Sånn passe dumme spørsmål som du hadde funnet svar på om du virkelig hadde undret deg. Det er en kjent sak at vår klode utstråler energi - elektroner - negativt ladde partikler.

Plastikk er ikke et ledende material. Plastikk fins fordi det er enkelt å lage playstation-kontroller av det.
Det siste spørsmålet ditt måtte jeg virkelig puste dypt med magen en stund for å fordøye. Alt på en gang liksom. I vår vestlige verden jobber vi imot naturen, fordi penger fins. En vakker dag faller dette systemet, da noen har tjent til seg alle pengene som fins.

Til saken. Developmental and Cell Biology Department, University of California har gjort forskning:

Grounding is used as a safety precaution for electrical equipment and working with metal or other conductive material that might come into contact with electricity (from lightning or power lines, for example). The low resistance path to the ground means that any static electrical build up or any short circuit or lightning strike can be dumped harmlessly into the earth, rather than cause damage to the equipment or an operator.

Ober distorts this concept, claiming that the earth is a source of electrons that gently flow into the body curing whatever ails you. A further premise is that simply by wearing shoes with rubber soles we are so thoroughly isolated electrically that our bodies cannot reach their natural electrical homeostasis. Our bodies, according to Ober, must be craving electrons, but simply cannot get them from the environment without a special connection to the ground. I guess sitting, lying down, and touching objects in our environment are not enough. Those rubber soles are just too efficient at isolating us (according to Ober).

The fact that electrons flow to and from us through everyday contact is made apparent by static electricity. If you ever got a shock from touching a door nob, then you experienced the transfer of electrons.

Completely blowing the physics aside, Ober and his accomplices then go on to butcher biology. The earthing site claims, as in the quote above, that inflammation is caused by free radicals. This is simply not true. The relationship between free radicals and inflammation is a complex one. It is probably more true to say that inflammation (which is caused by specific cells and proteins produced in an inflammatory response) causes the production of free radicals, which are used to cause cell damage. Free radicals are part of the weapons the immune system uses to damage invading organisms, for example. This also causes damage to host tissue as a necessary byproduct. Abnormal inflammation, of course, can primarily cause tissue damage.

Well, not so much. First, the above study was published in none other than the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, which means that it was either not submitted to, or was rejected by, journals that have any sort of legitimate reputation. I didn’t purchase the article, but going by the abstract and by the descriptions of other studies in that PDF, all of these studies suffer from the same fatal flaws: No blinding at all, and no control groups at all.

Embedded at the top of the article is a video in which Dr. Mercola and Clint Ober try to explain how all of this works and then demonstrate why you need to buy their expensive grounding equipment. In one demonstration, Clint puts an electrode on Dr. Mercola and then displays a volt meter reading about 1 volt of potential on the doctor. Clint then has Dr. Mercola place his hand on the grounding pad, and the voltage goes to about 0.02 volts (which Clint even misreads and/or exaggerates as 2 thousandths instead of 2 hundredths). This is a total sham demonstration; if you look at the setup, the other wire of the volt meter is hooked up to the grounding pad. This would be like putting both wires of a volt meter on the same side of a battery – of course it is going to read zero.

If someone really feels they need extra electrons, just go ahead and shuffle your feet across a carpet for a minute or so. That little shock you get from touching the doorknob? That’s because you picked up a few too many electrons. You will pick up all the electrons you need from your normal interactions with the environment. You don’t need special treatments to protect you from this mythical “dirty” electricity. I imagine your health would be better if you simply stopped worrying about it. It would also help my health as I wouldn’t have to un-teach bad physics.