[HN Gopher] Electricity can heal wounds three times as fast (2023)
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Electricity can heal wounds three times as fast (2023)
Author : mgh2
Score : 108 points
Date : 2025-10-16 12:59 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.chalmers.se)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.chalmers.se)
| mgh2 wrote:
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3776323/
| Bender wrote:
| Will there be a ELI5 how-to for DIY'ers? Or perhaps a non-rx
| device sold at Walmart and Amazon for DIY'ers.
| rpmisms wrote:
| I can't read, so I will be using a cattle prod on my broken arm
| Eupolemos wrote:
| That sounds like some obscure Fallout idiot savant member-
| berry :D
| Bender wrote:
| I have both a cattle prod and a TENS-7000. I assume there may
| be different voltages and pps that work best on different
| wounds and there must be a database that would be used to
| track results for everyone that self experiments. One study
| only applies to its small set of masochists. I would like to
| see the numbers evolve over time from more masochists so we
| can share each others pain, pleasure and recovery. Also the
| best places to stick it and results of different molecules to
| work in conjunction with the TazeMeBro-20000. _e.g.
| Terrasil3X vs Max strength Desitin vs other off-label options
| and other supplements._ Diabetics seem to prefer Terrasil3X.
| The step-by-step guide should have videos of unclothed people
| configuring and applying the TENS to every possible wound
| location.
| observationist wrote:
| spoken[loudly and slowly, since they can't read] Open science
| citizen research is awe inspiring. Thanks for contributing to
| humanity's progress, you are a true hero!
| RajT88 wrote:
| Cattle prods are expensive. Use a fireplace lighter. Much
| lower project cost.
| bregma wrote:
| Instructions unclear: cattle prod is now going to require an
| embarrassing visit to emerg to remove.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Get an electric blanket and sleep cozy and warm on cold nights,
| while the electromagnetic field revigorates your body and your
| soul.
|
| You also save on your heating bill.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| You could probably repurpose an electric face massager ?
| kipchak wrote:
| Anecdotally trying a nuface device on sore muscles a couple
| of times there seems to be some sort of positive effect.
| canadiantim wrote:
| Find a device capable of Transcutaneous electrical nerve
| stimulation (TENS) or just type TENS into amazon
| greenavocado wrote:
| Shoplift, get caught, resist, get tasered. Free electrotherapy
| that comes with free room and board too.
| AaronAPU wrote:
| It seems odd that cells wouldn't naturally move in the right
| directions with some purpose. Which makes me wonder if their
| purpose is just not understood and these faster healing wounds
| might have some yet unknown downside.
| altruios wrote:
| Maybe a randomized walk is the optimal healing algorithm
| barring any directive force? A local maximum. It can use the
| endocrine signaling though... and other directive signaling. So
| maybe those wear with time?
|
| 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.
| aeternum wrote:
| There is evidence from flat worms that electric fields is how
| cells naturally move in the right directions with purpose.
| However they produce the fields chemically via ion gradients.
|
| 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.
| mnadkvlb wrote:
| Michael Levin's labs, where this research is going on, showed
| organ (eg. eyes) regeneration etc. I really hope these guys
| are going in right direction regarding regeneration based on
| electric fields as a proxy for gene expressions.
| gooseyard wrote:
| I learned of Michael Levin via Sally Adee's "We Are
| Electric", one of the more interesting pop-sci titles I've
| read in a while, the section on Levin's lab was definitely
| the highlight.
| pedro_caetano wrote:
| They do move 'naturally' in the right direction if you think of
| a cell and it's membrane it can be loosely abstracted as a
| dielectric material and like any other dielctric can be
| polarized.
|
| 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.
| spidersouris wrote:
| > The project was recently granted new funding so the research
| can get to market and benefit patients.
|
| How is it now? Has this been extended to real use outside of
| research?
