Etsy Shop: Ultra Terrestrial

How did you get interested in cats? How old were you when you had your first kitty?

Little Sea Grape

I’ve always been interested in cats.  It was never a question. Unfortunately I was never allowed to have a kitten growing up which felt so cruel to me at the time! I longed to have a kitty of my own in which to devote all my love and affection. Luckily I did have some friends who were allowed to have cats and we spent a lot of time playing/torturing them (not sure they enjoyed being dressed up with doll clothes and decorated with stickers…eep. I still have some scars from the cat scratches I got from some of those mischievous activities). However when I was in college and living in Brooklyn I did adopt a pretty calico kitten from a couple in Coney Island. I was 19 when I got her. I named her Seagrape. She was a really playful, boisterous cat and loved being handled, which was fun. When I moved from NY a few years later I couldn’t take her with me so my friend adopted her.  Right now the only reason I don’t have a cat is that it’s very difficult to have a cat when there’s art projects happening all around my apartment that cannot be disrupted. I do feel cat-deprived.

Please describe your creative process.

My creative process usually starts with finding inspiration through books, videos, and the the internet at large. I spend a lot of time looking at blogs, flickr, and tumblr.  I watch a lot of interviews and documentaries which inspire creation in general.  Even though I try to keep an eye on popular trends I prefer finding source material that’s unusual,  so I often dig through old books. Some favorite sources of inspiration are early 20th century advertising trademarks, russian circus posters, and outsider art.  I often end up doodling in my sketchbook with words and images that capture my attention, and then turn my favorites into a finished design . I love the aesthetic of doodles or “naive” art styles- things that are quite graphic and colorful and aren’t trying to look realistic. I also share ideas and collaborate with my boyfriend, Victor Cayro quite a bit. Although I generally have to be alone to really get in the zone- I usually light a candle or incense, drink coffee, and play music.

How did you discover Etsy? Did you consider other ways to sell your products?

I was originally told about etsy through a really awesome professor I had at art school. The class was about “kitsch” and

Kitty Face necklace-silver chain

obviously, etsy is a great source for kitschy things and beyond. I have considered other ways of selling and have prints and hand-drawn t-shirts in person at art fairs, which is certainly a lot of work.  I’ve also sold things through stores on occasion.

Do you sell your products in a local store in your area?

Right now I have some jewelry pieces up at a vintage store , Black Cat Vintage in Dubuque, Iowa. It’s the only store of it’s kind in this area, although as I make more I hope to get more pieces out to stores in other nearby cities and hopefully, in other parts of the country.

Have you been successful at selling your products on Etsy? Have you always been successful, or did you end up getting a lot

Kitty Face necklace-silver chain

more traffic after being featured on a specific blog?

Well, my shop is brand new and literally just had it’s first couple of sales, so it’s too early to tell.

Do your customers ever give you new ideas for products?

I can’t answer that yet, but I hope so! I do plan on having listings for customizable items soon.

Have you thought of featuring a Ragdoll cat is some way? (Had to ask.)

Well, that’s an idea…especially If I decide to make small stuffed animals. Of course I’ll have to make it extra floppy.

Are you a one wo/man show?

Yes. I make and design everything myself, although I have some products in the works that incorporate my boyfriend’s illustrations.

Do you have a blog? Yes!

I loooove blogs. I started mine this year, it’s www.utbk.wordpress.com

Do you do custom ordering? Can someone return it if they don’t care for it?

Haven’t done customer ordering yet but I am open to requests at this time. I hope I don’t need to deal with too many returns, but if it’s a reasonable situation I will do whatever I can to make my customer happy with his/her purchase and refund or replace if it is defective.

Can you share a story with us behind any of your products that you especially enjoyed working on? Maybe because of the story behind the kitty?

Kitty Chandelier Earrings

Well I have to say I am enamored with shrinky dinks. It’s such a fun, easy to use material with great results. My Kitty Face necklaces actually stemmed from a different design originally, and I was annoyed with how the pendant kept flipping over when it was worn. So I decided to do something different with the chains, and the result ended up looking like cat ears. Obviously, I had to make a cat necklace! The Cat Chandelier earrings are also very flattering and I think would be a great gift for any cat-loving friends.

Sweet Tessa at 10 weeks

HI everyone! I started this life in Myrtle Beach South Carolina. My breeder’s name was Lori. Lori is now at Rainbow Bridge. My Momma found Lori on the Internet and they “conversed” for many months before Momma felt real comfortable with the adoption process. She had to sign an agreement with Lori saying I’d never be allowed to be an outside cat. I do at times enjoy walking on my leash and am now learning to ride in my stroller.

I’m a 6 year old Blue Bi-Color. My Momma saw her first Ragdoll at a cat show in her hometown. She saved and saved for me. She did a lot of research too! I got to come to my furever home when I was 16 weeks. I don’t remember much of that time except me loving to hide in the sofa!

