My New #1 Hack For Zapping Inflammation, Increasing Deep Sleep & Recovering Faster - Earthing (The Most Important Health Discovery Ever?)

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast.

But I realized the next time I die, I wanted to be happy with myself. I had done more or my life was worth more, had more value. And dawned on me that it's not reducing EMF that's causing these benefits. What's causing the benefits was connecting to the earth alone. When you touch the earth, every cell in your body, and specifically the red blood cells, become negatively charged, equal with.

The health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Oh, hello everybody. This is a podcast about woo woo stuff. Again, not that I've ever done that before. It's actually not that woo. It's about electricity. You'll see. You'll see. So I recently read this book called Earthing. And I've always been aware that getting outside barefoot and hugging trees and playing around on rocks and jumping in the ocean and walking barefoot on sand help with the electrical potential of the human body. But not in as profound and as well researched the way as I really thought until I went through this book called Earthing. At the same time that I was reading it, I was gone and I told my kids, hey, I'm heading out of town, I'm gonna read this book. And the book also has almost like a documentary that covers a lot of the same things that are in the book. And the documentary is called the Earthing Movie. And so my kids watched the movie while I was out of town and I read the book and we came back and I swear they haven't put on their shoes since I got back home because they're so into this idea that the earth can heal their bodies. So they already went barefoot quite a bit, but now they're rarely wearing their shoes. I'm traveling everywhere with my grounding mat now because I have this portable grounding mat that today's guest sent me, and I'm actually standing on one that's in my office right now as well. And this book just absolutely blew my mind when it comes to identifying what I think is one of the best solutions for chronic inflammation, for better sleep, for deeper sleep levels, for recovery, and a whole lot more. The author is named Clint Ober. And obviously I had to get Clint on the show because this really is the best book that I've read that covers the topic. He has a pretty interesting history that began with cable TV in Billings, Montana, actually, not far from where I'm at right now in Spokane, Washington. And he'll tell his story to us here as we dive in. But he also owns a company that does a lot of research into a lot of these grounding materials and grounding mats and things you can sleep on, even like patches you can put on your body. So what I'm going to do is link to all of Clint's books, to this movie, to his company, everything. If you just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com earthing that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Earthing so, Clint, welcome to the show, man.

Well, thanks, Ben. I appreciate being given the opportunity to visit and explain a little bit about earthing.

Oh, yeah. I'm really excited about this just because I coach some clients and have some folks who hire me to help them out with their sleep and their health and everything else. And I've just got almost all of them now buying these grounding mats and grounding shoes and getting outside barefoot even more than I used to after going through your book, because I just wasn't aware how deep the research goes on this stuff. So. So how'd you kind of get into this whole idea of earthing and grounding, which I'm sure, you know, for people who don't know what that is? Don't worry, we'll be explaining it to you.

Right. Well, it, you know, I'm 75, and I started this research when I was 54. And. But what happened? Well, first of all, I'll go back to, you know, I grew up in Montana, and I spent about 30 years in the communications industry in television, cable television. And in that industry, you have to ground everything to the earth in order to maintain electrical stability and prevent charge. It's like in the old days when you had television, you had all these lines and all the static and all of these problems and interference, electrical interference. And so when we built the cable systems, the signals were riding on internal cable. And so they had a shield where everything was grounded. The shield had to be grounded in order to prevent static charges. But what it did is it ended up being what allows you to have perfect data today, beating your computer, your TV set and the sound and so on. So now that's where it all started. But my background is I grew up on a, you know, kind of a rural environment, ranch environment, cows, cattle, whatever. And when I was quite young, I was my best friends were Native American. So I have kind of an earthy background. But I remember one of the things that my granddad told me and it's kind of carried me all the way through is when, when I was very young we had cattle and we had to babysit them. And if you. If you had. So my job as a youngster was, you know, I was probably 12 or younger, was to ride out and, you know, just sit there with the cows. And if you see one bawling or some. One that has some not acting like the rest of the cows, and then you take them out, you take them out of the herd, put them over into a pen, and then you go ride the pasture and make sure the grass is not too short, make sure there's no noxious weed, check the water, make sure that the alkalinity is okay, ride upstream and make sure there's not a dead animal upstream contaminating the water. And the theory was very simple. If the. If the pasture is pristine, then the cows will be healthy and happy. If we let them eat, you know, noxious weeds or whatever, and they get sick or something, interfere with the pasture, then we have to call the vet, call the banker, toss them the keys, and we're out of here. Because there's no way you can survive financially in that industry if you don't take care of the environment that your cattle are raised. So I grew up with that prevention concept of, you know, don't look at the symptom, look at the. What caused this, you know, what caused. So that's. So that's ingrained in me. But anyhow, I spent about 30 years in the communications industry, and one day I started getting sick, very sick. And I'd been to the dentist and had a root canal done. And about a month later, I just kept getting sicker and sicker. And then all of a sudden, I started turning yellow. And so I kept going back to the doc every week, and they said they would run more tests and every. And then they would. You know, this testing process went on for about a month, and finally I got so sick, they couldn't even get out of bed. So they took me to the hospital.

So what were you sick with exactly?

Well, at the time, they didn't know, but I had a root canal prior to. And so there's a whole movie about.

That that I think recently got banned from Netflix. What is it? Root cause movie?

Yeah, I haven't seen that. But what happened to me was that the root canal had an infection in it, and it settled. You know, a lot of people, it will attack the heart of the lung, but mine went in and settled in the liver. And at the time, nobody knew. I didn't know, and nobody knew. And so I went to the emergency room. And they put me in. It took eight hours to get in. But they put me in a CAT scan shortly after I arrived. And because they couldn't figure out what was wrong. And then they found that the liver was. There was a huge abscess in my liver. In my liver. Liver was shutting down, Everything was shutting down. And so the next morning the doc went in to see it or the doc came in, he says, I got some good news and bad news. The good news is we found out what was wrong and you know about the abscess and everything. They actually drained it while I was in there. They stuck a big like, seemed like a 12 inch needle in me and actually drained the abscess while I was in the CAT scan.

I can't imagine how I done with liver. I've had it done with an elbow abscess and it's pretty nasty.

Yeah. So anyhow, then they said that. Then the bad news was that I was only 49 at the time. And they said that, you know, I was young enough to get a new liver, don't have an alcohol history or anything. But the problem was I didn't have enough time. So they suggested I go home and get my house in order. And I was on every IV you can think of at the time. The nurses would come once a day and fix all that stuff up. But anyhow, a couple, three or four days later there was a doc call. He said they have a young surgeon in this was Swedish Medical center in Denver. And he said that they would like to do some experimental surgery and see how much blood liver they can cut out and see if there was a chance that I could survive because there was history, this was 25 years ago. So things were a little different back then. So anyhow, I went in and had no choice and went through the surgery. And surprisingly I survived it. And it took me about six months maybe to be able to walk a mile because if you don't have liver, you don't have energy. But in about six months, the liver grew back 100% in size. So it's not the same liver because your liver has like six different little pockets on it. That's all one big thing. But they had to cut out several. So one of the lobes grew and replaced, grew in size and replaced what was taken out. So anyhow, so I survived. But anyhow, in that process when you realize that this could be the end, all of a sudden, everything takes on a little different view, I guess. But anyhow, one day when I was recovering and well into My recovery. I woke up one morning and I looked doors or out the window, and I just. Everything would change. My whole being changed. I was different. And I couldn't go back to work. I owned a big company, had 500 employees.

