Earthing_ The Most Important Health Discovery Ever? Part 2

Static electricity is nothing more than the spark or minor shock we all experience, for instance, when we touch a metal doork.n.o.b after walking across a carpeted room (see figure below) or slide across a car seat. No big deal.

But in some industries, it is a very big deal. Centuries ago, armed forces had to use static control measures to prevent ignition of gunpowder stores. Today, such measures are required in the petroleum industry, where a random spark can also cause an explosion. In today's electronic industry, electrostatic discharge (ESD) causes billions of dollars in damage annually by destroying highly sensitive electronic parts and microchips. ESD affects production yields, manufacturing costs, product quality, product reliability, and profitability.

A whole static control industry has emerged with products such as wristbands, shoes, and conductive flooring that are widely used by electronics makers. These measures are designed to discharge potentially destructive charges. (Figure 3-1) [image]

Figure 3-1: Finger to the doork.n.o.b, showing electrostatic discharge.

THE BEGINNING OF AN ADVENTURE.

Little did I know at the time, but my life was about to take a new and totally unexpected direction that would consume practically all my waking hours. It still continues to do so, a dozen years later.

It all started innocently with that one simple question: Could wearing rubber- or plastic-soled shoes, as we all do, and insulating ourselves from the ground, affect health? At the time I had a particular interest in health because earlier back surgeries had left me with constant back pain. I never slept well. I'd take Advil to go to bed, and in the morning I'd take Advil to get up and get through the day. I also took other pain medication, depending on how bad the pain was.

I knew that the body was conductive, that is, it conducts electricity. You don't have to know anything about electricity to understand that simple fact of life. Just go touch a doork.n.o.b on a very dry day and you can see or feel a spark every time. There's always a static charge on the body that builds up when you sit on fabric-covered furniture or walk on carpets.

An Amazing Experiment Sitting there watching the foot traffic I realized that most people, certainly in the industrialized world, had little or no connection to the ground. In other parts of the world, like in the tropics and in Asia, Africa, and South America, rural people walk barefoot and often sleep on the ground. They are grounded.

I decided to try to answer the question I had asked myself. I went back to the apartment I was renting and picked up my voltmeter. (A voltmeter is an instrument that measures the electrical potential differences between the Earth and any electrical object, or any two points in an electrical circuit.) I connected a 50-foot wire to it and ran the wire out the living room door and attached it to a simple ground rod I stuck in the Earth. Then I started walking around the house and measuring the electrical charges being created on my body from being insulated from the ground. It was easy to measure the static electricity, as it would vary with every step that I took. What I found most interesting was the amount of electromagnetic field (EMF) induced potential (in volts) on my body. When I walked toward a lamp, the voltage would go up. When I stepped back, the voltage went down. I tested this with all the electrical appliances in the living room and kitchen. The only appliances that did not create EMF voltage on my body were the refrigerator and my computer tower. They were grounded. From my background in the communications industry, this immediately made sense to me as we had to ground all of our electronic equipment to prevent electrical interference from EMFs.

Next I went to the bedroom, lay down on my bed, and registered the highest level of EMF voltage on my body. The bedroom was the most "electrically active" area of the apartment. The bed was up against a wall full of hidden electrical wires. I wondered if these electric fields could be affecting my ability to fall asleep because sleep was always a big problem.

Now my curiosity was really stirred up. The next day I went to the hardware store and bought some metallized duct tape that is used for furnace ducting. I laid some of that tape out on the bed to form a crude kind of grid. I took an alligator clip and attached it to one end of the duct tape grid. I connected a wire to it, ran the wire out the window, and fastened it to another ground rod similar to the one that the voltmeter was connected to. I then lay down on the duct tape grid and noticed that the meter was now showing nearly zero, meaning that I was in sync, that is electrically equivalent, to lying directly on the ground outside. Like all the cable systems I had installed, I was physically grounded. I was lying there fooling around with the voltmeter and the next thing I knew it was morning. I had fallen asleep with the voltmeter on my chest. I hadn't needed a pill to fall asleep. I had slept soundly for the first time in years, and I had hardly moved at all during the night.

"Wow, this is fascinating," I said to myself. Something interesting had happened, but I didn't really understand the meaning of it. So I repeated this experiment on myself the next night. I fell asleep without a pill. The same thing happened the next night and the next and the next.

Getting High Off the Ground After a few more days like this, I told a couple of friends about it and asked them if I could set up a similar kind of makes.h.i.+ft grid with metallic duct tape in their beds. That's how I started "grounding" people. It was very innocent. One of the guys I grounded said to me, "You know, something is going on here. My arthritis pain is way down."

