Homeostasis and Your Health

Our bodies have a continual goal of being in a state of homeostasis. This is where our body, mind and spirit are most aligned in harmony for supporting optimal health and well-being. It is the sweet spot where things are working properly on their own and we feel good. The struggle comes in that homeostasis is constantly under threat from things like our environment, stress, diet, sleep and lifestyle. This delicate balance has response mechanisms that help rebalance and react to these conditions, but even they can encounter limits. This is where understanding homeostasis provides us a pathway to supporting this balance and helping our systems regain this position when there are challenges to it.

What is Homeostasis?

Envision a bar laid out on top of the point of a triangle. The balance point where that bar is level is where homeostasis is created. This process is our regulation control system of the body’s environment to ensure everything is performing as it should optimally. When something comes into our body’s environment it is a variable that can tip that balance to a negative that our body needs to respond on.

Imagine you are standing outside and get chilly. Our body gets the message and produces a response.

This in turn looks like the goosebumps we feel on our arms and the action to put on a jacket. Our homeostasis process is triggering all the responses inside the body to re-establish that balance across all our systems.

The body does all it can to negate the variable that’s been picked up in its environment and return the bar to this perfect position as quickly as possible. Homeostasis is a negative feedback loop structure. As variables in our body’s environment occur the change is detected by a receptor (goosebumps) that transmits the messages to the control center of our body (homeostasis). From here, we see information sent along the pathways to trigger the effector process to address the problem (cell response to warm body and putting on a sweater). The response feed to the control sensor tells it how big a problem it is and if more help is needed. The stimulus of the process works to negate the variable (the bar being rebalanced over the triangle).

There are physical, emotional and spirit homeostasis influences that occur in our body all the time. Our homeostasis state is a combination of all three of these pillars in our health. It is essential for our survival.

When Our Normal is Not in Homeostasis

The body is a complex organism capable of adapting to a number of situations. It is well equipped to respond to threats, protecting us from dangers and changing to fit in our environments. In all