And this was like the communications Internet company.

Yes, it was a cable television service company. And so anyhow, I looked out this window one day, and all of a sudden everything was kind of more electrical, more vibrant. I mean, I had seen colors that I hadn't remembered ever seeing. And all of a sudden, I looked around the room and I noticed because I'd done okay. And I had about everything you can imagine. I had lots of art, lots of nice things. And I lived on a mountaintop in Evergreen, Colorado, Cedar Vale and sea to Denver. And it was kind of playing King of the mountain. 49 years old and the average male counterpart. And I won. But anyhow, the point was I realized that I was going to, you know, that I could have died then. And I just went through this process of, you know, it's kind of a cathartic experience. And I realized that I didn't own any of these things that I had accumulated and collected and spent my whole life taken care of. And the other main thing that I went through was, you know, when you get near death, life gets very personal. And it's between. It's been between you and your maker. It's not about anybody else or anything else. But I was kind of disappointed in myself that I hadn't done more with my life other than accumulate things and so on, even though I had done a lot of nice things entrepreneurially. But I realized the next time I die, I wanted to be happy with myself, that I had done more or my life was worth more or had more value. It was a very personal thing. It wasn't about what anybody else thought. It was just about myself. And so what I did is I called my kids and I told them to come and get anything they wanted in the house, any of my personal belongings that they would have taken had I died. And they all thought I was nuts. And in fact, they even called one of the docs and indicated that I needed to a psychiatrist because I was acting strange. But anyhow, I told him, I said, it's very simple. I have to do this. So I let go of everything. I sold all my assets, gave things away, sold things. And I ended up with nothing left except two and a half suitcases of personal items, my clothing. And I went and bought a small rv and I set out to just to get away from the city, get away from everybody and everything. And I ended up spending a lot of times in national parks. And again, I had this call calling. I mean, it was the call of nature, whatever you want to. It was just a calling, something speaking to me. So I spent the next three or four years just driving around the United States, spending a lot of time in national parks as long as they'd let me. And then I ended up down in Key Largo, Florida, and I was on the bayside. And every night it was absolutely spectacular because you could see the sunset, the manatees and the sharks and all the. You could see all the sea life out there. And so anyhow. But I was standing there one night and I had this feeling come over me that. Because I'd been out there for about three years and I had this feeling coming over me that I had to go do something. But I remember going into the RV that night and I had a yellow tablet and I wrote on it, becoming opposite charge. And it was like something coming. I didn't know where it was coming from or anything. It was just feelings. And to me, an opposite charge would be going out and stirring people up, getting them charged up. And then the second thing I wrote was, status quo is the enemy. I had not a clue, so didn't think anything about it. But I went headed back to the west coast. And through a series of events, I ended up stopping one night in Sedona, Arizona. And I just woke up that morning and looked outside and here was this beautiful park like setting. I said, I'm not leaving here, I'm going to stay here. So I spent about a year and a half, two years there, maybe a little longer. And that's where the story really begins. Because I was playing with a computer one day and it kept crashing. And I knew it was static electricity. If you have static charger in your body and you touch an ungrounded computer back in those days, you know, the computer would lock up and crash.

You could touch an ungrounded computer.

Yes, this is in the old days. The computers now are much more, much better. But anyhow, this is back in 98, so anyhow, I had to put a piece of tape across the top of my computer or my desk. Metal tape, copper tape. And then I connected it to the electrical ground. And then the electrical ground wasn't working, so I had to fix it. So I was in kind of this mode of grounding in order to get rid of the static. And then later I went out and I was outdoors And Sedona is a tourist town, lots of people. But this tour bus pulled up and everybody got out, walked out. And for some reason I just was fixated with their shoes because everybody had on like these brand new white athletic shoes and like they'd been to a, you know, a mall and they were on sale because everybody seemed to have the same pair. And there was a, I think it was a tour group from Japan. And it was just kind of odd. And I don't know why, but I just asked myself, I wonder if there's a consequence of us no longer being naturally grounded. Because back when I was a kid or you know, before 1960, we were all barefoot or we had leather sole shoes. Then when we invented the plastics in the 60s, then everybody started wearing these plastic soled shoes. And I really didn't know, I had no clue. It was just an intuitive question. So I went home that night, grabbed a voltmeter and I went and tested, grounded it to the dirt or to the earth.

And you knew how to use all that stuff just from your experience in the communications industry?

Oh yeah, no, it was second nature to me. So I went and I was playing around and static, you can see that you have a huge static charge on your body every time you lift your foot off the floor in a home where you have carpets, if you have rubber soled shoes on. And static is, we've built static all the time and we don't recognize it unless it's really dry and you touch, it's over 3 or 4,000 volts. Then you touch a doorknob, you'll see the spark. So that was very high everywhere, but it wasn't quite in the 3 or 4000. It was like 2 to 3000 volt range all the time, depending on whether you're moving or not or whether you're sitting on the couch and getting up and so on. But what was more intriguing was that I set it to the 60 Hz AC and just started looking at it. And I noticed that and I totally familiar with emi, totally familiar with electromagnetic fields because in the communications industry you have to shield everything from what we call EMI electromagnetic interference. And that's noise to us. And in order to have a nice clean signal. And so I said, you know, there's something going on here because I don't think it's probably normal to have all this charge on the body. So I went and I went to the hardware store and bought a roll of metal duct tape about 2 or 3 inches wide like you would use for Heating ducts and so on. And I laid it across my bed, up and down, and then I connected it to a wire, threw it out the window, connected it to a ground rod, threw a second wire out, connected to a ground rod, connected that one to the meter so I could test and see, make sure that it was.

Ground with the ground rod. The idea behind the ground rod being that that is the way that we ground just about everything, Whether it's a copper rod from a, you know, going into home or. Or the type of ground rod technique that you're using, or even. I mean, like some of these mats you send me, they actually come with rods I can put outside into moist ground if I don't want to plug them into an outlet that's grounded. But essentially all that rod is doing is it's, it's doing just as, as the name implies, grounding it to the earth.

Yeah, it's. It's like, for instance, if you plug a lamp into a socket, you're connecting to the electrical. I mean, the 60 Hz electrical. If you connect a wire to the little ground port, then you're connecting to the earth, and the earth has a negative surf, so you are conducting. So it's like an extension cord to the earth. So anyhow, I laid down on the bed, and surely as soon as I set the meter up, then I could take the alligator clip, put it on the metal foil tape, the reading went to zero. Where before it was like 4 or 5 volts of EMF charge, the static was all over the place. But as soon as you ground yourself, it all goes to zero.

So this was the reading on your body, like you were measuring your own static electricity and it was falling to zero when you were, when you were actually grounded?