I didn't think too much about what he said, but a couple of days later I noticed that my own severe chronic pain had improved. I didn't need the pain pills anymore. I was also feeling much better overall.

I didn't understand anything about biology. I didn't understand how the nerves or muscles worked, but a concept was dawning. It occurred to me that there might be an a.n.a.logy between the human body and cable TV. Cable has hundreds of channels of information flowing through it. Similarly, the body has countless nerves, blood vessels, and other channels that conduct electrical signals. Maybe, I thought, when the body is grounded, it prevents the entry of "noise"-environmental electrical interference-that could disturb the internal circuitry. I started to understand in a simple way that without Earth contact the body was always being charged by the electromagnetic fields and static electricity in the bedroom or office or wherever. When you're grounded, you don't have a charge. When I grounded myself and my friends, the charges were removed, and we all started sleeping better and feeling better.

After I grounded a half dozen or so people, consistently improving their sleep and reducing their pain, I started to get a real high. I became more and more excited. I came to the conclusion that I may have made a great discovery. I said to myself there's something very, very real here that needs to be further investigated.

I looked far and wide but didn't find much information on grounding and health. In 1999, the Internet wasn't nearly the information universe it is today. It was still fairly new and I didn't find anything there.

I checked out the excellent university medical libraries in Arizona but didn't come up with anything. There were a few anecdotal stories about Native Americans that were folklorish in nature. I was reminded of my younger days in Montana where many of my childhood friends were kids from the Indian reservation. I vividly remembered the time when the sister of one of my friends developed a bad case of scarlet fever. She was very sick. Their grandfather dug a pit in the ground and placed the girl in the pit. He built a fire, for warmth, near the pit, and sat next to it for a few days while the girl mostly slept. At the end of that time she was much better. I also remembered going to the home of one of my friends after school and hearing his mother tell him to remove his shoes. "They will make you sick," she said. This all seemed very odd to me at the time, but I remembered that most things the Native Americans did were different from what I was taught to be normal. I later realized that there was always a reason based on much greater knowledge of Nature than I was ever taught.

I found information about barefoot enthusiasts who have long championed the idea of going unshod because they feel better. Some enthusiasts have formed organizations, such as the worldwide Society for Barefoot Living that promotes the benefits of taking shoes and socks off and walking naturally on the Earth. Their experience, along with medical research in the field of biomechanics, strongly suggests that many foot and back problems are partly caused by stresses and strains created by wearing shoes that force us to stand and move in ways the human body was not designed for. One dramatic example of this appears to be the success of barefoot runners. The shod foot may explain the high injury frequency in North American runners, in contrast to the extremely low running-related injury frequency in barefoot populations. Researchers have found, for instance, less force on the joints, and less plantar fasciitis and s.h.i.+n splints. This, however, wasn't really the information I was looking for.

I did find considerable information about electrostatic discharge and how people working on computer components and electronic chips had to be grounded in order not to damage any of the components electrically. But that wasn't it either. I had to keep looking.

I also wanted to know whether there was any possibility that sleeping "Earthed," as I started to call grounding, could be harmful. Electronics experts rea.s.sured me that the concept was perfectly safe. If you think about it, being Earthed is the natural state of living systems throughout history. It is the separation from Earth that is unnatural.

Beyond these few things, however, I couldn't uncover any concrete information anywhere relating to the possible health effects due to loss of natural grounding.

CHAPTER 4.

Challenges of an Amateur Scientist Emotionally, I was on a roller coaster. I came to the conclusion that n.o.body-past or present-had researched the grounding/health connection. I couldn't find any relevant information. When I realized that n.o.body else knew about it, I felt it was like the best day in my life and that I had discovered something important with which to help society in a big way. I had found my mission. And I was the only one who knew anything about it.

The euphoria didn't last long. Maybe that's the way it is with discoveries. The self-doubt starts to creep in that comes from being alone with some important understanding or breakthrough before anybody accepts your idea.

In my case, anybody who I talked to thought I was nuts. n.o.body took me seriously. n.o.body knew anything. My enthusiasm would always be returned by blank stares of indifference or negative responses. Who said this was so? People wanted hard facts. They wanted science. I was just an ex-cable guy talking about how the ground could reduce your pain and let you sleep better. What did I know? What credentials did I have?

