What kinds of pain have researchers studied?

Pain is not one single biological phenomenon.

The grounding studies conducted so far have looked at quite different models.

Some deliberately created delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) through strenuous eccentric exercise.

Another investigated massage therapists experiencing the repetitive physical demands of their work.

And the newest clinical study examined acute postoperative pain following lumbar spinal surgery.

These distinctions matter.

A protocol that influences soreness after strenuous exercise may not necessarily affect surgical pain, chronic pain or another pain condition in the same way.

They also mean that the individual studies should be considered on their own merits rather than combined as though they all tested the same thing.

2010: An early pilot found intriguing differences in soreness and tenderness

One of the first controlled studies specifically examining grounding and pain was published by Brown, Chevalier and Hill in 2010.

Eight healthy young men performed eccentric calf exercise designed to produce delayed-onset muscle soreness.

Four participants were grounded during their recovery using conductive electrode patches and grounded sleeping equipment. The other four went through the same procedure using sham-grounding equipment that was not actually connected to Earth.

Researchers measured a large range of outcomes over the following three days, including:

• self-reported muscle soreness;

• tolerance to pressure applied to the calf;

• creatine kinase (CK);

• white blood cells;

• bilirubin;

• and other biochemical and imaging measures.

The pain-related findings favored the grounded group.

Participants in that group reported less soreness, and they were able to tolerate greater pressure from an inflated cuff around the calf before asking for the pressure to stop.

Importantly, however, this was an exploratory pilot involving only four people in each group.

The researchers were looking for signals worth investigating further and used a criterion based largely on consistent percentage differences between groups rather than conventional statistical testing of each pain outcome.

So this study provided an intriguing early signal — not definitive evidence that grounding reduces exercise pain.

2015: Biological differences — but no significant reduction in pain

A larger follow-up study by Brown, Chevalier and Hill was published in 2015.

This time, 32 healthy young men were randomly assigned to grounded or sham-grounded groups after performing 200 half-knee bends designed to cause quadriceps soreness.

Participants were grounded or sham-grounded for four hours on each of the first two recovery days.

The results are particularly useful because they highlight an important distinction.

The grounded participants did not report significantly less pain

Both groups developed soreness.

When researchers compared Visual Analogue Scale pain scores between the grounded and sham-grounded groups, the differences were not statistically significant.

The paper's conclusion explicitly states that the study found no difference in pain relief.

But some biological measures behaved differently

Creatine kinase — an enzyme commonly measured after muscle damage — increased significantly in the sham-grounded group on day two, while it did not significantly increase in the grounded group. The between-group difference that day was statistically significant (p=0.04).

Researchers also reported differences in neutrophils and platelets.

Those physiological findings are interesting.

But they should not be interpreted as evidence that the participants experienced less pain, because in this study they did not.

That distinction — between what the body is doing biologically and how sore someone actually feels — becomes an important theme across the grounding literature.

2019: Massage therapists reported improvements in several pain measures

A different type of pain was examined in a 2019 randomized controlled study by Chevalier and colleagues.

Instead of deliberately creating muscle soreness, researchers studied 16 massage therapists, a group exposed to repetitive physical demands through their work.

The six-week study used a double-blind stepped-wedge design.

Participants were ungrounded during the first week, grounded while working and sleeping during the following four weeks, and ungrounded again during the final week. Active and inactive grounding cords were coded so participants and study personnel did not know which were connected.

Pain was assessed using the McGill Pain Questionnaire, alongside measures of physical function and other aspects of wellbeing.

Several results favored grounding.

In one of the two cohorts, pain-rating scores, the number of pain descriptors selected and present pain intensity were significantly lower at week five compared with baseline. Some pain measures were also significantly lower when both cohorts were analyzed together.

Physical function also improved in some analyses, including a significant improvement for one cohort at the end of the grounding period and an improvement for the combined group at the one-month follow-up.

But the results weren't uniform.

The second cohort did not show the same significant changes across its McGill pain measures, and the two cohorts differed in several ways during the study.

This makes the findings interesting, but harder to interpret as a simple, consistent treatment effect.

The trial was also small. It was funded by Earth FX, grounding products were donated by Earthing.com, and one author was a consultant for Earth FX. The paper states that the commercial funders did not participate in the study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation or writing.

