User:OlavN/The Body Electric


 * This article is about a book on bioelectromagnetism. A book on Kirlian photography by Thelma Moss has a similar title. See Body Electric for further meanings.

The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life has as its main author the scientist Robert O. Becker, and as coauthor the writer Gary Selden. Becker was an orthopedic surgeon at the time working for the Veterans Administration

, describes his research into "our bioelectric selves".

A PubMed search gives 91 listings for Becker RO in peer-reviewed scientific journals, 33 as first author (including several in the journals Science and Nature). The Body Electric is largely a summary of this work. Becker set out to examine why normal bones heal, and then explore the reasons why bones fail to heal properly. His experiments were mostly with salamanders and frogs, and his scope was widened to studying regeneration after lesions such as limb amputation. He suspected that electric fields played an important role for controlling the regeneration process, and therefore mapped the electric potentials at various body parts during the regeneration.

This mapping showed that the central parts of the body normally was positive, and the limbs negative. When a limb of a salamander or frog was amputated, the voltage at the cut changed from about -10 mV (millivolts) to +20 mV or more the next day—a phenomenon called the current of injury. In a frog, the voltage would simply change to the normal negative level in four weeks or so, and no limb regeneration would take place. In a salamander, however, the voltage would during the first two weeks change from the +20 mV to -30 mV, and then normalize (to -10 mV) during the next two weeks—and the limb would be regenerated.

Becker regarded these voltage changes as very important, both as an indicator of the regeneration process, and as an indication of the factors needed for improving regeneration. The electric field changes turned out to be caused by currents in the nerves, and the limb regeneration occurred from red blood cells, which first dedifferentiated into unspecialized cells, and then differentiated into the new cells needed.

Becker later observed several interesting properties of bones and bone growth, proposing that bones are semiconductors and piezoelectric in nature. These tie into the healing process by electrically stimulating bone marrow cells to differentiate into a form of adult stem cells which regrew the bone from within by regeneration. By applying external electrical stimulation in the proper form, he was able to induce bone healing in patients whose bones had failed to heal together.

Later in his research, observing from prior research that silver had been used as an antibacterial material in the past, he used a combination therapy of silver with electrical stimulation (used in this case primarily for iontophoresis -- to drive silver ions further into tissue to enhance its antibacterial action) and observed the desired antibacterial effect. Also observed was that with proper stimulation fibroblasts would dedifferentiate and apparently became able to form new cell types, leading to the possibility of wider uses for regenerative healing in humans and other animals.

From The Body Electric; "the ('positive silver') technique makes it possible to produce large numbers of dedifferentiated cells, overcoming the main problem of mammalian regeneration - the limited number of bone marrow cells that dedifferentiate in response to electrical current alone. Whatever its precise mode of action may be, the electrically generated silver ion can produce enough cells for human blastemas; it has restored my belief that full regeneration of limbs, and perhaps other body parts, can be accomplished in humans."

Later in the book he explores his concerns with deleterious effects of electromagnetic fields on living organisms.