The Bioelectric Body
Scaffold for the author's reading and rewriting. Established science throughout; the framing and the leaps are the author's.
Not only nerves
The popular picture keeps electricity for the nerves and the heart. Every living cell holds a voltage across its membrane, maintained at continuous energetic cost; nerve and muscle are the cells that fire it fast [1]. Skin, bone, gut lining, and the cells of an early embryo all hold and change their voltages, and those voltages steer what the cells do.
What the Charge suite has shown
The near field set the scale at which charge acts. The charged membrane gave the standing voltage. The electrostatic protein showed shape and charge as one fact. Fields in development showed voltage patterns that precede anatomy [3]. Wounds generate electric fields that guide cells into the gap to close it [2]. Gathered, these are not curiosities. They are the ordinary working medium of the body.
Held with care
Bioelectric physiology is established science; claims of healing by applied fields are a different matter and mostly are not. This chapter stays with what the body does to itself.
References (to be checked against the originals)
- Hodgkin, A. L. & Huxley, A. F. (1952). A quantitative description of membrane current and its application to conduction and excitation in nerve. Journal of Physiology 117, 500–544. doi:10.1113/jphysiol.1952.sp004764
- McCaig, C. D., Rajnicek, A. M., Song, B. & Zhao, M. (2005). Controlling cell behavior electrically: current views and future potential. Physiological Reviews 85, 943–978. doi:10.1152/physrev.00020.2004
- Levin, M. (2014). Molecular bioelectricity: how endogenous voltage potentials control cell behavior and instruct pattern regulation in vivo. Molecular Biology of the Cell 25, 3835–3850. doi:10.1091/mbc.e13-12-0708