Bioelectronics & NEUROMODULATION: Using Your Personal Electrome* to Tackle Symptoms & Underlying Disease

[Randy Eady]

ClearUP’s pulsed electrical current works in two ways. When the device discerns congestion, it vibrates and emits low-level microcurrent that stimulates sinus nerve fibers beneath the skin. The stimulation promotes norepinephrine release and vasocongestion, which reduces swelling and airflow resistance.

Bioelectronic medicine is the convergence of biology and electrical engineering. The human body is an electrochemical system. Bioelectronic devices work by neuromodulating the electrical activity in peripheral and central nerves in order to mitigate both symptoms and underlying causes of disease. 

Neuromodulation is another term commonly used to describe approaches modulating nerve activity in the central nervous system (or the peripheral nervous system) using electro-magnetism/other energy stimuli such as light and vibration-acoustics.

* Electrome is a novel term for the totality of all ionic currents of any living entity, from the cellular to the organismal level.  Cellular electricity is truly vital and uniquely personal. Death of any cell ensues at the very moment it irreversibly (excluding regeneration) loses its ability to realize its electrical dimension. The second mechanism involves communication activity invariably executed by sender-receiver entities incessantly handling flowing information.

 https://youtu.be/dszAqzZAmBk

[Randy Eady]

An ongoing trial is investigating the effects of different intensities of RAVANS in hypertensive people showing mid-intensity RAVANS stimulation (rated as a 5 on a 0-10 scale) increases the cardiovagal tone & reduces the sympathetic tone during paced-breathing tasks.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1935861X1930...

Highlights

- Respiration influences the brainstem activity, which is facilitated much more during exhalation

- The effects of auricular (ear) vagus nerve stimulation can be optimized with respiratory-gating (timing vagus nerve stim during breathing)        

- fMRI and heart rate variability were used to investigate central and peripheral responses to vagus nerve stimulation

- Exhalation-gated tVNS enhances engagement of key neuromodulator brainstem nuclei

- Exhalation-gated tVNS increases stimulus-evoked cardiovagal outflow

Furthermore, exhalation (eRAVANS), but not inhalation (iRAVANS) was shown to enhance cardiovagal modulation, confirming enhanced eRAVANS response on both central & peripheral neurophysiological levels can be optimized with respiratory gating.  Conclusive fMRIs localized on the  brainstem response of transcutaneous auricular VNS (taVNS) linked responses w/autonomic outflow, and demonstrated taVNS applied during exhalation enhanced locus coeruleus (LC, noradrenergic) and both dorsal and median raphe (serotonergic) nuclei.  A positive, binding association between the LC and serotonergic contributions of this brain region have been observed to support resting-state signals in the autonomic nervous system.