This blog post is the third in a five part series on grounding:
- Grounding 101: Exactly How Grounding Works
- Grounding 102: The Medical Research Confirming Head To Toe Benefits
- Grounding 103: What Dirty Electricity Is & How To Fix It
- Grounding 104: Grounding For Your Specific Healing Goals
- Grounding 105: The Minimum Time You Need To Ground For Sustained Results
As the leading medical authority in the healing field of grounding, you’ve come to the right place to understand more than even your own physician does about the healing practice of grounding!!! In this series we go over how grounding works, why we know it works, how to do it, and tons of specific techniques you won’t hear from anyone else.
Not only do I know the entire body of medical evidence on grounding, but as a physician I also understand electrosensitivity and how the body is affected by both natural and artificial electrical fields, so I can help you get grounded in the most healing, most effective way possible and help you avoid the negative effects of artificial electric fields.
If someone has forwarded you this free healing article and you want to get the rest of the series into your own inbox, sign up for my weekly uplifting, healing newsletter right here:
Today, we start with Grounding 103: What Is Dirty Electricity?
I get questions all the time from readers who feel tingling, stinging, flushing, pain, anxiety or other symptoms while grounding and are told that is a “grounding detox.”
They are told by grounding companies — businesses trying to sell massive amounts of grounding tools without any medical experience or health advisors, and absolutely no understanding of eletrosensitivity — that the tingling electrical sensations they feel, or the resultant restlessness, anxiety, insomnia & headache, are all part of the grounding process and that if they continue, it should go away.
But then it doesn’t, and they email me asking for advice.
So today, I want to share with you what I tell these folks — there is no such thing as a grounding detox. You are feeling a manmade AC current traveling up your ground cord. One that works in opposition to the natural DC energy the earth is giving you through grounding.
What you are feeling is a measurable, palpable AC current that is running through your body, and that having symptoms from this simply means you are electrosensitive.
And believe it or not, that is a good thing… I’ll tell you why below. And not only is being electrosensitive a good thing, but luckily there are lots of ways to continue to reap the enormous health benefits of being grounded while not allowing the AC current to reach your body.
All it takes is an understanding of what electrosensitivity is and how to address it.
I’ve got you. I created this video to explain to you right now exactly why you feel the symptoms you do, and how to feel better immediately so you can continue to use grounding to support your health:
How Grounding Is Changed
By Artificial Electrical Fields (YouTube)
Here is an overview of what I talk about in that video, along with links to correct this issue, easily and quickly!
1. What is the “tingling and stinging” you feel from standard grounding cords?
Many people felt uncomfortable sensations when they are grounding with regular grounding cords.
It’s been described as “tingling” and “stinging” on many pages such as Earthing’s: Why do I feel a stinging or tingling and Earthing Institute’s: I feel a kind of shock or an uncomfortable stinging, tingling in my hands and they suggest the symptoms are related to adrenal fatigue and not from feeling an artifical electrical current.. Ummm… no.
Because they do not understand this as a medical symptom of Electrosensitivity (which is a real, diagnosable condition) they recommend ignoring the symptoms or stop grounding entirely or that somehow your adrenal glands are imposing these symptoms, which also tells me they do not have enough medical or healthcare experience to understand what Adrenal Fatigue actually is. If you want more info from an actual physician on Adrenal Fatigue, I have a free downloadable guide for you here.
You can do better than ignore your physical symptoms, and it’s to get grounded safely. More on that below. But first, run through these symptoms and see if you experience any when you are grounding.
The most common symptoms are:
- stinging or tingling sensation
- headache
- decreased concentration
- vertigo/dizziness
- tinnitus/ringing in the ears
- skin reactions
- insomnia
- mood changes, including anxiety or depression
- fatigue
- heart palpatations
- muscle pain/tension
Many non-medical grounding advocates will tell you these symptoms are a “grounding detox” and that you will eventually get used to it if you keep grounding through their products.
But what is it, really?
If you’ve seen my previous posts and videos you know the difference between the natural direct current (DC) flow of electrons that is necessary for the natural, earth mediated grounding process, and the harmful alternating current (AC) electricity that is only from unnatural, man-made electrical power and EMFs.
What people are feeling with the stinging and tingling is the AC current flowing from EMFs through the sensitive parts of their body as the circuit is connected with a standard ground cord that has no filter in place to stop an AC current from traveling through it.
You don’t need the artifical AC current to get grounded, since grounding is a purely DC mediated process.
There are way more people that can feel this AC current than you might think. If you can feel these “grounding detox” sensations, you are absolutely not alone. It turns out that some people are more sensitive to this AC current than others, and in today’s post we’re going to explore how prevalent that sensitivity is.