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't significant cross-over
| with this[0] observation of plant-roots growing faster when
| exposed to low-voltage electricity.
|
| [0]https://www.nature.com/articles/d44151-023-00162-5
| wrs wrote:
| And electric bone healing stimulation. [0]
|
| [0]
| https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/advs.20...
| amelius wrote:
| In other news:
|
| > 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://actu.epfl.ch/news/a-pill-that-prints-2/
| georgeburdell wrote:
| 20 years ago when I was an undergrad I was studying the effect of
| electric fields on the chemical vapor deposition growth of
| (material du jour). Electricity turned what was a natural, random
| process, into one where we could direct the growth this way and
| that way. We didn't measure whether the growth rate was enhanced,
| but it's not surprising to me that a similar effect might show up
| all over the place to help speed along a natural process, because
| at the boundary, progressive chemical reactions isn't like
| stacking legos, it's like adding some, then taking a few away,
| then adding some more, and so on.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Yes. The healing nature of electricity was a well known effect
| [0], what this study brings to the table is more accuracy on
| how fast and how much.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcurrent_electrical_neurom...
| glial wrote:
| See also: "The Body Electric: Electromagnetism And The Foundation
| Of Life"
|
| https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-body-electric-rob...
| alex1138 wrote:
| So Frankenstein was right?
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| Close, it was Dr. Frank-N-Furter.
| tcherasaro wrote:
| I can supply my own anecdata here.
|
| 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.
| simmerup wrote:
| WHat were the side effects?
| glitchc wrote:
| I've had electro-acupuncture to as part of my recovery from
| shoulder surgery. One possible side-effect is that nerves can
| occasionally misfire or auto-fire. It could manifest itself
| as a tick or a twitch, where a specific muscle fires on its
| own without any stimulus (or the wrong stimulus). It goes
| away with extra physical training. I guess it is to be
| expected as the needle does cause some minor physical damage
| on insertion and removal.
| froobius wrote:
| Without a twin with the exact same injury and no intervention,
| to compare with, we don't know from this whether it was just
| the six extra weeks of healing that made the difference.
| fluoridation wrote:
| I mean, GP did open up by saying it was an anecdote, not that
| it was evidence that electrotherapy works.
| froobius wrote:
| Yes but some anecdotes are closer to evidence than others.
| And people seem to be treating the above anecdote like it
| is evidence. Which we both agree it isn't.
|
| It isn't convincing given the time frame / lack of
| comparison.
| simmerup wrote:
| People are adults and can be willing to take chances on
| anecdotes instead of waiting 30 years for science to
| maybe fund some studies that end up just as murky
| froobius wrote:
| Sure, I don't disagree with that. Although, in addition
| to labelling something as an anecdote, it's also useful
| to flag the confounding factors.
| benterix wrote:
| My friend had a kid with a bad eczema. She tried
| everything. Desperate, she took her to one of these
| charlatans. He asked the girl to stand on a copper plate.
| After a few days the eczema disappeared. Now my friend
| totally believes in all this stuff.
| simmerup wrote:
| The risk to reward ratio there is off the charts though.
| rogerrogerr wrote:
| I mean, if I didn't have anything else I was trying that
| could plausibly explain it, that'd be really hard to
| resist accepting as the cause. Totally understand it.
| cootsnuck wrote:
| We still don't understand the placebo effect. But
| definitely better to accept it's a thing and move on than
| believe grifters actually know what they're talking
| about.
| stickfigure wrote:
| "Biome recolonized by the bacteria of hundreds of other
| people who also put their dirty feet on the plate"
| msandford wrote:
| It's a wonderful theory, but alas. Copper is aggressively
| antimicrobial.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_properties_of
| _co...
| deadbabe wrote:
| The GP told a good story and was very personable and
| relatable.
|
| 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.
| fluoridation wrote:
| My point is that it's tone-deaf to complain about lack of
| rigor when the first thing the comment says is that it's
| not meant to be evidence. It's like reading a fictional
| novel and giving it a negative review for not containing
| sufficient citations for the events being related.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > try dry needling
|
| 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!)
