Better Wellness

Exploring the Healing Potential of Earthing with guest Clint Ober

• Roland Perez • Season 1 • Episode 11

Share episode

Discover the health benefits of having your body grounded, with expert Clint Ober, a pioneer in earthing. Join us as Janet Walker steps in for Roland Perez to guide a captivating conversation about how connecting with the Earth can transform health. Clint shares his remarkable journey from the cable TV industry to inadvertently unearthing the benefits of earthing. Get ready to hear Clint's childhood story that underscores the deep historical roots of earthing, utilized by cultures worldwide for centuries before gaining scientific attention.

Learn how grounding can be your ally in the battle against inflammation and chronic pain. This episode sheds light on the natural electrical connection between our bodies and the Earth, and how our modern lifestyle has distanced us from this simple yet powerful practice. We delve into personal experiences and scientific curiosity surrounding grounding's impact on inflammation and pain relief. Balance your body's electrical charges and discover potential improvements in sleep quality, stress reduction, and overall well-being.

Explore the earthing revolution with insights into the burgeoning market for earthing products, fueled by demand from athletes and wellness enthusiasts alike. Clint Ober reveals his journey from research to innovation, creating products that bring the benefits of earthing indoors for everyone. Learn how these tools help bridge the gap between ancient practices and contemporary life, emphasizing personal experience and trust in incorporating earthing into daily routines. Prepare to rethink your approach to wellness with Clint's innovative solutions.

From the producers of PBS's American Health Journal and Innovations in Medicine. Thank you for listening to Better Wellness.

Janet Walker:

Recently, wellness expert David Delrahim was here with our host, roland Perez, for an episode that focused on how nature can change our lives. Roland promised that we would explore the topic of grounding our bodies for health in a full episode, so today we're talking to the world's preeminent expert in earthing. Welcome to Better Wellness, a podcast that explores the newest innovations in true wellness. I'm your host, janet Walker, filling in for Roland Perez as an executive producer of the American Health Journal and Innovations in Medicine. For more than 25 years we've produced over 530 award-winning healthcare television shows that have aired nationally on PBS with an audience of over 100 million viewers.

Janet Walker:

The Better Wellness Podcast continues to explore health topics to keep your body healthy and to help you develop the mindset and balance that prevents illness. Our guests are experienced experts in the world of staying healthy, young and well. Our guest today is Clint Ober. Beginning as an expert in cable TV grounding systems, clint's research led to pioneering work in the field of earthing for health. Today he is the founder of EarthFX, a grounding research and development company that patented the first indoor earthing products. Welcome to the show, clint.

Clint Ober:

Thank you, Janet. Thanks for having me on your show. It's a real honor and a pleasure to be here.

Janet Walker:

First, let me ask what is earthing, and is that different from grounding?

Clint Ober:

The words are commonly used interchangeably, but earthing actually means to electrically connect with the earth. But earthing is the more technical name, the more used name around the world. Earthing is very simply putting your feet directly on the earth. Grounding is bringing two things to the same electrical potential.

Janet Walker:

How did you become a part of the discovery of earthing for health?

Clint Ober:

I grew up on a ranch in Montana and as a boy I was sat on a horse most of the time. But anyhow, at that time I spent a lot of time in Montana and as a boy I was set on a horse most of the time. But anyhow, at that time I spent a lot of time in nature. So I become very attuned to the things in nature. And when I left that environment I went to work in the cable television industry, which was just beginning in its early stages in Montana and Pennsylvania area. And as we were pioneering that industry we learned that you had to ground everything to the earth. You had to connect the wires that are in the air to the earth physically in order for them to discharge static electricity or any environmental charges that could be created on the wires, like lightning and so on, and ground it to the earth so that it didn't travel into the home, blow up a TV set or start a fire, but anyhow. So along the way we learned that a lot of the noise, a lot of the static, a lot of the problems and power surges and everything, we had to ground everything. But anyhow, when I was 50, I retired.

Clint Ober:

At that time I was noticing one day that everybody was wearing the Nike type tennis shoes and I never really ever wore those, because I was either barefoot when I was a kid or I was wearing a leather cowboy boot, and I always did. It just felt better and whenever I would put these tennis shoes on, my feet would sweat and I didn't like that. So I never really got in the habit of wearing them. But one day I was standing there at a tourist area and a tour bus pulled up and a group of tourists got off the bus. They were all. I think it was a Japanese tour group and I just looked at them and I just intuitively asked the question I wonder if no longer being naturally grounded could have an effect on our physiology and on our health, because they were all wearing those rubber-soled sneakers.

