The Body Electric

HAS anyone told you lately you’re electric? Well, you are. Your every pore oozes with the stuff. Must be all those ions you’ve been pumping. And we’re not just talking about nerve impulses here: every surface of your body, from your skin to your cell membranes, is humming with electrical activity.

Biologists have known for more than 200 years that nerve impulses are transmitted electrically. But only recently have they started eavesdropping on the electrical chatter of the rest of your body, and have discovered that electricity, in the form of electric fields, plays a vital role in numerous biological processes from embryonic development to cell division, nerve regeneration and wound repair. “The phenomenon is broadly applicable and I think we have only scratched the surface of something that is evolutionarily highly conserved and widely used,” says Colin McCaig of the University of Aberdeen, UK, who has been working on the biological effects of electric fields since the 1980s.

The Body gets a Healing boost from its inner Electric Fields

THE body’s ability to heal itself partly depends on natural electric fields, it has been proved for the first time. The work could lead to the development of drugs that speed up healing by enhancing these natural fields.

Cell migration and division plays a key role in development and healing. Most research in this area is on chemical factors, but several studies have shown that applying electric fields can affect migration and division as well. After successful trials in animals, for example, a team in the US is trying to encourage the healing of spinal cord injuries by applying an external field.

Anti-Infammatory Drugs prevent proper Bone Fracture Healing

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are commonly used to treat pain and inflammation in people with chronic musculoskeletal conditions, such as arthritis. People also commonly take NSAIDs after acute injuries, such as fractures – as can frequently occur in people with osteoporosis – or after joint replacement surgery made necessary by advanced arthritis. However, through an Arthritis Foundation-funded project, scientists have determined that taking NSAIDs after suffering a fracture may inhibit your body’s ability to heal.

The Intelligent Body by Michael Hyland

IT’S all rubbish!” cry the sceptics steeped in conventional medicine. Yet for all their clamour, it’s clear that complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) works, and can sometimes rid people of chronic disease. How do we bridge this gap? Do we continue to treat one branch of medicine as science and the other as magic? Perhaps there’s a third way.

Conventional medicine regards the body as a machine, like a jumbo jet or a computer. It assumes that the body becomes diseased in much the same way a machine breaks down—when a specific part goes wrong.

CAM has a very different philosophy: the idea that the healthy body is a system in balance, and that disease can be created by a fault that is distributed over the whole body. Because this idea is so obviously at odds with convention, CAM has always appeared unscientific.