Feet first

Our feet have more nerve endings than any other part of our body, a fact that is also recognised by acupuncture.

Our feet have more nerve endings than any other part of our body- Kathryn Borg

According to traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), one of the most important acupuncture points (KI – kidney I) is located on the ball of the foot. It is the major entryway for the absorption of Earth Qi (chi), TCM’s equivalent of negative electrons.

From KI, chi moves up the body to the urinary bladder meridian and, from there, to the body’s vital organs, such as the heart, brain, lungs and liver.

If the bare foot is an important portal to health-giving electrons or chi, the shoe must be one of the unhealthiest of inventions. That was certainly the view of American chiropodist Samuel Shulman, who once declared that “Footgear is the greatest enemy of the human foot”.

He reached his conclusion after studying the health of those people in India and China who almost never wore shoes. As a result they never suffered the usual foot problems of the West and their gait was superior (J. Nat. Assoc. Chiropodists, 1949).

Being connected to the ground through bare feet has more health benefits than we realise. The report today is looking at “earthing” our bodies to improve our general health and was prompted by a “eureka” moment experience by a cable TV engineer.

Clinton Ober was sitting on a park bench when he observed that most people wore rubber-soled sports shoes or trainers. His train of thought went on to wonder whether these were contributing to the epidemic of chronic disease by preventing the wearer from “grounding” to the earth.

The body, which is a natural conductor of electricity and primarily made up of water and minerals, may benefit from the occasional stabilising of our electrical systems by grounding to the negative electrons on the earth’s surface. Ober’s train of thought was linked to his work, where any electrical appliance would require earthing if it was to function without interference.

As a result of this “eureka” moment, Ober, who was suffering from chronic back pain and needed medication to sleep and to wake him up, decided to ground his own bed by lacing it with electrical duct tape to create a rudimentary grid, he ran a wire out of the window and to a rod stuck in the ground outside. Lying on the bed, he knew that “like all the cable systems I had installed, I was grounded”.

The next morning he woke up after having slept soundly and without medication for the first time in years. He experienced a few more nights of undisturbed and drug-free sleep.

As a result he ‘grounded’ a friend who was experiencing arthritic pain. The friend reported back that his pain had almost disappeared. This was followed by six other friends who also reported an improvement to their health.

Ober tried to interest the medical profession in his discovery, but there was no interest, only amusement about ‘the cable guy’. Today, however, earthing has started to be adopted by alternative practitioners in the US and is championed by one eminent cardiologist, Stephen Sinatra, who has described earthing as the most significant health breakthrough in his 35 years of clinical practice.

Ober also collected case studies from people whose chronic conditions had been reversed by using earthing. Some of the conditions this practice helped were to reverse inflammation, reduce chronic pain, improve sleep, increase energy, lower stress, normalise the body’s biological rhythms, thin the blood and improve blood pressure, relieve muscle tension and headaches, lessens hormonal and menstrual symptoms, and reduce jet lag, among many other conditions.

Coincidentally, John Gray, author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, was introduced to an ‘earthed’ bed while he studied meditation in India. He slept on a bed sheet made with copper material which was connected to a copper rod outside, placed in the ground. On his return to the US, he set up his own bed in a similar fashion. This method of sleeping solved the pain he had been experiencing for some years in his shoulder.

There is a simpler way to earth our bodies. Taking off our shoes and place our bare feet on the ground. Ober recommends that we try to ‘earth’ with our bare feet for at least 30 minutes every day to see a health benefit.

Biophysicist James Oschman has developed his “living-matrix” model to explain how this happens. “Earthing (standing barefoot on grass or earth) harnesses the earth’s primordial energy and restores the body’s natural electrical state.

“Barefoot contact with the earth, and several touch and non-touch therapies, stimulate the migration of electrical charges to areas of the body where there is acute or chronic inflammation.”

Earthing either prevents ‘collateral damage’ to healthy tissues around an injury or allows electrons to replenish the body’s own charge. (J. Bodyw. Mov. Ther., 2009).

Electrons from the earth act as natural anti-inflammatory agents and neutralise positively charged free radicals.

Next Sunday we will continue to look at this subject, including how animals are affected, a range of earthing products which can be used and further study results.

kathryn@maltanet.net