Both safety and health benefit from electrical grounding in the Morozko ice bath
Summary
Independent measurements by Brian Hoyer of Shielded Healing confirm the water in the Morozko Ice Bath confers an electrical grounding (earthing) benefit when you plunge.
Correcting electricital imbalances in your body will promote circulation, reduce risk of blood clot, reduce inflammantion, promote wound healing, and may boost mood.
Are you grounded?
Electromagnetic field (EMF) expert Brian Hoyer tested the electrical properties of the Morozko ice bath for Luke Story and Ben Greenfield. As he explains in the video above, he discovered the Morozko has "amazing" grounding properties that are beneficial for human health.
The fact that electricity is an important regulator of health in the human body should come as no surprise. Young children still play the game of rubbing balloons on their hair to create static electricity.
Without discharging all the built-up static electricity, their hair flies out from their scalp at weird, gravity-defying angles, and the balloon will stick to the wall and stay there as if by magic.
The balloon experiment is a demonstration of the fact that our bodies are capable of accumulating and storing electric charge.
Now, leading biohackers are discovering that being out of electric balance can cause strange distortions in our appearance and our health. To remedy the ills of living in a modern, industrialized world surrounded by stray electromagnetic fields, Ben Greenfield suggests:
Grounding the human body to the Earth uses the earth’s electrical potential and free electrons to maintain internal electrical stability, normalizing all of its self-regulating and self-healing systems. - Ben Greenfield
That is, although our bodies respond to electric fields, we are imperfect conductors incapable of correcting electrical imbalances without connecting to the Earth (i.e., grounding). Swimming in lakes, streams, the ocean, or any natural body of water will instantly ground your body. However, cold showers, and baths in plastic or fiberglass tubs will not.
Benefits of grounding (earthing)
Scientific experiments in human conductivity support these claims. Measuring human voltages in grounded and ungrounded states, Chevalier et al. (2012) discovered that connecting our bodies to the unlimited supply of electrons in the earth has a multitude of health benefits, including:
reduced cortisol spikes,
delayed muscle soreness and reduced inflammation,
strengthened parasympathetic nervous system response,
improved heart rate variability.
Evidence shows that contact with the Earth—whether being outside barefoot or indoors connected to grounded conductive systems—may be a simple, natural, and yet profoundly effective environmental strategy against chronic stress, autonomic nervous system dysfunction, inflammation, pain, poor sleep, disturbed heart rate variability, hypercoagulable blood, and many common health disorders, including cardiovascular disease. The research done to date supports the concept that grounding or earthing the human body may be an essential element in the health equation along with sunshine, clean air and water, nutritious food, and physical activity. - Chevalier et al. 2012.
The problem is that our high technology lifestyles have disconnected us from the Earth --both metaphorically and electrically. Without that connection, built-up, unreleased static charges create imbalances in our natural, imperfect conducting bodies.
Our mission at Morozko Forge is to provide the knowledge and equipment necessary to help you live a more natural life in an unnatural world.
To do that, we designed the Morozko with a metal tub so that we could connect you to ground. The water in your Morozko is in constant electrical contact with the metal in the tub, and the tub is in constant electrical contact with the copper refrigeration coils, and the coils are in constant electrical contact with the Ground Fault Circuit Interrupt (GFCI) that goes straight to the ground circuit in the electrical wiring of your home.
What that means is, when you plunge into your Morozko, you are bathing in the same unlimited pool of electrons that is available to you when you swim in the ocean or a mountain stream. Through copper wire, the Morozko brings the earth's electrons to you while you plunge.
Cold showers, cryotherapy chambers, and cold plunge tubs made of acrylic, fiberglass or plastic do not provide a grounding benefit, because they do not connect your body to the Earth. By contrast, the grounding properties of the Morozko provide an additional healing benefit that used to be obtainable only by swimming in natural waters.
When you can't get to the beach, or the mountain stream, or the frozen lake, Morozko will still bring the benefits of grounding to you.
Morozko is the next best thing to Nature.
About the Author
Thomas P Seager, PhD is an Associate Professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering at Arizona State University. Seager co-founded the Morozko Forge ice bath company and is an expert in the use of ice baths for building metabolic and psychological resilience.