2. Perception: levels of electricity
In the electrical safety community, where they study what levels of electricity can hurt or harm you, the amount of electricity that people can start to feel the tingling is called the ‘perception’ level.
100 years ago, back when electricity was being developed as a power source, people conducted a lot of experiments to determine what these different levels of electricity are. And those findings are still being used today!
The most commonly cited source of electricity safety is the The Electrical Safety Manual of the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety [1]. The sources for the levels they use can be traced back to a series of key experiments conduced in the 1950s [2].
Photos from Dalziel’s testing in the 1950s
Photos from Dalziel’s testing in the 1950s
The main set of experiments conducted for electricity levels involved hundreds of men and women subjected to different levels of electricity. They tested all sorts of levels of current in various ways, including a ‘gripping’ test where the subject starts off holding a metal probe and AC current was slowly increased until the person could start feeling it, as well as a touch test where the subject repeatedly touched a metal plate as the electricity was increased until they could start feeling it.
What did the researchers find? There is a big range of sensitivity!
First, there was a wide range of sensitivities — the data follows a traditional bell curve, showing a middle where most people are, but also long tails on either side. The least sensitive people couldn’t feel AC electricity until levels three times the most sensitive people!
Also, women were more sensitive then men, which is a fact that is further confirmed in the medical literature on studies about electrosensitivity — more women than men are electrosensitive, and this data shows us exactly why. Women tend to have a lower threshhold to perceive electrical current than men do. But that doesn’t mean if you are a male that you are not electrosensitive — not at all. Many men (and even more women!) all around the world are electrosensitive, and we will get into those numbers next.
Another thing that researchers found is that touching an object with current (touch tests) were more sensitive than gripping. In other words, if you touch an object that with AC current in it, you will feel it at a lower threshold than if you are holding onto the item as the current increases.
This is similar to the boiling frog analogy you are likely familiar with: a frog placed in water that is slowly heated will not perceive the temperature increase and will stay in the water until it is cooked to death… whereas a frog placed in water that is preheated will immediately jump out!
Similarly, if you touch a grounding tool you may be able to feel symptoms from AC current at much lower levels than if you have a current slowly introduced into the grounding tool.
This is why I say that being electrosensitive is a good thing!
If you can perceive the current entering your body when you touch a grounding tool, you’ll know immediately how to protect yourself — remove the source of the current. If you can’t feel it, and you need a much larger current to be able to perceive it’s presence, then you will blindly allow a current to run through your body unaware.
3. How many people are Electrosensitive?
The graph below shows us that there are millions of people who are sensitive to low amounts of AC body voltage when grounding!
Recent medical research has confirmed this to be true — millions of people are affected by electrohypersensitivty [3] and in population-based surveys, the prevalence of electrohypersensitivity (EHS) ranges from 1.5% of the population (found in Sweden) up to 13.3% (found in Taiwan) [4].
These numbers explain, clear as day, what a grounding detox really is. It’s simply the ability of electrosensitive people to detect an AC current when grounding through an unfiltered ground cord.
Even going with the lowest commonly agreed upon prevalence of perception (0.1% of the population, or 7 million people) this is roughly the same worldwide incidence of many other illnesses that no one would brush off as a “detox” reactions.
A quick look through the WHO Global Burden of Disease report shows that this incidence is similar to the incidence of stroke, for example. Electrosensitivity is more common than congestive heart failure. It is more common than Parkinson’s disease. It is more common than breast, lung, prostate and colon cancer combined.
So yeah, let’s not ignore this huge population of electrosensitive individuals who want to improve their health by connecting to the earth.
In the video I created for you right here (to show you the difference between grounding through an unfiltered, regular ground cord (known as a standard ground cord) and a filtered ground cord (known as the PureGround cord.) In it I show you that I have an AC body voltage of 4.57, and man could I feel it! In fact, by the time I had finished recording that video for you, I had a pretty bad headache from that exposure.
As you can see in the graph above, I’m not alone.
At a body voltage reading of 4.57, more than 3.5 million people all over the world would feel this as well. And unfortunately it is not uncommon to find body voltages shown on the graph, and even higher.
It also shows that at very small voltages there will still be people who will experience uncomfortable sensations; these people can be diagnosed as Electrosensitive in the modern medical community…. in medicine we call feeling sensations at this level of exposure Electrosensitivity… in the non-medical community, grounding companies will call this a “grounding detox.”
But these tests clearly show that theses are real symptoms, not a “detox” effect. People who sense electrical currents at very small levels are simply more sensitive to electrical stimulae, and there are millions of us.
