mgh2•15h
Electricity can heal wounds three times as fast (2023)chalmers.se
88 comments
  • Zenst•4h

    I see mention of the voltage of 200 mV/mm, though no mention if AC or DC, presume it is DC.

    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.

    • 8bitsrule•55m

      The study's title is “Bioelectronic microfluidic wound healing: a platform for investigating direct current stimulation of injured cell collectives”

  • tcherasaro•10h

    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.

    • froobius•10h

      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.

      • nickff•5h

        Even with a twin, you still wouldn’t “know”, because there might have been a difference in either their injury, their ability to heal (people can heal at different rates for many non-genetic reasons), or other, even ‘random’ factors.

        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.

        • selcuka•2h

          This is easier to test than arthritis. A doctor can make incisions on both arms of the same person at the exact same depth and length, then apply electricity to one of the wounds and monitor healing time.

        • im3w1l•4h

          Imo that study puts an upper bound on how harmful cracking your joints can be.

      • fluoridation•9h

        I mean, GP did open up by saying it was an anecdote, not that it was evidence that electrotherapy works.

        • deadbabe•7h

          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•6h

            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.

        • froobius•9h

          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•9h

            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

            • benterix•6h

              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.

              • emmelaich•2h

                It's probably the stopping of other treatments that fixed it. I had bad eczema and psoriasis. It stopped (after weeks) after I stopped treating it with random creams and taking cool showers. I later found out that the culprit was lidocaine.

                Also copper is biocidal, so maybe there's something there.

              • simmerup•6h

                The risk to reward ratio there is off the charts though.

              • dgfitz•5h

                I have small amounts of eczema on unfortunate spots. It comes and goes usually based on stress and inflammation. Been dealing with it for decades. It stinks.

                I’m half tempted to buy myself a copper plate to stand on.

              • cootsnuck•6h

                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.

                • Retric•5h

                  The placebo effect is unlikely to be important here.

                  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.

              • rogerrogerr•6h

                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.

                • Retric•5h

                  It’s hard to internalize we see permanent and seemingly arbitrary changes from things like hormone levels. The last teen pimple for example isn’t noticeable in the moment as the last teen pimple because you don’t know the future etc etc.

              • stickfigure•6h

                "Biome recolonized by the bacteria of hundreds of other people who also put their dirty feet on the plate"

            • froobius•7h

              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.

          • masfuerte•5h

            It is evidence. It's not proof.

    • stronglikedan•9h

      > 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!)

      • ehnto•1h

        I usually great with all kinds of pain, but I had to have injured fingernails removed and they put needles down the side of my fingers to numb them. Needles against the bone, not a feeling I want to experience again.

        I didn't return for the other nail, I preferred to do it at home with a knife, it was less painful.

      • drjasonharrison•9h

        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•8h

          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•9h

        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•8h

          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.

    • simmerup•10h

      WHat were the side effects?

      • glitchc•9h

        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.

    • naasking•3h

      Tendons take a long time to heal, much longer than skeletal muscle damage. I'm sure electric stimulation helped, but it could have just taken 12 weeks for the tendons to recover.

    • eth0up•9h

      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.

  • georgeburdell•11h

    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.

  • simmanian•5h

    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

  • ninalanyon•9h

    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•8h

      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.

      • JDEW•6h

        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•6h

          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.

          • Dylan16807•8m

            What does "very good natural food culture" mean in a numerical sense, over time? Because I could imagine that label being applied to countries that are staying much more natural than average, but still have very significant changes in food makeup.

          • markdown•6h

            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.

            • shlant•22m

              I hope more and more people start to see "capitalism bad" as a lazy scapegoat for any modern problem

            • estimator7292•3h

              "I'm going to dismiss all of your counterexamples because I have an example you didn't mention"

        • aorloff•4h

          It is not abundant food, its abundant sugar that is causing obesity.

      • CGMthrowaway•6h

        >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•6h

          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•6h

            > 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•6h

              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.

  • UI_at_80x24•12h

    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

  • rurban•9h

    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.

  • SilentM68•4h

    That sounds interesting. We keep on hearing stories in the news of many new discoveries being made every day. I wonder if the day will come when there exists an "affordable" technology to treat/correct malformed feet, fingers, toes, hands, by simply instructing the body's DNA to self-correct without the need for invasive surgery.

  • Bender•12h

    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•11h

      I can't read, so I will be using a cattle prod on my broken arm

      • RajT88•10h

        Cattle prods are expensive. Use a fireplace lighter. Much lower project cost.

      • observationist•11h

        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!

      • Eupolemos•11h

        That sounds like some obscure Fallout idiot savant member-berry :D

      • Bender•11h

        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.

        • rpmisms•3h

          This is exactly my kind of unhinged. Gonna try this.

      • bregma•9h

        Instructions unclear: cattle prod is now going to require an embarrassing visit to emerg to remove.

    • greenavocado•7h

      Shoplift, get caught, resist, get tasered. Free electrotherapy that comes with free room and board too.

      • AngryData•4h

        Jail isn't free in the US, they make you pay money when you are released or face more jail time and more debt.

    • makeitdouble•10h

      You could probably repurpose an electric face massager ?

      • kipchak•9h

        Anecdotally trying a nuface device on sore muscles a couple of times there seems to be some sort of positive effect.

    • canadiantim•8h

      Find a device capable of Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) or just type TENS into amazon

    • carlosjobim•11h

      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.

  • AaronAPU•12h

    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.

    • aeternum•11h

      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•10h

        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•7h

          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.

    • altruios•12h

      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.

    • pedro_caetano•9h

      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.

  • mgh2•15h

    https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3776323/

  • spidersouris•12h

    > 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?

  • tiku•7h

    So we just use those muscle stimulator things on battery on wounds?

  • wigglefruit•9h

    so they kind of “cattle prodded” the cells into moving the right way

  • amelius•11h

    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/

  • glial•10h

    See also: "The Body Electric: Electromagnetism And The Foundation Of Life"

    https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-body-electric-rob...

  • financetechbro•6h

    An interesting lecture that’s is tangentially related:

    https://youtu.be/iHVGe--xDDA?si=Rl4xRqNzxiuY0Zom

    • cootsnuck•6h

      I knew before clicking it was going to be Michael Levin. His lab is doing really interesting work.

  • alex1138•10h

    So Frankenstein was right?

  • davzie•6h

    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.