Uni10 Health and Social Care

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Homeostasis is the process that is used to regulate and maintain the interior environment of the body stable.

 The regulation of the internal body environment is processed by three mechanism, glucoregulation, osmoregulation and thermoregulation.

 The body uses two mechanism to regulate the environment, the positive feedback and the negative feedback. E.g. If we are too hot the body uses negative feedback to being the temperature down, it can be represented by +,-. On the other hand if we caught a virus, our body temperature increases more than the usual, this increase is due to the fact that the body uses fever to get rid of the virus, this is a positive feedback, which is represented as +,+.

Glucoregulation:

 The presence of glucose is very important in the production of the energy in our body. This type of sugar is essential when the production of the energy is taking place in the human body. It is combined with oxygen and important nutrients for the energy to be released from the mitochondrion.

 The level of glucose in our body need to be controlled, because the presence can be sometimes too much or too low.

The regulation of the glucose level in the body is made by the pancreas. When the glucose level in the body is too high the body releases insulin to try to control its level. The insulin helps the conversion of the glucose into glycogen, which is stored in the liver.

 When the level of blood sugar in our body is too low the body takes the glycogen which is currently stored in the liver and convert them back into glucose by a process called glycogenesis.

High glucose level

 Diagram:

Pancreas releases insulin.

The pancreas detects the high presence of glucose in the blood.

With the presence of insulin glucose is transformed into glycogen

In the liver glycogen is stored

Low glucose level

The glycogen stored in the liver is released

The pancreas detects that the blood is carrying low glucose

Glucose enters the blood stream and regulate its level

By a process called glycogenesis the glycogen is converted back into glucose

 Osmoregulation:

Water is an essential component in our body, it consist of more than 60% in our body. Osmoregulation is the control of the water level in the body.

 The control of the water level in our body is controlled by the Pituitary Gland. When the amount of the water in the body is above of what it should be the, the hypothalamus, which is a gland located in the brain detects it and the pituitary gland release a small amount of ADH, Antidiuretic Hormone. With that amount of ADH the Kidneys are not fully open, so the Kidneys become less permeable, less water enters the body and the majority of it go straight into the bladder through the ureter. This consists in the negative feedback, because the body instead of asking for more water it getting rid of it, we are not thirsty at this point.