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.

PJSC #70 Put Yourself Back in Contact with Mother Earth!

Thermography Images- left- INFLAMED.....Right- GROUNDED, little inflammation!!

PJSC #70
Put Yourself Back in Contact with Mother Earth!

Earthing, or grounding- connecting the body directly to the earth- is this a vital part of healthy living, or a strange scam?

I have been researching this idea, and testing it out on my own body, for quite some time.  I noticed when I began barefoot sprinting years ago that I really enjoyed it!  I would do my usual Sunday in-the-basement workout, with my chin ups, and dips, various sorts of self-resisted squats and leg raises and assorted ab exercises, various kinds of pushups, and several sets of kettlebell swings… then, as “dessert”, I would go outside and sprint for 50-100 yards or so, for maybe 5-10 sets of sprints.

It has gotten to where I really look forward to the feeling I get doing these- it’s like I’m little 8 year old Jay again, running with my friends and brothers around the yard, barefoot, just for the fun of it!  Remember how great it felt to tear around like this barefoot when you were a kid?  Well I’m here to tell you that it feels just as good at 60 as it did at 6- and the older you are the MORE you need it!

At first I chalked this feeling up to just the barefoot benefits:  my feet were strengthened by running and walking as they were meant to- not confined in little “coffins” of stiff shoes…and that is definitely a  big part of it!  The benefits of using your feet as Nature intended are legion- the long atrophy caused by constant wearing of shoes results, eventually, in not only foot pain, but it travels up the chain of the body, and causes knee, ankle, hip, and back pain as well!

You really do need to start going around barefoot, at least inside your house!  Socks are fine- they don’t “confine” and degrade your foot like shoes do.  But, is there even MORE benefit to actually being barefoot- outside- ON THE GROUND?

I believe that there is, and it has to do with the electrical charge of the earth, with which we are meant to be in contact with!

We are electrical beings; we need to be grounded! Like everything in the ancestral, or paleo lifestyle, the more we examine the many ways in which our civilization has gradually and relentlessly set us further and further apart from nature, giving us many comforts and conveniences, sure- but also made us lose contact with those things that made us what we are- things like real, God-made food!  Ample, restful sleep!  A tribal community and family that we interacted with on a daily basis!   Pure water and air, an unpolluted environment! Daily stimulation to our muscles, and nearly constant movement!

And now, it appears: Contact with the electrical charge of the Earth itself!  That contact, which our forebears had in abundance, has been largely lost through the constant wearing of shoes, and the separation of most of us totally from the land and the soil!
There is a book, and plenty of information about this topic at www.earthing.com  You can certainly go there and check it out, and make your own decision.  They sell grounding “products”, like mats that you can sleep on, and when you are selling a product like that, somehow your research seems a little, well, shady…

But I really think they are onto something, and you can try it out on yourself, for free!

When the weather warms up, SOON I hope, go outside and walk around in your yard, or the park, or wherever- barefoot!  Sit outside with your bare feet on the ground- even on cement you will be grounded!  Get some natural sun each day as well- skip the sunscreen, and let your body make vitamin D the way God and nature intended… I’m sure there are other benefits to this we just have not even discovered yet!

See if, like me and many others, you don’t start feeling, and sleeping better!

The theory is that grounding, or earthing your body, at least some of the time, is another piece in the paleo puzzle of improving how you look, feel, and perform, by putting things back into our lives that never should have been drifted away from.  Real food, real sleep, real movement, real environment, and real contact with Mother Earth!

They all go together, and we should reintroduce them into our lives for our own good!

- and Hey- could you give me a review on Stitcher?  I'd sure appreciate it dude!
Just go to this link- stitcher review link  Thank You Tribesmember!!
J