We've all been cooped up for awhile now and while we know it certainly can have negative effects on the brain it can on the body as well. When you stay inside too much you start to feel "off." We always knew this in the back of our minds but over the past few months, being encouraged (and in some cases mandated) to stay at home, it's been way too easy to stay indoors. We figured the reason we feel like crap if we stay inside for too long was due to a lack of Vitamin D. While that may be the case, we found a collection of studies that suggest something else entirely.
We have a Facebook group called RoshamFAM that's an open forum for ideas, art & projects (since we're always pushing ours). One of our fam shared these studies with us on from The Journal of Environmental and Public Health. Shout out to Cheryl.
Earthing: Health Implications of Reconnecting the Human Body to the Earth's Surface Electrons.
Usually, environmental health studies seem to focus on negative health of effects of your environment but this one suggests there's literally a whole world of positivity right underneath your feet. The earths surface is teeming with electrons and our modern way of life puts a barrier between us (concrete, asphalt, shoes). Returning to a more primitive human environment, a.k.a. getting your hands and feet dirty, once a day can can have a tremendous effect on your sense of well being. Here are 8 ways making direct contact with the Earth's surface can improve your health.
1. Regulating Sleep
You need sleep. No one needs to explain to you that if you don't get good sleep you'll be miserable. Earthing has been proven to to improve the time it takes to fall asleep, the quality of sleep and waking feeling rested.
2. Chronic Pain
82% of men and women in a blind study reported improvement in muscle stiffness and 74% reported improvement in chronic back or joint pain compared to 0%-12 who reported improvement in the control group.
3. Lower Blood Pressure
Some test subjects reported improvements with symptoms associated with high blood pressure, hypertension and even some respiratory conditions.
4. Improved Cortisol Levels
You need cortisol in your body to help control blood sugar levels, regulate metabolism, fight inflammation & assist in memory formation. However, too much cortisol can be very bad for you. Specifically, in men, high cortisol levels slow or stop the production of testosterone. While abstaining from certain foods like flax seeds, vegetable and hydrogenated oils (which are TERRIBLE for you anyway) can help regulate cortisol, Earthing seems to be effective as well.
5. Eliminates Ambient Voltage
There's still a considerable amount of debate on whether ambient voltage in the body caused by common electric power sources is harmful to humans but we can prove that the body is indeed effected by it. You absorb extra electricity from stuff in your house and walking barefoot outside discharges it.
6. Stress
Understanding the technical aspects of this particular double-blind study on how earthing affects stress requires a little more knowledge of root mean square (rms) values of electroencephalograms (EEGs) and how it relates to blood volume pulse (BVP). You're welcome to read more about it in section 2.4 of the study HERE.
We know you don't have time, but basically, you can stick a bunch of pads on people, measure specific electrical values and/or changes in their bodies and see how it effects their heart, brain, lungs and muscles. When you're stressed, your heart, brain, muscles and lungs react a certain way and that information can be quantified. Earthing has almost an immediate effect on your your body's EMP and BVP. In short, if you're stressed go outside and walk in the grass for awhile. You'll feel better.
7. Breathing/ Heart Rate
Another associated study has suggested that earthing can help stabilize variance in blood oxygen levels (BO), increase respiratory rates, stabilize heart rate variability (HVR) and raises the heart rate just enough to suggest metabolic healing response (due to an increase in oxygen levels).
8. Immune system
Earthing boosts your immune system. Another entirely separate study monitored levels of gamma globulin concentration in test subjects and noticed an increase in levels after earthing as well as the bodies abilities to absorb and maintain healthy vitamin and mineral levels.
There's a whole lot more to these collection of studies and you can take a more detailed look at the collection at ncbi.nlm.nih.gov We knew our moms were right when they told us to go play outside but we had no idea the depth of it's meaning. Obviously, there are lots of ways of treating all the things we've mentionioned but we found these studies to be interesting.
NEW EP COMING NEXT WEEK!
It's finally here! We've been working on an 808s Hip/Hop inspired remix EP for that last few weeks and we're finally ready to show it to you! It's available today to our Patreon subscribers at patreon.com/Roshambeaux and will be available on our store next week WED July 8, 2020!
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