Physiologic Rhythms Responding to Low-Level Electromagnetic and Mechanical Signals: The Joule Equivalence Principle

摘要

Human bodies aee complex, energy-dependent, thermodynamically-openelectrochemical systems. Within them, periodic, aperiodic, and chaotic oscillations, also known as rhythms, coexist at all spatiotemporal levels: From macro scales lasting days and beyond (e.g., menstrual cycle and 24-hour variations in intraocular pressure), through meso scales extending hours to seconds (e.g., white blood cell variations as well as phagocytosis and outer-segment disc renewal in the retinal pigment epithelium), to micro scales reaching the limits of recordable physical observation (e.g., resonant inter-molecular transfer of vibrational energy in water at <100 fs, and the memory of persistent correlations in water structure within 50 fs, which is important in stabilizing biological systems coupled to networks of hydrogen bonds). Because physiologic rhythms are essential to many biological functions, their alterations are often associated with disease.