Clint Ober:

Yes, I didn't really know. I had no clue. The question just came out of nowhere, but anyhow so grounding was an accidental discovery on my part. As it relates to health. I had not a clue and surprisingly I found out no one else did either at the time.

Janet Walker:

Interesting how the idea just came to you. Yes, is earthing a new or modern concept, and I'm including the 1960s in that time frame?

Clint Ober:

Well it is, and I'm including the 1960s in that timeframe. Well, it is because, like in most homes built before 1970, you do not have an earthing system in the home other than at the mains, but your outlets are not grounded. But earthing per se goes back to when I was a kid. One time I was raised around the Crow and the Cheyenne up in southeastern Montana. A couple of them were my best friends growing up.

Clint Ober:

But one day one of my friends, his sister, had scarlet fever and they had been to the docks and done everything but there was nothing they could do at that time. And this was in the 50s, early 50s. So when they brought her home, one of the elders dug a little pit in the ground and put a little bit of straw in it and they laid her in that. So she was in the earth, but not buried in the earth but laying in the ground, laying on the ground. And then they built a fire real close by and somebody was sitting there with her for a few days while this was going on. And then we came home one day from school and here she was up, running around like nothing had ever happened.

Clint Ober:

And I didn't think anything about that at the time. But as I got more involved in this and I recall that event and then I did some research and defined that many cultures around the world bury people who have high fevers or health challenges until they recover. Now it sounds odd, but you can Google it, it's everywhere.

Clint Ober:

But almost every culture they use earthing. They didn't call it earthing, it was just a process that, probably to cool the body, you put it in the earth and it cools you down but at the same time it reduces inflammation. So it's ancient. The Chinese yogis back 5,000 years ago would call it earth qi energy from the earth and they say it comes into the feet and travels up the meridians and throughout the body and it stabilizes or returns the body to normal. Now they had no technical background and I was not aware of any of that at the time I started this work, but anyhow. So it's kind of something that's always been there and every culture has a history or a story about earthing their people, especially for health reasons. But that was just in the background. I didn't find out most of it until after we had written the first book, the earthing book, and then people started sending us stories and clippings and references to historical books and so on about the use of earthing.

Janet Walker:

Oh, that's fascinating.

Clint Ober:

And so it was really fascinating. And then the question was well, how come nobody knows about it today? How come I didn't know about this? I've been grounding things for 30 years and I had no idea this.

Janet Walker:

I've been grounding things for 30 years and I had no idea as a society or a modern culture. What do you think caused us to disconnect?

Clint Ober:

from such a natural way of living and from experiencing the benefits of earthing. Oh, that's a good one. When I was a kid, as soon as school was out, we lost the shoes and we were always barefoot. You couldn't get shoes on us. So back then, you know, we didn't know anything about that. We just went for the comfort of being barefoot because we felt better barefoot.

Clint Ober:

What happened was in 1950, plus or minus a few years television began to surface. People started spending more time indoors. Before then you couldn't get us in the house. There was nothing to do in the house except listen to the radio on Saturday night, and so anyhow.

Clint Ober:

Then in late 1950s they discovered polymers, plastics. The first thing that happened with plastics is we put them on the soles of our shoes and we started carpeting our homes. But that was great, because now everybody could afford shoes and they're inexpensive. You didn't have to worry about taking care of them, you could just wear them anytime. But television, I think, was a little more interesting, because all of a sudden our lives switched on a dime. Television became the centerpiece of the home, got in the habit of being indoors or spending more time indoors being entertained via television, and now we have the computers and the tablets and the cell phones. I mean, we have screens in front of us at all times, 24-7 now, but anyhow. So that was the progression. It was in the 1960 era that all of this began to manifest in earnest.

Janet Walker:

So it sounds like everything in our lives is taking us further and further away, Even the processed foods. I'm sure there's not people that are putting their hands in the dirt with vegetable gardens like there used to be.

