I took my shoes off and went for a barefoot hike. I couldn’t believe what happened next

By Don Riddell, CNN

(CNN) — Whenever I see Kim McAdams, she is never wearing shoes. Every year, she checks my car emissions from her workstand at a parking lot in Roswell, Georgia. In the four years that I’ve known her, come rain or shine, she is always barefoot.

I had heard of people who kick off their shoes to connect with Earth, and it always sounded so calming. But in a parking lot littered with who knows what underfoot?

This year, my curiosity got the better of me. “Do you, by any chance, believe in the practice of grounding?” I asked. She replied with a smile, “Whatever makes you think that?”

McAdams said that she has never liked shoes, and at some point, during her time at high school in Ohio, she just stopped wearing them. “We had big bell Levi’s,” she explained. “It didn’t matter if I had shoes on or not — you couldn’t see my feet.”

Back in the 1970s, she said, nobody was talking about grounding, also known as earthing. “For a long time, I didn’t know it was a thing,” she continued. “I can feel the ground under me, I feel better, I feel healthier.”

As it turns out, viral TikTok videos in recent years have been popularizing the barefoot lady’s practice of making direct contact with Earth.

People are aiming to improve their health and get in touch with nature, she told me. “Everybody wants to be grounded, I think it’s because there’s so much crap going on and there’s so much stuff in our food, the chemicals that are in stuff.”

While McAdams’ approach may seem extreme, I’ve spent most of my professional career working in London and Atlanta, and I’ve grown to appreciate the restorative benefits of getting outside in nature. And taking it even further — maybe immersing myself by taking my shoes off while outdoors from time to time isn’t such a crazy idea.

Putting my feet in the soil

When I started gardening about 10 years ago, I would always take a speaker outside to listen to my favorite tunes. One fall afternoon, I wondered whether I really needed to be hearing Iron Maiden’s “Piece of Mind” album. Much as I love Steve Harris’ galloping bass lines, I had an epiphany that perhaps my own peace of mind would be better served by tuning into the birdsong and the leaves in the breeze.

Now, I take my shoes off whenever I walk in the yard, and I find the sensation of scuffing my feet through the grass to be strangely comforting.

I was onto something. Thousands of Canadian doctors are now prescribing nature to their patients, including Dr. Melissa Lem, a cofounder of PaRX, Canada’s national nature prescription program.

“There is a huge body of research, thousands of studies deep, delineating the benefits of nature for your health,” Lem, a clinical assistant professor of family practice at the University of British Columbia, told CNN. “Anything that gets you outside, mindful and more connected to nature will likely improve your health.”

So, I wondered, how much more of a difference does it make if you kick off your shoes and connect directly with Earth?

The 2019 documentary “The Earthing Movie” posits that the human body is both a biological and an electrical organism, making it receptive to the charges that are constantly radiating from the ground beneath our feet.

The scientific evidence on grounding is still emerging, Lem said. But to help us understand the theory behind it, she explained it like this: “We build up positive charges in our bodies, free radicals. Earth’s surface has a negative charge and so getting your body flooded with those negative ions and charges helps reduce the overall free radicals and reduce inflammation.”

Free radicals are molecules within the body with unpaired electrons. Driven to search for a match, they rob other cells of their electrons, causing cellular damage that can cause inflammation that contributes to chronic diseases. Grounding, according to its proponents, may support your body by supplying it with stabilizing electrons.

Filmmaker Josh Tickell, who codirected “The Earthing Movie,” said that he was skeptical when the idea of the film was first presented. “I thought it was, you know, California, eco, crunchy,” he told CNN. “I was just like, Oh my gosh, one more idea for a bad movie.”

But his film has found an audience of at least 8 million people on YouTube who are open to hearing its message or already believe it. Among the 10,000-plus comments are hundreds of personal anecdotes testifying to the restorative benefits of direct contact with nature.

The modern ‘earthing’ movement

Clint Ober, 81, is regarded by some as the “godfather” of the earthing movement. He believes that the advent of modern footwear has insulated us from what he considers the health benefits of Earth.

“Before I was born in 1944, you couldn’t get out of the dirt,” he told CNN. “Couldn’t get ungrounded if you wanted to. We stepped out of nature 65 years ago, and since then, everybody started developing these inflammation-related health disorders.”

