What Is Zeta Potential?

An Essay on the Charge That Organizes Living Tissue

Unbekoming · Unbekoming (Substack) · 23 October 2026

An essay on zeta potential, the surface charge that keeps cells and proteins dispersed in body fluids, and what the author says happens when it collapses.

Writing on his Substack, Unbekoming proposes that zeta potential, the electrical charge that keeps particles suspended in a fluid, is central to health. The essay draws together work from eight researchers across different disciplines who, the author says, reached the same mechanism from different starting points.

Healthy red blood cells carry a surface charge of roughly minus 15 millivolts, which keeps them dispersed. When positive ions strip that charge, cells clump and tissues are starved of oxygen.
Cites the Schulze-Hardy rule: trivalent ions such as aluminum collapse colloidal stability far more effectively than monovalent ions, by a factor the author puts at 600 to 1500.
Brings together researchers including Thomas Riddick, Melvin Knisely and Thomas McDaniel as independent support for one electrical mechanism.
Proposes potassium citrate and bicarbonate, avoiding aluminum exposure and sunlight as ways to restore charge. These health claims are the author's own and are outside President Water's field of work.

#zeta potential#colloids#external research

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