| drjasonharrison wrote:
| My experience with dry needling was just in and out, no
| movement laterally or in depth after insertion. I'm sorry you
| experienced this.
| adastra22 wrote:
| The whole point of the electro therapy is to make the
| muscle move though, so this is effectively the same
| (Galilean relativity) as moving the needle, right?
| bwoah wrote:
| I had the same thing happen once, and it was as fascinating
| as it was unsettling. _Very_ slight movement of one needle in
| what seemed like a pretty inconsequential part of my body
| produced a near-instantaneous full-body reaction involving
| many systems.
| fair_enough wrote:
| That's the magic of action potentials. As sodium ions (+1
| charge) propagate, they dissipate throughout the cytosol
| and sometimes leak out of the cell membrane, but they also
| trigger their own influx of regenerative current by opening
| voltage-gated ion channels on the cell membrane. Think of
| it as a "signal repeater".
|
| 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.
| eth0up wrote:
| Do you have any opinion on tens units? I have found them
| ineffective, but perhaps one can be modified?
|
| 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.
| wigglefruit wrote:
| so they kind of "cattle prodded" the cells into moving the right
| way
| ninalanyon wrote:
| I'm all in favour of extra therapeutic options. But what jumped
| out at me was that 1 in 11 people worldwide have some form of
| diabetes.
|
| 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?
| adastra22 wrote:
| What do you suggest? Free access to Ozempic?
|
| 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.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| >Free access to Ozempic?
|
| 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?
| quickthrowman wrote:
| There's not a surplus of meat and eggs anywhere. There are
| vast surpluses of all grains due to the Haber-Bosch process
| and the Green Revolution, plus national security concerns.
|
| 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.
| JDEW wrote:
| > Therefore, grains are cheap and people eat too much of
| them.
|
| People only overeat themselves into obesity once you
| process those carbs into high fructose corn syrup etc.
| Seems like a very different problem.
| adastra22 wrote:
| High fructose corn syrup is very likely one of the
| reasons American's health is significantly worse than
| other nations. However the entire globe is suffering from
| the obesity epidemic, not just the USA.
|
| 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.
| JDEW wrote:
| To blame abundant food for obesity and not the fact that we
| make everything ultra addictive [0] seems like inverse logic
| to me.
|
| [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-025-01143-7
| adastra22 wrote:
| Then why do we have a growing obesity epidemic in countries
| that DON'T have nearly as many problems with ultra-
| processed food? Southern Europe, Japan, and India are
| usually held as exemplar countries with very good natural
| food culture. All of them are struggling with increasing
| obesity.
|
| 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.
| markdown wrote:
| You haven't been to India, have you? The capitalist push
| to get every Indian eating addictive junk (most commonly
| with the use of sugar) is as aggressive as it is anywhere
| else in the world.
| rurban wrote:
| Not just skin, muscles also. It's standard therapy for some years
| already for partially torn muscles. As with my shoulder right
| now. Going to EMS therapy twice a week.
| tiku wrote:
| So we just use those muscle stimulator things on battery on
| wounds?
| davzie wrote:
| This seems to run counter to the anecdotal evidence that some say
| grounding has on healing. I assume grounding is discharging the
| body (if to be believed) whilst this article would have us
| believe we should add charge. I don't have a dog in the race,
| it's just interesting.
| financetechbro wrote:
| An interesting lecture that's is tangentially related:
|
| https://youtu.be/iHVGe--xDDA?si=Rl4xRqNzxiuY0Zom
| cootsnuck wrote:
| I knew before clicking it was going to be Michael Levin. His
| lab is doing really interesting work.
| simmanian wrote:
| The article and the comments remind me of Michael Levin's work on
| bioelectricity.
|
| 20 min ted talk - https://youtu.be/XheAMrS8Q1c
|
| 3 hr lex fridman episode - https://youtu.be/p3lsYlod5OU
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