I am a regular on the Cat Social site called Catster. If I do say I’m pretty famous there! I’ve made some great friends on Catster (and Dogster!) and we share holiday cards.

Tessa

I love classical music and will fall right to sleep! I usually sleep with my Momma on her king size bed. I have my own blanket to sleep on.

I’m a pretty big girl at 15 lbs 8 ounces. My Vet thinks I’m a little big but there’s just more of me to love.

I love to place with my electronic mouse game the most! It goes round and round and I jump on it trying to stop it.
I am not like most Ragdolls as I am wary of strangers. And I don’t like to be held. But I do follow my Momma all over the house. Where she goes I go.

Tessa for a walk

I do not like to be brushed or combed. I have had a bath two times in all my years. Of course I would never allow my Momma to bathe me. It took her years to find a cat groomer in our area. The groomer comes to my house and I have my bath in the van! I like the way the groomer brushes me; now Momma uses the slicker brush and things go much better.

I love to eat! I like my Royal Canin hairball formula in the morning- exactly ¼ cup! I have 2 teaspoons of Wellness Healthy Indulgence Turkey and Duck (only one I will touch!)each am and pm. For my snakc at night I LOVE the Duck formula of Blue Buffalo Wilderness dry food.
Now I’m so tired from dictating this to my typist so I’m laying down for a nap!

Etsy Shop: LooseDragons

How did you get interested in cats? How old were you when you had your first kitty?

Charlemagne

I had been a dog person and my last rescued dog had died of old age when a friend talked me into fostering a mother cat and her five newborn kittens. I was oh let’s just say over 50 yrs old when I took in all the kitties. We eventually found loving homes for all of them except for one which we had become very attached to. We named him El Tigre as he looked like a little tiger. (By we, I am referring to my teenage sons) Sadly, he died of FIP when he was 6 months old, but before he died we rescued another kitten that we named Charlemagne (Charlie for short). After Tigre died we went to the Humane Society and adopted a six month old kitten that we named Mozart. Mozart has long black fur and Charlie has long, strawberry blonde fur. Just a little over two weeks ago, the same friend who convinced me to adopt my first cat told me about an abandoned cat in her apartment complex. His name is Oliver. So now I have 3 long-haired cats.

I guess I am officially a cat lady. A very happy cat lady. I love my cats and spoil them rotten.

Please describe your creative process.

Hmm, the creative process. I’m into cute and attitude. And given my love of cats, I have been making lidded jars that look like cute kitties. I’m always trying to out-do myself in making the cutest kitty. Sometimes I start with something in mind, but mostly I just start working with the clay and see where it takes me. I also make teapots with a focus on dragons; hence the name of my shop LooseDragons. The dragons are all about attitude. My work is very organic and every peice is unique. I don’t do any production pieces. Because everything is hand-built it takes me a while to make each piece. The glazes I use are nearly all in earth tones. I usually use multiple glazes on each piece and if my piece looks like something anyone can buy in a store, then I have failed.

How did you discover Etsy? Did you consider other ways to sell your products?

Last spring, one of my friends back east saw my work and told me I should try selling it on Etsy. That was when I first learned of Etsy. I am also thinking of selling my work at a local Farmers’ Market.

Do you sell your products in a local store in your area?

No, and I probably won’t because of the commissions. But never say never. : )

Dragon Teapot

Have you been successful at selling your products on Etsy? Have you always been successful, or did you end up getting a lot more traffic after being featured on a specific blog?

I have only had my Etsy shop since late August and I started off with two items. I am pretty picky about what I sell; it has to meet my high standards. Now that I’m being featured on Floppycats, I’m sure my sales will pick-up. ; ) I’m certainly open to your suggestions on how to increase sales.

Do your customers ever give you new ideas for products?

Yes, they do. One of my customers who purched a dragon teapot and a cat jar suggested I make a bear lidded jar. I just made my first one. It’s beary cute. Another customer suggested a sea turtle, so that may be my next project.

Have you thought of featuring a Ragdoll cat is some way? (Had to ask.)

Oliver under the bed

I think my new kitty, Oliver, may be a Ragdoll cat. He spends most of his time hiding under the bed, but when he comes out and lets me hold him, he goes limp and just loves to be petted.
I am thinking of making a long-haired ceramic cat, but it may take a while. I don’t have a lot of experience using clay to make long fur.

Are you a one wo/man show?

Yes, indeed. I haven’t learned to play well with others.

Do you have a blog?

No. I think I’m too introverted to have one.

Do you do custom ordering? Can someone return it if they don’t care for it?

I am more than happy to take custom orders. As to whether or not someone can return something? It has only happened once – a long time ago someone returned a painting. My motto is satisfaction guaranteed or your money back.

Can you share a story with us behind any of your products that you especially enjoyed working on? Maybe because of the story behind the kitty?

