Do Salt Lamps Work?

part of this video was sponsored by LastPass stick around to the end for a word from our sponsor our negative ions good for you normally I dismiss such a question out of hand in fact that's exactly what I did when a friend brought it up about a month ago but he was insistent he said no this is for real there's science behind it and so I looked into it and I found this there are literally hundreds of published peer-reviewed scientific studies on the biological effects of ions it's a body of research that begins about a century ago and continues to the present day and this is just a fraction of it now these studies aren't just about any old ions they're about atmospheric ions or air ions and although the results are not uniform they all begin with the premise that positive ions make us feel bad and negative ions make us feel good so in this video I want to get to the bottom of this these are Himalayan salt lamps with the heat from the light bulb it releases negative ions in the air and of course negative ions are what you breathe in and produce the serotonin in the body and in serotonin is like the primary neurotransmitter in your whole body and all living things and that's what makes you feel good awesome can I jump in here for a second when I first heard all this business about atmospheric ions my first thought was why should we expect there to be many ions in the atmosphere at all I mean to recap an ion is just an atom or a molecule that has gained or lost an electron if it loses an electron it's a positive ion if it gains an electron it becomes a negative ion but here's the thing unlike charges attract so moving about in the atmosphere I'd expect the positive and negative ions to find each other and then BOOM they're back to being neutral however as it turns out there are some processes that are constantly generating atmospheric ions for example cosmic rays these are highly energetic particles from across the universe that slam into our atmosphere and transfer their energy to the air creating ions in the process cosmic rays are thought to create around 500 ions per cubic centimeter at ground level in ...