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Life is an active process.
Our bodies are constantly fighting to differentiate themselves from the environment.
Temperature. Acidity. Pressure. Charge. All these (and other) parameters have narrow windows in which human life is permissible, and our surroundings rarely match these levels.
Homeostasis is the careful maintenance of this mismatch.
For millennia, selection pressures have molded us into homeostasis machines.
But sometimes, the machine breaks. And under those circumstances, our bodies lose their ability to perform crucial functions.
Let's explore these functions in more detail...
Vital signs include:
They act as proxies for the core processes that sustain life.
Changes in one vital sign can affect all others. For example, if resp rate goes to zero, oxygen sats will drop, meaning less oxygen is delivered to the muscles of the heart, leading to decreased heart rate and blood pressure, starving the brain and thus impairing the body's ability to regulate its own temperature.
Thankfully, our bodies planned ahead.
Their systems, though imperfect, can help us respond to these stressors without dying at the first sign of trouble.
Which brings us to the concept of compensation.
Homeostasis demands stability.
Like a rubber band, our bodies tend towards a steady state when stretched into abnormal conditions. But rubber bands have limits to this elasticity, and we're no different.
Our bodies will work to restore homeostasis in response to external stressors (this is called compensation), but when stretched too far, they snap.
The result, decompensation, can be life threatening.
And in such situations, resuscitation may be required.