skidder

I wear those for blood clots in a leg. All poly materials, not a hint of metallics in them at all. A little tough to get on in the morning due to the variable strengths in the weave (foot/ankle/calf) but once on they are comfortable and I forget about them the rest of the day. Nope, I don't wear them when out riding a bicycle.

tomato coupe

Copper bracelets were popular long before the 80s. MIA bracelets were made out of several materials, including copper. And, setting a goal to get MIAs home before the copper corroded would be a cruel joke, as copper corrodes very slowly.

Road Fan

Several assumptions in all this.

One is to assume that if electrical conductivity exists between a human body and the surface of the earth, that is beneficial, because electric charge would become balanced between the earth and the human. If there is a potential difference between the human body and the earth, there is an electric field associated with it. We know that very low E fields are not perceptible, and I could not say if there are imperceptible effects which are beneficial. This is where the hypothetical part of this is. We also know that higher valaues of E field can have effects of shock, burning, major injury, and fatality. Very different effects but all the same basic physics. But it might be true that even the lower levels of E field have effects which are not beneficial, even if they feel good. We're getting pretty far from cycling, even the science of cycling, into stuff which is hard to measure much less to interpret.

One important reason to think about this is microelectronics. Tiny E fields can exist between to contacts of an electronic microcircuit (such as the computer which runs your car's engine) and the discharge of even these tiny E fields can destroy the microcircuit, which is an expensive business loss in a mass production environment. In such work areas workers must be grounded to the building grounding system to prevent their motions from causing the electric field intensity from building up.. The worker wears a little wrist band on a wire with a high electrical resistance, and it is connected to the ground and to the worker's wrist in this way. The currents in such cases are extremely small, but they are enough to destroy the microcomputer. These currents are flowing through the bodies of Electrical Engineers and Technicians, but no danger is believed to be present, monetary loss due to damaged integrated circuits is reduced nearly to zero, and any more subtle effects are, well, too subtle at least to pay attention to.

It was asked, can a bicycle be grounded? I think if you could drag a small chain along the ground you would be continuously grounded. And I think if the rim of a wheel is grounded to its axle, the tires might provide enough connection (enough conductivity or low-enough resistance through that tire or the set of both tires) to limit the intensity of the E fields which are present and which may be generated..

I'm not sure how understandable all this is here in bike world, but it reflects real electrical physics. As an electrical engineer with a deep background in electrical and magnetic science, the part I can't answer is, whether these technical electrical phenomena at such low levels have any good or bad physiological effects?

I just don't know the answer to that.

tomato coupe

Discharges that can damage electronics are produced by large E fields, not tiny E fields.

livedarklions

​​​​​​There's no plausible reason to believe they have any effect, silly studies in disreputable journals notwithstanding.

I'm pretty sure the electromagnetic fields I encounter walking barefoot in my house dwarf anything I could be exposed to by walking barefoot outside.

livedarklions

I grew up in Minnesota in the era of shag carpeting. Boy, did we discharge a lot of E fields. The indoor air gets very dry in the winter, and when you walk barefoot or stocking-footed on the shag, the shocks could be actually visible.

I can't work it out; would the grounding hucksters say that's healthy or unhealthy?

PeteHski

Well I can say it's not a very good look when your hair is standing on end.

PeteHski

Very hard to prove, but not totally implausible. I think scientists are still trying to prove whether or not cats and other animals are able to navigate using the Earth's magnetic fields. Then there's the potential link between clinical depression and living close to high-voltage power lines. Then there's the argument about the health effects of mobile phone electromagnetic radiation etc and all the other artificial background RF we are continually exposed to. Most government bodies insist that it's all (probably) harmless, but then history shows that these official positions can change with increased experience of exposure and further study e.g. asbestos. It's still early days in our understanding of the effects of RF on our physiology and mental health.

Lombard

I remember in the 1st grade, we used to shuffle along the carpeting to build up a charge and then touch (and shock) unsuspecting classmates.

livedarklions

Disagree. Impossible to prove because completely implausible. Frankly, the claim isn't well-enough stated to even be testable.

Detecting earth's magnetic forces has nothing whatsoever to do with benefitting from allowing your body to have infinitesimally small amounts of earthly electricity flow though it.
Do you have to ground a magnetic compass?