Clint Ober:

No, it's like when I was growing up in Montana, you know, we grew everything. We had fresh eggs every day and we milked cows. We made our own cottage cheese, we made our own yogurts, we made everything ourselves, and the only thing that we didn't make was sugar and flour and sugar. Before then, sugar was, you know, it was common, but it wasn't. And now everything we eat is full of sugar. Yeah, everything has pulled us away from that natural world, that innate lifestyle that we had. We didn't know about health. We had never heard of the word inflammation.

Janet Walker:

So that brings us to my next question what disorders happen from this disconnection, and how does earthing promote healing?

Clint Ober:

Well, that's a good one it took me. I first discovered this in the mid-90s and I was at the time I was pushing 54, I think I had a hard time sleeping, had chronic pain. I skied for 30 years. I played tennis. I've done everything you can possibly do, but anyhow. So I started grounding myself and, quite by accident, I learned the pain disappeared when you ground the body. And when I'm talking about pain, I'm talking about oxidative pain.

Janet Walker:

And that comes about from inflammation. Is that correct?

Clint Ober:

Inflammation. The word inflammation means just what it describes Body in flame. There's a fire, a slow burning fire, oxidation. So at the time nobody knew. We did studies and we tested cortisol, we tested various things and saw all these results, but we didn't understand the mechanism of what was really going on. So I just kept doing the research, kept pushing on it, because it affected women profoundly, and I'm talking about moms and people who had certain health disorders. When I would ground them it was almost like seeing a miracle. Versus the guys, guys are thick skin. Their skin is actually thicker than women's, so they're not as sensitive to the environment or what goes on in the environment.

Janet Walker:

So you mentioned you started by grounding yourself and you just mentioned that you've started grounding other people. Can you describe that so that I can get a picture in my head of what you mean?

Clint Ober:

Okay, well, back then I had a working knowledge of grounding and grounding equipment In the beginning, when I first recognized that I was experiencing this reduction of pain whenever I was working undergrounded or with grounding, that led me to testing out more about this, and the first night that I did this, I went to a hardware store and I bought a roll of three inch wide metal aluminum heating tape, duct tape. I brought it home and I put it on my bed, taped it across my bed from top to bottom and I connected it to a wire, threw the wire out the window, connected it to a ground rod. It was at earth potential. Most people wouldn't know to do this or even think of it, no Wow.

Clint Ober:

But I had to have two wires outdoors, one going to a meter so I could test the voltage and one going to the tape that I was laying on. So I went in and after I installed this I laid down on the bed and I was normally I had to leave the TV on because I couldn't sleep unless the TV was on.

Clint Ober:

I would just stay awake until I fell asleep because I had so much pain in my body. So I laid down on this tape on my bed and I had the meter and I was holding it in my hand and I could. When I would roll over and I wasn't touching the tape, then I would have these charges or voltages on my body, measurable voltages, and that was static electricity and EMF and all this environmental stuff that's in our modern living environments. It's everywhere. It's pervasive. Static electricity is the worst. It's everywhere.

Clint Ober:

Every time you move clothing or pick your shoe up off the floor, there's a static charge that is created. It bleeds off quite quickly but you're forever creating it and replicating it. So your body is forever charged with this environmental electricity. When you're standing barefoot on the earth, then the earth is infinitely large compared to the body. So when you put your feet on the earth compared to the body, so when you put your feet on the earth, then you couple up, you electrically connect to the earth, just like plugging something into an outlet. You're electrically connected and this has been there since the beginning of time. It's totally natural. It's a natural phenomenon and it provides the free electrons that produce all life on planet earth. But anyhow, it provides the free electrons that produce all life on planet Earth. But anyhow, it's not something that you can harvest. It's free to everybody. It's universal. It's everywhere around the world pretty much equally. So when you stand on the Earth, you are electrically part of the Earth. You and the Earth are one and the same, electrically speaking. What that does is it prevents buildup of static electricity on your body.

Clint Ober:

So once I recognized that grounding my body reduced all these charges on my body and playing with this meter, I fell asleep quite quickly that night. And I woke up the next morning with the meter laying by my side and I don't think I even turned over that night. I looked at it and I said, whoa, there's something going on, because I fell asleep. I didn't have to take any Advil, I feel rested, I feel like better than I felt in a long time. So that was the real aha, Okay, there's something going on here. I didn't know exactly what it was. I knew everything about all the noise and all the EMF and all the static. I knew all that. But I had no idea that the body is, when it's ungrounded, when it's not in contact with the earth, it's an antenna that attracts static charges and everybody has experienced it, because you walk across the room and on some days you can touch the doorknob and there's a spark Right. That spark is from your body discharging excess electrons on the body to the doorknob or vice versa.

