Right, nothing wrong with getting outdoors and soaking in the nature.
But these credulous woo-freaks hear the word “negative ions” and have no idea what that actually means.
“Negative” and “positive” in the physics sense only refers to the charge of subatomic particles. An ion is an atom with a positive or negative charge (due to gaining [negative/anion] or losing [positive/cation] electrons).
If I rub a balloon on my head, will my mood turn negative as well? That’s asinine.
In this sense, negative and positive are only abstract terms to describe opposite forces, not emotional or psychic ones. :rolleyes:
From a safety perspective, whether or not you’re “grounded” depends a lot on the voltage.
If you’re talking about direct exposure to household voltages in the U.S., which peaks at around 170 V relative to earth ground (or 340 V, though 170 V is much more likely), then it’s pretty easy to isolate yourself from ground by not touching metal (that is grounded) and wearing rubber-soled shoes. If you isolate yourself from ground, touch 120 VAC with your left hand, and then touch the bark of a tree with your right hand, you probably won’t feel anything. At the most a tingle. However, you would probably get zapped if instead you drove a nail into the tree and touched the nail.
If you’re talking about lightning, then it’s almost impossible to isolate yourself from ground. Rubber-soled shoes won’t isolate you. Wouldn’t matter a whole lot if you were touching a tree. You may have a better change sitting inside a Faraday cage.
Well, alrighty then. That’s what I get for being hasty and not reading the linked page, but who has the time? It just seemed like full-tilt woo.
How do they assert that anions/cations are supposed to affect your well-being, anyhow? We’re constantly in a flux of negative or positive static charge (to a lesser or greater degree), trees or no trees.
“Earthing” is woo. However, being outside (as long as it isn’t storming) is a good thing, and if you feel better to pause in your barefoot walking to rest against a tree, then that’s a good thing, right? I don’t think anyone is going to argue that hiking and being outdoors and being around trees is a bad thing.
I think there’s a strange and growing trend of people trying to justify doing “weird” things that feel good to them with “science” because there’s the idea that if you do weird things because you enjoy them, then you’re a freak, but if you do weird things because of “science” then you’re just at the forefront of intelligent behavior. It pops up all the time, and it’s really strange to me. If you like hiking barefoot, and resting against trees, just go for it, you know?
If something feels good to you or has benefits to mood or you enjoy doing it, just take it and run! Be confident in your understanding of what makes you feel better, do it BECAUSE IT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER, and don’t support the woo artists continuing to scam people.
What makes you think it is respectable? Professional looking web design? It is an Open Access journal, which inevitably means new, from a publisher based in Egypt. None of that inevitably means that it is open to publishing crap, but they are all bad signs.
In medical science especially, there are plenty of long established, traditionally published journals that are known to often publish crap, anyway. In judging a journal’s quality there is really no substitute for actually knowing the field.
As you go on to say, the whole business is clearly woo.
That Earthing.com site sure does have a lot of expensive products to sell. :dubious:
But yeh, the mentality to seek comfort in pseudoscience to justify doing things that naturally feel good, like basking in the sun, or hiking through the pines baffles me. “Movements” such as these only offer up a stake for the opportunistic to profit off the suckers.
Pity, when the real science is so much more satisfying, enlightening and free.
It just seemed like full-tilt woo.