PeteHski

Are you an expert in this field?

livedarklions

Which field is that? EM BS?
This is mystical stuff they're claiming, not medicine or science.

I have some medical training and I can read a study.

Now answer my question--do you ground a magnetic compass?

Road Fan

Depends what you mean by "electronics!" If you mean a modern TV, a laptop, a telecoms equipment rack, or a car, then you're right. Discharges which can destroy tiny silicon junctions inside microcomputers are very low energy - very high speed computing, ever increasing clock frequencies in turn require very tiny junctions, hence very fragile with respect to ESD. Once the integrated circuits are built into modules like a cell phone or another handheld, the design protects them . Bigger equipment might withstand a lightning storm (cars, trucks, and aircraft are rarely knocked out by lightning), but not a direct hit. But it's all electronics and based on the same physics, just a huge range of scale. In major storms we don't ground aircraft just because of lightning, it's more because of wind and wind shear.

tomato coupe

It doesn't matter how you define electronics. Discharges are the result of large E fields, not tiny E fields.

Road Fan

I would agree that predicting positive or negative effects of extremely low intensity
DC E fields is very difficult now, but i certainly don't know enough to say it's
impossible. Even if you're going to say you think something is impossible, I think it's
important to define well the thing you want to falsify, to make sure the correct victim
is killed.

Would you please point to the study or other evidence that you think indicates
mysticism, versus the simple inability to clarify a problem?

livedarklions

Well, right off the bat, the whole premise is absurd. People generally do a lot of shoeless walking indoors, and I'm pretty sure the ambient electrical fields in any given household are going to be more intense than anything you're likely going to encounter walking in the park.

Now you tell me if this resembles science in any way:

Gibberish from Deepak Chopra promoting the concept

"Losing Touch with the Ground

You are a bioelectrical being living on an electrical planet. Your body operates electrically. All of your cells transmit multiple frequencies that run, for example, your heart, immune system, muscles, and nervous system.

With the exception of humans living in industrialized societies, all living things on our planet are connected to the ground’s electric energy. In industrialized societies, you rarely go barefoot and walk around outside or wear natural leather shoes that allow you to absorb the ground’s energy. For many decades, people have increasingly been wearing rubber and plastic-soled shoes that act as a barrier to the Earth’s energy, insulating them from electrical contact with the Earth. People also generally don’t sleep on the ground anymore, as many cultures have done throughout history. They live and work above the ground, even far above the ground in high-rises.

The truth is, you’re disconnected. You’re ungrounded. You are not in touch with the Earth. Could this disconnection be an overlooked factor in the increase of illnesses noted earlier?"

The premise of that is ridiculous--so our bodies generate electricity chemically, therefore we need to be "connected" with earth's electricity? There's no logic there, there's nothing connecting that to the supposed rise in certain types of disease unless you assume that there's something qualitatively different about "earth" electricity vs. other kinds of electricity. That's clearly a mystical notion, not borne out by any scientific concept of electricity.
Here's an article debunking this crap:

https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room...feet-to-earth/

This is all about selling crap like conductive shoes. The researchers aren't even disguising their commercial interests in promoting this woo.

Knock yourself out with the "you can't prove it's impossible" crap, I've seen this movie before.

Road Fan

That's a little too much semantics for me. I was talking about damage to unprotected semiconductor junctions all the way up to junctions in bigger semiconductor devices as well as those in more highly protected equipment. I know, because we did a lab demonstration of it at University, that a then-typical silicon diode will fail if it is exposed to a sudden energy delivery as low as 1 microjoule. That was often an answer to the undergraduate question "how sensitive can they be?" I assume this event, which is essentially invisible and inaudible, would not be called a "discharge," but if a diode which helps to keep the steering of your car functioning soundlessly fails open, your car may fail to remain steerable. It IS a catastrophic failure if no mitigation is designed in. Is this a real discharge? I would say it doesn't matter what you called it, it forced your car to be unsteerable in a sudden event. In part of my real life I work on designs to prevent such hazardous conditions from being realized. I don't think I've heard the word "discharge" used.