Janet Walker:

Really, someone can start experiencing the benefits of earthing right now just by being barefoot on the grass or dirt or sand. Is that correct?

Clint Ober:

Yes, grass or dirt or sand, is that correct? Yes, anything that is a piece and a part of the earth, like concrete sitting on the earth, would be, and it's made of earth, so it would be conductive or semi-conductive, like the earth itself. Grass, damp, grass, just anything that is earth or earthen or alive and connected to the earth, like if you're riding a horse bareback, then the horse is grounded and when you sit on it you're grounded.

Janet Walker:

Oh wow, Very interesting.

Clint Ober:

That's why a lot of special needs programs like to take the kids and put them on horses.

Janet Walker:

Yeah.

Clint Ober:

Because it calms their nervous system. And now we know why. We didn't know why, but it's a big horse. But the horse is grounded. It's part of the earth electrically. You sit on the horse with your skin touching the horse and then you are grounded. And all living things up until modern times were naturally grounded to the earth. You couldn't get off of the earth. Now you can't get back to the earth unless you take your shoes off and go to the park or wherever. So what happens is when you ground the body to the earth, the body touches the earth. Then the body absorbs a sufficient amount of these electrons to maintain the body at earth. Potential Earth potential means the electrical charge of the earth and the electrical charge on your body is identical, one and the same.

Janet Walker:

Now you mentioned a meter, so then grounding can actually be measured in our bodies.

Clint Ober:

Okay, measuring the electrical functioning in the body. First of all, every single cell in your body is electrical, every single cell. To measure the body as a whole and say the body has an electrical voltage of X be a little bit challenging and it would take very expensive instruments to do that. And we have done that and we know this.

Janet Walker:

So getting back to health issues, specifically inflammation. What did you discover about inflammation?

Clint Ober:

Yeah, that was the question of questions, and no matter who I talked to in the scientific community or the medical community, they all said well, what's the mechanism of that? You have to tell us why this works, because we don't understand.

Clint Ober:

And so I spent, you know, eight to 10 years just wandering around trying to uncover well, why does grounding reduce inflammation in the body? We actually did a study and developed a whole list of the things that grounding was affecting in the body. One day I was sitting working on a research paper and somebody had mentioned something about oxidative stress and pain. He said if you're researching pain, you need to be researching oxidative stress. Pain is a byproduct of oxidation.

Clint Ober:

Oxidation in our world now means fire Body's on fire, so the body is being oxidized, just like when you light a match to a log. You're lighting a fire, it's oxidizing the log, it's burning the log up. So at the time that was Dr Steven Sinatra. He was a famous cardiologist that helped work with me for 15 years or so. But anyhow, he said you've got to go research oxidation. So I started looking and then I wanted to know what promoted oxidation, and then that led me to the immune system. And so, in short, if you have a pathogen in your body or an injury, then the immune system will respond by sending a neutrophil, a white blood cell, over to the site of injury or issue and the neutrophil will. It's kind of a jelly cell, it will just kind of wrap itself around the pathogen and then it will release what we call reactive oxygen species. The word reactive oxygen means that it's highly electrically charged charged sufficient that it can rip an electron from the shell of the pathogen and destroy it. That's how the immune system works and there's lots of technical explanation, but bottom line is oxidative pain is like what I call Vicodin type pain, hot burning, and it's inflammatory.

Clint Ober:

Healing pain oftentimes is just you injured yourself and the body produces enough pain to keep you or prevent you from doing further injury. So you know, rest, relax or do something. So one day, in a moment, I recognized that well, the only thing I'm doing is I'm connecting somebody to the earth and the only thing that happens when you connect somebody to the earth is earth's natural energy negative charge. Earth's electrical charge travels up the wire and then anything connected to that wire, it will absorb sufficient electrons to maintain earth's potential. So it's at the same electrical charge as the Earth. And the significance of that was very simple when you ground a person, the pain disappears, goes away. So what you're doing is the body's absorbing these free electrons from the Earth.

