Is earthing nonsense? An honest answer from a seller

Anyone searching whether earthing is a scam deserves a straight answer. Especially from a shop that sells earthing products, because we have an interest in you thinking yes. Keep that in mind for everything below.

This piece is not going to try to talk you into anything. It goes through what is settled about earthing, what is not, where the research is weak, and where this market genuinely does cheat people. By the end you will know enough to decide for yourself, including if that decision is no.

First, the part that is not in dispute

An earthing sheet is a piece of cotton with a grid of silver thread running through it, a cable and a plug. That plug uses only the earth pin of the socket, not the live wire. Plug it in and you are connected to the building's earth through a 100,000 ohm resistor.

That is not theory. It is electrical engineering of the dullest kind, and you can check it with a twenty euro multimeter.

What happens next is not contested either. Indoors your body picks up voltage from the wiring in your walls, from the lamp beside your bed, from your phone charger. Measure that voltage on your skin and you read a few volts. Connect yourself to earth and it falls away. In measurements of this, the value drops by a factor of twenty to ninety.

In the babies studied by Passi and colleagues in 2017, published in Neonatology, skin voltage fell from 415 to 19 millivolts. That is not an interpretation, that is a reading off a voltmeter.

The principle has also been applied industrially for decades. In factories where chips and circuit boards are made, everyone wears a wrist strap with a lead to earth, because static charge on a human body destroys sensitive electronics. There is a standard behind it, IEC 61340. Same resistor in the lead, same idea.

So: the product physically does what it says it does. Anyone claiming an earthing sheet does nothing at all has the physics wrong. That is not where the argument is.

Where the argument actually is

The question is not whether that voltage falls away. The question is whether it gets you anything.

Here is the honest answer: that has not been demonstrated firmly enough. Research exists, it is published in scientific journals, and it points the same way. But it is small research, and it has problems you need to know about before you build anything on it.

This is what is on the table:

• Ghaly and Teplitz had twelve people sleep earthed for eight weeks in 2004. Their cortisol dropped at night and the release moved closer to the natural 24-hour rhythm. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.
• Chevalier and colleagues measured in 2013, in ten participants after two hours of earthing, an average 2.7 times higher charge on the red blood cells, which makes them clump together less. Same journal.
• Chevalier had forty people sit for an hour in 2015, half genuinely earthed and half sham earthed, with nobody knowing who had which. Only in the genuinely earthed group did measured mood improve significantly. Psychological Reports.
• Passi and colleagues saw in 2017, in twenty-six premature babies, the voltage drop plus a 67 percent rise in vagal tone. Neonatology.

In our blog on the literature we go through these studies at more length, with references to the original publications so you can read them yourself.

The four objections you can make to that research

And that we have ourselves.

It is small. Twelve people. Ten. Forty. Twenty-six babies. Those are numbers at which chance can play a large role. In drug research these are the sizes of a first exploration, not of a conclusion.

It comes from a small corner. A good share of the publications carry the same handful of names. When a research field rests largely on one group, little disagreement is organised. Independent laboratories have barely repeated this work, and repetition by others is exactly what science runs on.

There is money in it. Part of the research was funded by companies that sell earthing products, or carried out by people with an interest in those products. That does not automatically make the results wrong, but it is precisely the kind of interest that we know from other research does colour outcomes.

Blinding is difficult. A switched-off mat feels the same as a switched-on one, so keeping participants blind is possible. But the researchers often do know, and with soft outcomes like mood or sleep quality that leaks through. The 2015 study was clean on this. Most of the others were not.

On top of that there is no long-term research. Everything on the table covers hours to weeks. What earthing does after five years, nobody knows, because it has never been measured.

Anyone who looks at this and says "the evidence is thin" is right. That is a correct reading of the literature.

So is it just placebo?

Partly, almost certainly, and that is no disgrace. Placebo works strongly on exactly these outcomes: sleep, rest, how you feel in the morning. Someone who spends a hundred euros and expects something from it lies down differently.

But there are two things placebo does not explain.

The first is the voltage measurement. Those numbers come from a voltmeter, not from a questionnaire. What a participant thinks or hopes changes nothing about what the instrument shows. With the babies in 2017 expectation played no part at all, because a newborn has no opinion about earthing.

The second is the 2015 study, in which nobody knew who had a working mat. If it had been pure expectation, both groups should have scored the same. They did not. With forty participants that is not proof, but it is an indication you do not wipe away with placebo.

