Spend any time watching or listening to health and wellness content and sooner or later you’re likely to encounter the practice of “grounding”. Google searches for the term have risen in the past year, as wellness influencers and podcasters have waxed lyrical about its supposed benefits. Distinct from its use in a parenting or psychology context (which can incorporate mindful breathing exercises), grounding or “earthing” involves walking barefoot outdoors or lying on the ground to realign oneself with the electric charge of the Earth.

What is grounding?

The surface of the Earth is slightly negatively charged. Grounding, so the claim goes, allows electrons (also negatively charged) to flow into your body, which would otherwise be blocked by insulating materials such as rubber-soled shoes. The ostensible benefits include, but are not limited to: improved sleep, metabolism and blood circulation; reductions in inflammation and in cardiovascular disease risk and pain; and relief from pre-menstrual syndrome.

Grounding takes its name from a legitimate concept in electricity. Karen Livesey, an associate professor of theoretical physics at the University of Newcastle, describes it this way: “When you deliberately take an object that has possibly an excess negative or positive charge, and you connect it to the Earth so that the charges all equalise out.”

“The object ends up with the same charge density that the Earth has,” she says.

We’re constantly building up positive and negative charges on the surface of our bodies – take static electricity, for instance. “If you’ve got woollen socks on and you walk across the carpet, that rubbing between the socks and the carpet transfers charge, and you can develop quite a strong positive charge,” Livesey says. “You touch a doorknob, and suddenly that charge transfers to the ground.” The shock you feel results from the charge being neutralised.

Negative charges from the Earth could, in theory, penetrate the body, but typically excess charge remains on the surface, Livesey says. “What we’re seeing in the literature is no causal link [explaining] why having a buildup of charge could adversely affect our health,” she says.

No dubious wellness trend is complete without someone turning a buck on it, so for those who live in cities or are otherwise precluded from regularly shoving their toes in the dirt, there is an assortment of conductive items people can plug into the grounding sockets of electrical outlets to get the same purported effects.

You can stand on grounding mats, sleep with grounding mattress covers and sheets, and even wear grounding socks – a Choice Shonkys winner last year. The socks, which come with a cord that effectively tethers a wearer to the wall, presumably do not yield great improvements in mobility.

What does the evidence say?

The flow of charge from one place to another is an electric current, measured in amperes. To put grounding into perspective, Livesey says appliances in our homes draw a maximum current of 63 amps. In comparison, one study found that a sleeping person connected to the Earth via grounding bedsheets produced a current of up to 10 nanoamps – that is, more than 1bn times smaller. “These tiny currents are almost undetectable,” Livesey says.

Playing devil’s advocate, let’s say electrons from the Earth do make it into your body when you dig your heels into some sand. What effect would they have? One claim is that electrons from grounding can neutralise free radicals, the reactive molecules that cause damage to cells. It’s a claim that sounds good but doesn’t stack up.

“The concept that electrons flow through the body and neutralise oxidative stress is really quite a vague concept,” says Prof Judy de Haan, who leads the cardiovascular inflammation and redox biology laboratory at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne.

“Not all free radicals are charged particles, so the idea of neutralising something which isn’t charged doesn’t always make sense. Indeed, in some instances the addition of electrons may exacerbate oxidative stress and cellular damage.”

De Haan says the body has its own natural mechanisms for dealing with oxidative stress, such as antioxidant enzymes.

The few scientific papers published on grounding have a “lack of scientific rigour”, De Haan says, with small sample sizes and poor study design. “When clinical trials are conducted, the important thing is that the researcher and the patient are both unaware of what the treatment might be,” she says – a feature known as double blinding, which reduces bias.

What do the experts recommend instead?

One thing grounding proponents have right is that there is solid evidence that spending time in nature – shoeless or not – is good for physical and mental health.

“The benefits of nature contact are ample and myriad,” says Prof Thomas Astell-Burt of the University of Sydney. Longitudinal research he has led with Prof Xiaoqi Feng at the University of New South Wales found that people living in leafier city neighbourhoods are at lower risk of conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure, as well as facing a lower risk of psychological distress, loneliness, sleep insufficiency and dementia.

“We’re consistently seeing a 30% landcover of parkland and especially tree canopy being the bare minimum to observe consistent benefits across health behaviours and mental, physical, and social health outcomes,” Astell-Burt says.

“Just being in nature, or a view of it, can help us feel less stressed and better able to concentrate on things that matter to us,” he says. Green spaces “provide attractive settings to keep physically active, solo or with others, and opportunities for solace and respite”.

De Haan says: “Walking in nature – of course that’s going to be beneficial. I don’t know whether touching the earth with your bare feet is going to make the difference.”

So by all means go outside and, as the kids say, touch grass. Just know that any improvements in your sense of wellbeing aren’t likely to be from a negative charge from the planet below you.

• Donna Lu is Guardian Australia’s science writer

• Antiviral is a fortnightly column that interrogates the evidence behind the health headlines and factchecks popular wellness claims