Many people "get by" just using wrist straps and that is fine if all that they want is to get by.
Sorry, the contact area of wrist straps is too small. In our studies, the copper poipes produced about 3 times the effectiveness of the wrist straps (without resistors in the leads). Our studies found three important things about electroded.
#1 The larger the contact area, the better the results
#2 The greater the number of contacts (at least up to 4) the better the results.
#3 The further apart the contacts were, the better the results.