Does Grounding Affect Mood and Wellbeing? What the Research Shows

What Do Researchers Mean by “Mood and Wellbeing”?

The studies in this area have not all measured the same thing.

Some have looked at immediate feelings such as:

• pleasant versus unpleasant mood;

• positive versus tired mood;

• negative versus relaxed mood.

Others have measured:

• anxiety;

• depressive symptoms;

• fatigue;

• energy;

• emotional and mental stress;

• overall quality of life;

• perceived psychosocial stress.

That distinction matters. Feeling more positive or relaxed after an hour is not the same outcome as treating an anxiety disorder or depression.

The research therefore needs to be interpreted according to what was actually measured in each study.

Study 1: Can One Hour of Grounding Change Mood?

One of the most directly relevant studies was published by Gaétan Chevalier in Psychological Reports in 2015.

Forty adults took part in a double-blind pilot experiment. Participants spent an hour relaxing in a recliner equipped with conductive grounding equipment. Some were actually connected to ground, while others were connected to visually identical sham equipment that did not complete the electrical connection.

Researchers used the Brief Mood Introspection Scale, or BMIS, before and after the session.

Although 40 people participated, properly completed mood questionnaires were available for 29 participants: 19 in the grounded group and 10 in the sham group.

What happened?

The grounded group showed statistically significant improvements in three of the four mood dimensions:

• Pleasant–Unpleasant: improved, p = 0.02

• Positive–Tired: improved, p = 0.04

• Negative–Relaxed: improved, p = 0.02

• Arousal–Calm: no significant change, p = 0.96

The sham group also improved significantly on the Pleasant–Unpleasant measure, but its changes on Positive–Tired and Negative–Relaxed did not reach statistical significance. Neither group changed significantly on Arousal–Calm.

That pattern is intriguing. Participants who were grounded showed significant changes across more dimensions of mood than those who simply underwent the sham relaxation session.

There is, however, an important statistical qualification.

The study primarily tested changes within each group — comparing participants' moods before and after the session. It did not provide the kind of comprehensive between-group analysis needed to establish that the improvement itself was significantly greater with grounding than with sham treatment.

In other words, the study provides an interesting positive signal, but it should not be interpreted as definitive evidence that one hour of grounding improves mood more than relaxation alone.

The researchers themselves called for larger, better-controlled studies.

Study 2: Grounding, Fatigue and Wellbeing in Massage Therapists

A 2019 study looked at a very different type of exposure: repeated grounding over several weeks.

Sixteen massage therapists participated in a six-week, double-blind study. They were ungrounded during the first week, grounded during weeks two through five, and ungrounded again during the final week.

During the grounded period, therapists used grounding equipment while working and also grounded themselves while sleeping at home. Researchers measured depression, anxiety, fatigue, physical function, sleep disturbance, pain, energy and other aspects of wellbeing.

What did the researchers find?

For the two cohorts combined, depressive-symptom scores were significantly lower at the end of the four-week grounding period than at baseline (p = 0.010). They remained lower during the following ungrounded week (p = 0.040) and at the one-month follow-up (p = 0.006).

Fatigue also fell significantly by the end of the grounding period (p = 0.012), with the difference from baseline still significant one month later (p = 0.018).

Anxiety decreased significantly by the end of grounding when both cohorts were combined (p = 0.038), although that response was driven mainly by one of the two cohorts.

Daily wellbeing logs produced additional findings. One cohort reported feeling less tired and having more energy during the grounded weeks. However, the researchers did not find consistent significant changes within the cohorts for their daily emotional-stress and mental-stress questions.

Why this study needs careful interpretation

The study involved just 16 people, divided into two cohorts of eight, and the two cohorts did not respond identically.

There were also important real-world differences during the study. Participants performed fewer massages during some weeks, and one cohort's study period overlapped Thanksgiving and the lead-up to Christmas. The researchers specifically identified the small sample and timing around major holidays as limitations and discussed workload, pain, gender and other differences as possible explanations for some of the contrasting results.

These issues don't erase the positive findings. They do mean that we cannot confidently attribute every improvement to grounding itself.

Still, the decreases in depressive symptoms and fatigue — including findings that remained significant at the one-month follow-up — make the study worthy of further investigation.

Study 3: Grounding Did Not Improve Anxiety or Depression in Mild Alzheimer's Disease

Not all grounding studies have found psychological benefits.

A 2022 placebo-controlled pilot study investigated grounding in people with mild Alzheimer's disease.

Twenty-two participants entered the study and 15 completed the 12-week intervention: eight in the grounding group and seven in the sham-grounding group.

Researchers assessed sleep quality as well as anxiety using the Beck Anxiety Inventory and depressive symptoms using the Beck Depression Inventory-II.

The study produced a positive result for sleep quality, but not for anxiety or depression.

After 12 weeks:

• anxiety scores did not differ significantly between the grounding and sham groups (p = 0.613);

• depression scores did not differ significantly between the groups (p = 0.189).

Additional statistical modeling likewise did not find a significant grounding effect on anxiety or depression.

This is an important result because it shows that psychological benefits have not appeared consistently across grounding studies.

At the same time, this was a very small study involving a specific clinical population. It cannot tell us whether grounding affects mood in healthy adults or people experiencing other forms of psychological stress.

It simply tells us that, in this particular trial, grounding did not significantly improve anxiety or depression compared with sham treatment.

Study 4: What Did the 2025 Earthing-Mat Trial Find About Stress?

A larger and more recent study published in Advances in Integrative Medicine investigated 31 days of earthing-mat use.

Sixty participants were randomized to either a grounding mat or a non-grounding control mat and instructed to use it for six hours per day. Fifty-six participants were included in the final analysis.