The honest summary: there is more going on than expectation alone, and at the same time there is too little to know how much more.

Where this market really does cheat people

Earthing has become popular, and that attracts supply nobody thought about. If you are looking for the scam, this is where it sits.

• Sheets where the grid pattern is printed rather than woven. It looks like silver thread and it conducts nowhere. This is the clearest case of plain fraud, and it is measurable in ten seconds.
• Plugs without a resistor, or plugs wired to all three contacts of the socket instead of the earth alone. The latter is not only pointless but unsafe.
• Cure claims. Anyone saying earthing heals inflammation, slows cancer or gets you off your medication is selling something that has been demonstrated nowhere. It is also not allowed, and it happens plenty.
• Silver percentages as a selling point. Ten percent, fifty percent. It reads as better. Earthing works by equalising voltage and almost no current flows in the process, so once the resistance is low enough, more silver adds nothing measurable. What it does give is spare capacity when threads wear out after years. The number says something about the margin, not about whether it works.
• Silence about wear. Silver oxidises. With normal use and washing, conductivity drops noticeably after two to three years. A seller who does not tell you that is hoping you only notice in two years' time.

What we watch for when making these, and how you can check that with any seller, is in what to look for in an earthing product.

Why does it cost money if the earth is free

That is a fair objection and it has a dull answer: it does not have to cost money.

Standing barefoot on grass is free and works better than any product, because that is direct contact with moist ground. Anyone with a garden who spends time in it daily needs nothing from us. We would rather say that out loud than let you work it out yourself.

What you buy from us is the option to do it indoors, during the eight hours you are already lying down asleep. In northern Europe it is too cold, too wet or too dark to stand outside barefoot for a large part of the year, and most people have no garden where they could. That is the whole offer. Nothing more.

What we do and do not claim

We say: our products make a demonstrable electrical connection to earth, and you can measure that. Every unit is measured before it ships.

We do not say that earthing treats, cures or prevents any illness. Our products are not medical devices and do not replace treatment. If something is wrong with you, see a doctor.

We also do not say you will feel anything. Some people notice a difference after a few nights, others never notice anything. The latter is normal and says nothing in itself about whether the connection is there. More on that in what you can feel and expect.

And if someone tells you earthing protects you from radiation from phone masts or Wi-Fi, that is not right. Earthing lowers the voltage that the electric field in your house puts on your body. With the wireless signals around you it does nothing. We worked that out separately in earthing and EMF: what it does and what it does not.

Measure it yourself, including on us

The nice thing about this product is that you do not have to believe the seller. You need a multimeter and two minutes.

Measurement one, does the fabric conduct. Set the meter to resistance or to continuity. Hold one probe on the press stud and the other on the silver thread in the furthest corner. The meter should give a low value or beep. If it reads OL or infinite, the grid is broken and the sheet makes no connection, however pretty the pattern looks.

Measurement two, is the resistor in there. Take the plug out of the socket. Set the meter to resistance on the 200 kΩ range. Hold one probe on the conductive surface and the other on the round earth pin of the plug. You should read around 100 kΩ. If you read zero, that safety resistor is not in there.

Measurement three, for the sceptics. Set your multimeter to AC voltage. Hold the black probe on the earth of a socket and grip the red probe between thumb and forefinger. You read a few volts. Now lie down on your earthing sheet or put your hand on it, and look again. That is the whole effect, live, on your own body. If it does not drop, something is wrong.

This is also why you get thirty days to change your mind with us, and why you may use the product normally in that time. If you want to run the full test: order one from us and the cheapest one you can find online, measure them both, wash them both five times and measure again. That is a fairer comparison than any product page.

What you can reasonably take from this

If you already thought earthing was nonsense, there is probably nothing here that changes your mind, and that is fine. The evidence for health effects is thin, comes from a small corner and is partly paid for by parties with an interest. Anyone who says no on those grounds is reasoning cleanly.

If you thought earthing was a miracle cure, that is not right either. There is no study showing it cures a condition, and anyone claiming so is selling you something other than what they say.

What lies in between is this. The electrical connection is real and measurable. The effect on your body voltage is real and measurable. What that means for your health in the long run, nobody knows exactly. There are indications, and it goes no further.

For a hundred euros and thirty days to change your mind you can try that out yourself, with a measurement you do not have to believe because you take it yourself. That is the whole calculation. We think it is worth it, but then we do sell it.

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