Road Fan

Sorry, don't intend to knock myself out! Chopra is right to say there is naturally electrical conductivity from bodies to the earth. Electricity (free or conductive electrons) may be generated in the human body, or not. I the course of motion and friction with the ground, air, and plants, wemay acquire electrons from other objects on earth. When we are grounded those electrons flow to or from the earth's surface. Does it matter? Chopra might say yes, I basically say "why does it matter?" The difference he assumes between ground-dwellers and (perhaps) hi-rise dwellers might not be as big as he suggests. The floors and other surfaces of the insides of modern buildings are grounded to earth through their water systems, power systems and data systems, and occupants are in contact with those devices. Humans may be less in-contact with exterior air, foliage and tree limbs, but we are hardly out of contact. So I see this as physics, perhaps "the secret life of your road bike while indoors for the winter." But I agree with you there's no presented connection to disease or even discomfort, or to their lack.

Probably bare feet or even shod feet can be better coupled to earthly soil, but what problem does it solve?

pdlamb

Which, no doubt, is why people assembling everything from watches to microwaves to televisions have to wear wrist straps and conductive sole shoes or ankle straps, to prevent the buildup of millivolt electric fields while working.

livedarklions

Pretty sure if your body doesn't generate nerve impulses, you're dead.

Chopra is right in a very trivial sense, but it's in the way these scams typically are. They take some factoid and make wild assertions based on the things we associate with the subject of the factoid.

This is "the human body is made mostly of water, the moon's gravitational pull on water creates tides, therefore the moon affects our health" kind of reasoning.

MoAlpha

Those doorknob shocks after shuffling on a carpet in a dry house are due to potential differences in the thousands or tens of thousands of volts. Still doesn’t mean a damn thing biologically.

tomato coupe

Electric fields aren't measured in volts, so "a buildup of millivolt electric fields" doesn't make any sense.

tomato coupe

Not a semantics issue -- you just wrote the wrong thing. Big E fields are problematic, not tiny E fields. Just chalk it up to a brain fart and move on.

3alarmer 

...and this means ? I ask you this as someone with considerable personal experience in management of chronic pain. I'm glad you are not in such terrible circumstances that you might be compelled to try this, but I don't get where you suppose I've claimed any "false mechanism" for anything. And your point about some slippery slope on the woo scale where everyone slides off the edge into grift and quackery ? Yeah, I don't get that either. I would say it's maybe a wee tad close minded, but hey, look where we are on the internet. That would be belaboring the obvious.

Clearly, there are a whole boatload of visual imageries that are used for pain management. Just as clearly, much of the research done in this area credits them with some statistical benefit. The most rational explanation I've read seems to focus on the idea that chronic pain (not pain associated with a self limiting issue) is experienced as a mental phenomenon (regardless of initial causation.).. So it's not unreasonable to suppose that some degree of mental control over the sensation of pain might have lasting benefit.


Are you really so expert in this area that you are willing to call all of this research hogwash ? (What am I saying ? This is teh Beikforooms. Everyone with a keyboard and a connection to the internet is expert on every topic that comes up for discussion. ) I can tell you that waving your arms around, pretending to do Tai Chi, and mentally disciplining yourself to enter a meditative state while doing those same movements "feels" very different. Pain is, at it's most basic, a "feeling". Some people seem to have better luck learning to control it than others. We're not talking Benny Hinn's jacket sweeps here, just a method of reducing chronic pain that has some research that seems positive, and quite a few practitioners who report success with it.

3alarmer 

.
...here is a link to one of the more exotic practitioners of "earthing". Go ahead and skim it, you might learn something.

This is almost always presented as a mental imaging exercise, thus the advice to :

All of these are simple meditation techniques. There's nothing especially new or radical about them, and they are probably borrowed from other disciplines, like yoga or Buddhist meditation techniques. It makes no difference to me or anyone else who uses them with some success whether you think it's a bunch of hooey. After a while, you begin to expect that from the more opinionated. Not a big deal, but why the compulsion to pee on the parade ? Is that how you choose to ground ?

A certain percentage of chronic pain complaint are associated with chronic misuse patterns and with chronic muscle tightness and associated shortening. Meditation is one approach to dealing with them.