|
About This Author
Come closer.
|
Carrion Luggage #1104913 added January 2, 2026 at 9:55am
Restrictions: None
Footloose
This style of headline, as seen in CNN of all places, has possibly transcended clickbait and moved into cliché.
You stepped on a pop top, cut your heel, had to cruise on back home?
A snake bit you?
You stepped on a Lego?
You got infected with tetanus?
He fixed the cable?
...I can think of many different outcomes of a barefoot hike, but few of them are appealing.
Whenever I see Kim McAdams, she is never wearing shoes.
It occurs to me that there are foot fetishists out there who would find this more erotic than the display of certain other anatomical features.
I had heard of people who kick off their shoes to connect with Earth, and it always sounded so calming. But in a parking lot littered with who knows what underfoot?
"It always sounded so calming?" I mean, it doesn't seem like something that takes a lot of prep. Just footin' do it.
Also, above snark notwithstanding, in my experience, your feet get used to barefoot, to the point where Jimmy Buffett's pop top isn't even going to break skin.
Back in the 1970s, she said, nobody was talking about grounding, also known as earthing. “For a long time, I didn’t know it was a thing,” she continued.
We lived in different 1970s, apparently.
People are aiming to improve their health and get in touch with nature, she told me. “Everybody wants to be grounded, I think it’s because there’s so much crap going on and there’s so much stuff in our food, the chemicals that are in stuff.”
Okay, look. You wanna go barefoot? Doesn't affect me in the slightest. I don't even care if you're barefoot on a plane (just not socked). As spiritual or spiritual-adjacent practices go, that's tame. Some might object on health grounds, but you're only endangering yourself. "Dirty feet?" You think shoes are pristine? Point is, I don't give a shit.
But for fuck's sake, you lost me with "the chemicals that are in stuff." What the organic hell do you think you're made of, lady? Spirit and soul? Sugar and spice? Oh, wait, those are chemicals, too.
Now, I take my shoes off whenever I walk in the yard, and I find the sensation of scuffing my feet through the grass to be strangely comforting.
Congratulations. You have taken the first step (pun intended) on the road to naturalism. I'm pretty sure there are still nudist camps out there that will help you take the next leap.
I was onto something. Thousands of Canadian doctors are now prescribing nature to their patients, including Dr. Melissa Lem, a cofounder of PaRX, Canada’s national nature prescription program.
All due respect to my Canadian friends, but Canadian nature will freeze your toes right off.
So, I wondered, how much more of a difference does it make if you kick off your shoes and connect directly with Earth?
You could just... do it. And not write articles with clickbait headlines about it. But then you wouldn't be connecting with money, I suppose. (In fairness, he probably didn't write the headline.)
The 2019 documentary “The Earthing Movie” posits that the human body is both a biological and an electrical organism, making it receptive to the charges that are constantly radiating from the ground beneath our feet.
Oh for...
Just to be clear, that's a prime example of pseudoscience. Yes, we're biological, obviously. Yes, there are electrical impulses in your body, perhaps less obviously, but without them you couldn't do EEGs or ECGs or whatever. Yes, the Earth also has electrical charges; that's in part what causes lightning. But then they take the unsubstantiated leap to "receptive" and "constantly radiating" and claiming that's a good thing.
The scientific evidence on grounding is still emerging, Lem said.
And yet, I'm pretty sure some people will believe that documentary's assertion and completely ignore the "evidence... is still emerging" part.
But to help us understand the theory behind it, she explained it like this: “We build up positive charges in our bodies, free radicals. Earth’s surface has a negative charge and so getting your body flooded with those negative ions and charges helps reduce the overall free radicals and reduce inflammation.”
No. And it's not a theory.
...but like I said, if it feels good, do it. I don't care. I do care about the spread of misinformation and pseudoscience.
But his film has found an audience of at least 8 million people on YouTube who are open to hearing its message or already believe it.
People believe a lot of weird shit without evidence. That does not make them right.
“Before I was born in 1944, you couldn’t get out of the dirt,” [Clint Ober, 81] told CNN. “Couldn’t get ungrounded if you wanted to. We stepped out of nature 65 years ago, and since then, everybody started developing these inflammation-related health disorders.”
81 years old and never learned the difference between correlation and causation.
The founder of Earthing, a company that manufactures grounding mats, mattress covers and pillows, Ober became more widely known...
Oh, look. A scam.
Research funded by Ober’s company shows some benefits of grounding, but so far, independent research into grounding has been limited. No studies have provided any certainty backing the movement, and any evidence still seems to be anecdotal.
I... okay, look. I've harped on this kind of crap dozens, maybe hundreds of times. Regular readers are no doubt tired of it. But once more for the back of the room: one of the first things to look for when assessing a study or, more likely, the breathless reporting of the study, is who funded it. It's not a guarantee that the study is biased, but there's a damn good chance that it is, even if only unconsciously on the part of the researchers.
To this author's credit, he discloses that part in bold with a hyperlink (which I admittedly didn't follow). But it's buried somewhere in the middle of the breathless (and soleless) reporting, like nails are sometimes buried just under the surface of the ground.
I shouldn't even have to rage about "anecdotal evidence," so I won't. This time.
For research purposes, I went shoeless myself.
"Research." No. Just another anecdote.
The early going was not as relaxing as I’d hoped. I had never previously noticed the crushed gravel under my sneakers at Leita Thompson Memorial Park in Roswell, but I was surprised at how quickly I was able to navigate the prickly terrain once I got used to it.
Again, I'm not ragging on the practice. Just the pseudoscience and monetization. If anything, the practice should cost you less money (from having to buy new shoes as much), not more.
And I have no evidence to back this up, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they sold apps to track your... tracks. With ads.
But then, I noticed one significant and immediate change. I usually wake up at least once or twice every night, but for the next week I slept until morning without any interruption. Was it the grounding or something else? Perhaps walking on the gravel had triggered the pressure points on my feet and given me some kind of natural reflexology treatment. I can’t say for sure, but my sleep definitely improved that next week.
I've noted this before, but in my experience, making any change can be positive (especially if you prime yourself to believe that it will be), because you're not just going through the motions, but changing the way you think by concentrating on something out of your ordinary. I've said similar things about people who deliberately get up earlier.
“We do find some of the effects that the grounding people report,” [Mat White, of the University of Vienna] explained to CNN. “But we’re not claiming it’s anything to do with electrical currents in the ground.”
I'll give the author some credit here for at least trying to be fair.
“There’s a lot of good-quality evidence showing that the more you physically touch the natural environment, the more you’ll pick up a complex microbiome,” he explained.
...and then they have to go on about microbiomes, which is still an emerging science.
How to ground yourself
Um. Just. Take off your shoes and watch for sharp, pointy things?
Once more for the skimmers: It's not hurting anyone else, so do it if you want to. Just, please, don't believe the pseudoscience, or the ones who are just trying to sell you more shit that you don't really need. |
© Copyright 2026 Robert Waltz (UN: cathartes02 at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
Robert Waltz has granted InkSpot.Com, its affiliates and its syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work. |
