Hi- I believe that earthing (also known as grounding) has cured my dysautonomia and adrenal fatigue. I am not in any way affiliated with earthing products. I am a disabled mom.
MY HEALTH STORY
For the past ten years, I have steadily transformed from a healthy, thirty-year-old attorney to a sickly forty-something-year-old on disability. All of my illnesses have involved inflammation, my immune system and my adrenal glands. In 2002-2003, I developed Sjogren's Syndrome and chronic hives.
In 2006, with my son in daycare bringing home every cold, and while I worked full-time, I developed an extremely rare flesh-eating pneumonia. Within a day of catching this, I turned septic and was in a narcotically induced coma for 2 weeks. Miraculously, I woke up with all of my mental faculties intact. I was left with scarring in my lungs called bronchiectasis. In denial about the gravity of my illness, I returned to work as a full-time attorney after 8 weeks.
Within 3 weeks of returning to work, I developed chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome (“cfids”). My adrenals were exhausted from managing my immune system through such a serious illness, and their failure caused my whole body to shut down. I couldn’t sleep no matter how many Ambiens I took. I couldn’t eat. I felt wired all the time due to a resurgence of Epstein Barr Virus. I had always had anxiety and angers issues, because ironically, although I craved stress in my life, I didn’t handle stress well. With the cfids and adrenal problems, my anxiety went through the roof. I also began getting recurrent pneumonias due to the lung scarring and because my immune system was down-regulated from the cfids. This was when I had to go on disability. My body had given out. I was bedridden.
In 2010, I tried an experimental treatment, Valcyte, and got my cfids in remission. Of course, the minute I got it into remission, I tried to reengage in some form of living. I started exercising and volunteering at my son’s school. Through all this, I still got pneumonias on a semi-monthly basis and started having difficulty sleeping through the night as my adrenals struggled to keep up. Even the little stress caused by volunteering was enough to take me down.
Then, in 2012, I developed dysautonomia (i.e. POTS or mitral valve prolapse syndrome—every doctor I see calls it something different). I suddenly became very sensitive to exercise. Sometimes I threw up after exerting myself. I started having dizziness if I didn’t drink water and take salt at timed intervals throughout the day. At bedtime, I had to sleep sitting up because I had such bad bed spins. I had adrenaline surges and low blood sugar where I would almost faint. I would feel really sick if I got hot. The nausea became so bad that I couldn’t eat.
In 2012, I also developed adrenal fatigue again. No matter how well I slept at night, I could not get up in the morning. I slept until noon. I felt low energy, depressed. My hair started falling out again. I was absolutely miserable. Everything I read said to cure adrenal fatigue one had to rest for two years.
During this round of disability, I decided that I was going to cure the dysautonomia and adrenal fatigue just like I had “cured” the cfids. I started researching like crazy and trying every treatment that I could get my hands on. I wanted to get better naturally, but I was desperate. I did graded exercise and acupuncture and Chinese herbs and hormones (pregnenolone & dhea) and diet and supplements. I got all sorts of blood tests, nutrition evaluations and food allergy testing. I did colon hydrotherapy and coffee enemas and Thai massage. I spent so much money it was ridiculous. The doctors had no suggestions beyond what I was already doing, and nothing worked. Finally, after a year, I gave up on ever curing the dysautonomia.
I had become so obsessed with feeling better that my stress levels were at an all-time high. I was anxious and always angry at my husband; it’s hard not to be a miserable person when you are miserable.Around this time, I started getting neck pain. I would get cricks that wouldn’t go away, and my having to sleep sitting up all the time compounded the pain. It was debilitating, so I started researching pain relief and stumbled upon earthing.
EARTHING
Earthing (also known as grounding) is the concept that our bodies need the electromagnetic energy of the earth for optimum health as much as we need water, plants, rocks (minerals), air and sunlight. The earth gives off electrons that our body readily absorbs, which brings us to the same electrical frequency as the earth. We have become cut off from these electrons in our modern life by wearing shoes with plastic and rubber soles and by living in houses made of wood; these materials are not conductors, so the earth’s electrons cannot pass through. In order to “earth,” you can walk barefoot on the ground. There are also grounding sheets and pads that you can order; you plug them into the third hole of your outlet. (They give you a tester to test your outlet to make sure it’s safe before you plug).