Cat with pearl handled six shooter

I decided to make a kitty with a mohawk, which I thought would look adorable. Then I decided to make it a cowboy kitty, so I gave it a neckerchief, a belt and a six-shooter. I really enjoyed making the little guy and even gave his six-shooter a “pearl” handle. I also made his tail look like a lasso. I’ve included a picture of him. Sometimes I get so attached to my ceramic kitties, I find it hard to part with them.

Gracie

Hello! This is my Ragdoll, Gracie. I got her when she was only 6 weeks old. We reused her from a local shelter. She was in a group of about 5 other kittens. But they were all Tabbies, and the shelter said she was part of them. But she was clearly not. She looked like a Siamese. It wasn’t until, 2 weeks later that we figured out for sure that she was a Ragdoll.

Her background story was not clear at all to anyone. All we knew when we choice her, was that she came in other 5 other kittens, no mom and covered head to paw in flees! She was so small and weak, it was terrible seeing her like that! But the second I saw

Gracie

her, I knew she was the kitten for me. She was adorable. She was white, but had a faint color, which are now all darkened. She had HUGE blue eyes. Adorable.

When we got her, my family and I had never heard of a “Ragdoll”.  So the breed was new to us. We had three other cats at the time. Which we still have, but we have added two more. So in other words, we were not new time cat owners. We had never really researched a cat breed before we got them. With all our cats, we have rescued. Most of them were at the moment thing. Like, 3 of the 5 cats we have, we got because they were going to be put down the next hour or two, or the next day. So we are these cats angels. Gracie today is now 6 years old. We do not know for sure when her birthday is, were guessing it’s sometime in April. We have had her just about her whole life.

Gracie

Gracie is one special cat. She loves to just follow me around. She doesn’t do much at all. But if I go to one room, she follows. If I close a door, she will sit there and cry until I let her in. She spends just about all her time with me! Lying by me, on me or even on my head! Haha. When it’s winter, she will paw at my blanket until I open it, and she will run in and lay on my feet. It keeps her warm, and oh my gosh me too! She’s a personal feet warmer. Like they say, ragdolls tend to keep to one person, and I’m very lucky that I’m that person she has chosen. She’s my girl. My big fat fluff ball of love.

Gracie, got her name from the “G”. Our other cats had names Giddy, and Gary at the time, so we decided to keep the G thing going. Even

Gracie

though her name is Gracie, we don’t call her it that often. She has many nick names. Her main nick name is Diva, because she is one! She is spoiled rotten! And when you see her, she looks at you like she knows she’s special. We also call her Fatso, because of her large size. Mostly we just tend to keep calling her Gracie and Diva. But she responds to either one. And comes running over meowing.

Gracie, has these random energy blast (especially after a good cat nap), in which she reacts to any movement by jumping in

Gracie

the air and attacking her cat tree. Her cat tree is her life. She sleeps there, escapes from our dog there, and when she gets excited she will climb it fast. I really recommend a cat tree, I don’t know if Gracie is the only ragdoll that gets random blast of energy, but if she’s not the only one, I recommend you get one. Another thing I recommend is to get a laser pointer! It gets her moving and excited. It’s a blast to watch and for her to do! Also, I sometimes take her outside, on my dogs old puppy collars that fit her. I just sit down and she sits with me and watches birds, squirrels, bugs and things as I read.

Thanks for reading. ~Jessica and Gracie

Gracie

The congress is only held every two years. This is where you can see the “best of the best” Ragdolls compete.

You can take a look at the 8th International Ragdoll Congress’ website to learn more!

If you live in the area you might want to drop in to see a ton of Ragdolls.

Caymus in Recycle Bin

A long time ago (or it seems like it), I wrote a blog post about the Ragdoll cat price.  It does vary quite a bit depending on the potential show and breeder quality of the cat in question.

I thought it would be fun to show the prices of the Ragdoll cats my family has purchased:

1. Rags, purchased in 1989 with his brother Cosby – $350/ea
2. Caymus and Murphy, purchased in 2004 – $600/ea (reduced by $50 each because we were buying 2)
3. Charlie and Trigg, purchased in 2009 – $800/each (reduced by $50 each because we were buying 2)

Here is a break down of the prices of Ragdoll kittens that I have found:

• Pet (Alter) Quality – approximately USD$375- USD $850 (some breeders charge more for females due to the fact that spaying costs more than neutering, also some breeders will charge more for rare or non-traditional color patterns, like Torties , Creams, Lilacs and Flames)
• Show (Alter) Quality – approximately USD$600- USD $1000+
• Breeder Quality – approximately USD$1200- USD $1800+
• Show/Breeder Quality – approximately USD$1500- USD $1800+

To get a break down on what each quality means, please visit Buying a Ragdoll cat.

How much did you pay for your Ragdoll kitten/cat?  What year was it?  Are you a breeder – do these prices pretty much match your ranges?

Really though – the question about Ragdoll Cat Price should ALSO include the total cost of a cat in 1 year’s time. A kitten can be quite expensive because of vaccinations and what not.  A cat can still be expensive because of food, litter, vet bills, etc.  Do you have an idea of what you budget for your kitty every year?

