Grounding as a Sleep-Focused Intervention in Mild Alzheimer’s Disease
From 2019 to 2020, researchers at the Department of Neurology and Chinese Medicine at Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital ran a clean randomized, double-blind study on grounding in patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease. Lin et al. wanted to know whether direct connection to Earth potential could serve as a non-pharmacological tool for improving sleep, anxiety, and depression in a population that typically carries high oxidative stress and disrupted circadian stability.
Alzheimer’s disease remains the leading cause of dementia, responsible for roughly 60–80 percent of cases. Its pathology revolves around amyloid-β plaques, tau tangles, synaptic failure, and a progressive deterioration of memory and behavior. Oxidative stress doesn’t sit on the sidelines here. It’s a driving force in the biochemical damage seen throughout the disorder, a point that continues to be strengthened by clinical and mechanistic studies.
In this trial, participants were randomly assigned to either a grounding condition or a sham-grounding condition. Both groups received 30-minute sessions, five times per week, for 12 weeks. Sleep quality, anxiety, and depression were evaluated through the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), and the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) at baseline and after the intervention.
The PSQI was the key metric. It’s a validated 19-item measure of sleep duration, latency, disturbances, and daytime dysfunction, scored from 0 to 21. Higher scores indicate poorer sleep quality. After 12 weeks, the grounded group showed a significant improvement in PSQI scores relative to the sham-grounded group. This difference held even under double-blind conditions, reinforcing that the effect wasn’t generated by expectancy or placebo.
The authors concluded that grounding improved sleep quality in patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease. Given how central sleep disruption is to neurodegeneration and how tightly sleep interacts with oxidative stress, this result carries weight. It points toward grounding as a simple, accessible, and cost-free practice that may help reduce symptom burden and potentially support the long-term prevention of chronic neurodegenerative conditions.
Nothing flashy. Just electrons, physiology, and a method people can actually use.
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Study:
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 (Basel). 2022 Mar 20;10(3):581. doi: 10.3390/healthcare10030581. Erratum in: Healthcare (Basel). 2022 May 26;10(6): PMID: 35327058; PMCID: PMC8954071.