Clint Ober:

And normally when you have an oxidative burst, throughout history we were always grounded. Nobody ever needed to know about grounding because it was automatic. It was just like sunshine. Then that helped me to recognize that it was the shoes that was universal around the world that changed in the 1960s, then the carpets and the creature comforts and the plasticization of everything that we touch, including the steering wheel in our car, you know whatever. Because when I was a kid we used to have tractors or whatever, and they were metal and everything was metal. Today you can't touch anything metal.

Janet Walker:

No, I mean, we have a computer mouse in our hand eight hours a day, 10 hours a day, and it's plastic yeah.

Clint Ober:

Right, so anyhow, that's how I made the connection was. Well, all I'm doing is pouring free electrons into the body and the body's absorbing them and it's reducing oxidative stress.

Janet Walker:

So someone who starts incorporating earthing into their lives can expect a reduction of inflammation and starting to feel better less pain, better sleep.

Clint Ober:

Oh yeah, no, what it affects is if you have pain or you are in pain, then your fight or flight system is elevated, your sympathetic state is chronically elevated and that's pumping your body full of cortisol the cortisol.

Clint Ober:

If you don't reduce that, then eventually it will create more pain, the pain creates more stress and it's just a vicious circle. So, anyhow, what's happening is we learned that because the body is now short of electrons, does not have enough free electrons to reduce the oxidative charge, immune system is doing exactly what it's supposed to it's oxidizing pathogens. The problem is, after the oxidative burst, if there's any free radicals left over electrically charged molecules, oxidants then they will steal an electron from a healthy cell, damage it, another neutrophil comes and you have a chain reaction and that's the start of chronic inflammation, or what they call autoimmune disorder, meaning the immune system is not functioning like it's supposed to. Normally it does that all day long, but the problem is there's not enough free electrons in the body to unwind and ground the excess radicals left over after an oxidative burst. So therefore, that's what the problem is.

Clint Ober:

Can grounding help people who have autoimmune conditions, then you can't have an autoimmune disease if you were to get grounded and stay grounded.

Janet Walker:

Oh interesting, it's not possible.

Clint Ober:

So to give you an example, I make that statement loosely, but basically the animals in the wild. Inflammation doesn't exist in nature. This only exists in humans and animals who live indoors with their owners.

Janet Walker:

And you mentioned cortisol. So that's the fight or flight hormone, yes, which, in short, bursts when we need. It is a good thing.

Clint Ober:

Absolutely.

Janet Walker:

But when it builds up and builds up and builds up in our body, it gets to these critical levels.

Clint Ober:

So you become chronically elevated. You have chronically elevated cortisol. That left alone meets the fibromyalgia, lupus, MS, and he keeps on going up the ladder. So the thing that women have to do at the end of the day, because they are much more sensitive than the guys they have to take a chair, go outdoors, take their shoes off, put their feet sit down, put their feet directly on the earth. Really that simple and it takes, you know, 15 to 30 minutes.

Clint Ober:

First thing that's going to happen and this is all we know this because of our studies First thing that's going to happen is you're going to discharge any electrical charges on your body. That's static electricity, that's, you know, all this stuff. But that charge, that's a cellular charge from inflammation, is going to discharge and that happens near the speed of light. Now the damage that has been created in the body by being charged or being electrified with all this stuff. But as soon as you ground the body, the body absorbs these electrons, dissipates these charges and then the electrons stabilize the immune system. It begins to function normally and a couple, three or four minutes, the immune system becomes stable. Now there's a lot of damage that's been created in your body from being ungrounded for days, hours, weeks, months and, for many people, years. And this damage has manifest differently in different people based on their genetics, their lifestyle, what they eat, their mental attitude, their everything creates, you know, is electrical. So you're, you're, our body's, full of charges. Our brain, everything, our emotions, everything is an electrical charge.

Clint Ober:

So you ground this out. The first thing you feel is kind of a release. A lot of times you don't even think about it because it feels so good to get grounded. You just do it automatically. You don't even know why. It doesn't matter. But the first thing you're going to feel is a release of this energy and the tension in your body is going to reduce. Now you have free electrons being absorbed by the body. So now you have greater range of motion. Because you have more energy, more electrons, you can breathe a little easier, your O2 uptake is a little improved and then any pain that you have usually within 15 to 30 minutes, I don't really care what kind of pain it is. From my experience, Any oxidative pain you have is going to subside.

