> Electrical systems are inherently powered by electricity. As electricity flows through them, however, it may build up to dangerous levels. This is why most electrical systems are grounded. Grounding ensures that any excess electricity will be discharged.
A biological system that is grounded has less excess charge inside it.
Its not about the surface of the skin, the skin/sweat can act as a conductor for the electrons to pass through into our body, and a wet ground helps even more. Our bodies are slightly positive due the oxidative effect occurring in our proteins, fats and other bodily tissues.(Oxidation is a chemical reaction in which atoms lose electrons)
>Unlike the epidermis and dermis layers of our skin — which are poor conductors of electricity — our sweat is rich with electrolytes such as sodium and chloride, which makes our sweat a surprisingly decent conductor of electricity (though not quite as good as metal).
>What’s more, our bodies don’t just sweat when we are hot. Every square inch of our skin is releasing traces amounts of sweat, regardless of temperature.
https://research-collective.com/biometrics_galvanic_skin_res...
Tissue is semi-conductive. Different tissues, more or less so. When earthing, your skin comes in contact with the relatively negative potential of the earth. The electrons will be drawn into the body due to the body's relatively positive charge. This is not quite the same thing as building up a high negative surface voltage such as from friction. Though I imagine over time this static charge could be drawn into the body.
Being a bit more speculative, I have read in sci studies that electron tunneling into positive holes (atoms with missing electrons in the outer shell) across proteins can typically occur in 10 to 20 angstrom hops. These hops range in speed from milli to nano seconds. Performing a little simple math it can be calculated ( roughly) that it will take about 2 minutes for electrons to travels an inch or so through the tissue (of course once into the blood stream they can be transferred at a different rate at the same time recharging depleted water soluble anti-oxidants eg.. vitamin c and uric acid). There are approx 12,700,000 hops per inch. Therefore, the process is not instantaneous, which goes along with how people report benefits (people talk about 20 to 30 minutes grounded to really start feeling the beneficial effects.
From my bio:
"The problem: We use logic, but on the basis that everything we know currently is all there is to know about this thing." I think that in 100-200 years our understanding of how electricity affects our cells will be transformed.
If I can't convince you that walking barefoot on wet soil or grass does nothing in terms of transferring electrons into the body, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
The body isn't positively charged on net. The interior of most cells is negatively charges and the surrounding fluid is OFTEN slightly positively charged which is part of the normal mechanism for material crossing cell boundaries. The whole thing on net is basically neutral. If you're starting from a different position, then the whole idea is baseless out of the gate.
If you had any net charge you'd discharge that into the environment if negatively charged, or vice versa. Usually there's enough humidity in the air to do the trick, but in extremely dry environments static electricity builds up until you touch something like a metal door knob.
If you just wanted some electrons, then generating some static electricity on a rug would be even better.
Even still the amount of current flowing between a person and the earth will be at best minuscule, almost unmeasurable[1]. The idea that "electrons going into your body" this way has any effect on your health is frankly not something that should be taken seriously.
Even if an object is in earths magnetic field, grounding itself still discharges electricity...
when you ground yourself (one way is going bare foot on the ground)...
> The ground on which you walk has a negative electrical charge. Therefore, it’s able to neutralize positively charged electricity
https://monroeengineering.com/blog/how-does-electrical-groun....
> Electrical systems are inherently powered by electricity. As electricity flows through them, however, it may build up to dangerous levels. This is why most electrical systems are grounded. Grounding ensures that any excess electricity will be discharged.
A biological system that is grounded has less excess charge inside it.