2025: A larger study found greater pain reduction after spinal surgery

The most clinically interesting addition to this research area was published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine in 2025.

Sokal and colleagues studied 84 patients undergoing lumbar spinal surgery.

Participants were randomized into two groups of 42.

Both groups had an adhesive electrode attached at the ankle during overnight postoperative rest. In the grounding group, the electrode was connected to a grounding system. In the control group, the equipment looked the same but was internally disconnected.

All patients received the same analgesic regimen of paracetamol.

Pain was measured using a Visual Analogue Scale on the first postoperative day and again following the overnight grounding or sham-grounding period.

What happened?

Before the intervention, mean pain scores were:

• 7.14 in the grounding group;

• 6.60 in the sham-grounded group.

The following day, mean scores had fallen to:

• 4.64 in the grounding group;

• 5.26 in the control group.

Both groups improved — something we would expect during postoperative recovery and with analgesic treatment.

The important comparison is therefore how much pain changed.

Mean pain decreased by 2.50 points in the grounding group, compared with 1.59 points in the control group.

That's a difference of approximately 0.91 points in average pain reduction between the groups.

The between-group difference in the change in pain was statistically significant (p<0.01).

Why is this study particularly interesting?

Unlike the earlier exercise experiments, this involved patients experiencing genuine acute clinical pain following surgery.

It also included:

• random allocation;

• a sham-grounding comparison;

• visually identical grounding and sham equipment;

• equal group sizes;

• and a standardized analgesic regimen.

That makes the pain result noteworthy.

It doesn't mean grounding has been established as a postoperative pain treatment. The study still involved only 84 patients, measured outcomes over a short period, and included several types of lumbar surgery.

The groups also differed somewhat in age: the grounding group averaged 53 years and the control group 60 years.

The researchers themselves called for larger, more homogeneous studies with longer follow-up.

Interestingly, this study reported no external funding and the authors declared no conflicts of interest.

What happened to inflammation and muscle-damage markers?

The postoperative study also measured biological outcomes.

One particularly interesting result involved C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker that typically rises as part of the inflammatory response after surgery.

CRP increased in both groups, but the increase was significantly smaller in the grounded group.

Creatine kinase decreased in both groups. Although the numerical reduction was greater in the grounded group, the between-group difference in CK change was not statistically significant.

That last point is important.

It would be tempting to group all of these findings together and say grounding reduced inflammation, muscle damage and pain.

But each outcome needs to stand on its own.

In this experiment, the clearest between-group findings included the difference in pain reduction and the difference in CRP response. The CK comparison between groups did not reach statistical significance.

2026: Thirty minutes on a grounding mat did not reduce muscle soreness

The newest study in this group takes us back to exercise-induced soreness — and produced a null result.

Ramos Salinas and Smith studied 12 participants using a single-blind, counterbalanced repeated-measures design.

Each participant experienced both a grounding and fake-grounding condition.

Participants sat with their feet on a grounding mat for 30 minutes before performing squat exercise. Muscle soreness was then measured after 24 and 48 hours.

Researchers found no significant differences between grounding and control conditions for:

• Visual Analogue Scale pain (p=0.299);

• a separate pain scale (p=0.395);

• or perceived exertion (p=0.349).

So, in this experiment, 30 minutes of pre-exercise grounding did not measurably reduce subsequent muscle soreness.

There is an important qualification: this is currently a conference-proceedings study rather than a full journal article, so it should be treated as preliminary evidence.

Its protocol was also very different from earlier research. Earlier DOMS studies used grounding for hours during the recovery period, whereas this study tested only 30 minutes before exercise.

Could that difference in timing or duration help explain the different findings?

Possibly.

But we don't yet know.

The study cannot establish that 30 minutes is “too short,” just as the longer studies do not establish an optimal grounding dose. A direct trial comparing different grounding durations would be needed to answer that question.

Does grounding duration matter for pain?

This is one of the more interesting questions raised by the research.

