Grounding and Cognitive Bias

“Cognitive bias is a systematic thought process caused by the tendency of the human brain to simplify information processing through a filter of personal experience and preferences.” - Tech Target

Whoa boy there’s a lot of cognitive bias out there today! Covid really exploded it. The way people believe or not believe in covid risk mitigation measures align with their political beliefs.

That’s cognitive bias. I’m sure I’m as guilty of it as the next person. I keep trying to minimize it.

Today I want to talk about it in relation to something I really want to believe is beneficial for health - grounding.

We all have electrical charges in our body. And just like electrical products such as appliances we need to ground those charges to prevent electrical problems. The surface of the earth has a slight negative electrical charge due to many free electrons.

The theory goes that when we walk barefoot on the earth, or use a grounding mat, we allow those electrons to flow into our bodies. The electrons act as antioxidants neutralizing free radicals which are missing an electron.

Makes sense. And it sells a lot of grounding mats. People who buy grounding mats seem to have amazing health outcomes. Just look at the reviews on Amazon.

The trouble is that there seems to be some technical issues with the grounding mats. This guy did an interesting video about it.

Most grounding advocates talk about the voltage drop they see in people’s blood when they are grounded. That’s great.

However, if we are talking about the flow of electrons into your body from the earth, then we need to look at amps.

When this guy looked into the research, he found that grounding mats only had a few NANO-amps flowing into your body. There are 1 BILLION nanoamps in an amp. For comparison, think of a normal circuit in your home. Most of the circuits for your outlets are 15 amps. Some are 20.

Something else to consider. When you shuffle your feet across the carpet, you build up static electricity. You’re creating about 20,000 volts in making the spark you feel when you touch something. But you’re only creating about 1/1,000 of an amp. That’s still about 100,000 Nano-amps if I did my math correctly.

So the amount of electrons flowing into your body and neutralizing the free radicals seems pretty small. Do the grounding mats help? Do they really improve your sleep, pain, wounds etc. like the manufacturers tell you?

I’m not so sure. Believe me. I want them to work. It would be wonderful to tell people to walk outside barefoot in the grass every day for improved health. Or lay on a mat all night and your problems will resolve.

And what a great way to stick it to the pharmaceutical industry who poo-poo’s such therapies.

I’m just not that sure how effective grounding is as I do my research.

We’ve tried lots of therapies with our assisted living residents. Some things like low-carb diets really seem to help. Others..not so much.

I’m into finding out the truth. I hope my cognitive bias doesn’t get in the way.