Negative Ion Therapy – What Are The Benefits?

Despite the fact that “negative ion therapy” (aeroionotherapy) sounds new and high tech, it’s actually been studied and used successfully for many decades. Studies about aeroionotherapy go back at least to the 1960’s when scientists tried this treatment option for many different conditions and purposes with different levels of success.

One of the benefits that has been proven over and over again in clinical trials and studies published in peer reviewed academic journals is the positive change in overall mood and outlook. In a 2008 study published in Psychological Medicine, men and women (regardless of the mood they started out in) experienced a positive change in mood after being exposed to just 30 minutes of negative ion therapy. Participants reported reduced depression, reduced anger, and an increase in “overall feeling of wellbeing.”

Studies have linked this feeling of well being from the high concentration of negative ions to an accompanying reduction in stress hormones (like cortisol) and an increase in immune response — that means that this therapy makes you feel happier, less stressed out, and less susceptible to becoming ill (though its interesting to note that negative ions have a negative effect on many nasty germs that would hurt us, which also helps us stay healthy because it kills bacteria before they even have a chance to enter our bodies).

Other studies have proven additional benefits, such as increased wound healing, improved respiratory function, and better liver metabolism. In rats, it has been shown that negative ions improve neural functioning and information transmission in the brain.

It makes sense that negative ions can do so much for our health because they are found so densely in nature, but not in our artificial cities and buildings where we are exposed to electromagnetic fields that tend to have an opposite charge. Maybe it’s one of the reasons that “fresh mountain air” seems so fresh and revitalizing to us: it’s the ions! Once dismissed as merely alternative medicine, scientists are beginning to take more serious note of negative ion therapy once again and are beginning to find new uses and benefits of it constantly.