The Voltage of Life
This graph compares the numbers of white blood cells circulating after people received repetitive stress injuries to their calves. After the injury, one group was kept electrically insulated from ground, while the other was grounded. You can see that there is a large difference in biology when people are electrically insulated from Earth.
Elevated white blood cells are a marker of inflammation. You can see dramatic graphs of other inflammation markers in the same study below. The experiment proves that being electrically insulated from ground causes inflammation and slows the healing process.
The effects of grounding (earthing) on inflammation, the immune response, wound healing, and prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4378297/
The theory about what's happening here is simple. The surface of Earth has a few volts of negative static charge in the form of free electrons, which it shares with the plants and animals that live on it. If life uses-up free electrons as part of its chemistry cycle, then being electrically insulated from the ground would cause us to run out of usable electrons and hinder some aspect of metabolism.
Some people will look at that graph and be puzzled. Why did inflammation diminish after injury in the grounded group? That feature is caused by a design flaw of the experiment: all the subjects were ungrounded before the experiment, and therefor had elevated inflammation before their injuries were induced. The group that was grounded after injury lost that elevated inflammation, but gained inflammation from the injury at the same time. Because the graph lines go down, we can deduce that being insulated caused more inflammation than the injury did.
In times of extreme injury, disease and old age, that much extra inflammation can be the difference between life and death. In healthier times it is the difference between feeling well and feeling great. In my opinion, earthing is the most powerful healing technology you can get without a prescription, and in saner times it would be making headlines as the greatest medical discovery since antibiotics.
Almost every shoe made today is an electrical insulator. Concrete and lumber are also insulators. The only place in an older home that is likely to be grounded are the water pipes and taps, but the plastic pipes in modern homes have removed even that connection. As a result, most people get very little contact with the free electrons of Earth.
Because birds need to fly and animals need to climb on dead trees, nature devised an electron battery to carry us for a while. It's called "ground substance" or "polyelectrolyte gel," as documented in that study. How long the battery lasts or takes to recharge doesn't seem to be known yet.
Earthing studies show that sleeping on a grounded bed sheet made of conducting threads is enough to produce dramatic health outcomes. Some people go farther with grounded mouse pads, foot rests, shoes, and touch points about the home. Lots of people already know about this, so there are many earthing products available.
You can give your body a few volts of negative static charge by using a negative ion generator. That should have the same effect as being grounded, and there are cheap rechargeable devices made for wearing. I've never tried one of the portable devices, but I do have a plug-in unit over my desk.
The science for negative ions is very conclusive. After a hundred+ studies, nobody has documented negative health effects from negative ions. All the results lean positive. The study below is an analysis of all the negative ion studies that could be found.
Negative Air Ions and Their Effects on Human Health and Air Quality Improvement
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6213340/#B28-ijms-19-02966
Plants normally emit negative ions, as documented in that study, but potted plants are rarely grounded so they don't have a source of free electrons to make ions with. What that does to plant health is little studied, but putting a ground wire into the soil will correct any problem.
Positive ions steal electrons from the body, so it should be no surprise that all studies of them show negative health effects.
The atmosphere has more positive ions than negative ones, so it has a net positive charge which it shares with every person that's not grounded. Although it's weak, the atmospheric voltage rises about 100 volts for every meter above the Earth's surface in fair weather. For that reason, insulated people normally accumulate many volts of positive static charge on them. Sometimes the charge is high enough to make a spark when a ground point is touched.
People who suffer with inflammatory conditions will notice a big improvement from earthing, but most people are not aware of their body's inflammation level and won't notice if it goes down 20%, as the graph above suggests. They will only feel the psychological uplift that comes with being healthier.
If you find this information convincing, do something about it. You can test your environment with a $50 ion meter, and you can use it to make your home healthy with negative ion generators. You can buy earthing sheets and other products, especially as a gift for the elderly or bed-ridden.