General News
17 March, 2025
Call the Doctor: Our Internal Circuitry
Our bodies have within them an electric circuit that is constantly pulsating with electricity. It is made up of cells called neurons, that bundle together, similar to electrical wires, that we call nerves.
This system operates just like any ordinary electric circuit such as the power grid or the circuitry in your phone. Like any circuit, ours is uninterruptedly connected end-to-end. Its constant flow of electricity is in perpetual flux, varying in both frequency and amplitude.
Our electrical circuit is responsible for everything our body and mind does. All our thoughts, feelings, movements, hormone production, nutrient absorption, and metabolism are controlled by electricity.
Some of this we have conscious control over, like the movement of our limbs. However much of our electrical activity is outside of our control, such as the movement of our bowel, our heart rate, or blood vessel wall tension. There are some bodily functions innervated by our circuitry that we have partial, variable,e or arguable control over, examples being our breathing, blinking, and emotional feeling.
The electrical circuit we do not have control over is called the “autonomic nervous system”.
Our electrical flow, with its changing pulsation and intensity, can run smoothly and in coordination, or it can be dysfunction.
Too much or too little electrical activity, or electrical activity that is out of coordination with the rest of the body can result in damage and disease. There are many pathologies that are theorised to result from the dysfunction of our electrical circuit, particularly the dysfunction of our autonomic nervous system. Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) involves abnormal bowel motility, often either too fast causing loose stools and cramping, or too slow causing constipation and bloating.
The lightheadedness and palpitations felt in Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) are in part due to the impaired coordination of our heart rate and the contractility of the small muscles that ring our blood vessels, controlling blood pressure. Likewise, migraines are thought to be due to dysregulated changes in the blood flow resistance of the arteries in our brain.
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and Fibromyalgia are considered by some to be conditions involving autonomic nervous system dysfunction.
There are likely many reasons why a human’s electrical circuit (or nervous system) can become dysfunctional (or dysregulated). One reason relates to our conscious experience. Whilst I will have more to say on this in my subsequent columns, I will mention two interesting and important facets that our neurobiological systems exhibit for you to ponder in the meantime.
First, as I mentioned above, our circuit is connected end to end, meaning our brain is connected to all our bodily nerves. Just like any other electrical circuit, electricity will flow everywhere throughout this uninterrupted circuit. It stands to reason that if high frequency and amplitude electricity is being generated in our brain, that energy will flow on through to our bodily organs.
Secondly, we experience emotions as bodily sensations; heartache, a gut feeling, stomach butterflies, a lump in the throat, etc.
One theory states that the emotions we feel are simply our conscious experience of the electrical activity of our organs.
This short piece may introduce the reader to an area of modern health care called 'mind-body medicine'. An area that medicines’ most reputable (and perhaps most conservative) scientific journal has suggested should be routinely incorporated into primary health care. The good news in all of this is that the nervous system is very malleable.
There are simple practices and techniques one can use to re-regulate their electrical circuitry.