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E-bandages lightly zap and heal wounds

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: E-bandages lightly zap and heal wounds

#41

Post by thrill »

lapetitejort wrote: post #18
gpm wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of medical technology that involves sticking metal inside of people permanently , as long as they're making it out of the right kind of metal it's hard to believe it would be an issue to stick it on your skin.

I have metal in my body planted without my consent via an explosive device and the doctors don't care to take it out. The risk of infection outweighs the risk of it staying in my body.

A tip of the hat to those with special medical letters for airport security scans.

Re: E-bandages lightly zap and heal wounds

#43

Post by willy_k »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #28
jws wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The study, https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ade4687 suggests in figure 1 that the device is 0.5mg of molybdenum and dissolves over an 18 day period, ~30µg/day. This is less than your recommended dietary allowance of 45µg/day and about two orders of magnitude under the tolerable upper intake level. You will also find in the study analysis of what compounds the molybdenum forms as it dissolves. Also, who knew…

There's a very big difference between ingesting products and having them absorbed in your body differently.

Depending on the product, sure. However, metals aren’t (as far as I know, there are probably exceptions) metabolized by the GI system, apart from being absorbed in to the bloodstream which would be equivalent to this. I have no idea how it could interact with surrounding tissue, that might be an issue but probably pretty unlikely.

Re: E-bandages lightly zap and heal wounds

#44

Post by maximinus_thrax »

jongjong wrote: post #32
hackernewds wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is healing wounds limited purpose?

It seems very small. There doesn't seem much advantage in healing such small wounds 30% faster. It doesn't seem like a sure thing that it can scale to larger wounds; will it be able to generate the same amount of electricity over a larger area? Also it seems like it would help only with surface wounds; it doesn't seem like it will help with deeper wounds were healing speed would matter more. Then we have to consider…

For those suffering from diabetes, small wounds can become a very big deal. Even without diabetes, depending on the wound location, it cannot heal in time (say for example a cut on your dominant hand's index finger which one would use very often and mechanically breaking the healing process) and risks infection.

Re: E-bandages lightly zap and heal wounds

#45

Post by permo-w »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #27
iandanforth wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope ion concentration gradients (which also manifest as electrical potentials) serve to guide everything from white blood cells to the precursors of both replacement and scar tissue. You can mimic this signal directly by applying a potential difference. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10849...

I saw a lecture on bio electricity and it blew my mind. I love areas of science that seem like crystal woo that turn out to be legit. Scientific groupthink creates many opportunities…

it’s disappointing to me that there’s never been a real double-blind study into healing crystals. yeah they’re very clearly placebic woo woo, but the fact that no one’s even thoroughly looked at it is a little sad. RIP James Randi

Re: E-bandages lightly zap and heal wounds

#47

Post by toss1 »

Fomite wrote: post #46
toss1 wrote: post #33

Pure conjecture: I wonder if this would help against drug-resistant bacteria wounds?

Not conjecture :) This is actively of interest in that area. One of the researchers down the hall from me is working on it.

Wow, cool! Can you give any indication of the prospects? I'm wondering if there's a way that charge gradients can be exploited to advantage our tissues and disadvantage the bacteria...

Re: E-bandages lightly zap and heal wounds

#48

Post by lumb63 »

psychphysic wrote: post #19
unsupp0rted wrote: post #11

I wondered why electricity would help a wound heal in the first place. > The inflammation associated with these wounds can disrupt the body’s normal electric signals, impeding the migration of new cells that can support the healing process.

Honestly, that is indistinguishable from the crystal mumbojumbo you get. And it feels like we're at the magic/science interface with electrotherapy. That said it is somewhat suspect, and the hypothesis is not really falsifiable by the experiment which is why the journal article itself is not claiming to test that. It is really disappointing that IEEE didn't actually link to or name the article directly. Very poor sci…

You should look into the book The Body Electric. The ability of electricity to heal (the doctor in the book even reports some instances of finger regrowth in humans) is remarkable.

Re: E-bandages lightly zap and heal wounds

#49

Post by canadianfella »

permo-w wrote: post #45
dr_dshiv wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a lecture on bio electricity and it blew my mind. I love areas of science that seem like crystal woo that turn out to be legit. Scientific groupthink creates many opportunities…

it’s disappointing to me that there’s never been a real double-blind study into healing crystals. yeah they’re very clearly placebic woo woo, but the fact that no one’s even thoroughly looked at it is a little sad. RIP James Randi

[dead]

Re: E-bandages lightly zap and heal wounds

#50

Post by theptip »

ehsankia wrote: post #40
iandanforth wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope ion concentration gradients (which also manifest as electrical potentials) serve to guide everything from white blood cells to the precursors of both replacement and scar tissue. You can mimic this signal directly by applying a potential difference. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10849...

Regardless of the low level effect, if there was a measurable difference, wouldn't it be fairly trivial to have a trial where people measure healing time of this vs a normal bandage, to see if the difference is statistically significant?

The first (small) paragraph reads:

> The first electronic bandage the body can absorb can apply electric signals to speed the healing of wounds by 30 percent, a new study finds.

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