The Grounding Question, and How One Inspector's View Changed

• Early 2000s. Her bed remedy was a shielding cloth, and her rule was firm: connect only to a dedicated ground rod driven into the earth outside, never to the ground hole of a wall outlet.
• 2015. She described grounding the body in bed as easy and often helpful for sleep, fatigue and pain, and raised no concerns.
• 2020. She slept on a grounding sheet plugged into an outlet ground and said it took the edge off her exhaustion. She laid out the possible risks to clients and let each one choose.
• Her latest teaching pages (written in 2020 and published in 2021). Removing the sources of voltage became her preferred option, and she now called grounded material the controversial choice. She wrote that she would not leave grounding material connected to a wall outlet's ground for good, because something so close to the body should not be tied to the household wiring in case of a fault. She used the outlet ground only briefly, to take measurements.

Her settled advice, then: first unplug devices near the bed, move cords away, and find and switch off the circuits that reach the bed, as described in her body-voltage method. Treat grounding the body as an optional extra, not the main fix. And if you are sleeping badly or waking exhausted, ask your doctor about a sleep study as well; sleep apnea is common, treatable and easy to miss.

Induced current. Her own idea, which she offered as a question rather than a finding, was that when grounded material pulls the voltage on a body sharply down, the field from nearby wiring may turn into a tiny current passing through the body on its way to ground. The bigger the drop, the stronger that current might be. A client recovering from a stroke had given up on grounding because it felt like electricity running through him, and another electrically sensitive client said the same. She wondered whether they were early warnings for everyone else. Other clients slept well on grounding for years, and she was candid that people differ.

No true zero. The earth itself carries some voltage. Measuring between two points in the soil about 10 feet apart, she typically found around 12 to 15 mV, and she recalled never seeing less than 5 mV. Part of that, she was told, comes from utility current returning through the ground. The earth is close to zero, not zero.

Smaller results than they first seemed. A near-zero reading on a grounded sheet came only with bare skin touching it. Through a bottom sheet, the drop she measured was often modest, sometimes little different from simply unplugging the lamps by the bed.

Storms and faults. A lightning strike or wiring fault could reach anything tied to the house ground, which is why grounding products advise unplugging during electrical storms.

Evidence: Inspector's practice (precautionary).

Current guidance: Mainstream electrical safety practice advises against tying bedding or anything else you sleep on to a household outlet's ground, because a wiring fault can energize that ground. Research on health benefits of grounding is small, and much of it comes from people connected to the products. No health agency recognizes it as a treatment.

If you choose to try grounding, her later caution is the one to carry forward: reduce the sources first, never connect bedding permanently to a wall outlet, have a licensed electrician check the wiring, and stop if it feels wrong.

This page is for education only. It is not medical, legal or engineering advice. The inspector whose work this builds on was an environmental consultant, not a physician. Talk with your doctor about health concerns, and use licensed professionals for electrical work and large mold jobs. Products, prices and labs mentioned reflect the years they were recorded and may have changed.

Source: the field work of environmental inspector May Dooley, MS, MA, CMC

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