I have a question about a grounding mat i use at night to sleep better.

I do not know if a grounding mat works and I do not use one.

However, so long as you connect the grounding mat to earth ground, no harm can come.

If the central heating pipes are metal (copper) they are at earth ground.

Anything that goes through heating equipment might not be grounded.  The best choice if you don't know is a cold water pipe.

I agree. I assume the central heating was throughout the building and so was grounded. But cold water pipes are certainly grounded as well

Even if you see copper or metal cold water pipes protruding from the wall, there's no guarantee that pipe of a non-conductive material does not exist between what you see and the earth, breaking the grounding contact.
If you have plug outlets like this:Attach your grounding clip to the pin indicated by #2 on the image.

If you are grounding to your central heating tube make sure you are grounding to metal and not a painted surface.

Even if you are grounding to a metal surface on the tube there is no guarantee that that surface has a good ground connection to the outside.

I was informed about such grounding mats about a colleague from work and I have read about it at that time, but I never bought or tested one.
I do not know if besides the fact that are dealing with electricity, if they are really comfortable for the bad, in top of the mattress or sometimes were sold as blanket too. I am a bit skeptical about the physical comfort.
Coming back to the grounding, of course the experts above answered you proper, but I would add few more words.
I think the recommendation done by Tom Beck by making a customized power cable with a plug and only the ground wire is the best solution, because each socket must have the ground wire by law. In fact are old houses with old wiring where cables have only with 2 wires instead of 3. They are still acceptable by law in certain countries, as Germany, if the neutral wire is connected to the ground. But that does not apply for the new houses/buildings.
I think I understand why you want to attach to the heaters pipes. It is because is easy, close to the bed and any other connections to the ground is not in handy in the bedroom. Then is psychological fear that if you connect something to the socket as Tom Beck recommended, then mentally seems as you might bring by mistake also the 230V to the mat and you might have an electrical shock instead of discharge. But that is only psychological and I still think Tom Beck proposed the best solution.
Nevertheless, if you have no sockets with ground pin/wire around your bed and you want to connect to the pipes from heating system, then to make sure it is really grounded, you must measure it using some instruments. For the home users you need minimum at least an ohmmeter, a digital multimeter. If you don’t have one, ask some friends or a specialist to come at your home for 5min and measure it.
The ground should be under 2ohms or better under 1ohm.
To measure the ground you need a reference, a good known ground.
The dedicated, special instruments require 3 reference points directly in the ground at a certain distance between them as 10m, they measure the soil conductivity and the grounding quality of your ground reference point.
But in your case, as I think you do not intend to make your own reference ground by digging in the soil, you have to use what is close to you in the house, a ready-made one.
Then we come back to Tom Beck ground reference from socket, use a (probably long) wire between that ground from socket and near your heating pipe and using the ohmmeter you measure the resistance.
If it is higher than 5-10ohms forget it, if it is under 5ohm is acceptable, if it is under 2ohm is good and if it is under 1ohm is very good. The results depends by thickens and length of the wire used between the ground of the socket and the quality of the ground from pipe used for heating.
With this test you rely on the grounding quality of your socket, which is supposed to be good ground according with the law of house electricity. If you have any other known good grounding reference point, then use that one as reference when you measure it.
This is what you can do home with minimum steps in order to be make sure you have a good ground.
Depending where you live, flat or house, yours or rented and depending by your skills and financial possibilities, further developments can be done.
For example you can build your own good reference ground in the soil near the house or you can ask/pay a specialist/company with a dedicated instrument to come and measure the quality of the grounding for difference reference points that you choose.
I think that’s about it, I have no more ideas for the moment, at least.

Hello Kitty

Did you get instructions with the mat?
What do the instructions recommend?
Does the mat come with a wire of some kind already attached to it, and if so what kind of clip or plug is attached to it?

I am wondering whether it could be just as easy to attach an "anti-static" wrist strap (as used by computer technicians and in factories where static electricity needs to be earthed) to your ankle and connect that to a copper pipe instead of using a grounding mat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antistatic_device#/media/File:Antistatic_wrist_strap.jpg

If the pipes from your boiler to the central heating radiators are continuous copper, then they will connect to metal fittings on the boiler.  The water pump, gas ignitor, and timing clock in the boiler should all be powered by an earthed power supply.  Traditionally there should also be thick "bonding" wire, covered with plastic shielding in the normal colour for earth wires, that connects to metal gas pipes and cold water supply pipes where they come into your house.  The other end of the wires should connect to an earth block at the consumer unit (fuse box).  The reason for this is so that there is a guaranteed continuity to earth even if the internal water or gas pipes are plastic in places.  So, the copper pipe supplying the circulating hot water through the radiators should be earthed, but you have to remember that sometimes the pipe may not be metal to metal because plumbers use sealing compounds, PTFE tape, and even fibre washers at the joints to connect pipes to radiators.