Non-medical grounding advocates will try to convince you to keep grounding through a standard ground cord, allowing this AC current to run through your body — they are counting on the fact that when you continue holding on to an electrical current, you become less sensitive to it — like the slowly heated water the frog eventually boils in that we talked about above.
But in medicine, we do not want you to become desensitized to AC current and to numb yourself to the sensation of it. We want you to remove this exposure from your grounding experience entirely.
This is why we developed a ground cord — called the PureGround cord to remove AC current from your ground connection. More on that — and other ways to make your grounding experience better — below. Keep reading!
What to do if you are Electrosensitive?
Here are 3 steps you can take:
1. Learn more.
First of all, know that it is an actual diagnosable and treatable condition.
In every other country than the USA, that is. Jeez. I don’t know why we are so late to formally diagnose and treat EHS, but throughout Europe and in Canada, you can get a formal diagnosis and even disability support, including letters from your physician to request employers and schools to accommodate your needs (and your children’s needs) to reduce EMF exposure and safeguard your health.
Physicians can write:
- letters requiring employers to provide you with a hardwired ethernet connection
- recommendations to your employer to have you work in a place that is furthest from the wifi router
- letters to school educators to seat children in the class seat that is furthest from router
- letters to school educators to create a cell phone free classroom, with all cell phones put on airplane mode at the beginning of class
- letter to school educators requesting they allow students intermittent times to go outside and ground to the natural energy of the earth to help offset EHS symptoms
You don’t have to wait for your local health care professional to get on board with diagnosing and treating electrosensitivity, because I will be your healthcare advocate and help you. I developed a class to teach you everything you need to know about your conductive health — including both positive ways to boost your conductive health through safe grounding practices, as well as ways to protect your conductive health through lowering your EMF exposures.
In this online class I even walk you through how to get your own, in person physician comfortable with diagnosing EHS and writing those recommendations listed above on a Rx for you to hand to your employer or you child’s teacher.
It’s absolutely possible to be EHS and safeguard your health, while still living in the modern world. I walk you through exactly how to do it, starting with a self assessment tool that will help you figure out if you are electrohypersensitive (EHS) and walk you, step by step, through all of your living spaces to making them safer for you and your entire family.
Plus I give you tons of encouragement and additional tools to boost your health, decrease the reactivity and inflammation in your body, as well free printables and worksheets that you can keep forever, as well as lots of medical literature to validate exactly what you are experiencing and why.
No longer will you be brushed aside and told that your legitimate, valid ability to perceive electrical currents and EMF fields imposed on your body are simply a “detox” to ignore.
Nope. In this 7 day Electrosensitivity Online Class we will go over together:
- Day 1: What is electrosensitivity and how to assess if you are electrosensitive
- Day 2: Removing the exposures you can remove (I’ll walk you through it!)
- Day 3: Reducing the exposures you can further reduce (let’s do it together!)
- Day 4: Shielding from any remaining exposures: key concepts & actions to take
- Day 5: Grounding to rebalance your conductive health with natural earth EMFs
- Day 6: Boosting your body’s resiliency to mitigate the symptoms you may already be feeling
- Day 7: How to talk to your physician about further in person diagnosing & treatment of EHS
Take action to protect your well being (and forward this to your family and loved ones so they can take it with you!)
It absolutely doesn’t have to be overwhelming, I’ll break it down for you into easily actionable steps that will leave you feeling empowered, not scared.
2. Avoid electrical fields while grounding
The first, and easiest way to do this is to switch your regular, unfiltered ground cord to a PureGround Cord.
The PureGround cord blocks AC current so you can get the benefits of the healthy direct current from the earth without AC currents traveling up the cord. It also has a shielding wrap around the entire length of the cord to protect the ground connection from becoming contaminated with electrical fields in your room.
You can order this AC filtering, EMF shielding ground cord right here, and start grounding again with confidence.
The PureGround cord will stop the electric current from your outlet — an absolutely crucial first step — but the second thing you may want to do is to avoid any other electrical fields that are in the room.
That just means to make sure you are greater than 3 feet away from any source of electrical field (like appliances, cords, outlets, light fixtures, fans, etc…) and you will make grounding instantly more comfortable.
- If you ground in bed and your bedside lamp is right beside you, you are in an electrical field (even with the lamp off!) — move the lamp to an outlet that is further from your bed.
- If you have an extension cord running under your bed, you are likely in its electrical field, remove it.
- If you ground at work and you have a power strip right by your feet where your grounding mat is, you are grounding in an electrical field… go outside to get grounded on your lunch break instead, or wait until you can ground at home in areas of less artificial electrical fields.
If you feel negative symptoms while grounding, experiment by grounding in an area free from manmade electrical fields and see how you feel.
