Grounding Mats for Winter Recovery in Norway

 

Coming Inside, Part 1: Grounding for Winter Recovery

It's September 1st as I'm writing this, and I'm not sure if it's just me, but does it feel like summer's over already? When I'm out walking or cycling I'm seeing people already in jackets, jumpers, trousers. The days have still been warm, but the evenings and nights are getting colder now. To be frank, I don't know how some people are managing in jackets and jumpers already, I'm still breaking into a sweat in a t-shirt. I've already noticed something else too. A few more sniffles about. A bit more illness going round. Years ago I used to be exactly the same, and around this time of year was when the stiffness would start creeping into my joints, especially my arthritic ankle. Perhaps your joints are starting to feel it too. Perhaps there's already illness doing the rounds in your house.

If any of that sounds familiar, and I'd put money on at least one bit of it does, you've probably already started reaching for the usual suspects. More sleep. More vitamin C. Maybe you've bumped up the protein. All reasonable. All part of it. But there's a piece almost nobody in Norway talks about when it comes to recovery, and it isn't a supplement or a food group. It's electrical.

What I'd call earthing, jording as it's known here, is basically making sure your skin is in contact with the ground, either directly or through something conductive that carries the same charge. In summer we do this constantly without even registering it as a health practice. Shoes come off. We're in the grass, in the sea, on hot sand, feet just resting straight on the earth. Ask yourself now, when was the last time you actually stood barefoot on grass, dirt, mud or sand? Not trainer soles. Not a pair of wellies on the school run or a walk round Bragernes. Actual skin, actually touching the ground. I'd reckon for most of you reading this it was sometime back in July.

The ground itself is negatively charged and loaded with free electrons. Those electrons can flow into your body through direct skin contact, or through a conductive mat or sheet wired to an earth point in your wall. You're not alone if that sounds a bit out there, for years I thought the whole thing sounded like complete nonsense too. Then I actually sat down and looked at the research properly. A review summarised in the Journal of Environmental and Public Health suggests those electrons act like mobile antioxidants. They neutralise the excess positively charged particles, sometimes called reactive oxygen species, that build up in your body during illness, injury and hard training. Enough electron flow may reduce inflammation and help you recover faster. You can read that paper here: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3265077/.

This isn't me being all high and mighty about it either. Until my arthritis forced me to pay attention, I hadn't thought about any of this once in thirty-odd years of adult life. That's just modern living for most of us, rubber soles, asphalt, more rubber. Come winter, once boots and thick socks go on for good, that connection basically disappears for months.

The electron reservoir nobody mentions

Here's the bit that took me ages to properly join up, and it's the bit I find properly fascinating once it clicks (quantum biology rabbit hole, bear with me). Your body runs on redox reactions. That just means electrons constantly trading hands between molecules. Train hard, or fight off whatever your daughter's brought home from school this time, and your body throws off a spike of reactive oxygen species. Those are positively charged, electron-hungry molecules. They go looking for electrons wherever they can steal them, including from your own healthy cells and tissue. That's a big chunk of what soreness, swelling and that dragged-through-a-hedge feeling of being ill actually is, at a cellular level.

Normally your body handles this fine, using its own antioxidant systems plus whatever you're getting from food. But here's the question worth actually sitting with for a second. What if your slow recovery this winter has nothing to do with what you're eating, and everything to do with something far more basic, your actual supply of free electrons to neutralise that positive charge? A 2015 review in the Journal of Inflammation Research, led by physiologist James Oschman, proposed exactly that. Direct skin contact with the earth's negatively charged surface may help buffer this oxidative spike, supporting your body's own anti-inflammatory and wound-healing processes. You can read the full paper here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25848315/.

Think about what you're up against every single day. Proton spikes from training. Proton spikes from illness. Increasingly, from what I've read, and I hold this one a bit more loosely since the evidence is younger, possibly even from chronic low-grade stress. And your electron reservoir, unless you're topping it up somehow, just keeps getting drawn down through autumn and into the depths of a Norwegian winter, when you're barely getting outside barefoot at all.

What I actually noticed, and what the studies found

I'll be specific here rather than vague, because "I use it and find it helpful" tells you nothing useful at all. Four winters ago I went through a properly bad stretch with my arthritis. I used red light and that was helping bring my "time to useable" down from about 20-30 minutes down into the single digits but I wanted more as I training hard. I started sleeping on a grounding mat connected to the earth, more out of curiosity than real expectation (I use the earth because I believe there is still the potential for dirty electricity to interfere if you are using a plug, but that is a personal choice). Within about ten days my morning stiffness was noticeably shorter. Not dramatically. Just noticeably. 5 minutes instead of 8-9, some days where there was nothing, and I was still training hard. One person isn't a controlled trial, I know that. But it lined up closely enough with what the research was suggesting that I kept going, and I still sleep grounded most nights now.

The research backs this up beyond just me too. A 2015 pilot study in the Journal of Inflammation Research measured grounding's effect on delayed onset muscle soreness after eccentric exercise. The grounded group had significantly less pain and faster recovery of muscle function than a sham-grounded control group. Another earlier study, this one on sleep specifically, found participants grounded overnight showed a shift in cortisol rhythm, plus reported less pain and better sleep after just a few weeks of use. You can find that sleep and cortisol paper here: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3265077/.

Which of those two winters do you want this winter? The one where you bounce back in a day or two from a hard session, or the one where everything feels like it takes longer to shake off than it used to? Ask yourself now, which do you want.