While those principles still exist, Floppycats has become much more than that and I am pleased about it!

Thank you for your support for 4 years and here’s to 40 more!

When MeLinda of Merlin’s Hope asked me to get in touch with Martin Zucker for an interview for the site (because of his book Veterinarians’ Guide to Natural Remedies for Cats), I wasn’t expecting to be introduced to Earthing, but I am glad I was.

Marty said he would prefer for me to take a look at Earthing.  So we were sent an Earthing packet to investigate:

The Earthing pad works quite well for indoor pets that have no access to the Earth’s ground energy outside. They will often plop right on it and get energized.  From the feedback the Earthing team has received, animals are drawn to the energy.  You may see some results particularly for older infirm animals.  However, cats being cats will sometimes ignore it.

Overall though folks say that their pets love the mat and after laying on it regularly, the pets seem to show more energy and vitality, less lameness, etc.

What is appropriate for pets and available is a pure carbonized rubber conductive mat that people generally use as a floor mat.

This is one of the smaller mats that they offer.  It is plugged into an outlet but only the grounding part of the outlet – or the 3rd hole of an outlet.

Earthing Outlet Checker

The Earthing pad comes with a tester and the tester lets you know if your outlet is:

• Open ground
• Open Neutral
• Open Hot
• Hot/Ground Reverse
• Hot/Neutral Reverse
• Or Grounded which is the correct one you want.

The Earthing packet also comes with detailed instructions on what to do and how it works.It tells you that you want to unpack the box and make sure everything is there.   You can put the mat on a  bed and there are also other components to it depending on what you ordered from their site.

I love how pliable the mat is – it makes it easy for travel and easy to put on top of things because it molds to the surface it is put on.

The only problem with Charlie and Trigg reviewing this product is that they are young and vibrant and go outside every day, so they aren’t going to be as attracted to the Earthing pad.  However, I did take the pad over to my parents’ house to see if Tucker, their 12-year old German Shepherd with degenerative disc disease would be interested in it.  But, guess who was interested instead:

Murphy on the Earthing Mat

Yep, Murphy loved it and rolled on it and then laid there for awhile – I assume until he was balanced and then went about his business.

Murphy on the Earthing Mat

Murphy on the Earthing Mat

One of the most difficult things about this review was getting footage of a cat actually on the mat when I also had my video camera handy!  After several months, I finally accomplished just that!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZEW7CFpbM8[/youtube]

To give this review the information and answers it deserves, last week I interviewed veteran health writer Martin Zucker, co-author of Earthing:The Most Important Health Discovery Ever?  Martin has written more than a dozen books in his long career, including the popular Veterinarians’ Guide to Natural Remedies for Cats.  He says this is the most important book he has ever written because it brings attention to a totally overlooked natural resource that belongs in everyone’s lifestyle for better health.

Here’s the interview:

Jenny: What is Earthing and how does it work?

Marty Zucker: Sure.  Earthing is probably the most natural thing you can do.  Think in terms of being barefoot outside or sleeping on animal skin.  People have been doing that throughout history and they’ve largely been oblivious to the fact that being in direct, barefoot contact with the earth endows the body with certain energy from that emanates from the surface of the earth.  It’s a not well known, but its well established scientifically that the surface of the Earth is alive with free electrons and those electrons are placed on the earth by lightning strikes that are going on all the time and by solar radiation.  So, the Earth–the Earth radiates this energy.  It’s a natural, subtle, gentle, nurturing energy that’s there on the surface of the Earth and when we are bare skinned, that is barefooted, on the earth, our bodies are bioelectrical in nature.  Our bodies are conductors, so we pick up and we receive that energy and that energy normalizes, it manages the cadence of the biorhythms.  It is quieter at night and it is livelier during the day.
And so this energy, this undulating energy, this diurnal pattern, regulates our internal bioelectrical circuit, so to speak, and all our cells operate, Jenny, on–on electrical frequencies.  They have a certain range of electrical frequencies and as you can imagine we’ve evolved where if the natural frequencies of the Earth and so, in modern times, we’ve put on rubber and plastic soled shoes and we no longer sleep on the earth and this has disconnected us from the earth.  Our hypothesis is that this disconnect from the energy of the earth has primed us for dysfunction, for dys-regulation, for inflammation.  And we know that when these electrons come into the body, just like if you were eating lots of–tons of blueberries and taking a lot of vitamin C and coenzyme Q10.   These are all antioxidants and they come into the body and they help reduce inflammation.
Now, when you are barefoot on the earth, you are absorbing trillions of electrons into your body and these electronics are antioxidants, they are anti inflammatory.  They come into the body and what they do is they snuff out, they neutralize the free radicals that are causing chronic inflammation and, as you know, chronic inflammation is regarded as the primary cause of multiple diseases like cardiovascular disease to auto immune to cancer to diabetes, all these conditions have inflammation as their basis and this is…  And inflammation is probably the liveliest, most active aspect of modern bioresearch these days.