Yes. If you pull up the sheets on a dry day in the summer and you're looking, turn the lights off, and you turned up, you can actually see the sparks sometimes in your bed. Most people don't pay attention to it because there's enough humidity, you don't notice it. But anyhow, yeah, we had static charge on the body, and then there was an EMF charge. I mean, the electromagnetic field charge. And it wasn't, you know, these are noise. I mean, the static electricity is thousands of volts, but the EMF is just background noise type stuff. And I thought to myself, I said, well. And then as soon as I grounded myself, it went to zero. So. But what was most interesting was the first night. Next thing I knew, I woke up in the morning and the meter was laying beside me and I hadn't turned, I hadn't moved all night. The significance of that was, is I was a 45 year, 54 year old cowboy. I had every kind of pain in your body, skiing injuries, tennis injuries, dumb things like riding in rodeos when I was a kid. And you know, anything you could have wrong with you, I probably had it. So I was pretty in a lot of pain, a lot of issues. And I lived in, you know, Advil and black coffee. Those are the things that help, help cope.

That's all you need, baby, just Advil and black coffee.

I mean, that's right.

I throw a little ribeye steak in there, but yeah, that's all you need to be happy.

Yeah, exactly. So, but anyhow, I woke up and I said, you know, there's something here because I slept better. And so I had a couple of friends and I conned them into, let me ground you, let me see what you think of this thing. And so I kept, every night I slept better. And then the guys, my friends, they were neighbor type friends and they said, you know, surely there's something to this. And then one of them asked me, says, do you think there's anything, any possibility this could have anything to do with arthritis? Because my arthritis is going down. And I said, no, I don't think so. And I didn't know. So I started researching everything I could, everywhere I could to find out, you know, about grounding the body to reduce pain and to improve sleep. And there was absolutely nothing. The only thing that was out there was if you're doing surgery, you have to ground the body before they open the body up. And in order to prevent a cardio event, yeah, there was grounding, mental grounding. You know, in the yoga and bodywork industry, everybody gets mentally grounded, but that's being centered. Mentally, it's not physically grounded. And so I kept playing with it and playing with it and then one day I just said, you know, I went down to University of Arizona and looked in the medical university libraries there and tried to find out nothing. So I went out to, I said, there's something here, I got to get to the bottom of it. So I went to California, went to UCLA first because I figured, well, if anybody could figure this out, they could. But they pretty much laughed me off campus and said I was nuts to think that you could ground the body and would do anything. And so I ended up doing my own study with a group of a couple of guys that I found at that university who were doing doctoral studies. They said, Help me design the study. And then I found a nurse lady that kind of helped pull together. And we took 60 people. 30 of them were grounded, 30 of them were blinded. And the results were phenomenal. We had significant improvement in sleep, significant reduction of pain, and then all kinds of other things like PMS issues disappeared, TMJ disappeared. Just all kinds of issues. And so I said, okay, there's something there. But again, so I had enough evidence that I could give it to somebody and say, here, let's figure this out. And I went back to the sleep industry. Nobody wanted to talk to me there, especially the CPAP industry. That's a different world. And then. So I ended up meeting an anesthesiologist in San Diego, and he said, I'd be more than happy to do a study because he says, I don't think there's anything to what you're doing. But he said, I'd be happy to prove you wr. And I said, fine, let's do it. And we did. And that was on the first study. What we found was. And what he wanted to measure was cortisol and saliva cortisol. And so we measured, took little cotton swabs, things, and they chewed them every four hours for 24 hours, put them in vials, and then froze them and then shipped them to a lab. And when it came back, the results were profound. I mean, before, everybody's cortisol profiles were all over the place. And as soon as they grounded, everybody's cortisol synchronized. I think that's in the book. It shows graphs of it.

What do you mean their cortisol synchronized when they were all grounded?

Well, before the younger ladies had elevated cortisol, let's say at midnight, or like, if you don't sleep at night, if you're not sleeping at night, then you have elevated cortisol, and it's produced by your fight or flight system because you're thinking about something, you're stressed, you know something's going on, and so the cortisol becomes elevated. So. And then once they were grounded, then you have to look at the charts. But once they were grounded at midnight, then the cortisol all quieted way down and everybody synchronized, meaning they were in a similar range. Where before. Where before some of them were elevated cortisol. Those were the younger people who are high anxiety. And then the older ladies were. They had exhausted adrenals.

Okay. So folks who had kind of sluggish cortisol levels, they seem to get a slight uptick while grounded, while the people with the high cortisol seem to see a downregulation of cortisol almost similar to like an adaptogenic effect.

Exactly. And yeah, it was really, really profound. And there's a chart in the book that explains it. And what was interesting was at 4:00am, and this is, this is really significant, at 4:00am, cortisol spikes, you know, it starts climbing all the way until about 6am and it's a dramatic curve. And before it was kind of all over the place. But once they were grounded, what was important was that 4 o' clock everybody's cortisol went up. And that's what gives you the energy to get out of bed in the morning and hit the day if you don't, if you're dragging yourself out of bed, your cortisol is low or you have adrenal fatigue and so on. But the main thing is there was no daylight at 4 o' clock in the morning. There was no daylight, there was no noise, there was no other environment cueing, you know, where everybody would say, normally biorhythms are affected by light and by all these things. So we knew that the earth is the only thing that changes at 4:00 clock in the morning or about that time. That's when daylights are coming back around the sun and the earth is spinning. So the amplitude of Earth's electric field is starting to climb. So anyhow, that was a really neat finding. And so that study led to a host of other studies. But I have to go back to the other study. The first study, what was really, really interesting in that study was I remember one day we had two people that we were grinding out of 60 and I didn't know who they were or anything prior to going to them. I was just. They were selected subjects. And so I went out and what I was to do, I had to go and measure the electric fields in their home, in the bedroom where they were sleeping. And then I would put a pad in the bed under the sheet, and then I would have them lay on it or sit on it. Then I would remeasure the electric field.

Was the pad an actual grounding pad?

Yeah, it was kind of from like, it was a conductive cloth that I had bonded to a, a very thin layer of felt.

Okay, and did you have a cable from that going into an outlet, or do you have a cable from that going out to a ground rod?

At that time I was running it all out to ground rods because I was measuring against pure earth. And what was interesting was I went to one home. And they had really high electric fields, EMF in the home. And this lady had arthritis, all kinds of issues. And so she couldn't even hold the meter. And I thought, well, we're going to get really good results from this subject. And then I went to another home across town and this was an older gentleman, similar, had all the arthritic and all of the health issues, cardiovascular, everything you could think wrong with him. But what was significant is he had no EMF voltage in his home whatsoever. He was in the bedroom, he had a concrete floor and a bed with metal bed frames touching the floor. And he didn't have any lamps or anything near the bed. And it was an adobe wall behind him, so there was no wiring in it. So when he laid in bed, it was just static, nothing. And I thought, wow, this is really going to terrible because this person's not going to experience any results because there's no electric. Because I thought back then it was just eliminating the electric charge and the static charge on the body was producing the results because I didn't really know. But then a month later when the results came in, they both had the same results. Here's a high EMF and here's no emf. But yet they both improved sleep, significant reductions in pain, significant reductions in their arthritic situations, color, energy, everything was better. And I looked at it and I said, there's something wrong here because this can't be. So I immediately set out to start testing environments with emf and no emf, magnetic field, no magnetic field, and so on. And then it dawned on me. It was the Earth itself that was connecting to the Earth and equalizing the body with the Earth. In order for that to happen, you either had electrons leave the body or electrons from the earth come to the body and hold it at Earth potential. And then I dawned on me that it's not the EMF that's causing these reducing EMF that's causing these benefits. What's causing the benefits was connecting to the Earth alone. So that's how this whole body of work began. And that's when I immediately shifted and started looking at grounding the body. And I knew that the earth had a negative charge.

