Effects of Grounding (Earthing) on Massage Therapists: An Exploratory Study

• 作者: Brook Henry Christopher Pruitt Deepak Chopra Gaétan Chevalier Lizabeth Weiss Paul J. Mills Sheila Patel
• 来源期刊: 健康(英文)
• 学科: 医学
• 关键词: EARTHING GROUNDING Heart Rate VARIABILITY (HRV) Blood Viscosity Inflammatory Biomarkers Oxidative Stress
• 年，卷（期）: 2018,（2）
• 页码范围: 228-250
• 页数: 23页
• 分类号: R5

摘要

It is well known that massage therapists often develop a number of health problems relatively early on in their career. A preliminary study showed that grounding massage therapists during their work may alleviate some of the health problems they encounter. A doubled-blind randomized controlled trial was designed to examine the effects of working and sleeping grounded for 4 weeks on massage therapists’ blood viscosity, stress (through HRV), inflammation (IFN-γ, IL-6, TNF-α, and hsCRP) and oxidative stress (MPO and MDA) biomarkers. The results show stress reduction as measured by heart rate, respir-atory rate and hear rate variability (HRV) and a lowering effect on blood viscosity that lasted for at least one week after ungrounding, with systolic blood viscosity becoming significantly lower at the end of the study. Inflammation markers (IFN-γ, TNF-α, and hsCRP) increased rapidly, within one week, after ungrounding. The findings suggest that grounding is beneficial for massage therapists in multiple domains relevant to health and wellbeing.