Janet Walker:

Okay, I think, as soon as this interview is over, I'm going to go out in my backyard and walk on the grass for a while.

Clint Ober:

Yeah, that's what you're doing. Then just kind of make a mental note about the tension in your body, your respiration, and then just that relaxation effect that comes over you.

Janet Walker:

I saw that there are at least 20 peer-reviewed clinical studies in the medical community about earthing that prove the positive benefits. Why aren't more doctors talking about it with their patients?

Clint Ober:

I don't want to get myself in trouble here, but I'll tell a short story. I have a lot of friends in the medical industry. I have a group in San Diego area that when we grounded the riders in the Tour de France, you know back in 204 or something in that timeframe.

Janet Walker:

So how exactly did you do that? What did you use to ground the riders?

Clint Ober:

What we call the recovered bag. It was a like, if you can think of, a king-sized sheet folded over, but it had a conductive carbon material on it and it had a zipper, so it was like a big sleeping bag.

Janet Walker:

Oh, okay.

Clint Ober:

And it was grounded. So then you ground it to the earth, like we did for the tour. We designed it for the riders of the Tour de France, the US Postal Team and Team Discovery. Some of these writers were patients of one of these docs and when he found out about it he said well, I want one of those. So he got one and he played with it, took it home, and then he called up and wanted more, and so I started giving him a dozen at a time, sometimes two dozen. And then he called and put in an order and I said I'm going to be driving to San Diego. I'd like to at least stop and meet you. And so I went there and I asked him. I said what do you do with these things? And he says, well, we use them ourselves, you know, to stay off the some of the meds, to prevent what we now know as inflammation and modern health disorder, but anyhow. So I asked him. I said why don't you give these to your patients? Because you know it works Well? It really had great effect on the writers, because those guys are doing a 22 or 23 day marathon every day, all day long, and their issue is recovery. They have to recover, they have to prevent inflammation in the bodies, because you don't recover if you have inflammation.

Clint Ober:

But when I asked him how come he didn't give it to everyone else, he said and he's a nice guy, and he wasn't demeaning anything. And I'm not demeaning him at all, but he said it's very simple. He said I went to school for 12 years and I look around. He said I went to school for 12 years and I look around. He said I have this office, I have this staff, I have all of these people. And he said I've got a wife that's married to a doctor. Those were his exact words. But anyhow, he said I can't tell people to go home and get well for free. I have to do my tests, I have to do all the things I do and a lot of people they need medical attention, medical care and medical guidance. So I'm not trying to interfere with any of that, but they knew the significant health benefits of it.

Clint Ober:

And he said we can't just tell people to go home and take their shoes off and get well, because it does have such a profound effect on the cardiovascular system. Because cardiovascular disease is an inflammation. It's an inflammatory health disorder. It doesn't exist in nature and we have lots of docs and lots of nurse practitioners, lots of people who suggested that you ought to try for certain people because there's not much you can do for certain diseases. There's a point where it becomes more palliative care and to be able to ground these people and reduce their pain, even though they can't recommend it because it's not blessed by the medical world, ama and so on.

Clint Ober:

But I did call the FDA one time when I first started on this and I said I want to know what all the rules are, because this is something that affects health. And I explained it and he said well, they kind of understand what I was talking about. But he says we do not regulate natural phenomena. This is a natural phenomenon. This is not something you bottle up and put it in packages and ship it around and wholesale it and sell it. This is something that is available to every person on the planet and it's free to every person on the planet and it's free If you can find a spot of bare earth or dirt or grass that you can spend time on. And for a long time I just called this poor man's medicine.

Clint Ober:

You don't do anything. I mean whatever's wrong with you. If you have something wrong, please don't even think about it. Go to a doctor, have the test. But for inflammation-related health disorders whether it's lupus, ms, any of those kinds of health disorders just go outdoors, put your feet on the air for 15 to 30 minutes and notice what happens, and if it's good then do it twice a day. If it's really good, then do it more often. Lose the shoes, don't wear them in the house. Don't wear shoes ever at all if you don't have to.