So I went quickly from the best day in my life to the worst day. I was feeling down in the dumps one day in 1999 as I was sitting and talking with one of the guys in Sedona whom I'd grounded. He was telling me how good he felt and how big the change was in his life. Hearing him say those words reignited a spark and lifted my spirits.

I said to him, "I'm feeling good from this, too. Other people are telling me the same thing. This is real. I'm not making anything up. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. I've just got to find the answers."

With new resolve, I packed up and drove to California in my RV, an amateur detective trying to solve a mystery. I figured I'd spend a few months out there and hopefully turn up some real expertise that I could tap into, some people to teach me more, or to figure out how to quantify what all this was about.

"STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND"

The first thing I did was try to interest sleep researchers in Southern California. I made phone calls. I knocked on doors. I introduced myself as a guy with an electrical background who has made some interesting observations about sleep and pain. I had seen dramatic results. I said I wanted to get some experts to validate my observations.

In pursuit of expertise, I felt like the hero of Robert Heinlein's old science fiction cla.s.sic, Stranger in a Strange Land. Stranger in a Strange Land. I felt I was on another planet. I didn't speak the language. They didn't speak mine. I felt I was on another planet. I didn't speak the language. They didn't speak mine.

Imagine how I felt walking into the office of a scientist or doctor, if I got that far. The office walls were full of awards and diplomas. These were individuals who had spent years becoming experts in their field. And here I was, with absolutely no formal training in the field. The experts used biological terms I never heard of. When I would turn the conversation to electrical concepts that I understood, like voltages, electric fields, grounding, and positive and negative charges in the body, they were about as clueless as I was hearing them talk about what they knew.

Communication was just one problem. Another was that most scientists or doctors had no desire to get involved or lend their name to anything out of left field like this, something with no scientific history or legitimacy.

One scientist sat back and laughed in my face. He asked if I expected him "to believe that sticking a nail in the ground and connecting it to an iron bed pad and getting people to sleep on it will reduce pain." He said he wouldn't believe it even if it were published in the New England Journal of Medicine. New England Journal of Medicine.

One doctor told me that even if what I was saying were true, why should he tell patients to take off their shoes and get well for free?

Another stated that I needed to provide him with all the published research related to grounding the body and he would then take a look at it. When I told him there was no research and that is why I was approaching him, he said to come back after someone substantiates the validity of grounding.

One amused researcher asked if I had any idea about what it takes to do research. He told me it would take five years and $5 million to put together a real scientific study and get it published, if it even got that far.

Most of the experts I spoke to were polite, but n.o.body took any interest. They sent me on my way and wished me good luck. That's when I decided to do the first study myself.

GETTING THE SCIENCE BALL ROLLING.

All wasn't lost though. At one university sleep clinic, I managed to talk to some friendly students. They said they would be willing to counsel me how to do a study. I didn't have a clue. One thing I had to figure out was how I could ground people for any length of time, long enough so that I could identify a measurable result. People are always moving around. They are busy.

So I went back to my own experience. The only way to do this, I realized, was when somebody was in bed, at night, when sleeping. That's the only time people are still. That seemed to be the most practical way to produce a measurement. So a bed pad of some sort seemed the best way to go. But I had to design something more substantial than the crude metallic duct tape grid I was using for myself and friends.

I contacted a company that makes protective equipment for the electronics industry. I had some special conductive fiber materials manufactured that I then bonded to 1-by-2-foot wool felt pads. The test subjects were to sleep directly on the pad placed on their bed. I fixed a metallic snap on each pad so I could connect it to a wire running to a ground rod stuck in the Earth outside the bedroom window. Now that I had a pad, I needed people for the experiment.

As you can imagine, no doctors would lend me patients for my little study. I was on my own. I got the inspiration for volunteers one day while getting my hair cut. I heard people in the salon talking about their health issues. I figured that a beauty salon could be a good source of volunteers. I convinced the woman who operated the salon to try grounding first. I set her up with a grounded bed pad. Her feedback was positive. She was sleeping better. She enthusiastically approached some of her clients to partic.i.p.ate in the study. I found others by leaving fliers in ten beauty shops in Ventura, California, where I was living at the time.

One of the people who stepped forward was a nurse. She was a great help, smoothing the way so I could enter the homes of strangers, explain the bed pads, actually place them in people's beds, and connect them to simple ground rods I stuck in the Earth outside their bedroom windows. What I was doing was not exactly your ordinary house call. In the end, I was able to enroll sixty people-thirty-eight women and twenty-two men-with sleep problems and a variety of joint and muscle pain.