To test this out, try turning off your breaker to your bedroom for a night and see if you sleep better.
Or move your grounding mat from your office to your sofa and ground instead while you watch TV or read a book (again, making sure you are a few feet away from any cords, appliances (including the TV,) outlets, walls (since cords run through walls) etc…
Usually simply pulling a chair or your bed a few feet away from a wall will get you into an electrical field free area.
And again, for more guidance on this you can get step by step instructions directly from me in my Electrosensitivity Course right here.
3. Offset Man Made EMFs Indoors with Natural Grounding Outside
The third thing I highly recommend you do is, even if you ground indoors through grounding tools (and a PureGround cord) head outside for at least a few minutes daily to rebalance your conductive health.
It doesn’t have to be for long — grounding is as instantaneous as flipping on a light switch. When you turn on a light, the entire room is illuminated — and that’s exactly what happens when one cell in your body becomes grounded: your entire body becomes grounded instantly.
While there are cumulative benefits over time to grounding, there is really no time too little for grounding, either. I never want you to miss an opportunity to be grounded just because it’s might only be for 30 seconds while you stop at a street crossing, or lean against a tree while you take a break during lunchtime, or when you stop for a second to pull a weed out from a garden bed.
Within seconds your skin surface conductance has changes throughout your entire body and your muscle tension has decreased. As seconds turn to minutes, your brain and vagal tone have gotten a calming boost from grounding, and you might notice pain decreases and mood lifts. Over time, as minutes accumulate to hours, your metabolic processes get a boost and your circulation (which supports every single organ system in your body) is running more smoothly. Grounding day after day means nighttime sleep is more restorative, stress hormones normalize, inflammation decreases, and health benefits begin to accumulate, often resulting in noticeable health benefits on a large scale. (If you want to watch a video of me going over the health benefits depending on length of time grounding, hop over here.)
You can click on that image to see it closer, or to print it out for free!!! It is a free printable I created for my Electrosensitivity Online Class — in it, you can see the health effects of the earth’s natural DC energy as well as the deleterious health effects of artifical EMFs, and how they directly oppose each other.
This opposition is what you are feeling if you have symptoms from dirty electricity while you are grounding. You are not imagining it and it’s not a great idea to ignore it, and it’s definitely not a “grounding detox”.
Seen in a side-by-side comparison this way, it becomes obvious: grounding daily to reset the conductive health of your body is ESSENTIAL. And that is the topic of next week’s free blog post, Part 4 in my 5 part series on grounding — all about how to add grounding into your life in an easy and effortless way.
The Bottom Line:
In a nutshell: electrosensitivity is a well defined, identifiable, treatable, and preventable neurologic disease.
And awesomely, the human body is an incredibly resilient force of nature and we naturally go back to vibrant health when we allow our body to bounce back by giving it time to heal between insults.
The basis of life is a natural ability to repair and recover and adapt — our body simply needs time and space, away from a constant toxic onslaught, to do so. This is even more crucial for those of us who are electrosensitive.
I truly hope today’s article helps to reassure you exactly what you are feeling when you notice symptoms of electrosensitivity, to give you a fuller understanding of what is really happening when you are having a “grounding detox”, and tons of solutions to help release those symptoms and feel better than you’ve ever felt.
Meet me back here next week for Grounding 104: Grounding To Reach Your Specific Healing Goals.
I’ll walk you through tons of ways to use grounding to help heal specific health issues, from insomnia to irritable bowel to healing a skin wound to alleviating anxiety.
I will also give you a huge list of ideas on easily incorporating grounding into your daily activities so that it doesn’t add even one more minute to your day — it’s so easy to multitask by adding grounding to activities you already enjoy, and better yet you’ll start noticing benefits immediately. Meet me back here for the scoop!
And if someone forwarded this newsletter to you and you’d like to have that article come directly to you, you can sign up for my newsletter right here. I’d love to help you enjoy healing!
xoxox,
Laura Koniver MD
References:
[1] The Electrical Safety Manual of the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2009-113/pdfs/2009-113.pdf
[2] C. F. Dalziel, “The threshold of perception currents,” in Electrical Engineering, vol. 73, no. 7, pp. 625-
630, July 1954, doi: 10.1109/EE.1954.6438873.
[3] Belpomme, D.; Irigaray, P. Electrohypersensitivity as a Newly Identified and Characterized Neurologic
Pathological Disorder: How to Diagnose, Treat, and Prevent It. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2020, 21, 1915.
https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms21061915
[4] Hedendahl L, Carlberg M, Hardell L. Electromagnetic hypersensitivity–an increasing challenge to the
medical profession. Rev Environ Health. 2015;30(4):209-15. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26372109/
