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If you’re anywhere near the wellness side of social media, you’ve probably seen people plugging their bed sheets into the wall and talking about the many benefits of grounding sheets, also called earthing sheets. The idea behind grounding sheets is that they keep you connected to the Earth’s electromagnetic field while you sleep, which lets you practice grounding — an alternative therapeutic practice that typically involves walking barefoot outdoors — without ever stepping foot outside. Their purported advantages encompass everything from reduced inflammation to lower stress levels to overall better sleep. But is it really possible for electrically charged bedding to provide measurable improvements in your health? Here’s what the science says.
The practice centers on the belief that making physical contact with the ground connects you to the Earth’s electromagnetic field, allowing your body to absorb electrons from the Earth’s surface while releasing static electricity and other environmental electric charges. The alleged effect on your body is an overall state of balance that supports better health.
Grounding gets its name from a well-established electrical-wiring practice: Electrical equipment is grounded for safety reasons, to help disperse static buildup and prevent power surges. In the event that an electrical system malfunctions, grounding provides a path for excess current to flow into the ground without hurting anyone. A quick way to tell whether an electrical outlet is grounded is whether it has space for plugs with a “third prong”: Though only two prongs are needed to create a functioning electrical circuit, the third prong can divert electricity to the ground to prevent electric shock.
For the therapeutic form of grounding, the most basic way to make physical contact with the Earth is to go outside and walk around barefoot. By connecting your skin to the surface of the Earth, proponents say you’re providing a path for electric charges to flow from your body into the ground, just like that third prong on an electrical plug.
Those same proponents often point to various ancient cultures that allegedly practiced grounding. However, the modern understanding is largely attributable to Clint Ober, now the CEO of a company called EarthFx. According to his online biography, Ober, whose background was in cable TV development, was familiar with how grounding could prevent static and interference in TV broadcasts, and after a personal health crisis, began to wonder “if grounding the human body could reduce ‘interference’ and improve health.” Ober theorized that wearing shoes with rubber or plastic soles would insulate him from the earth’s electrical charges. (Many pro-grounding arguments now claim that our ancient ancestors didn’t wear shoes or spend their days indoors, so they were always grounded, unlike us modern shoe-wearing, building-occupying humans.) He went on to design the first earthing mat, which he patented in 2004, and ultimately kicked off a movement that created a cottage industry of grounding products — and in the social-media era, the influencers who peddle them.
Through the electromagnetic connection they promise to provide, grounding mats, bed sheets, and other devices purport to help you improve just about every facet of your health by improving sleep, reducing inflammation, easing chronic pain, increasing energy, lowering stress, relieving headaches, balancing hormones, and more.
But any practice or treatment that’s billed as a cure-all for a long list of vague symptoms is worth scrutiny — and there isn’t much scientific evidence to suggest that grounding is particularly effective. In a post on Science-Based Medicine, Yale professor of neurology Dr. Steven Novella points out that there is no research establishing grounding’s underlying claim “that there is an electrical homeostasis that has any effect on how the body functions” in the first place. And when I asked Dr. Greta Raglan, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan’s medical school, about existing studies on grounding and grounding products, she mentioned a range of methodological concerns and was generally skeptical: “It wasn’t like everybody [in the research I reviewed] had insomnia and then was magically recovered because they used these devices,” Raglan says. “From a face validity perspective, it seems a little bit strange that putting this device between your body and your sleeping surface, for instance, would make a massive change in your closeness to the electrical current of the Earth.”
Dr. John Saito a pediatric pulmonologist at the Children’s Hospital of Orange County who is also board-certified in sleep medicine and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, didn’t dismiss the possibility that grounding products could be effective, but echoed Raglan’s doubts. “In the world of sleep, we talk about things like light and dark exposure, and how it affects our circadian rhythm. So it’s not too far of a reach to say our electrical exposure plays a role,” Saito explained, before acknowledging a lack of evidence to link grounding devices to a concrete measure of improved sleep, like changes in brain-wave patterns, or that would rule out the placebo effect or other potential causes of sleep issues.
It’s also worth noting that in the studies of earthing available on Google Scholar, there are a few recurring names amongst the researchers — including Ober, who still sells a variety of grounding products through his website, and Gaétan Chevalier, director of the Earthing Institute, which sells courses to become “certified” in earthing.
If you really want to try grounding sheets, Saito says, there aren’t many risks to worry about. However, there’s also no simple way to prove they are doing anything, aside from your own subjective experience of whether you “feel better.” To that end, Saito suggests that anyone who’s grounding-curious start with the toes-in-the-dirt variety; if it helps, great, and if it doesn’t, at least you didn’t spend any money on it. He also emphasizes that if you’re having sleep problems, you should go see your doctor. “If you are missing the elephant in the room that you have severe sleep apnea and you’re not getting enough oxygen,” he says, new bedsheets won’t be the fix. Saito also recommends focusing on the basics of good sleep: a routine bedtime and sleeping in a dark, cool, and quiet place.
“My general stance is that devices intended to assist with sleep buy into this idea that our bodies aren’t inherently capable of sleeping on their own,” Raglan cautions. “And it can actually make our sleep problems worse if we feel like we need all of these accoutrements to get to bed.”
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