Homeostasis or What Happened? I Thought I Was Healthy!

Homeostasis. It's what keeps us alive. It's what can slowly kill us. Homeostasis means maintaining the same state. This is a good thing, right?

Yes!...and no. Our body must maintain homeostasis or die. There are many things in the body which must stay within a certain range or bad things happen. Let's look at the blood for a bit. The body works very hard to keep the blood, and what the blood contains, within specific ranges. Since blood services every part of the body, you can see why that's important. If the blood suddenly went out of balance, it would affect the entire body. So, there are systems in place designed to keep the blood as it should be -- or, in homeostasis.

However, this marvelous system can also lead to slow, degenerating conditions in the body. How? As an example, let's look at the mineral calcium. Calcium levels in the blood must stay within a certain range. Maybe we drink a soda pop, which contains a lot of phosphoric acid. Calcium and phosphorous just love each other, so calcium leaves the blood and bonds with the phosphorous. Now the levels of calcium in the blood just went down. And that soda pop didn't give us any calcium to replace it. Where's the body going to get calcium to maintain homeostasis in the blood?

Where is there is great big store of calcium? That's right, our bones! Calcium is taken from the bones in order to maintain homeostasis of the blood. It's kind of like robbing Peter to pay Paul. The body takes care of an immediate problem--lowered blood calcium, by sacrificing long-term health. A few years later and a few thousand soda pops and our bones are getting weak. But, what happened? I thought I was healthy!

Our bodies are so marvelous at compensating. The soda pop is just one little example of how eating nutritionally deficient foods hurts us. If our food doesn't provide the nutrients necessary to maintain homeostasis, then the body is forced to rob it from somewhere else. It compensates for a very long time until suddenly we break down--typically with some chronic disease: cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, etc.

As a paramedic, we were all a bit nervous about runs that involved children. Why? They're cute, they're fun to play with, and they can crash on you in a second. Children's systems can maintain homeostasis like no other--they will compensate and compensate and suddenly they're in cardiac arrest. They will compensate until the body is just absolutely unable to do so anymore. Basically, it taught me that while they can look fine--don't trust it! Adults don't compensate quite so well--so if they still look fine twenty minutes after that car accident odds are good they are fine. If it's a child though...hmmm--I want to thoroughly examine before I say they're okay.

It's the same with our health, only a lot slower and less dramatic. We will look fine, feel fine, and have no symptoms. So, we continue to eat our garbage food and drink sodas or energy drinks until, slowly and gradually, our body can't compensate anymore and disease develops.

The moral of this story is that by providing the nutrients we need to maintain homeostasis, we stay healthy. Nutrient-rich foods and herbs build the reserves in the body. Nutrient-poor foods rob minerals from the body. Which do you want to eat on a daily basis??


Josh