Yeah, I definitely want you to explain to people how this would actually work. Like so far, you know, we've just heard about some little experiments that you did, but I'm sure people are wondering what was happening, like what's going on here that would actually cause someone being grounded to the earth via a rod and a cable and a mat. Or being outside barefoot or whatever the case may be. Like, what's actually going on?

Well, it's like static electricity. If you have static electricity on your body and you touch something that's grounded, then there'll be an arc between you and that object. And it can be electrons either coming from the earth or from that grounded object to your body. Or if it's a negative charge, then it can be electrons coming from your body to the grounded object. And so what's happening is you're equalizing the charge. So. Yeah, how do I explain this? I could go on for hours on the studies and everything.

I mean, we have time. I don't think you necessarily need to delve into the studies. I'd rather hear you explain the actual science of negative ions and how that's affecting the body when we're in some way grounded.

Right. So kind of what I have to tell what the story. Meeting Steven Sinatra first, because that'll help this all make sense. Steven Sinatra is a cardiologist.

Yeah, I know Stephen.

Okay. So, yeah, he's a good guy, and he was a friendly guy back then. I had a hard time with docs because they didn't understand anything about electrical. And they knew everything about, you know, biology, but they didn't understand the electrical side of biology. And so, anyhow, I met with this doctor that. The anesthesiologist, Dr. Galley. We got these results, and he said he didn't really understand them. He says they're obvious. So he wanted to meet with. He knew this Dr. Sinatra. And so he said, let's go meet with him and see what he has to say about it. And as soon as I started to explain it and tell Steve that we're. All we have to do is ground the body and we reduce pain. And he said, this is back in 202, 201. He said, if you're reducing pain, he says what you're doing is reducing inflammation because you can't have pain in your body unless you have chronic inflammation. And he fell in love with the concept, and he got involved with me, and he helped with studies, and he's been involved ever since. But anyhow, at that time, the word inflammation meant that, you know, you twisted an ankle and it ballooned up, and it was red and sore and hot. And when I started doing research on inflammation, then I found that inflammation is primarily caused from neutrophils. If you have a damaged tissue, a damaged cell, like a cut or an injury or whatever. So neutrophil comes over, and it encapsulates the damaged cell or the pathogen, and it releases reactive oxygen reaction oxygen molecules. And these molecules, the word reactive means that is short an electron. And as soon as I heard that word, I said, okay, now I know what's going on because the immune system is electrical. I was looking at it. The immune system worked not as an acid, but as an electrical, because the cells, you know, everything is, you know, with just about electrons. I realized that what's happening here is the neutrophils are releasing these reactive oxygen, which are positively charged molecules, and they go and they rip an electron from the pathogen and destroy its structure. And that's how. And that's the end of a pathogen. Right.

And that's how an oxygen free radical would actually be beneficial for reducing, for reducing pathen. Well, I won't even try to spit out pathogenicity. How a free radical would actually destroy pathogen is via that action. But it could have the same effect on an actual cell within the human body. Like a beneficial cell.

Yeah, that's fundamentally how the immune system works. And so what's missing here, what happened was, and it took us a long time to figure all these things out. In 1960, we invented plastics and we put them on the soles of our shoes. And so everybody is insulated from the earth. We're no longer naturally grounded. But when you take your shoes off and you stand barefoot on the earth, the earth is negative, about 20 to 50 millivolts. And what negative means is there's an abundance of free electrons that can move and do work, move and reduce charge. And this is a natural phenomena. And that's why we ground everything electrical to the earth in order to maintain electrical stability. Because these free electrons from the earth, they come up the wire, just like your refrigerator or your computer, if it's grounded.

And this is kind of weird. From what I understand in the book, the way that the earth actually gets charged with free electrons is via lightning, Is that correct?

Well, that's part of it. You have it streaming from the sun, you know.

Okay, so sunlight would also be a way that, that the earth is charged with, with negative ions. Lightning. Is there anything else like wind or temperature fluctuations or things like that?

Well, it's all relative, but it's basically what happens is during the day, the sun at noon, I mean it's heating. That's the hottest time of the day. And so it's exciting electrons on the earth and that's the highest level. And so from noon till 2 o', clock, then you have all this evaporation and so this is water molecules. They're positive, but anyhow, so they're evaporating. So you're getting this condensation, I mean, or this evaporation. Then at 2 o', clock, as the temperature starts to cool in the atmosphere, then there's an imbalance in charge. The negative Earth is pushing on the electrons in the cloud. The negative electrons are going to the top, the positive electrons are coming to the bottom. And so then all of a sudden you have. Once there's an equal amount of, there's a welling up of electrons on the surface of the Earth, you can't see any of this, but it's happening. And so as soon as there's enough electrons on the Earth to equalize the opposite amount of positive charge in the clouds, then you'll have lightning. So the electrons, if the lightning is under the clouds, it's coming up from the Earth to the cloud and neutralizing the positive charge in the bottom of the cloud. If it's coming out the top of the cloud, it's negative electrons coming back to the ear. So anyhow, you have all of this energy recharging and replenishing the negative surface charge of the Earth. But it's a little more complicated than that. But you have this global electrical circuit and there's electrons going up and coming down all the time and it's just keeping the Earth energized. But the lightning plays a big role because at two o', clock, wherever you're on the Earth, it's two o'. Clock. Especially in the equatorial regions, there's constant lightning. And it's that, yeah, that electrical charge, because the Earth is turning.

So even if you're not in the specific locale where there is a lightning storm, you would still like hundreds or thousands of miles away still be getting exposed to the negative ions from a lightning storm at 2pm in an equatorial location.

Yeah, because one the electrons, if you can think of it this way, think of the electrical surface charge of the Earth as little blue, you know, marbles or something. Miniature micro. Miniature marbles. And there's a layer of these blue electrons laying everywhere on the Earth. So it can be discharged and charged, it moves around, it goes up and down depending on the time of day and all of this kind of stuff. But there is forever this ground potential. These free electrons are everywhere on the Earth. The ocean, they're equal throughout the ocean. But anyhow, and then electrical travels at the speed of light. So, you know, all these things. I mean, the electrons don't Necessarily travel at that. But anyhow, there's an equalization that takes place around the whole globe. So it's always. There is always ground. The only time there would not be a lot of ground would be in the middle of a desert if you're standing on sand that is very, very dry.

So would this mean, and I don't want to throw you off too much, but would this mean that if you did want to go outside barefoot and get as many benefits as possible from being outside barefoot, you'd either A, go out at 2pm or B, go out after, or as soon as possible, like after a lightning storm at whatever time of day it happens to be where you live.

Well, I personally don't think it matters all that much relative to the body, but have you ever noticed after a rainstorm, you go out and you breathe?

Feels amazing.

You feel so much better. That's because there's so much negative charge in the atmosphere.

Yeah, I mean, that or like swimming in the ocean, those are the two times I feel the most charged up.

