You also save on your heating bill.
Maybe not just any electric signal will do, maybe frequency and amplitude are a factor as well. A 'healing signal'.
Curious research. We'll see what becomes of it.
There's a very cool researcher who used this method to create flatworms with heads (or tails) on both sides. https://www.cell.com/biophysj/fulltext/S0006-3495(17)30427-7
IMO the issue is with unhealthy people, things like poor circulation reduces the body's ability to produce the natural ion gradients and thus why the external electric field helps.
The issue with diabetes is that over time periphery blood supply becames problematic which means healing takes way longer, sometimes never healing at all leading to necrosis (dead tissue).
So you could argue that 'accelerated healing' tissue is a poorer grade tissue by some metric, e.g. connective tissue is not as flexible or strong etc. But in diabetic wounds the alternative to 'accelerated healing' tissue could literally be an amputated limb.
How is it now? Has this been extended to real use outside of research?
[0] https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/advs.20...
> EPFL researchers have demonstrated the first pill-sized bioprinter that can be swallowed and guided within the gastrointestinal tract, where it directly deposits bio-ink over damaged tissues to support repair.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcurrent_electrical_neurom...
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-body-electric-rob...
I recently went through 6 weeks of PT for injured tendons / tendinitis in my arms with 0 results.
The therapist suggested we try dry needling + electric stimulation for another 6 weeks. So we did that and I recovered 90% in the second 6 weeks of therapy.
There were side effects but they were minimal and completely gone now.
It looked a little like this except on my arms:
https://youtube.com/shorts/pTEPMgDdy2A?si=MSx7YnmUbApsigWe
I was skeptical but sold on the benefits and relieved to have an effective therapy option to fall back on when it happens again as it does every couple years. Unfortunately, my insurance doesn’t pay for it.
It isn't convincing given the time frame / lack of comparison.
Hormonal changes mean people have permanent differences in their skin at specific points in time. Eczema is known to respond more cyclically with menstrual cycles, which is a lot easier to correlate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_properties_of_co...
I’m half tempted to buy myself a copper plate to stand on.
Also copper is biocidal, so maybe there's something there.
But you can treat their data as garbage, pseudoscience, backed by nothing. Because it is. Any effects are likely to be placebo. Wait for real research. Science isn’t a popularity contest.
There is a well-known case study where a man ‘cracked’ each joint in one hand every day, and never ‘cracked’ any joint in the other hand for many years, to see whether it caused arthritis. He didn’t get arthritis in either hand. The only thing you can take away from that is that cracking the joints doesn’t necessarily cause arthritis for him.
The person posted an anecdote; you don’t have to rely on in, but your dismissal is shallow and unhelpful.
Yeah, that's a "no" from me dawg. My PT stuck the needle in, and I was fine with that. Then he moved it a little, and I turned pale as a ghost and started sweating. Same thing happened when I had my nerve conduction study - never again. Needles going in and out is fine. Needles moving around under my skin ain't gonna happen any more. (Except at the dentist, but that's what the laughing gas is for!)
As long as the initial stimulus is strong enough to trigger an action potential, the signal propagates all the way from the nerve ending to the central nervous system, and whatever response the CNS cooks up always makes it all the way to all the muscles it intends to trigger. Stated another way, the peripheral and central nervous system have enough of these signal repeaters for any signal to travel anywhere.
If you happen to be aware of a diy poor man's hack, maybe point me yonder. I gots lots o' problems. I'm also interested in zapping me 'ead, but that's more complicated and... seemingly expensive.
This is surely a relatively new state of affairs so wouldn't it be a rather good idea to prevent it at source so to say rather than cope with the negative effects?
The real underlying reason for this is quite simple: Haber-Bosch enables us to have abundant and cheap food for everyone, and our evolutionary history hasn't wired us up to respond appropriately to that.
How does that "prevent it at source"? I was going to say "free access to meat and eggs" and then I read the rest of your comment. You are blaming metabolic dysfunction on the people setting low prices for food, did I read that right?
Therefore, grains are cheap, everything is pumped full of salt and sugar, and people eat overeat.
Also, famines were semi-regular occurrences across the world until very recently.
Your idea would work if meat and eggs took fewer resources to produce, but reality does not work like that.
People only overeat themselves into obesity once you process those carbs into high fructose corn syrup etc. Seems like a very different problem.
There are regions of the world that are doing better than others, and a wide spectrum of reasons for that, but it is only comparative/relative improvement. Obesity is getting worse everywhere, across the board, as people are uplifted into middle class incomes and able to purchase and eat whatever they want & as much as they want.
I'm not saying that ultra-processed foods are fine. They are bad and very much part of the story. But it is not the whole story either.
20 min ted talk - https://youtu.be/XheAMrS8Q1c
3 hr lex fridman episode - https://youtu.be/p3lsYlod5OU
I have seen a few articles over the years on stimulating wound healing and did a little digging and found it goes back further than I appreciated:
1843: Carlo Matteucci (Italy) observes that wounded tissue generates a steady current — the first evidence of endogenous “healing current.”
Modern experimental era (1950s–1980s)
1950s–1960s: F. W. Smith and others at the Royal Free Hospital (London) and USSR researchers start applying DC microcurrents to chronic ulcers.
1960s–1970s: Robert O. Becker (NYU, later VA Medical Center) systematically studies wound and bone healing with DC and pulsed currents — showing accelerated healing and even partial limb regeneration in amphibians.
1972: Becker and Murray publish seminal paper: “Low intensity direct current stimulation of bone growth and wound healing.”
Late 1970s–1980s: Clinical trials on pressure ulcers and diabetic wounds using microamp DC show improved epithelialization.
Clinical device development (1990s–present)
1990s: FDA approvals for electrical bone-growth stimulators, later expanded to soft-tissue wound dressings.
2000s: Research into pulsed DC, AC, and capacitive coupling grows; low-frequency (1–200 Hz) electrotherapy devices enter wound-care practice.
2010s–2020s: Rise of microfluidic and bioelectronic dressings (like the Chalmers study, 2023), nanogenerators, and self-powered wound patches — merging electronics and biology.
Looking into the AC/DC aspects: DC = best for directional healing and wound closure. AC = best for tissue conditioning, circulation, and long-term comfort.
Combination or cycling gives the fastest and safest overall healing, especially for chronic or deep wounds. Also, prevent polarisation irritation over prolonged usage.
Certainly does feel like a technology that has been sleeping in the wind, and a future first aid tool. Of note, electronically, such a device could also aid in cleaning the wound by killing bacteria, which may be one reason that healing is improved.
mgh2•13h ago