Grounding for your Health!

I hope you have heard of grounding.  It is quite crucial to health, and yet almost unknown to most people, even those of the paleo persuasion.  It may sound ‘out there’ to you if you’ve never heard of it, but trust me, it is quite real, and can make a huge difference in your health, both physical and mental!

We are electrical creatures- our various bodily functions happen with electrical connections and stimulus.  Our hearts are functional only through electrical stimulus, as our all of our other circuitry in the body- especially, the brain is complicated memory circuit, and when off-kilter, it can go into dementia, Parkinson’s, and other mood and regulatory problems.  It is as if your brain is ‘shorting out’.

The main wake up call of most of the paleo/ancestral lifestyle is to bring us back to basics!  When we started making plastic and rubber soles to our footwear, we cut ourselves off from the grounding of contacting mother earth.  This, along with the fact that most of us started living unnatural, cut-off from nature kinds of jobs, sitting at climate controlled desks, barely moving throughout our days- well, we are just asking for trouble, evolutionarily speaking.

Just as we need to get vitamin D by getting out in the sun, and exercising daily, along with walking in Nature to keep our sanity and health- we need to be in regular contact with the earth, with the planet, by actually grounding ourselves to the actual soil itself.  Barefoot walking and running, on the earth, grass, or sand accomplishes this very well in Spring, Summer and Fall- but what about here in the north country, when snow and ice cover the ground?

It’s actually easy to fix this problem, even in Winter.  If you wear leather soled shoes, boots, or moccasins, you are grounded every time you are outside.  But such footwear is actually very uncommon nowadays, although you can find it if you look online for grounding or earthing shoes.  It tends to be pricey, though, and you definitely won’t find it at Wal-Mart!  

Here is an easy work around: today, for instance, I hiked around my woods with ski poles on the snow.  Although my shoes were not earthing shoes, every time a planted my ski poles, I was grounded- again and again and again!  And you can also ground yourself easily from time to time, simply by grasping a tree trunk.  Or a pole in the ground, whatever.  Or, if you have a concrete floored basement, walking barefoot on that can accomplish the same thing.  It’s not that hard, but it is super important, whatever anyone else tells you.

Most of humanity today, at least in western countries, are completely cut off from contact with the earth!  They wear plastic-soled shoes constantly, live in totally artificial man-made environments, and also eat grains and sugars almost exclusively, along with grain fed/sick animal products.  Even the nutrients to feed their food are from unnatural sources for these animals!

So first, eat real foods.  Hopefully, you know the drill- grass fed meats, wild caught seafood, and grass fed dairy along with non-GMO vegetables.  Most fruits should be organic, especially berries and apples, which are heavily sprayed and have skins that we consume.  Exclude all vegetable oils, sticking to coconut oil, Ghee, pastured butter and beef tallow and other animal fats from healthy animals.  Eliminate all grains, especially wheat!

Second, ground yourself, daily!  Go out into nature, even in the worst of weather, because just like good nutrition- you need grounding just as much.  And also, whenever you are inside your home- go barefoot!  I cannot express how important this is, for the health of your feet.  Oh, socks are fine, you just need to get the muscular/skeletal structure of the foot to be working on a daily basis.  Our balance, the arch of the foot, and our entire base of the human structure needs to have gentle exercise and stimulation regularly, or it inevitably starts to break down.

So go ahead.  Start to rebuild your health.  It all starts with a bare foot, from the ground up.