The studies reporting favorable pain findings have generally involved much more grounding than the recent 30-minute experiment:

• the 2010 DOMS pilot used grounding throughout substantial periods of recovery and sleep;

• the 2019 massage-therapist study involved grounding during work and sleep over several weeks;

• the 2025 postoperative study used grounding during overnight rest;

• while the 2026 experiment used a single 30-minute session before exercise.

But these studies differ in far more than duration.

They involve different populations, different types of pain, different grounding equipment, different timing and different outcome measures.

So the existing evidence raises the possibility that timing or duration matters, but it does not yet demonstrate a dose-response relationship.

That question deserves to be tested directly.

How might grounding influence pain?

Researchers have proposed several possible mechanisms, particularly involving inflammation and oxidative stress.

One hypothesis suggests that conductive contact with the Earth allows electrical charge to move between the Earth and body and that this may influence reactions involving reactive oxygen species during inflammation.

Other grounding research has explored changes in autonomic regulation, circulation and electrical characteristics of the body.

These ideas are scientifically interesting, but an important distinction is needed:

Researchers have measured changes in some physiological markers.

That is different from:

Researchers having demonstrated exactly why those changes occurred.

At present, mechanisms involving electron transfer and antioxidant effects remain proposed explanations, not established biological mechanisms for pain relief.

For the pain question specifically, clinical outcomes matter most: does a person actually experience less pain, improved function, or both?

So, does grounding reduce pain?

The most accurate answer today is:

Possibly in some circumstances — but the human evidence isn't yet strong enough to say that grounding reliably reduces pain.

There are genuine positive findings.

The early DOMS pilot found favorable differences in soreness and pressure tolerance.

The massage-therapist trial reported improvements in several pain measures.

And, importantly, the newer 84-patient spinal-surgery study found a statistically significantly greater reduction in postoperative pain following overnight grounding compared with sham grounding.

At the same time, there are meaningful null findings.

The larger 2015 DOMS study found no significant difference in subjective pain despite physiological differences, and the 2026 short-duration grounding-mat experiment found no significant reduction in soreness.

Taken together, the research suggests that the answer may depend on what type of pain is being studied, how grounding is applied, when it is used, and for how long.

Those possibilities remain research questions rather than established rules.

What does this mean if you use a grounding mat?

Several of these studies used grounding equipment, including mats, patches and grounded sleeping systems.

But the protocols varied substantially.

That means we cannot assume that any particular commercial grounding mat, duration of use or everyday routine will reproduce effects seen in a research study using a different setup.

For someone who already chooses to ground, the pain research provides an interesting area of investigation — particularly now that a controlled clinical study has reported a positive postoperative result.

It does not provide a basis for replacing medical treatment or prescribed pain management.

The bottom line

Human research into grounding and pain remains preliminary, but it is developing.

The findings are not uniformly positive, and grounding has not been established as a clinically proven pain treatment.

Yet the evidence is also more substantial than simply anecdotal reports.

Controlled human studies have found favorable pain-related outcomes in an early exercise pilot, in some measures among massage therapists, and most notably in a 2025 randomized sham-controlled postoperative study involving 84 spinal-surgery patients.

Other controlled studies have found no significant reduction in soreness.

That mixed picture gives researchers something useful to investigate.

The next step is larger, independently replicated research using well-designed sham controls, clearly defined pain populations and standardized grounding protocols.

The evidence isn't settled.

But there are now enough interesting human findings to make the question worth continuing to ask.

Research discussed

Brown D, Chevalier G, Hill M. (2010). Pilot Study on the Effect of Grounding on Delayed-Onset Muscle Soreness. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 16(3), 265–273.
https://doi.org/10.1089/acm.2009.0399

Brown R, Chevalier G, Hill M. (2015). Grounding after moderate eccentric contractions reduces muscle damage. Open Access Journal of Sports Medicine, 6, 305–317.
https://doi.org/10.2147/OAJSM.S87970

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

Sokal P, Broda M, Zając M, Sokal J. (2025). Earthing as a Supportive Therapy for Post-Spinal Surgery Recovery. Journal of Clinical Medicine, 14(11), 3844.
https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm14113844

Ramos Salinas PN, Smith JD. (2026). Effect of Earthing with Grounding Mats on Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness. International Journal of Exercise Science: Conference Proceedings, 2(18), Article 175.

This article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice.