Dr Bichara Sahely BSc, MBBS, DM (Internal Medicine) with ChatGPT5.1 (Open AI)
Corresponding author: doctor@sahely.com

Date: 4 December, 2025

---

Abstract

Cohen et al. (2025) advance a powerful reconceptualization of health as an intrinsic, field-like property emerging from the interaction of energy, communication, and structure. While their treatment of energy and communication as organism-level integrated variables is compelling, their conclusion that biological structure can only be represented as a “laundry list” of independent components introduces a conceptual asymmetry that is no longer supported by contemporary biophysics. Here, I argue that biological structure is best understood as a continuous, dynamic field governed by multiscale tensegrity and cytoskeletal electromechanics, with microtubules serving as active oscillatory mediators between structural geometry, metabolic energy, and bioelectric communication. When structure is treated as a field rather than an inventory, global structural integrity becomes theoretically definable and empirically measurable. This reframing restores full triadic symmetry to the intrinsic health framework and strengthens its physical grounding across biological scales.

---

Cohen et al. (1) propose an ambitious and timely reconceptualization of health as an intrinsic, latent property of biological systems rather than as the inverse of disease. By treating health as a field-like state emerging from the interaction of energy, communication, and structure, their framework offers a unifying foundation for a future science of health that is not anchored in pathology. Their emphasis on recovery, robustness, and network dynamics represents a decisive step beyond static biomarker thinking.

A central asymmetry enters the framework, however, when the authors conclude that, unlike energy and communication, biological structure cannot be meaningfully integrated at the organism level and must therefore remain a “laundry list” of independent components—arteries, membranes, limbs, tissues—whose conditions are largely unrelated (1). On this basis they argue that global structural integrity is unlikely ever to be characterized as a system-level variable. This commentary contends that this conclusion reflects a legacy, static ontology of structure that is inconsistent with contemporary biophysics. When biological structure is treated as a dynamic, continuous, electromechanical field, global structural integrity not only becomes conceptually coherent but directly measurable in a manner fully aligned with the authors’ own perturbation–recovery paradigm.

From the perspective of current biomedical measurement, the authors’ caution is understandable. Structural metrics are typically localized: arterial stiffness at one site, focal white-matter lesions, bone mineral density of a single region, sarcopenia of specific muscle groups. Aggregated statistically, these variables often show weak correlations and appear additive rather than integrated. In contrast, energetic and communicational integrity already admit organism-level proxies—VO₂ kinetics, mitochondrial efficiency, heart rate variability, and network physiology metrics—that naturally invite global integration (1). The resulting asymmetry is therefore best understood as a measurement limitation, not as an ontological property of biological structure itself.

Biotensegrity theory directly overturns the assumption that structural elements operate as largely independent mechanical entities (2,3). Across scales from the cytoskeleton to whole-body posture, biological architecture is organized as a prestressed, continuous tension network with discontinuous compression elements. In such systems, local deformation necessarily redistributes global stress; force transmission is non-local; and system integrity is governed by field-level variables—prestress, impedance, and eigenmodes—rather than by the condition of isolated parts. Under this framework, arteries, membranes, fascia, bones, and cytoskeletal filaments are not mechanically independent objects but scale-specific expressions of a single organism-wide structural field. Global structural integrity is therefore not only meaningful but is an intrinsic property of living tensegrity networks.

At the cellular scale, microtubules provide the electromechanical substrate that physically links structure to energy and communication. Microtubules possess helical lattice geometry with strong intrinsic electric dipoles, exhibit electromechanical coupling between deformation and polarization, and are embedded in structured interfacial water with dielectric properties (4). Experimental studies demonstrate that microtubules support scale-free electromagnetic resonances and time-crystal–like oscillatory behavior, indicating that they function as active phase-coherent oscillators rather than inert struts (5). These properties place cytoskeletal architecture precisely at the intersection of structural geometry, metabolic energy flow, and bioelectric signaling. Under these conditions, cellular structure behaves as a coherence-supporting field, not as a static scaffold.

Cohen et al. illustrate their intrinsic health concept using the analogy of a battery (energy), wire (communication), and solenoid (structure) jointly producing a magnetic field (1). In physical electromagnetism, however, the solenoid is not merely a passive container for current. Its global winding geometry directly determines the topology, intensity, and coherence of the emergent field. Biotensegrity and cytoskeletal electrodynamics render this analogy literal rather than metaphorical: biological structure functions as an active solenoidal field generator that shapes metabolic and bioelectric coherence. Once this is acknowledged, structure cannot coherently be excluded from organism-level integration while retaining full field status for energy and communication.

When structure is treated as a continuous field variable, energy, communication, and structure form a fully symmetric triad. Energy reflects metabolic and redox phase capacity; communication reflects bioelectric, neural, endocrine, and immune signaling; structure reflects prestressed mechanical–electrical tensegrity networks. Intrinsic health then becomes a true biophysical coherence field, rather than a partially metaphorical one. Structural degeneration, metabolic inefficiency, and signaling dysregulation are no longer independent pathologies but conjugate expressions of coherence loss within the same coupled field.

This reframing has direct implications for measurement, fully consistent with the authors’ emphasis on dynamic recovery rather than static state variables (1). A field-based view of structure enables organism-level observables that parallel VO₂ kinetics and heart rate variability: whole-body elastography and impedance mapping, arterial pulse-wave velocity as a network stiffness proxy, postural sway and gait variability as tensegrity eigenmodes, and structural recovery kinetics following mechanical or metabolic perturbation. Just as energetic and communicational integrity are inferred from recovery trajectories, global structural integrity can be inferred from the recovery of mechanical and impedance fields. Structure thus joins energy and communication as a pillar that is simultaneously field-like, dynamical, and quantifiable.

A field-based ontology of structure also directly supports the authors’ assertion that intrinsic health must apply across biological scales (1). In unicellular organisms, the membrane–cytoskeleton complex already operates as a tensegrity–bioelectric field that integrates form, metabolism, and signaling. In multicellular organisms, extracellular matrix, fascia, vasculature, and neural networks extend this same field logic across tissues and organs. Structural coherence is therefore scale-invariant in principle, even as its geometric realization becomes increasingly complex with organismal organization.

The characterization of biological structure as merely a “laundry list” of independent components thus appears to arise from legacy measurement constraints rather than from the physical organization of living systems. Contemporary biophysics demonstrates that structure is a continuous, dynamic, electromechanical field organized by multiscale tensegrity and cytoskeletal coherence. When this field-based view of structure is incorporated, the intrinsic health framework of Cohen et al. acquires full triadic symmetry and deeper physical grounding. Global structural integrity becomes both conceptually coherent and empirically tractable through dynamic, perturbation-based metrics—fully aligned with the authors’ own vision of a future science of health.

---

References

1. A. A. Cohen et al., Intrinsic health as a foundation for a science of health. Sci. Adv. 11, eadu8437 (2025).

2. D. E. Ingber, Cellular tensegrity: Defining new rules of biological design that govern the cytoskeleton. J. Cell Sci. 104, 613–627 (1993).

3. D. E. Ingber, Tensegrity I: Cell structure and hierarchical systems biology. J. Cell Sci. 116, 1157–1173 (2003).

4. G. H. Pollack, The Fourth Phase of Water (Ebner & Sons, 2013).

5. K. Saxena et al., Polyatomic time crystals of neuron-extracted microtubules. J. Appl. Phys. 132, 194401 (2022).

---

Table 1. Conceptualization of Structure in the Intrinsic Health Framework

---