Researchers are looking into how inflammation and how inflammatory messengers in the body link to and create diseases.  So, it is widely accepted now that inflammation is the–is the causes of the many, many of the chronic diseases of our time.  The Earthing hypothesis is that when you are connected to the Earth, that is, when you are barefoot outside or you’re sleeping, working, relaxing indoors on Earthing Systems, such as, conductive sheets, conductive mats, conductive bands, or conductive patches.  By being in bare skin contact with these, you are absorbing from the Earth.  Just as you would be by being out barefooted or sleeping on the earth and there has been throughout history, cultures that have honoured the connectedness to the Earth.  They revered the Earth, but now with what modern science, particularly in the last 12 or 13 years, it’s been discovered that there are pronounced effects on your health by being in contact with the Earth.  That is by sleeping on the conductive sheets. By working on your computer perhaps barefooted and you have your feet on the mat. The results are astounding and the feedback is astounding.  We call this Earthing or grounding yourself.

Grounding is similar to the effect of grounding electrical systems.  Throughout the world, all electrical systems are grounded; that is, they are connected to a wire that goes to a ground rod in the earth, picking up the Earth’s energy.  That energy stabilizes the electrical systems and, similarly, it stabilizes the same energy, stabilizes your body’s electrical system.  As I said before, you’ll operate electrically.  All the systems in your body, your brain, your muscles, your immune system, your heart, all of those operate electrically.  So, when you bring of the Earth’s energy to your body, you are stabilizing those systems.  Your nervous system goes immediately from a stressed, sympathetic mode to a call mean, Parasympathetic mode; immediately.  This has an effect on your heart.  It has an effect on your stress. People immediately feel calmer.  They sleep better.  Their Cortisol levels, that’s their stress hormone, it becomes more normal.  As you know, people who are stressed have irregular cortisol levels and when cortisol is elevated, people don’t sleep well, they have the insomnia, they have a lot of-lots of health issues.  One of the studies that has been done with Earthing indicates that cortisol is normalized when you sleep grounded.  That is, when you sleep on one of these grounding sheets that is connected to the Earth and these sheets have little  silver threads in them, silver fibers and when your skin comes in contact with those fibers, the energy from the Earth is conducted into your body and you get all these wonderful effects inside your body.

The sheet is connected to the Earth via a wire, a chord that goes into the ground port.  That’s the third hole in your electrical outlets.  It goes into the third hole and a third hole is connected to a wire that goes to that ground rod outside and that’s called a ground wire.  That grounding is what stabilizes your electrical system in your house, your office and stabilizes when you come in contact with that sheet or conductive net.  It stabilizes your body.  So, this discovery of Earthing indoors, which is the equivalent of being barefoot outdoors, has been going on for about 14 years.  It was discovered by a man who founded and created the largest cable television marketing and installation company in the United States and he discovered this effect on the body back in ’98.  He’s been inspiring research on it ever since and we have the research on the website Earthinginstitute.net.

In 2010, we–I wrote a book on Earthing with this gentleman Clinton Ober along with Stephen Sinatra who is–who is a holistic cardiologist.  Dr. Sinatra believes that Earthing is the most important health breakthrough in his 35 years of practicing medicine.  It’s that significant for the health.  The research has shown that Earthing reduces inflammation.  It reduces chronic pain because, as you well know, pain is based on inflammation.  So, if your body is inflamed, if you have on inflammation from say,  tendinitis or carpal tunnel, that is going to cause pain.  People who have inflammation in their joints, have joint pain.  So, inflammation causes pain.  Earthing, that is grounding yourself with the Earth’s energy, reduces inflammation and, as a result, it reduces pain.

People sleep better.  They don’t have pain.  They are feeling calmer.  They sleep better.
Insomnia is–about 30% of Americans have a chronic insomnia problem and about 10% of those have problems functioning during the day.  So, we know in a–to a large degree that Earthing improves sleep and so for people that have to take sleeping pills, it offers an actual alternative.  If people sleep better, has less pain, they have more energy.  They feel better.  They feel more vibrant.

Jenny: You had mentioned that Dr. Sinatra has seen great improvement…  that it’s the best thing that he has discovered in his 35 years of his career, is that because he has seen this success within his own patients?