Exactly. So, you know, for an athlete or somebody. Sure, absolutely. But for the average person, no, the Earth has a. See, here's the whole concept. Right here is if the body has a negative surface charge, and I do have to get into the blood study somewhere down the road, but if the body has a negative surface charge, meaning that your body is negative, it's got 20 millivolts of free electrons that can move and reduce charge. It means just like your refrigerator, your computer, or anything else electrical, you cannot have charge in a grounded object. You cannot have inflammation inflamed in a grounded object. That's the one that's hard for people to get their mind around. So what I'm saying is what happens with the neutrophil? I mean, we have to go back to the neutrophil here a little bit. For instance, if you put rubber shoes on or live in a home and say, a carpet and sleep in a foam bed, then you're above the earth, you're away from the earth. And so now your immune system is going to keep working 247 because you're breathing pathogens. You know, you work out, you're building up inflammation in your body. You got all these things going on. But if you don't, the minutrophils are going to go in there and continuously, and microphages and so on, they're going to continuously destroy pathogens and damaged cells and all the other things they do. So if you don't have enough electrons in Your body. When the neutrophil does its job, you know the oxidative burst to destroy that pathogen, if there's a few left over after the pathogens are gone, then within 5, 6, 10 nanoseconds, those reactive molecules are going to steal an electron from something. And the only thing in the environment is probably a healthy cell. So it'll steal an electron from the healthy cell, damage it. Then the immune system says, okay, there's more damage. So it sends another neutrophil to clean that, and then there's more collateral damage, continuous collateral damage. And then all of a sudden, you have what they call fire or chronic inflammation, where the body is actually oxidizing itself.

So basically where we're at right now is that you started to observe all these different health effects on sleep, on inflammation, on cognitive function, on recovery, et cetera. And we know that the natural frequencies of the earth, these subatomic particles, these free electrons, are the way that this is actually happening. Those electrons have a negative charge. We are actually getting exposed to that negative charge when we are either directly in conductive touch with the surface of the earth by doing something like walking outside barefoot, or when we are bringing that negative charge to us through a grounding rod or a grounded outlet and having something plugged into that, like a mat or a patch, that attaches to our body that keeps us grounded or earthed, even if we're, say, inside.

Yes. Okay, got it. But the mechanism of how that charge works is the key. And that's what Stephen, Dr. Sinatra and Gaitan Chevalier worked on for a long time. Because we knew what was happening, but we couldn't quite understand how it was happening. Just putting a negative charge on the box. So how did these electrons get everywhere? What happens? And so one day we. I love it when Stephen tells the story, but one day we were in Essex, Connecticut, and he had like 13 people come to a meeting, and most of them were cardiologists or high profile medical people and all medical doctors. And he drew their blood and looked at the blood before. And everybody, including himself, everybody had kind of thick, sticky blood. Rouleaux formation.

It's called Rouleaux formation.

Yeah.

When blood is clotting like that.

Yes. You know, it's just. It stacks up like poker chips or something. And then some were better than others, but they all had some form of. They didn't have this pretty beautiful blood that you would think a cardiologist would have. And hope Steve doesn't kill me for this, but anyhow, so then what we did is we drew blood. We grounded them for 30 to 40 minutes, each one of them. All we did was put patches on the bottom of their feet and connect them to a ground rod driven into the earth or to the electrical ground of the building. And then we drew the blood again. They weren't giving any food, nobody was eating anything, and there was no water or anything like that. But everybody's blood separated perfectly. There was distance between all of the red blood cells. So that asked the question, how did that happen? So then Gaetan Chevalier, who is an expert in this, we figured out a way to measure the electrical surface charge on red blood cells. And what we found was. And all of this information, all these studies are available at the Earthing Institute, dude. But what we found is we increased the negative surface charge on the blood cells, red blood cells, by a factor of 2.7. It's huge.

And that was just via grounding.

Just via grounding. And what happened was.

And what were you using to do that?

We just. Well, we just put patches on the bottom of the feet and grounded them to. What happens is the red blood cells, when they become more negatively charged, I mean, I think every cell in the body becomes negatively charged. So there's. Every cell has more electron surface. So now these reactive oxygen species from neutrophils or microphages, whatever, they can steal an electron or two from a cell and not hurt it. But what happens is now these red blood cells, they repel each other like the little negative magnets. You put them together and they push each other apart. So all the blood cells are pushing each other apart now. And everybody. Their face turns pink after they're grounded for 20, 30 minutes, their fingers, everything, the color of the. Everybody's color comes up. So now what happens is when the red blood cells, because now they can go single file into the capillaries and oxygenate the tissue and then bring out the debris and so on. So the mechanism of action, and this is the discovery of grounding, is that when you touch the Earth, every cell in your body, and specifically the red blood cells, become negatively charged, equal with the Earth. It's like, here's a red blood cell, big round one. Here's a big round planet, and they both have the same electrical surface charge. So that's nature. That's a phenomena of nature. But it's also why we ground everything to the Earth in order to put that charge on it, in order to prevent harm from an electrical event. So that's, you know, Stephen and Gaetan, I credit with that. And that is the discovery of the. Because. And that's why we wrote on the book. You know, it's the most important health discovery ever. All you gotta do is go stand barefoot on the earth and it'll normalize your blood viscosity and clean up the inflammation in your body.

Well, what I found interesting in the book was this stuff isn't. It's not necessarily new. I mean, I know you titled the book the most important health discovery ever, but can you explain what our ancestors knew about Earth and grounding? Because it seems to me that there's pretty good evidence that this isn't the first time humans have become aware of the power being connected to the earth.

Yeah. You have to realize that when we wrote the book, we knew about certain cultures, you know, like prana and things like that. We tied that together. But when we wrote the book, nobody. When we would go to look and research, we couldn't find anything. But after we wrote the book, then we started getting lots of reports, like in Germany, France and all, there were people 100 years ago that are doing the same thing that we're doing. You know, they knew that there was a benefit, but they didn't know the science behind it. So all we did was put the science behind it. It's not new, but you can go back thousands of years to Hinduism, all of that.

Yeah, well, Chinese medicine, one of the main kidney points is actually in the bottom of the feet. And the way they treat that is by connecting the feet to the earth. I think it's translated to growing a root. But that's actually one of the healing methods used in traditional Chinese medicine, particularly for the kidney function.

No, absolutely. We know all this now, and we tied it all together. And so, yeah, this goes way back, way before there was any knowledge whatsoever. But there was another piece of it. People were all barefoot, and they lived on the earth, and so they didn't need to know about grounding because they were all automatically grounded.

Well, I don't know if people were always barefoot. I mean, I would imagine that in a realm of thorns and sharp rocks and needing to walk long distances without getting chafing on the bottom of the feet, that people used covers or surfaces on the bottom of the feet. But they were conductive, right?

Yes, they were the animal skins. But I think the average person, like, if you go to any of the indigenous cultures, even when I grew up, you know, all the kids were grounded. I mean, were barefoot. We were barefoot. All the Native Americans, we were all barefoot. They had moccasins and they would wear them when it was a pretty appropriate. Or when they needed to. But day to day and moment to moment, we were barefoot.

Yeah.

And so I think. So in that state, you, you, you have health.

Well, that's actually something I wanted to ask you about is, you know, conductivity of surfaces. Because people will ask me, well, if I'm on, if I'm walking barefoot on asphalt, let's say I'm jet lagged out, you know, And I think grounding everything is fantastic for jet lag, by the way. It's one of the first things I do when I get off a plane. If I'm at a hotel, I go out to the backyard grass behind the hotel and make some calls barefoot. Or I'll go for a walk to the grocery store with my, you know, just holding my shoes in my hand. And you know, sometimes I'm on concrete or asphalt, sometimes I'm on grass. But when it comes to conductivity of the surface, you're on, does it matter? I mean, can you compare and contrast like dirt versus grass versus cement or concrete or asphalt?

