Voltage & Membrane Fluidity - Pillar 1 –
Every cell is a battery; every thought a current.
We talk about “energy” as if it’s mystical, but it’s simply potential difference. Every cell runs on about –70 millivolts. Lose that, and enzymes slow, transporters stall, and signals misfire. Disease, at root, is depolarization: a body that can’t keep its charge.
1. The Membrane as Instrument
The outer layer of each cell isn’t just a wrapper—it’s an active electrical device. Half of its surface is made from phosphatidylcholine (PC), built from choline, fatty acids, and phosphate. PC gives membranes their strange duality: soft enough to let proteins move, stiff enough to hold voltage.
When PC runs low, membranes turn brittle; sodium and potassium pumps leak; mitochondria sputter electrons instead of capturing them. The cell loses its tuning fork. That is the hidden physics of fatigue, brain fog, and chronic inflammation.
Seed oils, trans fats, and oxidative stress accelerate this hardening. Their damaged double bonds integrate into membranes like warped tiles—beautiful chemistry destroyed by industrial heat. The result is slower signaling, noisier nerves, and the creeping static of modern illness.
2. Choline: The Invisible Electrician
Choline feeds this whole architecture. From it the body makes:
PC for membrane structure,
Acetylcholine for neural transmission,
Betaine for methylation and repair.
If PC is the wall, acetylcholine is the current running through it.
Low choline means both poor insulation and weak signal. It’s why ADHD, Alzheimer’s, and autoimmune fatigue all share a single pattern: the lights flicker, so the brain overcompensates with adrenaline. That’s why stimulants help—briefly. They borrow charge from emergency reserves.The solution is not more current, but better wiring.
3. DHA: The Lightning Rod
Another essential lipid, docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) from cold-water fish and algae, intertwines with PC to form the cell’s “liquid crystal.”
DHA’s kinked structure keeps membranes supple; PC keeps them coherent. Together they determine how fast ion channels open and how receptors swivel to meet neurotransmitters. Every spark of thought depends on that dance.When diets lose DHA—through processed oils, low seafood intake, or vegetarian ultraprocessed substitutes—membranes stiffen further. Ion channels freeze, neurons misfire, and signal-to-noise collapses.
Restoring PC and DHA is like replacing the copper and the insulator at once. Voltage steadies. Coherence returns.
4. The Liver Connection: Where Charge Meets Flow
The liver is the great capacitor of the body—it builds, stores, and exports PC.
Each hepatocyte manufactures PC in two ways:Directly from dietary choline (the Kennedy pathway).
From phosphatidylethanolamine using methyl groups from folate and betaine (the PEMT pathway).
That PC is then pumped into bile through a transporter called ABCB4, mixing with bile acids to prevent them from burning the ducts they travel through. Without enough PC, bile thickens into sludge, bile flow slows, toxins accumulate, and the microbial “Love Trio” in the gut—Akkermansia, Faecalibacterium, Roseburia—begin to die out.
The terrain loses its solvent; voltage can’t recycle. This is where liver stagnation turns into systemic inflammation, hormonal chaos, and even fibromyalgia’s deep ache—a current trying to move through thick oil.
5. The Microbial Feedback
The Trio are not passengers; they’re electricians of the lower grid.
They recycle bile acids, produce short-chain fatty acids like butyrate and propionate, and send those metabolites upstream through the vagus nerve to tune acetylcholine output.
Their survival depends on steady bile flow and membrane integrity; our coherence depends on their metabolites.It’s a single circuit:
choline → PC → bile → microbes → SCFAs → vagus → acetylcholine → inflammation control.
Break any link, and the terrain shorts out.6. The Voltage of Emotion
Every feeling has a frequency because every nerve impulse is a voltage event.
When membranes are pliable, signals travel cleanly; we call that clarity or calm.
When they’re rigid or inflamed, noise fills the line; we call that anxiety, fatigue, or brain fog.That’s not metaphor—it’s electrophysiology. Low PC reduces acetylcholine release; poor acetylcholine tone lowers vagal rhythm; low vagal tone means inflammation stays switched on. Modern life feels emotionally jagged because our membranes literally can’t smooth the current.
7. The Collapse Pattern
Across conditions, the breakdown is identical:
Collapse Point Effect PC depletion Membranes lose charge DHA loss Channels and receptors freeze Bile stagnation Detox and microbial loops stall Microbial loss Butyrate and vagal tone fall α7 receptor silence Inflammation runs unchecked Systemic result Fatigue, fog, and fragmentation It doesn’t matter whether it’s ADHD, long COVID, or autoimmune pain—the terrain is singing out of key for the same reason: broken voltage architecture.
8. The Repair Principle
Re-lipidate the membrane, reignite bile, reseed the microbes, retune the vagus.
Those four acts restore the body’s electrical grammar.Real food supplies choline, lecithin, and omega-3s.
Bitters and movement keep bile flowing.
Fermented fiber rebuilds the microbial trio.
Breath and stillness reopen the α7 receptor’s anti-inflammatory gate.No single step is heroic, but together they restart the current.
You can watch it happen in heart-rate variability, skin warmth, focus, and mood—the terrain remembering itself.9. Why Seed Oils Became the Perfect Storm
The twentieth century replaced natural fats with industrial polyunsaturates stripped of choline and oxidized before they ever reached the table. These oils harden membranes, disrupt liver PC synthesis, and crowd out DHA.
That one dietary shift erased a billion years of membrane evolution.
The price was coherence.You can trace the rise of chronic inflammatory, neurological, and metabolic disease directly along that curve of “improved shelf life.” The oils preserved food but corrupted voltage.
10. The Closing View
Every organism is an electrical event. Biology is chemistry written in voltage.
When membranes are soft and charged, life interprets itself correctly: nerves communicate, immune cells recognize friend from foe, bile flows, and thought feels effortless.
The “Muddy Middle” — and Real Life
When the wiring hardens and the current falters, the terrain forgets its language. We call that disease, but it’s really amnesia—an ecosystem that lost its rhythm.
Restore the flow, and memory—cellular, emotional, microbial—returns.
This is the first pillar of coherence: Voltage.
All other pillars depend on it.