The science of how these electrons improve health is not 100% understood. We know that free radicals are positively charged and that they do their damage to bacteria, viruses and human tissue by seeking electrons, so one theory of the benefits of earthing is that electrons may act as antioxidants. However, some of the other benefits of earthing are not easy to understand. It makes sense in some ways though because we evolved over hundreds of thousands of years walking barefoot and sleeping on the surface of the earth. Also, there are double-blind placebo studies published in scientific journals showing earthing regulates cortisol and adrenal gland functioning, reduces pain, aids sleeping, thins the blood, and enhances a sense of well-being.
Earthing & Me
I bought the earthing sheet for my neck pain, and I plugged it in with the expectation that my pain might improve after about 6 weeks of sleeping on it. My husband thought I was daffy and refused to sleep on the thing. Luckily, I had bought the half sheet, so I could put it on my side of the bed and not have to listen to his complaining. When I lay down on the sheet, I immediately got tingling and burning shock sensations in a big scar on the side of my leg. “That’s weird,” I thought. It was a little uncomfortable but it subsided after about 15 minutes. Once I finished reading, I went to sleep.
On the first night, I had an intense herxheimer reaction (also known as die-off). This is something that often happens to people with cfids who have lots of viruses or bacteria built up in their body when their immune system or a drug they are taking is killing the pathogens. When I get die-off, it’s my Epstein Barr virus dying. Since it resides in your nervous system, my nervous system gets inflamed, and I can’t sleep. So on my first night on the sheet, I slept horribly.
When I got up the next day, I was shocked. I had never had die-off before from anything but potent antiviral drugs. I immediately began googling “die off and earthing,” and I found many people with lyme disease and cfids who had experienced die-off when using the sheet. I figured that it must be the blood thinning properties of earthing, because Coumadin is often used in treating cfids because people’s blood gets very clumpy, and thinning the blood exposes pathogens. I was impressed and excited that I had found something to help keep my viral blood levels down.
During this time, I had been continuing with my dysautonomia routine—water and salt all day at timed intervals. I had noted to myself, “Wow, you are getting really good at measuring just the right amount of salt to prevent dizziness.” Little did I know.
Then, on the fourth evening, we went on a church retreat to some cabins in the wilderness. We drove at night to get there. Right around bedtime I realized I had forgotten my salt! Panic!! My husband walked around the entire camp trying to find me salt to no avail. I decided to tough it out and vowed to drive to find salt in the morning. That night, I had no dizziness, no nausea, and I slept like a rock. I was shocked, but I didn’t trust it, so I found and took salt the next day.
Once we got home, and I had the convenience of being able to let myself feel sick, I decided I was going to test whether I needed salt and water anymore. One day, I purposely got extremely dehydrated and had no salt, and I felt fine all day and slept like a rock that night. The next day, the same. The next day, the same, and every day since. I have no nausea, no dizziness, no low blood sugar. I feel 100% normal.
After a few nights of earthing, there were other things I noticed as well.
(1) My adrenal fatigue appeared to disappear. Even though I hadn’t slept well those first nights due to die-off, I woke up with energy, and I could get out of bed without dragging until noon. I felt more energized sleeping 4 hours with earthing than I did when I slept 12 hours normally. I felt like I had returned to the land of the living.
(2) My anxiety and anger lifted. I feel lighter, happier, more peaceful, less stressed. My husband has noticed a change in my moods and my energy. I feel like I have found something that has been missing all of my life.
My conclusions: Most of the diseases that I have had involved stress and the adrenal glands, and stress is what made me so sick with every disease I’ve ever had. We know earthing regulates your cortisol, which is why people sleep better when they earth. Perhaps, earthing does this by regulating your hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis which would explain why I feel the healthiest I have ever felt in my life and why my dysautonomia and adrenal fatigue were miraculously cured after a few nights of sleeping on the sheet.
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