Marty: Dr. Sinatra has seen success with patients and success outside of patients and what’s happened is that he is now retired from active practice and he’s been practicing himself, he’s been sleeping grounded ever since 2001. In fact, he is the one that inspired Clint Ober to look at inflammation and to see if grounding yourself could affect inflammation because inflammation is regarded as the cause of cardiovascular disease.  The arteries become inflamed and, they form plaque and then you have problems getting blood supply to your heart or to your brain and if the plaque breaks off, you can have a stroke or a heart attack.  We find in the research, and these are small studies, but they are significant in their findings and one of them is that Earthing improves blood flow.  It improves circulation and we’ve seen situations where diabetics with poor blood to flow to the extremities and have wounds that don’t heal, they have a substantial relief from those.  They do heal once they start grounding regularly.  So, Dr. Sinatra did a small pilot study, which is going to be replicated at a major university this year, showing that when you are connected to the Earth, all of these trillions of electrons come into your body per second and nobody has seen an electron, but what we hypothesize happening is that an electron comes into the body, they increase the negative charge of red blood cells and red blood cells–the electrical charge on red blood cells, is called the Zeta Potential.  The more negative the charge, the better these red blood cells are able to repel each other.  So, as you can imagine– if I could draw a picture for you–if the red blood cells are clumping together–if they have a weak electrical charge, they clump together, and it’s harder for that blood to flow through the very small openings of the capillaries to reach all the distant tissue in your body.  Dr. Sinatra says is that people who have heart conditions, who have diabetes, have this thick, inflamed blood that is hard–it doesn’t flow well, sorta like ketchup.  He wants to see the blood flow like  red wine.  So, this study that he did with an electrophysiologist shows that when you ground yourself, that the blood moves faster, there is less clumping, less clustering of red blood cells and the blood flows better.  You have improved circulation…  significantly better.  And this is a big deal medically.  It is a big deal for many reasons.  If you can get blood to the tissues, all of the tissues are going to function better.  You can get more nutrients to the tissues.  You can get more oxygen to the tissues.  So, this is something that is really significant.  We are–we are really excited about that impact of Earthing on the body that is to improve circulation and blood flow and blood flow.

In the Earthing book in Dr. Sinatra’s chapter, you can see the difference between people before grounding and 40 minutes after, you can see the difference there and that’s pretty visual.
People feel their extremities warming up and the significance of this and the potential for this is really immense and we’re waiting for this larger study which will probably be related this year and when that happens it will generate a lot of excitement and the whole medical world.

Jenny: How have you seen Earthing help animals?  Are they suffering from the same diseases and cardiac conditions that you already mentioned?

Marty: Cats seem to have less of the problems that dogs have.  When I was writing animal books, I would always hear from veterinarians, they would see more health problems with dogs than cats.  Indoor animals are drawn to the sheet, to the mat because they’re picking up something programmed in some way to understand that.  There is something primordial in their DNA and they’ll pick up on that immediately and I’ve had people tell me that when they have dogs or indoor dogs or indoor cats, and the animals will often gravitate to the mat or the sheet and go right there.  In the animal chapter we have in the book, and you are welcome to extract anything from that that you like, there was on informal study done about dogs and how they appeared to have less pain and were more mobile and had more energy when they were grounded.  So, I really can’t say much more about the animals than what is in that chapter, but that’s the feedback that I’ve gotten since the book–from other people that their animals are doing better.
I heard this from a few other people as well that animals will gravitate to it, to the sheet or to the sheet or to the mat.  Some people have bought the mat and put it on the floor for their animals.  Animals will often go right to it, will sleep on it, will just go there and rest and apparently they are getting some–they are getting the energy from the Earth and its resonating with something in their DNA that this is–that this is natural for them.

Jenny:  I agree that animals are way more connected and if they don’t have access to that outside then that I can see how they would be attracted to it.  Do you have any idea of the size of the population that using Earthing?

Marty: Thousands for sure.  Many thousands.  I couldn’t really give you a number, but it’s really starting to become now a global movement, Jenny and, you know, women really get it.  Now, women really get this and they seem to be more in tune with this than men.  Men are always trying to figure out how things work, women are more intuitive so this resonates.   Women get it and there are so many issues that women have ranging from a PMS and hot flashes and autoimmune conditions.  They often have benefits, significant benefits, significant relief from being grounded and they’ll start telling their mother, sister, aunt, grandmothers, daughters and getting these things for their families.  It’s just, women really relate to this, really resonate with this.  It’s kind of like it’s Mother Earth–it’s Mother Earth!  There is something feminine, spiritually feminine about this.  It’s just beautiful to see the way women get this.

Jenny: Does holistic medicine accept the science or does science accept the negative vs. positive ions theory and what’s taking so long for adaptation and acceptance? 

Marty: Earthing is something very old, I mean, we’ve been doing it–is just the modern name for something that we’ve been doing since time immemorial.  I mean, we were walking barefoot on the ground and we’ve been sleeping on animal skins that are conductive.  We’ve been doing this forever.  This is one of the most natural things that anybody can do.

The science is new, though.  This is new and this is what takes a long time for modern science for modern medicine to accept anything.  I mean, you know how modern medicine basically is surgery and pharmaceuticals.  How they are–they are often hostile to alternative medicine. So, this is something about as natural as you can get so.  We, the Earthing project, are developing research as we can and putting it out there and it will take time for that to be accepted by the medical establishment.  There are many natural doctors and chiropractors and alternative health practitioners that are into this already.  They have recommended it for their patients because they’ve seen results and there are some MDs also, but getting this out into the mainstream medical establishment will take a long time simply because the science that they require to have something like this accepted, the level of science is not there yet.  This is something that is still new.