Coming inside doesn't mean cutting the connection completely

This is part one of a short series I'm calling Coming Inside, because that's exactly what's happening to all of us right now across Norway. Jumpers back out. Terrace door shut more than it's open. And as we retreat indoors for the next five or six months, we lose a few properly important biological inputs, one by one, without really noticing. Electron supply from the ground is the first to go, the moment bare feet get swapped for wool socks and slippers.

The good news is you don't need to go back to walking around a Drammen park in bare feet in November to keep this topped up (yes, i'm going to be still doing it, even if there is a little frost on the ground, because I'm one of those people. However, you don't have to). A grounding mat or sheet, connected properly to the earth pin in the ground or in your wall socket, lets you stay connected while you sleep or while you're sat working, which for most of us covers a solid eight to ten hours a day when the actual earth outside is either frozen solid or under a layer of snow that insulates you from it anyway.

I test every device batch I stock with various tools to make sure it is doing what it should. So whether it is red light therapy with a spectrometer, or grounding items the equivalent discipline is checking actual conductivity and proper earth connection. It's not about just trusting the marketing copy. I've sent grounding products back to suppliers before because the resistance readings weren't what was claimed. Not fun conversations, but necessary ones if I'm going to put my name next to something.

Where this fits with the rest of what's changing indoors

Grounding is only one piece of what shifts as we move our lives back inside for winter. In part two of this series I'm getting into the lighting question, because the artificial light flooding most Norwegian homes right now is quietly working against your body clock in a way most people have never had explained to them properly. Not just that, some of the lighting can be actively eating up that electron buffer we talked about in this blog but causing excess oxidative stress. And in part three, the wavelengths you're missing entirely once you're wrapped up and staying indoors, and what that's actually costing you.

If you want to read more on how grounding and light work together as one connected system rather than separate tricks, I wrote about that in more depth here: https://lighttherapy.no/blogs/english/quantum-biology-and-mitochondrial-health-the-synergy-of-grounding-and-light-therapy. And if you're specifically dealing with a hard Norwegian winter and want the fuller seasonal picture, this one goes deeper into that: https://lighttherapy.no/blogs/english/grounding-norwegian-winter.

If you want to try grounding for yourself this winter, you can see the mats and sheets I've tested and actually stock here: https://lighttherapy.no/collections/harmony-pemf-and-grounding-materials. If you're stacking this with training or dealing with joint pain on top of it, the red light panels pair with grounding well for exactly the reasons above, more electron supply, less oxidative load: https://lighttherapy.no/collections/red-light-panels. And if you want to get into protocol specifics for your own situation, illness, training load, arthritis, whatever it is, message me. That's what I'm here for.

This post is for educational purposes and reflects current research and personal experience. It is not medical advice. If you have a diagnosed inflammatory or autoimmune condition, please talk to your doctor before making changes to your routine.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does grounding actually reduce inflammation, or is that just theory? There's a growing body of published research, including a 2015 pilot study in the Journal of Inflammation Research, showing measurable reductions in inflammatory markers and faster recovery from muscle damage in grounded participants compared with sham controls. It's still a relatively young field compared with something like vitamin D research, so I'd call the evidence promising rather than settled, but it lines up with what a lot of people report anecdotally too, myself included.

How long do I need to use a grounding mat before I notice anything? Based on the published sleep study, some participants reported changes in cortisol rhythm, pain and sleep quality within a matter of weeks of consistent nightly use. My own experience with my arthritis was a noticeable shift in morning stiffness within about five to ten days. I notived improvements in sleep and relaxation within 1-2 days though everyone's baseline is different, so I'd give it at least three to four weeks of consistent use before deciding whether it's doing anything for you.

Can I just walk outside barefoot instead of buying a grounding mat? Absolutely, and in summer that's exactly what I'd tell you to do, get your bare feet on grass or sand whenever you can. The problem in a Norwegian winter is fairly obvious, the ground is frozen or under snow for months, which is precisely why an indoor grounding mat or sheet exists, to keep that connection going through the season when direct earth contact simply isn't practical.

Er jording det samme som å ta på seg ullsokker og gå ut? Nei, faktisk stikk motsatt. Jording handler om direkte hudkontakt med jorden, eller med en jordingsmatte koblet til jordpluggen i veggkontakten din, slik at frie elektroner fra jordoverflaten kan strømme inn i kroppen. Ullsokker og sko isolerer deg fra denne kontakten, akkurat som asfalt og gummisåler gjør. Om vinteren, når bar bakkekontakt ute er upraktisk eller umulig på grunn av snø og frost, er en jordingsmatte innendørs den praktiske løsningen for å opprettholde denne elektronforsyningen.

Is there any risk to sleeping on a grounding mat every night? For most people, no, it's a passive, low-risk practice, you're simply lying on a conductive surface connected to the earth pin of a properly wired socket. The one thing I'd flag is to make sure your home's electrical earthing is actually sound and to buy from someone who tests conductivity rather than just claiming it, which is exactly why I check every product I stock before it goes on the shelf.

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References

1. Chevalier G, Sinatra ST, Oschman JL, Sokal K, Sokal P. Earthing: Health Implications of Reconnecting the Human Body to the Earth's Surface Electrons. Journal of Environmental and Public Health. 2012. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3265077/
2. Oschman JL, Chevalier G, Brown R. The effects of grounding (earthing) on inflammation, the immune response, wound healing, and prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. Journal of Inflammation Research. 2015. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25848315/
3. Sokal K, Sokal P. Grounding - the universal anti-inflammatory remedy. Biomedical Journal. 2023. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36528336/