Thank you all so much for all the comments to a question i considered a bit silly myself but still it kept me busy haha...i do not have a boiler, and the central heater was earthed prperly according to the expert.i dont knw if its 1,2 or 3 ,r or five even.Still thanks a lot.i shouldnt read too many horrorstories on groounding through the central heater tube.A grounding mat is not the same thing as a computer lol.thanks a lot!You guys are great.

What I forgot to say is that the mat is ready made with a wire and little alligatorclip attached to it and a copper attachment to put on the heater tube.My confusion was mostly about electricity /emf or static electricity...i have a problem upstairs with a lot of antennas surrounding the house and was worried about emf and not feeling too well when sleeping...actually feeling pretty louzy before i had the mat....I had an accident and so im kind of sensitive...i know the mat will not protect me from any of that but it did make me feel better and sleep more sound throughout the night..strange since i didnt even believe in them...and since the makers of the mat claim that no electricity will flow through the mat while others say it does take on released  body voltage.there are a lot of different opinions on the matter.i have good results with the mat to my own surprise and sleep a lot better with it...maybe because my central heating plumbing is close to the kettle wich is only one floor below and a vieuw meters away directly into the ground.i was however having the crazy fear of releasing electricity into the central heating tube, knowing that a silver mat acts a bit like an antenna (?) and so  afraid  for making any dangerous mistakes. i understand that no human body can be compaired to a computer or  emf to electricity coming from a computer by example attached to a tube..or any other electric appliance and that we are mostly dealing with static electricity ..but this is the confusing part here haha...i was afraid to ask it knowing that people would probably think its a ridiculous question but you guys are so kind that i dare to ask it.Second fear was my bathroom being right next to the central heater and earthed in the bathroom as well lol

Wow, thank you, You are awsome...Such a kind and good answer.I was, however,  not afraid of being electrocuted whilest on the mat lol...I ment, is it possible to release electricity wich picked up  bythe mat and than released  into the heating system,,...so just the other way around...this because i was advised not to  connect anything to ground on the heatertube so creating two grounding points wihin the house....but thanks for all the awsome information..I feel a lot better now.....and agree that its mstly a marketing thing.....but still, as long as i feel it does something for me..why not ....perhaps its the focuspoint wich helps me to relax.i do feel some vibrations , but that might also be placebo...I wish you a nice weekende and keep up the good work here....

although I was mostly worried about releasing electricity into heating tube and not to pick it up while laying n my earthing mat, i thought the answer was awsome and this was also explained to me.Very good!

Thank you Kitty.

No, don't worry about your electric carge going from your body into the mat and into the pipes that connect to the heating system.   The amount of electricity is tiny.  It would be the same as sleeping with one hand holding the pipe all night, only a bit more comfortable :-)

I suppose what I was saying about the "marketing hype" was that sometimes companies and "practitioners" make false claims among the true facts, or exaggerate the benefits.

I was brought up in Africa where (obviously) English was the 2nd language for the majority of the native population.  In addition, many of the older rural people had never learned to read or write, so pictures and symbols were used by manufacturers on packaging to try and describe the contents.  There was a brand of laxative chocolate that showed pictures of people doing active things like running and playing tennis.  They obviously were trying to infer that you will feel more healthy if you are not constipated.  Lots of people started taking them because they thought it would make them fit and healthy, but ended up with continual diarrhoea.

Of course, this example was completely unintended and "accidental", but it shows how easy it can be to mislead people with false claims.

Very few of us feel as healthy as we should.  We are probably swallowing poisons that leak from plastic food containers, we probably all eat too much sugar and salt and not enough fruit, vegetable and fibre, most of us do not take enough regular exercise.  Living indoors surrounded by synthetic carpets, curtains, wall coverings, etc and with the windows closed in artificially dry air probably isn't good for us, but "experts" latch onto some of those things and will try to ban salt, ban sugar, ban central heating and nylon carpets because they are dangerous to our health.  They probably do more harm to our health than all of those things because they are making us worry so much about them.

A couple of years after mobile phones first became available affordable and everybody was holding them up to their ears, scientists began to worry about people getting brain damage.  Facebook and Twitter have probably caused more brain damage than mobile phone electromagnetic fields.

A lot of the ancient healing methods work for many people, for example accupuncture and Reiki Healing, but scientists find it difficult or impossible to prove why they seem to work.  The same is true for the "science" behind grounded mattresses.  Some sellers would have us believe that I will be able to jump and run like an athlete after sleeping on one, but I could never do that before.  There are obviously other more responsible sellers who restrict themselves to factual information.

Here are some interesting pages:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_field
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomagnetism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioelectromagnetics

Take care and enjoy your grounding mattress.  Just because I am a bit sceptical does not mean that it doesn't work.