Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Verbal (talk | contribs) at 09:18, 20 June 2010 (copyedit). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "The Body Electric" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The topic of this article may not meet Misplaced Pages's general notability guideline. Please help to demonstrate the notability of the topic by citing reliable secondary sources that are independent of the topic and provide significant coverage of it beyond a mere trivial mention. If notability cannot be shown, the article is likely to be merged, redirected, or deleted. Find sources: "The Body Electric" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (Learn how and when to remove this message)

This article is about a book. See Body Electric for alternative meanings.

The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life is a book by Robert O. Becker and Gary Selden in which Becker, an orthopedic surgeon at the time working for the Veterans Administration, describes his research into "our bioelectric selves".

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.

See also

• Regeneration (biology)
• Harold Saxton Burr
• L Field
• Energy (esotericism)
• Electrotherapy

References

1. Howe, LM (2000-05-15). "British Cell Phone Safety Alert and An Interview with Robert O. Becker, M. D." Council on Wireless Technology Impacts. Retrieved 2009-02-09.

• Biology books
• 1998 books