Earthing: Gets you to the right place with the wrong reason

Now and then when one is researching minimalist shoe products, you come across the concept of earthing.

Earthing is bunk.

I do highly recommend proper grounding for all electrical appliances.  Low powered appliances are grounded through the neutral line, high powered appliances have an additional grounding plug.  A simple outlet tester should tell you if your house wiring is behaving correctly.  Stray voltage is no joke.

Another possible source of stray voltage is static.  This is almost impossible to avoid in indoor heated environments.  Even the best "earthing" shoes will do nothing because most indoor flooring is an insulative material.  The stray voltage you pick up with static is way less than stray voltage you can get from bad wiring and isn't a huge concern unless you're playing with a Van de Graaff generator.

From Wikipedia

Even if you were worried about proper "grounding" the earth isn't all that conductive, proper electrical grounding requires rods be sunk into the ground.  Electrical fences generally use three six foot rods for proper grounding.  Home systems are grounded with one eight foot rod.  Just touching the earth is not likely to do the trick.

That isn't to say that you won't experience an improvement in health if you try earthing.  Barefoot and minimalist shoes may help some people with gait issues through reducing constriction of the foot and leveraging the nerves in the foot that are muted through cushioned shoes to improve gait with biofeedback.  Sleeping on a hard surface with no pillow may have postural benefits for relieving back tension and even sinus issues.  Spending time outside increases your exercise level, sun exposure and Vitamin D production.  Soil also contains beneficial bacteria that you can alternatively pick up through gardening.  If earthing got you there and it's helped you, good for you, but it's probably not the actual earth contact doing the trick.

So if earthing helps you, but you're miserable in winter, get some good wool socks (insulative) and thin leather moccasins (water resistant), build yourself a platform bed with minimalist padding, take some Vitamin D supplements, get some exercise, bring in some plants potted in local soil, and enjoy being warm in winter.

(Amusingly this hits just about all of my non-diet blog labels.  Even endocrine, since Vitamin D is as much a hormone as a vitamin.  Earthing does touch on a lot of real benefits even though the reasoning is all wrong.)

Health Blogging as a Diagnostic Tool

I know hardly anyone reads my blog.  I've got one family member that comments occasionally, occasionally I strike a nerve with someone that has a similar issue or a religious stance on my diet.  But overall most of the hits on my blog are indexing robots.

I'm ok with that.

I will continue blogging even if I have nobody listening.  If it annoys people perhaps I'll turn off all the social plugins that announce the fact that I'm blogging.  But the most valuable part of blogging is the search tool.  Before I started this blog I had a user group that I discussed many of my health issues with, which is also searchable.

Yesterday, my Dr. proscribed a high level of Vitamin D for me.  I recalled vaguely that I'd tried that before and had a negative reaction, but wasn't able to say what time of year it was or what dose I'd been taking.  So when I got home I went to my blog and my old usergroup and did a search.  I was able to update the doc with a lot more detail:

I looked up my records, I previously tried 4000 IU vitamin D in late May 2011.  I was getting a lot of fatigue, sleeping in, needing caffeine to function.  (I don't make a regular habit of caffeine.)  I stuck with the regimen for over a week, and then backed down to 1000 IU.  I was not yet on the Paleo diet at that time.  I was also taking K2 and Calcium/Magnesium/Zinc at the time.

Another time I was able to look back through my records and discover when I started moving from a low carb diet to a ketogenic diet, and line it up with symptom patterns.  My commentary on two meals with similar macronutrient profiles was staggeringly different over time.  Lots of habits drift over time, and only by blogging minutia am I able to pick up on what exactly happened.

Doctors have encouraged health logs for a long time when tracking down obscure problems.  I encourage you to do the same, either in a paper journal, a private blog, or a public blog like my own.  The public blog has the downside of muting some TMI info that I might write in a private log but not a public one, but the occasional feedback is also an incentive to keep it up regularly.  To each their own on that one...

Freckles!

I'm in my mid 30's, and my father noticed this weekend for the first time that I've inherited his freckles.  Before I changed my diet I was never able to tolerate enough sun to bring them out.

Yesterday I spent 5 hours at an outdoor event, and only my left arm that had gotten extra sun on the hour drive over felt overexposed.  I took my hat off and started shading that arm with it, and I'm just a little pink there today, with no pain, so it should heal up quickly.  I'm wore long sleeves when I doing yard work after the event just in case.

Speaking of my outdoor event, I spent most of that five hours walking around the event, and I think I did pretty well.  I'm a bit sore today, but nothing extreme.  I still did yard work and helped move some boxes after the event.

More on Healthy Sun Exposure

http://barefootrunninguniversity.com/2012/07/17/are-we-increasing-cancer-risk-by-covering-up/

My severe sunburn is mostly healed.  I spent 3 hours by the pool in my new swimsuit, with some usage of a wrap when sitting by the pool chatting, and no additional damage was done.  Before the big 3 hour stretch, I several times put on my new swimsuit and spent 5-10 minutes outside getting moderate non-damaging exposure to accustom my skin that was covered by my old swimsuit to the sun.

I think the minimalist runner mantra of "Listen To Your Body" applies to sun exposure as well.  When I burned two weeks ago, my skin felt like it was heating up and loosing it's ability to self-regulate, but I put off getting into shade because I was having fun and kept wanting to do just one more thing...  Sunday at the pool I kept my wrap handy and covered my shoulders and head at the first sign of heat in the skin, and gave it a little time to recover before getting more sun.

I've also been considering what I've already read about sunlight and melanoma risk.  Statistical studies show that people with a history of sunburn are more likely to get melanoma, but they have had trouble reproducing this in the lab rats.  What else to people with a history of sun burn do?  They avoid the sun!  Is the burn itself, or the avoidance of sunlight that does more damage?

Sun Exposure

Last summer I spent more time outside than any summer since childhood.  I wore a floppy hat and a T-shirt, but no sunscreen.  I never burned once.  I attribute some of my success to avoiding vegetable oils and taking Vitamin D supplements in winter.

This year I got cocky, and went to the water park with no sunscreen or cover.  Every place normally exposed by a T-shirt was just fine.  I don't think of myself as tan, but I had just enough of a hint of color that my skin had natural defenses against the sun.  However, my pasty white shoulders got a pretty bad burn in 2 hours of exposure.  So I renewed my research a bit.  My burn may increase my chances of getting melanoma, but overall it may not be a total loss.  Regular moderate sun exposure (such as working outdoors) actually prevents internal cancer, and general overall health.

My new plan is to try to spend at least a few minutes outside each day in either my swimsuit top or my sun dress.  I don't really find sunbathing pleasurable, and I don't want a deep tan, but I need to get my pasty white shoulders a little bit of defense against longer special occasion sun exposures.

http://www.innerself.com/Health/cancer_sun.htm
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/jan/22/sharp-rise-vitamin-a-deficiency
http://yelling-stop.blogspot.com/2010/12/my-vitamin-d-experiment.html