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

Abstract

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, respiratory 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.