covers 2,100 miles on the ground and ranges from sea level to 8,700 feet.

In July, when the race is run, the weather is very hot in France. The narrow asphalt roads over which the Tour is run start to crack, blister, and soften, making the going extremely treacherous. Falling on that kind of surface is like landing on a cheese grater. Cyclists suffer ma.s.sive abrasions affectionately known as ”road rash.”

The traffic around the racers as they go from stage to stage is intense. There are more than 170 cyclists racing in a very crowded pack. They are shadowed by a chaotic convoy of support vehicles carrying mechanics, spare bicycles and parts, as well as vehicles with Tour officials, media, and security personnel. The combination of cyclists, high speeds, narrow roads, cars, and motorcycles is a recipe for mishaps. Crashes are common and can cause serious physical trauma.

”As a doctor who has worked with some of the best of the best in the sports world, I've found that it's essential to never allow yourself to believe that what you did before is any guarantee of future success. So, by definition, I'm always looking for new innovations that will take me to the next level and give me that compet.i.tive edge over the compet.i.tion. I am continually remodeling my ultimate clinical 'tool box' so as to stay current with state-of-the-art equipment and methods.

”When I first heard about Earthing, it sounded very interesting to me. I had never heard of it before, but it sounded like something that might be useful for what I do. I contacted the developer of the technology (Clint Ober) and asked to meet with him. When we talked, it became clear to me that if Earthing did what he said it was supposed to do, it could give the Tour cyclists a tremendous advantage.

”Earthing wouldn't change anything I normally did. And all somebody had to do is lay down and go to sleep or relax like they would normally do. This would help them sleep and relax, so I was told. This was very appealing. I knew that when I would spend time outdoors with my feet in the sand or I'd walk at the beach with my feet close to the water, I would feel a lot better.

”But I first had to try the technology on myself. I was not willing to use anything for my patients that I didn't know worked from my own firsthand experience. For about five years, I had been suffering with the consequences of mercury poisoning. At one point, my health was quite debilitated. I had been receiving treatment for it and was improving gradually. I was getting better. But after grounding myself one night, I felt a significant improvement. When I awoke the next morning, I felt much better. I had more energy. I had had difficulty concentrating before, but now I had greater clarity of thinking. I had less pain. Less irritability. My body felt like it had been washed from inside out. After three or four nights of sleeping better and feeling better, I knew that this was something for real. I recognized that this is something that could have tremendous value not just for me, but also for my patients and the cyclists at the Tour de France.

”I was, to say the least, impressed. I asked Clint if he could create a prototype system for me to take and use at the Tour de France. The challenge is that the Tour is so difficult mentally and physically that the riders have a hard time sleeping. And if you don't sleep, you don't recover. If you don't recover, the body breaks down, the mind goes down, and you can unnecessarily get injured or sick, which is catastrophic for a top Tour effort.”

A Huge Difference ”Clint agreed and came up with a prototype system. It had a metallic snap at one end that connected to a wire that ran to an outside ground rod. Clint handmade all the wiring and taught me how to use the system. It was ready just in time for the 2003 Tour de France. And it made a huge difference. The severe mental and physical strain from daily compet.i.tion needs to be discharged from the body while the rider is relaxing and recovering, so we need technology available at night in order that the rider gets up the next morning fully recovered.

”I saw the same experiences among the riders that I had experienced myself. They slept much better. And that's a big deal in a compet.i.tion like this where cyclists have a very hard time sleeping because they are so over-stimulated from the Tour's intensity and, ironically, often overtired. When they can't rest and sleep enough, they can break down. When trying to sustain high performance at this level, team physicians always wonder how they can improve sleep and take advantage of the sleep downtime. So Earthing was like an answer to my prayers. The riders reported less mental tension and stress. They felt calmer. Their decision-making was good. Their vitality and morale were really high.”

Accelerated Healing ”We also applied Earthing, along with other treatments, to accelerate tissue repair and wound healing from injuries sustained during the compet.i.tion. The results were phenomenal. The cyclists recovered much faster.

”The most dramatic case involved a cyclist in the 2005 Tour who suffered severe lacerations to his upper right arm after cras.h.i.+ng through the rear window of a support car that had stopped abruptly (see Figure 13-1). He managed to make it to the finish line. He immediately received aggressive medical treatment and was taken to a local hospital for st.i.tches. When I saw him on the team bus right after that day's Tour stage, he had shock written all over his face. His jersey and riding shorts were b.l.o.o.d.y. His arm had been tightly bandaged to stop the bleeding. When the bandages were removed, you could actually see the tendons and bones through the torn flesh. It looked like somebody had chopped up his arm with a carving knife. Later at the hotel, we saw extensive st.i.tches in his upper arm, as well as his elbow, hand, and chin. He had a large purple bruise on his leg, as if someone had hit him with a lead pipe. The team had serious reservations about whether he could continue in the Tour because of the extent of his injuries. Everybody doubted he would be able return to compet.i.tion the next day. (Figure 13-1) [image]

Figure 13-1. Rapid wound healing. Overnight grounding accelerated the healing of this, and many other similar cycling wounds. (Photos courtesy of Jeff Spencer, D.C.) ”I asked for twelve hours-basically overnight-to try to help him heal enough to continue racing. I knew that Earthing could make a big difference. Everybody agreed it was worth a shot as long as he wasn't in danger of hurting himself further. So I applied multiple grounded electrodes to his arm and leg and he slept grounded that night, as he had throughout the compet.i.tion. When he awoke the next day, there wasn't nearly the pain, redness, soreness, or swelling he had the night before. He didn't seem nearly as bad off as would be normally expected. He felt up to going out that day and racing. Our high hopes were that he could continue, finish the day's ride, and get stronger and heal more each subsequent day. I took the patches off him and gave him additional care with other techniques. I taped up his bruised leg, and he was rebandaged, and off he went to race that day's stage. It turned out that he was indeed able to put in a full day's ride and perform his role for the team. The other cyclists were overjoyed. He ultimately finished the compet.i.tion and contributed to the team victory. To an outsider, his recovery was nothing less than miraculous.

”In my experience with Earthing, this kind of response is not surprising anymore. In many instances, I have seen an absence of what we regard as a normal inflammatory response. When individuals are grounded, injuries lack much-and I mean much-of the typical degree of pain and redness. Tissue repair is accelerated.

”At the end of the 2005 Tour, the team director asked me about the condition of the riders.

”'They're doing great,' I said.

”'What about tendonitis?' he asked. Cyclists have a high incidence of tendon inflammation in their legs because of the prolonged and intense strain they put themselves through.

”'It wasn't a problem,' I said.

”'Anybody sick?' he asked.

”'No, everybody's good,' I answered.

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