Although sleep was the main focus of the research, the researchers also measured perceived psychosocial stress using the Brief Encounter Psychosocial Instrument, or BEPSI.

The grounded group's stress score improved significantly compared with its own baseline.

However, this is where an important distinction appears.

After 30 days, the average BEPSI score was:

• 1.5 ± 0.1 in the grounded group

• 1.4 ± 0.1 in the control group

The difference between the two groups was not statistically significant (p = 0.756).

So it is reasonable to say that stress decreased during the grounding intervention, but this study did not demonstrate that grounding reduced stress more than the control condition.

That distinction — between improving from baseline and outperforming a control — is important when evaluating health research.

So, Does Grounding Improve Mood?

At this stage, the most accurate answer is:

Possibly — but we don't yet know reliably.

Across these studies, researchers have observed several positive signals:

• broader short-term mood improvements after one hour of grounding;

• reductions in depressive symptoms in a small occupational study;

• reduced fatigue and increased energy in some participants;

• reduced anxiety in part of the massage-therapist trial;

• lower perceived stress compared with baseline in a 2025 grounding-mat study.

At the same time:

• the 2015 mood study did not establish a clear between-group treatment effect;

• the 2019 results varied considerably between two very small cohorts;

• the Alzheimer's trial found no significant effect on anxiety or depression;

• the 2025 trial found no significant between-group advantage for perceived stress.

That is why neither “grounding definitely improves mood” nor “there is no evidence grounding affects mood” accurately represents the research.

The evidence is limited, mixed and genuinely interesting.

Why Might Grounding Affect Mood or Stress?

Researchers have proposed several possible biological explanations for grounding's reported effects.

These include potential influences on:

• autonomic nervous-system activity;

• stress physiology and cortisol rhythms;

• inflammatory processes;

• electrical characteristics of the body;

• transfer of electrons between the Earth and the body.

These ideas appear repeatedly in the grounding literature, but they should be treated as hypotheses rather than established explanations for mood changes.

The mood studies reviewed here did not demonstrate that electron transfer, reduced inflammation, changes in cortisol or autonomic regulation caused the psychological findings.

This distinction is important: researchers can measure that someone's mood score changed without yet knowing why it changed.

What Are the Biggest Gaps in the Research?

The clearest limitation is simply the size of the evidence base.

The dedicated 2015 mood analysis included 29 usable questionnaires. The massage-therapist study involved 16 participants. Only 15 participants completed the Alzheimer's pilot. The 2025 study was larger, with 56 participants analyzed, but its stress outcome did not show an advantage over the control group.

There is also considerable variation in:

• the populations studied;

• how grounding was delivered;

• how many hours participants were grounded;

• whether exposure occurred once or repeatedly;

• the psychological measures used;

• the statistical analyses performed.

This makes it difficult to combine the studies into one simple conclusion.

What would strengthen the evidence substantially would be larger randomized trials, good sham controls, predefined psychological outcomes, direct statistical comparisons between groups and replication by independent research teams.

Funding and Research Affiliations

Commercial involvement in grounding research is relevant and should be transparent.

The 2019 massage-therapist study was funded by Earth FX, Inc., and grounding equipment was donated by Earthing.com. The paper states that those companies did not participate in the study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation or manuscript preparation. The authors also disclosed several relevant affiliations, including Gaétan Chevalier's role as a consultant for Earth FX and affiliations of other researchers with the Chopra Foundation and Chopra Center.

The 2025 trial reported grant support from World Home Dr. and Geosan Corp. The authors declared that they had no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the research.

Commercial funding does not automatically invalidate a study, but independent replication would increase confidence in the findings.

The Bottom Line

The human research on grounding, mood and wellbeing is still small, but it contains several findings worth taking seriously enough to investigate further.

A one-hour controlled experiment reported improvements across several mood dimensions. A longer study of massage therapists found improvements in depressive symptoms, fatigue and some measures of anxiety and energy. A more recent earthing-mat trial found lower perceived stress relative to baseline.

Those positive signals sit alongside important null findings: anxiety and depression did not improve significantly in a placebo-controlled Alzheimer's study, and perceived stress in the 2025 trial was not significantly better than the control condition.

So the current evidence does not establish grounding as a treatment for depression, anxiety or other mental-health conditions.

What it does suggest is that the relationship between grounding and subjective wellbeing may be worth studying more closely — particularly with larger, independently replicated, sham-controlled trials.

For now, the most scientifically defensible conclusion is also perhaps the most interesting one:

The evidence is early, but there are enough positive signals to justify asking better questions and conducting better studies.

Research References

Chevalier G. The Effect of Grounding the Human Body on Mood. Psychological Reports. 2015;116(2):534–542. DOI: 10.2466/06.PR0.116k21w5.

Chevalier G, Patel S, Weiss L, Chopra D, Mills PJ. The Effects of Grounding (Earthing) on Bodyworkers' Pain and Overall Quality of Life: A Randomized Controlled Trial. EXPLORE. 2019;15(3):181–190. DOI: 10.1016/j.explore.2018.10.001.

Lin CH, Tseng ST, Chuang YC, Kuo CE, Chen NC. Grounding the Body Improves Sleep Quality in Patients with Mild Alzheimer's Disease: A Pilot Study. Healthcare. 2022;10(3):581. DOI: 10.3390/healthcare10030581.

Park HJ, Lee GR, Kim Y, et al. A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Study on the Improvement of Sleep Quality with Earthing Mat. Advances in Integrative Medicine. 2025;12(3):100458. DOI: 10.1016/j.aimed.2025.01.005.

This article is for informational and educational purposes only. Grounding has not been established as a treatment for depression, anxiety or other mental-health conditions. If you are experiencing significant or persistent psychological symptoms, seek advice from an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.