Based on the advice I had received from the sleep clinic students, I divided the volunteers into two groups. Half slept on pads that were actually grounded. For comparison, the other half slept on bed pads that looked like they were connected to the ground rods, but I inserted a s.p.a.cer on the wire to block conduction. The volunteers did not know if they were actually connected or not. I was the only one who knew.

The nurse interacted with the people during the thirty days' experiment. Then she collected the data. We then wrote up the experiment as an anecdotal study and published it in 2000 on ESD, ESD, an online journal that provides articles, technical papers, news items, and book reviews on the subject of electrostatics. an online journal that provides articles, technical papers, news items, and book reviews on the subject of electrostatics.

The results were extraordinary. Here is what we found afterward when we compared the grounded group with the ungrounded one: * *85 percent went to sleep more quickly.

*93 percent reported sleeping better throughout the night.

*82 percent experienced a significant reduction in muscle stiffness.

*74 percent experienced elimination or reduction of chronic back and joint pain.

*100 percent reported feeling more rested when they woke up.

*78 percent reported improved general health.

Several partic.i.p.ants reported unexpected but significant relief from asthmatic and respiratory conditions, rheumatoid arthritis, hypertension (high blood pressure), sleep apnea, and premenstrual syndrome (PMS). There were also reports of fewer hot flashes.

Discovery of the "Magic Pain Patch"

One woman who partic.i.p.ated in the study had crippling rheumatoid arthritis in the joints of her hands and arms, and she had difficulty walking. I wanted to measure how much electrical charge she had on her body in her bedroom and asked her to hold a small, handheld tester for me. She couldn't. Her arthritis was too severe and too painful. So in order to get a reading I adhered an electrode patch-the same kind used by doctors when they do EKG (electrocardiogram) tests-on her forearm and connected it with an alligator clip to the ground wire coming into her bedroom. I then connected and disconnected the clip in order to read the change in the body charge between being grounded and ungrounded. After chatting for five or ten minutes while I was setting up the bed-pad system, the woman said the pain in her arm improved considerably. She then asked me to move the patch to her other arm. I did not believe what she was saying, but I did what she asked and moved the patch to the other arm. Minutes later, she said the pain in that arm had gone down a good deal as well.

After leaving her home, I immediately called several acquaintances I knew who had arthritis and other painful conditions, and gave them each setups with electrode patches, Earthing wires, and ground rods. I wanted to see if I could repeat this dramatic reduction of localized pain. Remarkably, each and every one of them reported a rapid reduction in pain. A couple of them referred to it as the "magic pain patch." This is when I first discovered that localized Earthing of the body in this manner produced fast and dramatic reduction of local pain. It was kind of like pouring water on a fire.

Now I was really excited. I felt encouraged. But still no scientists would talk to me seriously about it. My student buddies told me that I needed to produce much more solid information to support my idea. Anecdotal studies wouldn't be enough, they said, and wouldn't stand up to scientific scrutiny.

Refining the Discovery Initially I regarded the positive results I was witnessing as a consequence of eliminating static electricity and/or the s.h.i.+elding of the body from environmental electric fields. This a.s.sumption turned out to be absolutely true, but accounted only in part for all the good results.

When I installed the Earthing system in people's homes for the first study, I always measured their body voltages while they were lying in bed-both before and after placing the grounding pad on the bed. When I measured people with extremely high body voltage, I would think to myself that I should get some really good results from this person.

One day I set up a volunteer, a sixty-five-year-old man, who complained of chronic pain and problems with sleeping. He had no electrical devices near the bed. His floor was bare concrete. When I measured his body voltage, it registered near zero. With very little body voltage, I thought we wouldn't get any results from him. However, his feedback in the end was as good as others with high body voltages.

His case was the first indication I had that Earthing alone produced the results that I myself had experienced and observed in others. This realization stopped me in my tracks. I then had to learn everything I could about the Earth's electrical properties.

I learned, for instance, that the Earth's electrical surface charge is always negative, meaning that the surface is filled with free electrons. They are able to move and reduce a positive charge. In Nature, lightning is the best example of a negative charge reducing a positive charge.

If Earthing people reduces their chronic pain, that suggested to me that pain is related to positive charge. I then began to ground people in low-or no-electric field environments to replicate this observation and confirm that it was the grounding alone that reduced pain. The results were consistent. Earthing reduced pain no matter what the electrical environment. It wasn't until later that I learned the connection between chronic pain and inflammation, and the role of electrons.

