IT MAY sound like something out of Frankenstein, but electric currents applied to the skin could potentially speed up wound healing. Ironically, though the phenomenon was reported 150 years ago by the German physiologist Emil Du Bois-Reymond, it has been ignored ever since.
Now Josef Penninger of the Austrian Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Vienna and Min Zhao of the University of Aberdeen, UK, have demonstrated that natural electric fields and currents in tissue play a vital role in orchestrating the wound-healing process by attracting repair cells to damaged areas.
The researchers have also identified the genes that control the process. “We were originally sceptical, but then we realised it was a real effect and looked for the genes responsible,” Penninger says. “It’s not homeopathy, it’s biophysics.”
read the whole story…
Title: The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life
Author: Gary Selden
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I first heard about this in The Body Electric by Gary Selden. He wrote about the research of Robert Becker who experimented with regrowing bones with electric currents. Regeneration on a much larger scale is discussed in the book also.
A great read if you want to get really depressed about where our medical science (and science in general) is headed. It’s great stuff until the end. Brilliant stuff really. It is heartening to hear that folks are following up on these old ideas.