As you might remember from July’s article, the fascia is one of the most intricate pieces of our physical makeup. It's a three-dimensional cable made up of complex fibrous tissues that surround our bones, organs, nerves, blood vessels, and more.¹ One of its most fascinating roles is the way that it carries electrical charges throughout the body.

When the fascial tissues allow for the flow of electricity, our body can function at a beautiful, optimal level. On the other hand, when fascia isn’t healthy, likely due to patterns of tightness or deformation, the human body will likely experience chronic symptoms or disease.

So, how can we enable and support healthy fascia and electrical flow? One huge aspect of this comes down to water. Our bodies are primarily made of water, and the holistic electrical communication within the body is largely dependent upon the structure of water molecules. To understand this, it’s important to dive deeper and explore the fourth phase of water and the piezoelectric phenomenon.

The 4th Phase of Water or EZ Water

Water has traditionally been known to have 3 phases – solid, liquid, and gas. However, Dr. Gerald Pollack and his research team discovered a 4th phase of water, a semi-crystalline state, that has huge implications for how to best support human health.

Cells contain mostly water, and this water plays a huge role in how electrical charges are carried throughout the body. Inside the cells, we find macromolecules (or proteins) with hydrophilic surfaces. This type of surface wants to attach to water rather than repel it. Pollack found that when water molecules are near a hydrophilic surface, they split into two entities – one negative and the other positive. The negative charge likes to hug the hydrophilic surface, while the positive charge is pushed away. Inside a tightly packed cell, Pollack found that this causes a negative charge surrounding hydrophilic proteins. As a result, there’s no room for the positive charge, and these proteins are forced out of the cell. What’s left is a protein primarily surrounded by a lot of negative charge.

There’s more to this phenomenon than just that. When water molecules split into their negative and positive charges, they rearrange themselves and are no longer the same H20 molecule. Instead, they create H3O2. The hydrophilic surfaces have a family of negative charges surrounding their surface, creating a boundary layer labeled the “exclusion zone” (or EZ) because it pushes everything else out. This EZ water is a gel-like semi-crystalline state, so it blurs the line between water’s liquid and solid state, hence its discovery as the “4th phase of water”, also referred to as “structured water”.²

Cells function most efficiently when they contain the EZ form of water. This buildup of negative charge acts similar to a battery, storing masses of potential energy. This energy can be used to support your mitochondria, deliver energy to the cells that need it, and improve the electrical communication between cells and within the fascia.³ EZ water also provides the energy to help cells return to their baseline and maintain a state of homeostasis in the body.

How to Support EZ Water: Light, Pressure, and Piezoelectricity

Pollack’s team discovered sources that can increase the amount of EZ water in our cells, light being one of the most potent. Pollack’s lab tested many various forms of light waves and found the most effective to be direct sunlight and infrared light (1200 nm wavelengths). By increasing your exposure to sun or infrared light, you can increase the negative charge of your cells, and as a result, your cells’ potential energy. Increasing the potential energy in our cells will increase their ability to “work” and then efficiently return to their baseline state.

More than light, there’s another factor that plays a role in how crystalline structures behave: mechanical stress. Increasing the force on a material creates an accumulation of electrical charge.⁴ The behavior is termed piezoelectricity, which means “electricity resulting from pressure and heat”.⁵

As pressure or stress is applied to our fascia, it causes deformation to the collagen and increases the negative charge in our soft tissues. On a cellular level, there’s even more happening. If you revisit the concept of EZ water, pressure or surface changes can influence the state of water and increase its semi-crystalline form. As this semi-crystalline state emerges, it magnifies the negative charge, opens ion channels in the cells, and pushes out the positive charge into circulation for elimination.⁶

By applying pressure to our tissues through practices such as myofascial release, acupressure and injection therapies such as neural therapy and peri-neural therapy techniques, we can facilitate the conversion of cellular water to a semi-crystalline structure and ultimately promote more circulation of electricity through our fascia.

The Health Implications of EZ Water

The semi-crystalline state of water (EZ water) supports energy and cellular communication within the fascia and tissues, and this ultimately promotes the overall health of your human body. So, it boils down to this – increasing the amount of EZ water in our body.

This can be accomplished by drinking more EZ water, or structured water. You can use certain types of devices at home to convert H20 into the structured H302 state. Other practices can help support EZ water and the flow of electricity throughout your body and fascia. Some of these include sun exposure, infrared sauna use, and therapies such as myofascial release, acupressure, acupuncture, and injection therapies such as neural therapy and peri-neural therapy techniques.

It’s essential to understand that the human body is a holistic system with its own intelligence and method of communication. While there’s far more research to be done in this field, it’s clear that the 4th phase of water and piezoelectricity are both threads that are leading us down a path of better understanding of how to support the fascia and the larger communication network of the human body.

Sources

Tennant, Jerry. Healing is Voltage: The Handbook. Coppell, TX, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2010.
Pollack, Gerald. The Fourth Phase of Water: Beyond Solid, Liquid, and Vapor. Seattle, WA, Ebner & Sons Publishers, 2013.
Pollack, Gerald. Cells, Gels, and the Engines of Life: A New, Unifying Approach to Cell Function. Seattle, WA, Ebner & Sons Publishers, 2001.
Holler, F. James; Skoog, Douglas A. & Crouch, Stanley R. (2007). Principles of Instrumental Analysis (6th ed.). Cengage Learning. p. 9. ISBN 978-0-495-01201-6.
Harper, Douglas. "piezoelectric". Online Etymology Dictionary.
6. Pollack, G.H., (2013). The Fourth Phase of Water: A Role in Fascia? Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies. 17, 510-511.