NORMALIZING THE HORMONE OF STRESS.

When the first study was published, it created a big stir among researchers and health pract.i.tioners concerned about the health risks from exposure to environmental electric fields. One such person I met at this time was Maurice Ghaly, a retired anesthesiologist in Southern California who was interested in electric field research. I told him what I had learned. He pretty much dismissed my theory. But he said he would like to prove me wrong. It didn't make sense to him that grounding could do what I said it did.

Dr. Ghaly decided on a pilot study. He would measure the circadian secretion of cortisol on people before and after they slept grounded, over a period of a few weeks. Cortisol is known as the "stress hormone." When you become worried, fearful, and anxious, your cortisol level rises. The rise stimulates a branch of the autonomic nervous system known as the sympathetic system. Your body s.h.i.+fts into a vigilant mode, ready, if needed, to fight or run, the so-called fight-or-flight mode. The hormone level comes back down after the vigilance and tension ease. A life of constant stress-from common things like money, work, or relations.h.i.+p problems-also causes your cortisol level to rise and remain high, creating a kind of sympathetic overdrive in the body. In our day and age, a consistently high level is a cla.s.sic indicator of stress and is known to contribute to many health problems, like sleep disorders, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, reduced immune response, autoimmune disease, mood disturbances, and blood sugar irregularity. Stress of this kind also promotes inflammation in the body.

My first study was subjective, based on the feedback of people I grounded. This time we would measure a substance produced in the body, thus providing an objective measurement for the effect of Earthing on the physiology. It was a big step forward scientifically.

For the study, I needed something that would hold up even better than the previous bed pad. So I designed a st.u.r.dier bed pad that would fit over the whole mattress.

We enrolled twelve subjects who complained of sleep problems, pain, and stress. They slept on the Earthing pads I made up for eight weeks. Their individual daily cortisol levels were determined at four-hour intervals over a twenty-four hour period just before the start of the study and then once again at the three-quarter mark via a standard saliva test. The partic.i.p.ants also reported daily how they were feeling throughout the entire experiment.

The study was published in a 2004 issue of the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. The conclusion was significant: Earthing during sleep resynchronizes cortisol secretion more in alignment with its natural, normal rhythm-highest at 8:00a.m. and lowest at midnight. Figure 4-1 provides a visual representation of the dramatically improved cortisol group profile. The conclusion was significant: Earthing during sleep resynchronizes cortisol secretion more in alignment with its natural, normal rhythm-highest at 8:00a.m. and lowest at midnight. Figure 4-1 provides a visual representation of the dramatically improved cortisol group profile.

Cortisol levels before and after grounding [image]

Figure 4-1. Realignment of natural cortisol rhythms. In unstressed individuals, the normal twenty-four-hour cortisol secretion profile follows a predictable pattern-lowest around 12:00 midnight and highest at 8:00a.m. (Graph A). The pre-grounding chart (Graph B) shows the wide variation of patterns among the study partic.i.p.ants. Graph C represents the altered pattern of the partic.i.p.ants after Earthing, showing a significant stabilization of cortisol levels. Seven partic.i.p.ants registered a reduction in high- to out-of-range nighttime cortisol secretion, a 53.7 percent average drop; six had an average rise towards normal of 34.3 percent in 8:00a.m. levels; and two with abnormally high 8:00a.m. levels had an average drop of 38 percent. (Data adapted from The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 2004.) Subjectively, the partic.i.p.ants reported improved sleep along with reduced pain and stress. Even more impressive was the fact that the improvements often occurred within the very first days of sleeping grounded.

Following is a summary of the findings: * *All but two subjects developed more natural cortisol rhythm, and one of the exceptions was someone already in a normal pattern.

*Eleven of twelve partic.i.p.ants said they fell asleep faster.

* All twelve reported waking fewer times during the night (from an average of 2.5 times to 1.4 times, a 44 percent reduction). All twelve reported waking fewer times during the night (from an average of 2.5 times to 1.4 times, a 44 percent reduction).

*Nine out of twelve said they felt more refreshed and less fatigued, with more daytime energy, while three reported no change.

*Of the eleven subjects who said before grounding that their pain interfered with general activities, seven now reported improvement and only four said there was no change.

*Nine out of twelve described reductions in their emotional stress and were less bothered by problems such as anxiety, depression, and irritability; two said there was no change; one said the stress was worse.

*Six out of seven partic.i.p.ants reported improvements of gastrointestinal symptoms.

