Part 3 of “How does ANF Work?”
Part 3 in our “How does ANF work?” series describes one of the mechanisms at which the ANF disc can create its therapeutic effect.
The easiest way to describe this is via the law of Sympathetic Resonance. I am sure we have this this phenomenon before. Think about an experiment involving 2 tuning forks that have matched frequencies and/or harmonics. (Remember a frequency is the number of times the wave oscillates per second and the harmonic is a function of the wavelength) in the experiment you strike the first tuning fork and it vibrates at its predetermined frequency which is a function of its structure (think back to Part 2 how Hutcheon and Yarom (2000) states that a nerves frequency is determined by its structure and its function – yes, you see the parallels 😊) so the first fork (let’s call it “the disc fork”) vibrates and because it shares the same frequency/harmonic as the 2nd tuning fork (let’s call that the ‘nerve fork’) it can pass its energy into that structure and make it vibrate. This is Sympathetic Resonance. So (I hear you ask) how does the nerve oscillation or uptake of the discs energy create a therapeutic effect?
This was described in a paper by Frölich and McCormick (2010) that showed via application of a very small EMF you could:
1. Change the membrane potential of a neuron to produce excitation (firing) of the nerve.
2. Increase the rate at which the nerve fired without changing the harmonic.
3. Create a wave of neuronal activity such as a neural signature that may act out as a function.
4. With a disruptive EMF you had the potential to be able to create a dissonant or disruptive frequency to reduce or inhibit a neurons effectiveness.
Therefore if we know the frequency of the target neuron (see part 2) we can influence it by an applied EMF.
There is much research to be done to describe this further and acknowledgment must be given to Björn Nordenström (1983) who describes the inner mechanics of cellular and neural activity in the book ‘Biologically Closed Electric Circuits’, thar I have not described a part of this explanation in a desire to keep it concise and relatively easy to understand.