We’ve done about a dozen studies so far and you can find those studies up at Earthinginstitute.net.

The most recent study that came out is a review of Earthing and it really summarizes everything pretty well and is in a scientific format, published in the Journal of Environmental and Public Health and you can find it on the Earthinginstitute.net research page.  It was just published in December.  To be sure of this kind of big medical studies, big clinical trials, the kind of big things with hundreds of people, we don’t have that.  Those are hugely expensive.

Hopefully one day there will be enough interest that there will be those kinds of studies and when that happens I would think of as result will be spectacular.

Jenny: Yeah.  While you’ve been talking, I’ve been thinking “Wow, wouldn’t it be fun to just put Earthing mats in the entire floor of the hospital to see if there was crazy improvements or something like that?”  I guess those concentrated studies are probably better.

Marty: Here is the funny thing about that, Jenny is that they ground the beds and all the Medical Equipment.  They are all grounded.

Jenny: Oh! Wow.  Gosh, that is so ironic.

Marty: Isn’t that something?

Jenny: Wow, I hadn’t thought of it that way, but that’s crazy!

Marty: Patients are not grounded, but the hospital building is, but all the equipment is grounded.  They’re all plugged into those outlets that have three holes, right?

Jenny: Right.

Marty: It stabilizes the electrical system.  It runs on electricity.  It stabilizes all of that, but the patient isn’t.   Hopefully, one day they will be.

There are certain considerations as far as people on medication are concerned because, from my experience we know that people who are on blood thinners like Coumadin need to monitor their blood levels very carefully when they grounded themselves.  Why?  Because as I explained to you before, Earthing thins the blood.  It improves blood flow.  So, you can have somebody who’s taking Coumadin and they start to ground themselves, they really need to check with their doctor and monitor their blood thickness.  The combination of Earthing and Coumadin can thin blood too much so many people working with their doctors have been able to cut down on their level of Coumadin.  We know also that thyroid function appears to be improved by Earthing and that’s so people who are taking thyroid medication for under active thyroids.

So, those people who are on medications need to work closely with their doctor because Earthing has physiological defects in the body that can impact dosages of medication.

These are all things that we are aware of, that people have reported back to us.  They need to be studied and formally.  We know that Earthing improves blood pressure.  For people with high blood pressure, they are sometimes able to reduce their medication.  There is a blood pressure study that is being done this year.

We’ve written these things on, Earthinginstitute.net.  I write up these birthing reports from time to time.  We have medical cautions in there and advisory in there and we talk about some of the amazing things that people report.  You know, Earthing is not a medical treatment and people who are under the care of their doctors have to let them know that they’re doing this.  They have to work with their doctor and they have to advise their doctor.  We say this all the time because there are effects on the physiology and they are profound.

So, Jenny, all of these things are going on in the human body apply to cats and dogs and–and–and, so I’ve heard people say, “My animals are more lively.  They are more energetic.  They seem to be in less pain.” Pet owners can look at their animals and they can get a feeling that there is less pain.

Jenny: Right. So, I assume that you sleep on an Earthing mat?

Marty: Yes, I’m pretty much grounded 20 hours a day.  I’ve been that way for about four years now.

Yeah, my wife and I have an Earthing sheet and we also have a mat on the floor near my computer and I also put my bare feet on that and I worked on the computer grounded.  My wife is an ex dancer and she has a lot of muscular skeletal issues and she uses the Earthing patches.  The patches are like the EKG, you know like how the doctors use for testing electrical impulses from the heart.

Those connect, just like the feet on the mat you have, you can snap that chord onto a patch and put it where you pain is whether it’s your knee or your back.  So, she puts a couple of these patches on and she grounds herself every day in the afternoon and she gets relief from her pain and she doesn’t have to take any pain killers.

So, it’s not curing her arthritis, but it’s giving her pain relief.

Jenny: That’s awesome. So, if I wanted to try out Earthing, would you recommend the premiums starter kit that is on Earthing.com? 

Marty: Yeah, I really would.  Yeah, that is a good, economical way.  It’s around $200 bucks, I think or $199. It has a mat and 1/2 sheet.  So, you would simply use it…  Put it above the bottom sheet on your bed and makes sure that some part of your body, bare skin, comes into contact with it.  It doesn’t matter if it’s your bare feet or your lower legs or your thigh or your butt or whatever, however you sleep.  You just need some bare skinned and contact and you have the mat already. You can use it in socks, thin socks are okay.  You’ll get that energy coming through thin socks because your foot sweats and the moisture creates a channel of conductivity.

Jenny: Are there any new products that are coming out in 2012 that that Earthing.com is going to introduce? I know that you’ve mentioned a couple of studies that are going to come out.