*Five out of six women with either PMS and/or hot flashes said their symptoms were better, *All three individuals with TMJ (temporomandibular joint) pain said their discomfort was less.

The Sleep Connection The study produced another quite interesting finding that was not published but provided more evidence about the multiple benefits of Earthing. Eight of our partic.i.p.ants had an increase in melatonin ranging from 2 to 16 percent. Three subjects had no change in their melatonin level, and one experienced a decrease of 6 percent. The finding was exciting because melatonin is an important hormone that helps regulate sleep and other biological rhythms and is also a powerful antioxidant agent with anti-cancer properties.

Right from the start of my experimenting with Earthing-and by right from the start I mean my own initial experience-the positive impact on sleep has been very noticeable. This is a big deal. We all need good rest to allow our bodies to repair and recover from each day's activities. That's the way Nature set things up: cycles of rest and activity.

After I saw how grounding was helping people sleep, I started to research the sleep problem. I found a 2002 Newsweek Newsweek article ent.i.tled "In Search of Sleep" that said there were an estimated 70 million problem sleepers in the United States alone. "I Can't Sleep" was the t.i.tle of a article ent.i.tled "In Search of Sleep" that said there were an estimated 70 million problem sleepers in the United States alone. "I Can't Sleep" was the t.i.tle of a BusinessWeek BusinessWeek cover story in 2004. From those, and many other sleep-related articles from all over the world, it became quite clear to me that quality sleep improves overall health and that poor sleep does just the opposite. cover story in 2004. From those, and many other sleep-related articles from all over the world, it became quite clear to me that quality sleep improves overall health and that poor sleep does just the opposite.

I also learned that back in the early 1970s researchers identified several behaviors that were positively linked to length of life. Sleep headed the list, followed by exercise, eating breakfast, and avoiding snacks. Weight, smoking, and moderating alcohol intake also made the list. Later on, researchers found that sleep deprivation may enable bacterial growth and that sufficient sleep may slow down bacterial growth. More recently, sleep deprivation-even a modest reduction-was found to promote inflammation in the body. Loss of sleep, even for a few short hours during the night, apparently prompts the immune system to turn against healthy tissue and organs. Other new studies suggest that sleep loss may also contribute to recurrent depression.

In my ongoing sleuthing, I learned that since the pioneering research in the 1950s of Hans Selye, the father of stress medicine, medical researchers believe there is a relations.h.i.+p between imbalances in cortisol and inflammatory pain.

It was becoming clearer and clearer to me that Earthing was something very special that could make people's lives better in a mult.i.tude of ways. It was this vision that kept me going, because there were many times when I frankly felt overwhelmed by the challenge of me-an unknown quant.i.ty with no degree by my name, or even a high school education-proving a totally foreign concept to the scientific community.

MORE CHALLENGES: BEDS, SPOUSES, AND FAs.h.i.+ON.

My first sleep study created a buzz when it was published in 2000. I was hounded by people wanting bed pads. All of a sudden, there was a demand for this "quasi product." I didn't realize it at the time, but I was becoming somewhat of a designer of Earthing pads. Later, when I got involved in Earthing people in the world of sports, athletes didn't want a whole bed pad. It was too much to carry around. They wanted something they could roll up and put in a small bag and take with them when they traveled. Thus, the recovery bag was born: conductive silver strands woven into cotton sheets fitted together like a sleeping bag.

The products developed both out of a demand by people who heard about Earthing as well as a desire on my part to promote scientific research. It all started on an ad-lib basis with conductive duct tape and a wire connection to a ground rod. That's what I used in Arizona on myself, friends, and other interested people. It was all makes.h.i.+ft. Nothing sophisticated.

As this evolved, people simply wanted something more refined. Some people wanted sheets, so I started consulting with experts in the fabric industry. I first dabbled in polyester with carbon threads. But n.o.body wanted polyester, so I switched to cotton with conductive silver strands. That development cost more than $1 million and took three to four years. I first had to find manufacturers to deal with what for them was a nuisance factor, and then test and retest. These were all prototype products that cost a lot of money to make, and for the most part, I was giving them away to athletes, doctors, and people in the studies and their relatives. It all mushroomed. I would get rid of one model, then order more, then get another batch of new material, and then another flurry of orders and requests. I never for a moment thought I would be in the sleeping or bedding industry.

In the early days, a lot of doctors started getting products for their patients. One of them called and asked if I had some kind of a "half pad," a sheet that didn't cover the whole bed. I asked why he wanted it. He referred to the spouse problem.

Spouse problem?