Janet Walker:

You've written a book and produced documentaries, including the Earthing Movie, the Remarkable Science of Grounding, and you've got some big celebrity names promoting earthing for health. Author and actress Muriel Hemingway is a huge proponent of the movement, especially for its effects on mental health. Why do you think that earthing is gaining so much popularity among the celebrity crowd?

Clint Ober:

Well, first of all, it works. These people are all stressed. If you think of an athlete, like you know, like the baseball players, football players or whatever, I mean, they're high output energy, I mean and they have lots of information because they have to maintain muscle tone and have to work out. They have to do all these things. Actresses are the same. Actors and actresses and performers like Sting or any of these people who are putting out all this energy and they're on tour or they're doing this or whatever, they have to recover every night. Recovery is the name of the game. You're only going to stay in the game as long as you can recover.

Clint Ober:

When we started grounding the Tour de France and talking about recovery, then all of a sudden, a lot of high profile actors, actresses I would say that most elite athletes and the baseball players, half of them use grounding A lot of the sports teams, but the actors and actresses, they all go to similar type docs as the athletes. And when I started grounding the Tour de France, all of a sudden all the other docs started to find out about it. The docs who take care of these kind of people found out about it. And then I started getting all these calls and they said well, you know, other people are doing it. I got to do it and I got to do it now, but everything took off all by itself. We've never known how to market it, because this is more of a research and development company EarthFX Inc. And the Earthing Institute is where all this stuff is deposited all the studies and everything.

Janet Walker:

Let's talk a little bit about your company, earthfx. Not everyone lives in a place or has the time to get outside barefoot, so your company has developed products that can give people the earthing experience and benefits inside their homes, cars or offices. Yes, how was it that you came to start manufacturing products for earthing?

Clint Ober:

I never in my life ever thought that I would be in the business of creating products. But anyhow along the way, when we started doing studies, we would bring people in who had not necessarily health disorders but just to be able to ground them for a period and then draw blood before and afterwards or do biofeedback or just all of the things that we did After we did the studies. The people who were grounded all wanted to keep the devices that we were using to ground them during this test period. The reason is because it made pain go away in 15 to 30 minutes.

Clint Ober:

So anyhow we started giving them the test units and then all of a sudden they start coming back and wanting one for their mom, or one for their grandma and daughter or whatever. But that little universe. And then all of a sudden, we didn't have any scraps, didn't have enough product or anything, so we had just. We sat down one day and we said, okay, what is one thing we can do that we can produce so that people, when they leave here or learn about it, they can, at least for the people who can't get grounded any other way, they can at least do this. And so the first thing that happened, we were working in one of our facilities and we had these conductive mats thin black conductive mats laying on our benches so we could put electronic parts on it and not have any static electricity harm them.

Clint Ober:

So, anyhow, we looked at the mattress and said, well, the best thing we can possibly do, without creating something they have to do every day, is create a mat that they can sleep on. They have to put it on their mattress, cover it up with a sheet if they want, and lay down and do what they always do every single night Just come home, lay down, go to sleep and let nature put out the fire of inflammation and help them recover. And then we started giving them away and then all of a sudden it was too big, so we had to start buying stuff and then we started selling them and we sold them for. So, anyhow, this, over a period of 20 years, is now a business that goes around the world. It's kind of that kind of a thing. People learn about it and they share it. You can't sell it because they don't believe you or don't understand what you're talking about, unless you experience it or you trust somebody or you do something that somebody's telling you to do.

Janet Walker:

Well, unfortunately we're out of time to talk about all of the amazing earthing products you offer, including the mattress pads, shoes, yoga mats and more, but listeners can visit your website at earthingcom to see the full product list and I'm sure they'll be glad they did. Clint, thank you so much for being here. It was so nice talking with you.

Clint Ober:

Same here.

Janet Walker:

And hopefully we'll get to talk again at some point soon. Take care.

Clint Ober:

You bet. Thank you, take care.

Janet Walker:

Listeners. You can learn more about Clint Ober Earthing the products that can help you heal, and Clint Ober's book Earthing the most important health discovery ever by visiting wwwearthingcom. And thank you so much for listening to the award-winning Better Wellness podcast. I'm your host, janet Walker. Better Wellness is brought to you by Cocoon Wellness a new way to support your natural-born ability to be well. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, google Podcasts, iheartradio, spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Be well and thanks for listening.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Janet Walker

Host
Head Shot

Roland Perez

Host