STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.

Not A Cure

Does "grounding" heal "any kind of disease that you have"? No, that's not true: There are no cures for multiple diseases, from cancer to HIV, and the simple treatment of putting your feet on the earth is not medically proven to heal "any kind of disease."

The claim appeared in a video on Instagram on January 29, 2023. It opened with a person saying:

What if I told you that you could heal whatever inflammatory disease that you have and start doing it for free? What is free?

This is what the post looked like on Instagram at the time of writing:

(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Thu Feb 9 16:47:05 2023 UTC)

The video claims:

You can heal any kind of disease that you have for free basically all you have to do is get your feet grounded. A body that is consistently grounded cannot sustain chronic inflammation.

Grounding is the naturopathic practice of walking barefoot on the earth or connecting the body to a ground-contact wire. The theory is that human physiology benefits from through-the-skin contact with the earth's surface to change the flow of electrons through the body. The National Library of Medicine, which indexes a million titles, includes links to literature reviews and other meta-research suggesting grounding might reduce inflammation, but no clinical studies involving large numbers of randomly selected human subjects.

While the video does briefly say that grounding is "not the end-all cure-all," that is not mentioned in the caption and is in direct conflict with the claim that you can "heal any kind of disease that you have." The caption of the post states that you can "heal any disease that you have" by using grounding or "earthing." It does not have the disclaimer that grounding is "not the end-all cure-all" mentioned in the video.

There is no cure for a variety of diseases including cancer, HIV and Ebola, to name three.

When it comes to cancer, "cure" is "a word most doctors won't say," WebMD noted as of June 12, 2022. "There's no cure for it, but there are treatments that may be able to cure some people of some cancers."

"There is no medication to cure Ebola and no vaccine to prevent it," the Minnesota Department of Health reported as of November 7, 2022.

"There is no cure for HIV, but you can control it with HIV treatment," the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported as of July 14, 2022.

A 2015 report titled, "The effects of grounding (earthing) on inflammation, the immune response, wound healing, and prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases," states research does show benefits to grounding but not that it cures diseases:

Multi-disciplinary research has revealed that electrically conductive contact of the human body with the surface of the Earth (grounding or earthing) produces intriguing effects on physiology and health.