Yeah, let me see if I can. The best way to answer that. Technically, technically, concrete is fine. Dirt, grass is fine. Asphalt is not necessarily. And it's not a good conductor of ground. So it's really concrete or earth or grass.

What about three things? A, trees, because those are connected to the ground. Curious what trees would do if you were just like. Because there's a lot of people who are into like hugging trees for health. What would rocks do? Like if you were rock climbing. And then also. What about water? So what about those three things?

Yeah, water. I mean, you know, rocks. If you're climbing on rocks, you're grounded. If you're standing on rocks, even though you can't measure it very well, there's enough moisture and there's enough conductivity in those that anything outdoors you're, you're, you're pretty well grounded. Water is, makes it quicker, easier. But water itself is not conductive, which is kind of interesting. But so, yeah, just barefoot grass, dirt and concrete and rocks.

Now, what about salt water, like the ocean? Because it was my understanding that if you jump in the ocean that you are getting some of the effects of negative ion exposure.

Yeah, you're perfectly grounded. You can't get more perfectly grounded than jumping in the ocean.

Okay. So it needs to be saltwater water.

Yeah. Now a lake is a little different because a lake, if it has a lot of mineral, it's going to be fairly conductive. But Some lakes don't, and so they're less conductive. You know, distilled water is not conductive. It's the mineral in the water that makes it conductive. That's why I always encourage drinking mineral water, I mean, spring water, because it's got a natural amount of minerals that our bodies are used to getting that way. But anyway, anyhow, did I answer that question?

Yeah, yeah, I think you got it. And. Oh, wait, did you say, you said trees are grounded as well. Feel like climbing a tree?

It's a different phenomena. Certain trees, if you can feel the tree, feel the branch or feel the trunk and it feels cool, then it's grounding. But if it's got a lot of bark on it, you're not really grounding electrically. I mean, electron wise. What you're doing is, is anything alive on this planet, every human being, every bug, every tree, every bird, everything emits an electromagnetic field. You know, some people call it auras and whatever and so on, but we all emit these electric fields. The tree has an electric field. So if you walk underneath of a tree or hug a tree, then your electric field and its electric field are going to couple up, they're going to become one. The bigger of the two is going to have a resonant frequency. Like the tree is going to be resonating at natural earth frequency where if you have shoes on, you're not. You're resonating with environmental frequencies and so on.

What about these shoes? And I actually want to get your opinion on this because, like I have some sandals that are called Earth runner sandals that have like a carbon plug built into the bottom of them. I know there's another company called Plugs that makes like grounding or earthing shoes. Shoes. If you, if you somehow figure out a way to get metal in the bottom of your shoe or copper like a lot of these companies use. Do you think that's efficient? Have you looked into that at all or seen any research on it?

Well, I've done a lot of research on shoes. In fact, I made up a nice black rubber flip flop like the Havaianas, and I put a, like a one inch plug in it. And you know, I developed this carbon plug plug. And then I went to a longevity conference and I did this for David Wolf and we went to a longevity conference that he had in Costa Mesa. And I think we ordered a container. There was like 16,000. We sold them all out in just a few weeks. And then we ordered another container. But in the process, everybody kept complaining about, well, you know, I want a different color. I want some bling. I want this. I want different sizes and whatever. And I said, excuse me, folks, I'm not in the shoe business. I don't want to be in the shoe business. So I walked away from the shoe. But I told everybody else, here's how you do it. Go do it. You know. And I've also worked with Nike and various other people or people from Nike and so on. And it's interesting, the shoe industry, they say, you know, well, you know, this may be true and all of these things, but we're not going to make any grounded shoes until people come running into our store and say, we want a grounded shoe, then we're going to make them.

Yeah, well, I notice even on Amazon, like Amazon sells, like a grounding shoe strap, where you can just take any shoe, like a Nike or rubber shoe or anything, and wrap this strap around it and apparently it grounds the shoe. I haven't, I haven't yet tested that or mess around with them at all. But, but have you seen those?

Yeah, that's from the electrostatic discharge industry.

Yeah. Called. Called the, called the earthling.

Yeah. I, you know, there's all kinds of people doing all kinds of things out there. I encourage all of it. Not that all of it works, but. But if it doesn't work, it'll fade away. If it does work, then people will grab onto it and bring it about. But in the ESD industry, if you are a visitor to a factory where they make chips or software or electrical components or you're going into a clean room, they will make you put one of the straps in your shoe so that you don't have any static charge on your body when you're in that environment. So that's an old, old technique. People who work in the gas line, in gasoline industry, dynam industry, you have to have grounded shoes or you have to have a grounded shoe device of some kind. And so that's. That works. I mean, there's no question about it now. They don't last very long. It's a problem. It may only last a day or an hour or some. May last weeks. I would like to work on that, but I can't because my footwork is focused on the research, the science, getting the books out and getting the movies out. And there's millions of people that want to be in the shoe business. I encourage them to do it because the most important thing you can do in this world today is ground these shoes. So these kids, you know, because all of our kids are sick today. I mean, diabetes. Almost 40% of them can be diagnosed with diabetes. Diabetes is an inflammation related health disorder. You can't have it if you get grounded and stay grounded.

Yeah, not my kids. They're barefoot almost all the time. Unless we go to the grocery store. They literally, like, they're out building their tree fort right now with no nail guns. Barefoot. Maybe not the safest thing, but that's just the way they roll. And they've been doing even more since they watched this documentary on earthing. And you've got a lot of the science and you've got a lot of the research in your book. But of course I don't want to talk about stuff. People just go read in the book. Which is fantastic, by the way, and people do need to read it. But I did have another question for you, and that's how long do you need to do this? I mean, can you just go outside, touch the ground for 60 seconds in the morning, you soak up all the negative ions and you're good to go. Or do you need a certain amount of, of time in a grounded or an earth state?

No, you need a certain amount of time. I mean, there's a lot of people out there. Go touch a leaf, go do this, go do whatever. It's all kind of craziness. But you have to first of all think in nature, we were always grounded. We always lived in a grounded environment. To give you an idea, let me put it in perspective. In 1960, if you went to a medical doctor or Practitioner. Practitioner. 90% of the visits were for infectious disease, childbirth and acute injury. Today, 90% of the visits to a practitioner for an inflammation related health disorder, an autoimmune disease, something is stressing the body sufficient. The immune system can't maintain health. And 10% for infectious disease and so on or less. So we've had a dramatic shift in, in our health and everything that we got, supposedly better water, better food, better whatever, that's all questionable and I'm not going to get into that argument. So in nature, I mean, before 1960, as kids, we were always grounded and there were no such thing as sick kids when I was young. I mean, some kids might have some asthma and things like that, but that's primarily when they were indoors. When they would go outdoors or jump in a swimming pool, the asthma would disappear. So what I'm trying to say is it's like the animals in the wild. They don't have any of these issues. So humans, your immune system works 24 hours a day. The body is a capacitor. I mean, so you are creating radicals in your body at all times. A lot of the metabolic processes, lots of other things going on. The food you eat, the air you breathe. So on innate you would be grounded 24, 7 and you could not have inflammation in your body. You will have the inflammatory burst, you know, the oxidation. But that is a natural process and that's a very short term process, but the chronic inflammation. So in order to get grounded, if you have pain in your body, you need to stay grounded until the pain disappears, because it will. If you have. Let me tell you another story. I'm trying to find ways to get this across. If you're young, your body is a capacitor. You've got lots of resources. You can go long and hard until you're about 27. That's when the body starts crashing.

Well, are you saying the electrical potential of the human body is going to change as you age?

No, you just have better resources. I mean, the body, it's hard to hurt the body before age 27. Again, I don't know how to explain this.

Yeah, well, that's a host of things. That's endocrine function, that's mitochondrial density, that's a lack of time for toxins or metals to build up. I mean, there's a lot of things at play there.

That's what I mean, there's a lot of things there. But let me give you an example. Like the people I have worked the most with are lupus and Ms. And related, those related family of disorders. You can take, take a woman who has ms, that's neutrophils, microphages, oxidizing the myelin sheath that covers the nerves. And you can see there, you know, I mean, anybody's been around anybody's ms, so. But when I ground somebody, if I take a patch, an electrode patch, put it in the palm of their hand and connect it to the earth via the electrical ground or the ground rod, then I can honestly look at that woman, say you no longer have Ms. And she may have had it for 10 years. I said from now on you no longer have Ms. What you have is you have damage now that was created by the Ms. But we put out the fire as soon as we put the patch on the body, then the body becomes flooded with free electrons. And then it stops that oxidative process. It stops the neutrophils from oxidizing, oxidizing the myeloids sheath. So now, so what we found over the years, I can ground somebody with Ms. During sleep for eight hours, and she gets up in the morning, 8 o', clock, 9 o', clock, and she can go for a couple hours and then the pain will start coming back. So then eventually we started grounding them for like 16 hours a day with patches or bands or whatever, and then they could make it through until they went back to bed that night. And. But so it's like if you go ungrounded for 12 hours and you go grounded for 12 hours, you kind of got an equalization there. But the more grounded you are, the more you put out the fire of inflammation and then the more healing can occur.

Okay, so so basically it's like the more the better. But what would the minimum effective dose.

Be until the pain stops?

What if you're not in pain? What if you just. What if you're just going after health or longevity? I, I mean, like, are you going to see a change in negative ion potential by touching the ground for 60 seconds? Or are we talking about like a necessary time of at least 10 minutes or something like that?

I'll let you answer this. How many, how long does it take the blood to circulate?

Like one. One beat of the heart for the entire body?

No, the complete circulation of the blood in the body. I don't know. I think it's like 22 minutes or something like that. All right, so if you want to really get your blood charged up and because your body does act as a capacity capacitor and you will hold that charge, but you need to be grounded for probably, I would say, 30 minutes. Okay. And then, so what's happened is you put the fire out first of all, then you got healing mechanisms are kicking in. And, and then, so, but at the same time, you're building up that store of electrons on the red blood cells and every other cell in the body. So then when you disconnect or put your shoes back on, you're going to be able to go for quite a while. A while.

Okay.

All right, a few hours. But then you're going to get fatigued and run down and your color is going to change. That's a signal to get grounded again.

Now, now you sent me a couple of these grounding mats. Like, I'm standing on one right now while we're talking. I think it's called the everything mat that, that just plugs into the wall or can be run outside and, and put via grounding rod into the ground. And then I also have one that I'm now Traveling with that's like a grounding or an earthing mat that I can put next to my bed. But it comes with like a testing cable or like a testing device that you plug into the outlet to ensure that the outlet is grounded before you plug in the mat. Now, how common is it for an outlet to be ungrounded for people who are like buying a grounding mat and plugging this into an outlet in their home? I mean, isn't it required for most homes to have to be grounded for an outlet to be grounded?

Most homes that are solid, they have to have ground in the bathrooms, in the kitchens. Now, homes built before 19, you know, it's state by state, city by city. But homes built before 1960, that era, a lot of them do not have ground. There was no need to have ground. They didn't use it. We didn't have all the electrical type devices we have now. So a lot of those homes don't have a ground. And oft times, what happens is they remodel those homes and they'll go in and put in new outlets. But there's no ground wire in the back of the. I mean, in the system. So they. It looks like there's a grounded outlet, but when you stick the ground in, there's no. There's. It doesn't register as ground because there is no ground wire connected to the outlet. So if you have that situation, then you have to buy. Use a ground rod or have an electrician come and he'll drill a hole through the wall and put a dedicated ground rod into that outlet that you're going use it.

Okay. And so you plug it into any outlet that's grounded or you run it through the wall. And it looks like, I think all the mats you sent me came with both options. But the other question I have for you is you have this website, your website's ultimate longevity. And I'll link to that if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com earthing. I'll link to that. But I mean, you can buy grounding mats on Amazon. Why wouldn't somebody just go grab one of these on Amazon Prime? Is there any difference between the technology or anything like that that you're using? I mean, are all grounding or earthing mats created equal or how does that work?

Well, they're not created equal, I can assure you.

And I'm not throwing you a softball here. Like, I actually, I don't know, I'm just curious.

Yeah, no, what it is. As soon as we started marketing these Products. And by the way, you have to realize these products came into being by accident when we were doing our studies. Everybody wanted the patches, they wanted this, they wanted that. So we ended up. This is an accidental business. But as soon as we started manufact manufacturing the products, then when Amazon came along board then Amazon would go out and encourage everybody to knock everybody off and have it made in China and whatever and start your own business. And we had hundreds of people come along and start manufacturing grounding products, earthing product using our name. And you do not have, if you have $100 million, you would go broke with the legal process of trying to keep everybody off. So you can't. So it's an unfortunate situation out there. But the Amazon is primarily where this is at. And I'm a member of Amazon and I cannot buy anything on Amazon because I don't have to go to the store. But a lot of the mats are not complete. They have, the cables they have are not sufficient. A lot of them are silver with cotton. And we stopped producing that product a few years back and had to change because they didn't last long enough. They would. You know men, when they work out and sweat and their sweat hits the silver on the, in the sheets, then it oxidizes the silver and destroys the silver. So we had, we had to quit producing that. So then. But we spent years developing this block, this carbon block and in a way that could be used that was safe, that didn't have off gassing and didn't have all the issues and the problem problems. And a lot of the knockoffs do have serious outgassing problems and so on. You know, I don't really know. And I'm. It's not that I want to be the only person in the world supplying grounding products. I don't. There's 7 billion people out there. I mean lots of people need to do this. But right now the best thing on the market are the products that we offer. Because one, we spent years developing them and the main thing that we were after is they have to have the function first of all, they have to be able to ground you and then they have to be able to do it safely. And safely is not just the electrical. I mean, all of our cords have a 100k resistor in them so there can be no electrical event. All of these things are important. And these people that just jump into it and try to copy everything we're doing, you know, the black mass that they're selling, some of them have phthalates, some of them have this, Some of them have. But again, I can't talk about any specific one unless I measure it. But for safety and reliability and. And we've been around for 20 years putting these things together. And the number one thing for me is safety, electrical safety. And then it has to function. It has to ground you, and then it has to do it in a form that is comfortable for you or you can use in your environment. So I think for what we offer, the quality of the cords, the product, and we stand behind all of our products, products, there's nothing out there that will compete with them.

