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by incomingpain 883 days ago
It's bad because you are isolated. You need to get grounded in order to sleep properly:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15650465/

Big fluffy beds way off the floor are bad. It's interesting to note that the above finds it most effective for women. The below is most effective for men.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10105021/

It shouldn't actually matter your sex.

To add, buddhist monks must sleep on the ground and lay followers are expected to sleep on the ground on occasion.

2 comments

> It's bad because you are isolated. You need to get grounded in order to sleep properly:

> https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15650465/

This was published by the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, which has also published articles on how homeopathy is effective. I don't know that I would consider it a high quality source.

I noticed the same thing, but this makes me more concerned: the link has nih.gov in it. Usually when I read articles from that URL, I tend to put a bit more trust in them than say healthline.org or some blogspam or something like that. Does this mean I have to start taking nih.gov articles with a grain of salt too?
Yes. Blindly trusting any source is just another fpavor of ignorance.
do i start with the same level of distrust when reading something on nih.gov and healthline.com?
The UK NIH unfortunately has a reality ignoring relationship with "homeopathy" and other "alternative" medicines, up to and including the current king being a vocal Proponent of using more alternative medicine to reduce costs and improve health.

It's not great.

Probably some powerful/connected 'teach the controversy' snake-oil peddlers forced the NIH to publish this. At least they were able to segregate the woo off into it's own section.
I sourced the NIH. I'm not familiar with the infinite number of journals and their associated possible biases.

I did get downvoted badly. I was not aware the NIH was so untrustworthy. People usually accept them as a source.

I will now question the NIH. Thanks for telling me about the NIH.

is it just me or does that second link resemble pseudoscience?
"Earthing" is definitely in the pseudoscience category. There's no supposed mechanism, and "earth" is just a relative point anyway.