Aaron Hartman, MDFunctional Medicine Specialist | Clinical Researcher

The Magic of Capacitors_ Electrical Energy in the Body

30 Oct 2024 · 1 min

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A short talk by Aaron Hartman, MD, arguing that biological cell membranes act like capacitors, storing electrical energy across membranes (cited ~80 millivolts per cell) and that summing this across trillions of cells implies substantial electrical energy in the body. The speaker contends that chemical metabolism (e.g., the Krebs cycle) alone does not fully explain the body's energy budget.

Questions this video answers

About 80 millivolts.

10 trillion cells.

Chapters

What capacitors do is use positive and negative electrical energies with a gap between them or space, and they actually hold energy. All of our cell membranes actually separate. Electrons hold energy. So the average human cell has about 80 millivolts of energy across the cell membrane. So if you take this and multiply it by 10 trillion cells, our bodies actually have a significant amount of current. The interesting thing about our body's metabolism is we cannot explain our metabolism solely by understanding the Krebs cycle, how you break down sugar into energy, how you turn fat energy. Our body, just by the chemical activities that we do on the surface, does not create enough energy for us to actually survive.