Marty: Yeah, the big thing is going to be the Earthing bed and it  is a very pure quality memory from–it’s a conductive cover, a memory…you slip it into a cover—it’s like a envelope, you zip it up and then it has a connector on it. You take your Earthing chord and you snap it onto that cover just as you would your mat and then on top of that cover you have a conductor sheet and the conductivity is through the silver fibers. It is a fitted sheet and then you tuck that fitted sheet into the contour of your bed, whatever size it is. You then sleep on that fitted sheet so the Earth energy is coming up through the chord and into making contact with the cover of the mattress and then sheets picks it up so the sheet is fully conductive and then all you have to do is just make contact with that bottom sheet. Every two weeks or how often you wash your sheets, you just through the sheet into the washing machine and you don’t have to disconnect anything. You don’t have to disconnect any wires or anything because the cover for the mattress just stays there and so however often you wash your bottom sheet, you just throw it into the washing machine. No bleach, no fabric softener, no lotions, creams or oils on your body before bedtime, they’ll be making bare-skinned contact with your sheet and they can destroy the conductivity. The bed is the new big product for the year. We feel that this will revolutionize the whole sleep industry. It’s really the future of sleep now and you have not only the comfort memory, but you have the added benefit of being grounded. The combination is just amazing. I sleep on one of these and it’s just amazing.

Jenny: Is there any way to overdo it?

Marty: Well, let me ask you that question. Can you overdo it by being outside barefoot? Outside for a week at a time and you stepped on the ground, is there something that you would over do?

Jenny: No.

Marty: The same thing.

Jenny: But you can under do it?

Marty: Well, we think that everyone in society that is not grounded is going around electron deficient and we think that electron deficiency is what facilitates chronic inflammation because if you are grounded, you are going to have enough electrons…electrons have a negative charge and the free radicals that are causing the inflammation has a positive charge and they are looking for electrons. So, they are stealing electrons from healthy tissue. So, if you have plenty of electrons in your reservoir of your body because your body conducts these—your body is conductive in the collagen, which is the structural protein of the body. So, the electrons are conducted by the collagen and your blood and so you have this big reservoir of electrons in your body, so your free radicals theoretically can’t run amok and cause chronic inflammation. So, who is getting the inflammation? Our hypothesis is they are people who are disconnected from the Earth because they don’t have enough electrons, negatively charged electrons in their body to offset the positively charged free radicals that are causing chronic inflammation. That is as simple as I can say. It’s a hypothesis, but this is what seems to be happening and we talk about it in the book.

Teague as a kitten

Assateague Red AKA Teague. Teague was born in Landsdale, Pennsylvania to a ragdoll breeder. We already have a 4 year old Ragdoll, Rocky, who we thought needed a friend to keep him entertained. Our 14 year old Maine Coon mix just can’t keep up with the shenanigans of a younger cat any longer. We then saw photographs of Teague on the breeders website, and knew he was the cat for us. We drove to the breeders from the Eastern Shore of Virginia to pick Teague up, and it was love at first sight. He was just a little ball of white when we brought him home, but we knew from his parentage that he was going to be a flame. Since he’s a year old now, his coloring has really started to come out, and it’s beautiful.

Teague

He’s been quite the bundle of energy since we brought him home. He’s always underfoot, he cannot stand to be away from people, which is wonderful. We wanted a lapcat, and we certainly got one. When he’s not eating, or sleeping, he’s either curled up on your lap, or bringing his mouse toy to you to play fetch. We throw the mouse, he fetches it and brings it back to you to throw again. (we’ve had dogs in the past, and none of them were this interested in playing fetch!) Our older ragdoll Rocky, is average size for a ragdoll male, and Teague is almost as big at just a year old, so we feel he’s going to be a rather large cat. He just loves to play, whether it’s chasing the vacuum as it’s being run, or climbing over a baby gate to get where he’s not supposed to be, and yes, I said climbing over. He’s also fearless, we have a second story landing at the top of the stairs, and as we were watching television on evening, Teague launched himself through the railing on the second floor to the couch below. My mother almost had a stroke when he landed on her, but he was fine. Since then, we’ve discouraged him from going to the second floor as we don’t want to risk him injuring himself by thinking he’s the cat of the Flying Wallendas! He is a terrific

Teague

ambassador for the breed, his temperament is fantastic, and he does nothing but impress guests of ours with his version of the “ragdoll flop”. Because several friends have had the chance to interact with him, 2 family friends are now owners of Ragdolls! Where they had never even heard of the breed before. He has become a playmate of Rocky, they like to wrestle and chase each other throught he house, over furniture (people in said furniture or not), etc. I think once he gets a little older, he’s going to contest Rocky’s Alpha-male status. He’s definitely going to have the size to do so. In short, he’s the perfect Ragdoll to encourage others to become interested in the breed. We will always have cats for pets, and thanks in part to Teague (and Rocky), a Ragdoll is the only breed we will ever have. Thank you for making this website available so others can learn of our breed and enjoy them like we do.

Sincerely,

Amy Bealer

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