When I was talking to Dr. Jeff Spencer, I think he was actually one of the first people I ever heard talk about grounding and earthing when I was at the Ironman Hawaii Sports Medicine Conference, like, nine years ago. That was when I first met Dr. Spencer, and he was working with Tour de France teams at the time. I think he was with Team Radio Shack. And he was using these patches on them every night to help them recover more quickly between stages. The patch patches, basically all you do is just plug one end of the cable into an outlet, and then the other end of the patch just. You just stick it. Because I have a bunch of my office. So I just stick this to any surface of my body after it's plugged in.

Yeah.

So I don't. I don't have to have a mat.

No. An athlete's best friend is the patches. Anybody who has their health is seriously compromised. Their best friend is the patch. Because what the patch does does is, you know, your skin has lots of resistance. It can have up to five megs of resistance. So grounding the body is, you know, it's going to ground. But if you ground with a patch, an electrode patch, what it does, it's like, you know, a direct contact, and so electrons can actually flow faster, and it's going to ground you faster. The patch allows you to put the ground closer to the area where you need them. So it's a shorter path to ground. Because when you ground the body, sometimes you got a lot of inflammation. The ground will be used up, fixing that inflammation before it gets to the issue that you're trying to solve. So the patches, you know, it's like I had a triathlon athlete here yesterday, and he had shoulder issues, cramps in his legs, and all this stuff, and putting the patches on and doing various things. And I said, you know, here's your problem, that basically he's out working out, but he's not grounding himself after he Works out he's waiting till going to bed or doing something or when the pain comes up. But anyhow, the patch, you can put the patch anywhere on the body. And I don't care what your pain is, in five minutes it's gone. And so what you're doing is you're sitting on fire hose and pouring water on a fire.

So you could just put it on. You could put it on specific injury spot too, if you want to.

The patch, if it's an open sore, put it, you know, nearby.

Okay.

If it's a more referring like an.

Orthopedic injury or something like that.

Yeah, yeah. Just put it right on. Right on. I always, I always use two with athletes. I always put one on the bottom of the foot and one wherever the injury or the issue is.

Okay, got it. Now tell me about this freaking CH chair. You've got like a $3,500 chair on your site. And this blew my mind when I looked at it. I got chair envy. Tell me about the chair.

The chair is. It's a zero gravity chair. It's made like companies like Human Touch that make the standard zero gravity chair. And what we did is we put the conductive material that we have on the mats, the sleep mats and the universal mat. We used the black material that we put on those and we covered the entire chair. So when you sit in the chair, then you are totally grounded. I mean, you are rock solid grounded. Because it's a huge ground plane. It's a lot of ground. And it was designed primarily for wellness centers and spas, and we primarily sell it to spas. But now people are starting to buy it individually. Older people, a lot of people sleep. Sleep in. And so it's just a comfortable chair. I went overboard because I wanted the best rock solid chair that you could get. And everybody wants to sit in a zero gravity chair. So when we have a seminar or we're at a demonstration, group demonstration, everybody wants to sit in the chair because they don't know what's ground or anything. They just want to sit in the ground zero gravity chair.

But it's also got like heat and massage and everything else. And then the zero gravity position. But it's grounded.

Yes.

That's pretty.

But it's. But it's a killer app for the people that can use it. It's great. Yeah.

If you like doing nice things.

Yeah. And we use it, you know, for, well, the salons and so on. A lot of people use it in wellness centers.

Yeah.

To. For drips and for all kinds of things just to make people come comfortable and ground to get the inflammation out of their body while they're being treated so they have better outcomes.

Well, we didn't even scratch the surface of all the research. I mean, you've got like at least 20 different peer reviewed research studies that have been conducted on grounding. And then a ton that you guys have sent me for everything from stress and anxiety to hrv, like improvement in hrv, improvement in vagal nerve tone, improvement in blood glucose, serum electrolytes, wound healing. So what I did is over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com earthing for those who are a little bit more research minded, I'm just going to put a link to all the different research studies that Clint sent over to me and I'll also link to everything we talked about in today's podcast, like the movie and the book and some of the grounding equipment. Clint's website. And there's also, we have a pretty fat, it's not like a discount code. It's a bunch of bonus materials like the book and the video and a bunch of other stuff you get when you order from his website. So what I'm going to do also is put that over@bengreenfulfitness.com earthing or if you just want to like buy a mat or some patches or whatever right away, you can go to ultimatelongevity.com Ben that's Clint's website, ultimatelongevity.com Ben and that'll automatically give you all the, all the bonus materials if you, if you get a mat or whatever. But what I own right now is I've got the desk mat that I stand on while I'm working. And then I've got the earthing mat that I just fold up and take with me when I travel because it just fits right into my carry on. And then I have some of these patches that I haven't even opened the patches yet. I haven't even started messing around out of the patches. But I'm looking forward to getting injured sometime so I can actually toss them on and see how those feel. And then of course, I've got my, my Earth runner sandals that I just wear whenever I'm traveling or I've been, you know, flying around or whatever. So this is really cool stuff. And I would highly encourage anybody who wants to take a deeper dive to read the book because, you know, Dr. Sinatra and Clint dive deep, deep into the science in the book and we didn't even, even scratch the surface of it today, but I would recommend the book as well. So anything else you want to throw in there, Clint?

Yeah. Think of the patches as power recovery. If you got to recover fast, I.

Open this box now after we hang.

Up, because that's what we do with the athletes you have, like, Tour de France, all of them. It's about recovery. It's about staying in the game. And so that's what the patch is really all about. Other than that, I could go on for hours. But I did want to say one thing. You know, you were talking about jet lag when you fly. You know, we discovered this in one of our studies that we had three nurses that were lived in New York and they were flying to San Diego daily, whatever. And we measured their cortisol, and their cortisol was three hours off from everybody else's, and we couldn't figure that out. And then we realized that it's the. When you get out of a plane and you're not grounded yet and you measure cortisol, it's going to be three hours off. But if you ground them for 15 minutes, just happens to take their shoes off, stand barefoot on the earth, then the cortisol syncs up to normal timeframe. So that's what gets rid of jet lag. Because if your cortisol is three hours off, then you can't function. So. But it's. But it syncs up. I mean, the earth, the rhythms of the earth synchronize and regulate the circadian profiles of so many things in our body.

Oh, no. There's so many fixes for jet lag, like ketone esters and glutathione and charcoal. But I mean, like, if there's anything like water earthing and sunlight, I mean, if there's nothing else you do, at least those three variables make a profound difference in my opinion. And I travel a lot.

Yep. There you go. So cool. You know, anytime, if you have any other questions, holler at me. That's what I spend my life doing, is trying to explain all this and share it. Yeah.

Yeah.

The main thing is take care of the. Take care of the kids anytime you get the kids grounded. Because this generation's. We got to get the shoes fixed.

Yeah, well, my kids are definitely grounded. So. Clint, thanks so much for writing this book, for. For being a part of this movie, for filling all my listeners in. And again, if you're listening, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com earthing if you want to shop around for a bunch of Clint stuff or buy a very fancy chair. Go to ultimatelongevity.com Ben and in the meantime, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Clint Ober signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week. Well, thanks for listening. Listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance and plenty more. Please also know that all, all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes, use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.

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