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| My ungrounded feet in rubber boots. |
The article gets a lot of things right about atoms (they make up everthing!), but it confuses "free-radicals" with positive ions. (Free radicals don't have to be charged.) Then it tries to explain why negative ions can help. And while it is true that a positive ion and a negative ion can react in some circumstance to produce a neutral compound (think of hydroxide and hydrogen ions reacting to make water in an acid base reaction), random negative ions won't necessarily disarm a free radical. You need an antioxidant for that, a molecule that can participate in a reaction that can soak up extra electrons. You still need to eat your vegetable and wear sunscreen.
Negative ions and positive ions co-exist quite nicely in your body. You need those positively charged potassium ions, in fact, to keep your heart beating rhythmically. So on its face, the "science behind grounding" given in the article is bunk. If all those negative ions in the ground started neutralizing all the positive ions in our bodies, we'd be dead.
While I get this is a not a science news piece, but a perspective piece (a "[d]iscussion of news topics with a point of view, including narratives by individuals regarding their own experiences"), I wish someone at the Post had fact-checked the science. Yes, it feels nice to walk barefoot on the grass, or to be outside. I'm pretty certain the negative ions aren't the reason why.
Hear, hear!
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't have seen this without your tweet, but this made me chuckle a bit:
"Simply allow your skin to be in contact with any natural conductors of the earth’s electricity, working up to at least 30 minutes at a time (unfortunately, studies do not seem to have addressed how often grounding should occur). You can walk barefoot on grass, moist soil, sand, gravel or concrete (but not other types of pavement). You can swim in the ocean, a lake or other natural body of water. You can sit under a tree, leaning against the trunk."
Here's hoping these "studies" that will one day clarify how often this "grounding" needs to take place to get the "benefits" associated will also carefully weigh these against the various infectious risks of walking barefoot in some soil or sand (sporotrichosis, hookworm, strongyloidiasis), swimming in some bodies of water (giardiasis, schistosomiasis), and/or sitting under/against trees (Lyme disease)...