Fringe Friday! From skinny teas and detox’s, to miraculous healers and everything in between, there are as many charlatans as there are desperate people looking for an easy way to success. Enter #fringefridays each week I plan on presenting facts backed by peer reviewed research to help decipher between the bull shit, and what actually works—as strange as it might seem. For the inaugural fringe Friday we will be looking at earthing aka “grounding”. Grounding is the practice of connecting to the Earth’s natural energy, by walking barefoot on grass, sand, dirt or rock and the thought is that by doing so you can diminish chronic pain, fatigue and other ailments that plague so many people today. The Earth is a conductor or free electrons and so are all living things on the planet, including us. The body is composed of mostly of water and minerals, which in combination are excellent conductors of electrons from the Earth providing there is direct skin contact or some other conductive channel for them to flow through. The Earth’s energy upgrades one’s physiology by allowing the body to cope and repair thereby promoting wellbeing, vitality and better sleep. It also harmonizes and stabilizes the body’s basic biological rhythms (sleep), knocks down chronic inflammation and reduces and eliminates associated pain, making it the most natural and powerful anti-inflammatory and anti-aging remedy around! Sounds crazy, right? I thought so to, when I first heard about it, but in doing some trial runs on myself and following up with other people’s anecdotal evidence who also noticed an improvement in pain relief and a sense of less stress. Think of it this way, have you ever seen photos of muscle beach or Gold’s Gym in the 70s? If you have, then most likely you have come across Arnold Schwarzenegger and his band of merry muscle bound brethren hang out on the beach and smoke a J (topic for another time). In the 70’s these guys were training hard, every day, twice a day. But, they also wandered into the gym barefoot from the beach across the street and then went and chilled on the beach right after. It is possible that perhaps all of that downtime “connected to the earth” allowed for them to recover more quickly and aid in their success—along with the crazy training regimine, nutrition, and sterioids. Check out the following study that is very well done, and has some pretty incedible results https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4378297/