Grounding improves your sleep

Grounding has been tested for its effect on sleep in six small human studies, and the two that compared it with a sham device point in different directions. The larger, a 2025 trial of 60 adults in South Korea, randomly assigned people to a grounding mat or an identical mat that was not grounded, used for at least 6 hours a day for a month; both groups reported better sleep by similar amounts, with no difference between them on any sleep questionnaire. An activity tracker recorded more sleep time in the grounded group, which had also recorded more at the start. The smaller, in 15 people with mild Alzheimer's disease in Taiwan who were grounded for 30 minutes while seated on weekdays, found better sleep scores than sham after 12 weeks, though both groups started near the good end of the scale and much of the gap came from the sham group's scores getting worse.

Three others had no separate comparison group or compared barefoot walkers with people who did no exercise, and all report better sleep on at least one measure. The sixth, a 2024 report from South Korea in which 62 adults walked a forest trail barefoot or in sneakers 20 times over 5 weeks, says in its abstract that sleep improved in both groups with no significant difference between them; its full text is behind a subscription, so it is not among the Sources. The studies enrolled 12 to 62 people, ran 4 to 12 weeks and measured sleep mostly with questionnaires, and no systematic review has pooled them. Two of the six human studies, including the largest sham-controlled trial, were funded by companies that sell grounding products, and the review that proposes how grounding might affect sleep was written by researchers contracted to a grounding company; the funding of the earliest study and of the 2024 forest walking report could not be read, and the other two declare no such ties. Whether grounding helps people with a diagnosed sleep problem such as insomnia has not been tested yet.

In the Korean trial (Kyung Hee University, Seoul, published 2025), neither participants nor researchers knew which mat was which. The mat plugged into a wall outlet, which grounded it and also powered a small indicator circuit, and the authors describe its use as grounding during sleep. The groups started unevenly: the grounded group was older on average (46 against 34 years) and had higher insomnia scores (12 against 7.6 on a scale from 0 to 28). On a sleep questionnaire scored from 0 to 21, where higher means worse sleep, the grounded group went from 9.4 to 6.3 and the sham group from 8.3 to 5.7 after 31 days, with no significant difference between them; insomnia, daytime sleepiness and stress scores also did not differ. The difference in tracked sleep time at day 31 is shown only in a chart. The paper reports different group sizes in its text and tables and states no trial registration. It was funded by World Home Dr., the maker of the mat, and Geosan Corp., and two authors are listed at companies, one of them the mat maker.

In the Alzheimer's trial (Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 2022), 22 people over 65 were randomly assigned to a grounding mat or an identical mat with a disconnected cord, and neither they nor the staff assessing them knew which; 15 finished. On the same 0 to 21 sleep questionnaire, the groups started at 1.9 and 2.0. After 12 weeks the grounded group scored 0.3 and the sham group 3.0, a statistically significant difference. In the authors' second, model-based analysis, the grounding effect fell just short of the usual cutoff for statistical significance (p = 0.053). Anxiety and depression scores did not differ. The trial was registered after it had finished, and it received no outside funding.

The two other studies of grounding during sleep compared people with themselves. In a 2019 study at a wellness center in California, 16 massage therapists used number-coded cords for six weeks: sham cords in the first and last weeks and working cords in between, plugged into outlet grounds at work and into sleep mats or bands at home, with neither the therapists nor the staff knowing which was which. Sleep disturbance scores fell from 51.3 to 47.5 by the end of the grounded weeks and were 48.9 after the final sham week, a change from the start the authors did not report as significant; reported hours of sleep did not change significantly. The study was funded by the grounding company Earth FX, the equipment was donated by the grounding retailer earthing.com, and the lead author consults for Earth FX. The earliest study (2004) grounded 12 adults with sleep problems, pain and stress on conductive mattress pads in their own beds for 8 weeks, with no comparison group: night-time saliva cortisol fell, and nearly all participants reported fewer sleep problems. Its full text is behind a paywall, so its funding could not be read.

A second 2025 study in South Korea found that 29 women with menopausal symptoms who walked barefoot for an hour three times a week for 12 weeks reported better sleep than 31 women who kept their usual routine, but the walkers were not randomly assigned and the comparison group did no exercise, so contact with the ground cannot be separated from walking. The main proposed explanation is that grounding steadies the day-night rhythm of cortisol and shifts the nervous system toward rest; in rats, 21 days on a mat wired to an outlet ground increased measured sleep time and lowered orexin, a brain signal that promotes wakefulness. Indoor grounding products are usually connected through the ground port of a wall outlet; the Korean trial checked for adverse reactions at each visit but did not report what it found, and no cited study assessed the electrical safety of sleeping connected this way. A 2012 review by researchers tied to a grounding company notes unpublished reports of raised INR, a measure of blood clotting time, in people taking warfarin who began grounding; no study has tested this. None of the studies enrolled children, and none reported including pregnant women.