The founder of Earthing, a company that manufactures grounding mats, mattress covers and pillows, Ober became more widely known after he was featured in the “The Earthing Movie.” In it, he recounted the story of a childhood friend from the Cheyenne Tribe in Montana who had been treated for a serious illness by being placed in a hole in the ground for days.

Ober said he spent almost a month in the hospital in 1995 after an abscess had compromised 80% of his liver function, and when he got out, he vowed to live a healthier, more natural lifestyle.

Research funded by Ober’s company shows some benefits of grounding, but so far, independent research into grounding has been limited. No studies have provided any certainty backing the movement, and any evidence still seems to be anecdotal.

“I don’t have a corner on the science,” Tickell said. “But when you film enough people having enough life changes, you kind of go, there’s something here.”

Ken Crenshaw, 57, is the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team’s director of sports medicine and performance. He says he has treated players with grounding mats. He also sleeps on one at home and even has one in contact with his hands when he types at the computer in the office, which means he is practicing grounding for much of the day, even though he is working in his indoor office.

Crenshaw told CNN that some players have been skeptical because they can’t feel anything happening when they are in contact with the mats. “But if I’m working on you from a manual tissue standpoint, I feel like it changes how quickly the tissue will respond,” he said. “Is that a subjective call? Yeah, but I feel like it does.”

Trying grounding for myself

Shortly after I had first seen “The Earthing Movie” a few years ago, I remember walking past a younger man on a trail in the forest. He was barefoot, seemingly without a care in the world. For research purposes, I went shoeless myself.

The early going was not as relaxing as I’d hoped. I had never previously noticed the crushed gravel under my sneakers at Leita Thompson Memorial Park in Roswell, but I was surprised at how quickly I was able to navigate the prickly terrain once I got used to it.

“Barefoot! Wow!” exclaimed one lady who stopped dead in her tracks. I assured her and another woman that I wasn’t crazy, and that I’d be careful to look out for tree stumps and broken glass.

The words that really struck me came from a couple behind me on the trail. “That man isn’t wearing any shoes,” he bluntly observed. “He’s grounding,” she replied, with complete authority.

In that moment, I felt as though I’d entered another world, a world in which contacting Earth wasn’t some fringe activity, but instead something normal and totally understood.

I honestly didn’t expect anything to happen as a result of my barefoot hike.

But then, I noticed one significant and immediate change. I usually wake up at least once or twice every night, but for the next week I slept until morning without any interruption. Was it the grounding or something else? Perhaps walking on the gravel had triggered the pressure points on my feet and given me some kind of natural reflexology treatment. I can’t say for sure, but my sleep definitely improved that next week.

Mat White has some thoughts about the change in my sleep quality. He’s a health and environmental psychologist at the University of Vienna who is running a 6.3 million-euro research project on biophysical resilience for the European Union.

“We do find some of the effects that the grounding people report,” he explained to CNN. “But we’re not claiming it’s anything to do with electrical currents in the ground.”

“There’s a lot of good-quality evidence showing that the more you physically touch the natural environment, the more you’ll pick up a complex microbiome,” he explained. “We know that better microbiome is better for the gut and brain mechanisms that can reduce inflammation and increase immune function.”

How to ground yourself

It’s important to note that if you have a chronic inflammatory illness, you should consult with a doctor before grounding. The great outdoors isn’t a cure-all. But whatever you think about its merits, the benefits of simply communing with nature are well-documented.

White’s research estimates that just two hours outside every week could increase your well-being by 2%. If that doesn’t sound like much, he says that estimate is an average, meaning that for some people the benefits can be far higher.

If you’re going to invest in grounding equipment like mats and sheets, the only downside seems to be that you will have spent money on something that might not work. But if you’re getting outside, with or without your shoes on, what have you got to lose?

“You’re not going to overdose on grass,” Tickell quipped.

Grounding, or earthing, yourself doesn’t mean you have to reject wearing shoes all the time, as McAdams does.

It can be as simple as slipping them off and taking a walk in the grass or the dirt. You can play in the sand at the beach or take a dip in the sea, a river or a lake. Even gardening with your bare hands would count — you just need to make direct contact with Mother Earth.

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