Decompensation: Limit to Body's Ability to Maintain Status Quo
Homeostasis dictates that the body adjusts itself to ward off the destabilizing influences of stressors, through its ability to maintain a constancy in the state and function of its internal environment. The driving forces that come to play may be neuronal, hormonal, that influence structural and functional changes. When the body functions sub-normally, it is bound to fail. A major stress mediator is histamine and it evokes compensation in the human system. Since exhaustion usually ensues if the stressor is not removed in time, cellular plasticity and versatile functionality are limited and decompensation results. Breathing compensation may be manifested by the recruitment of intercostal and other respiratory muscles, hypotension can be compensated by redistribution of electrolytes and fluid within the body compartments, the cardiac muscle stretches and hypertrophizes, the hepatic or the thyroid gland cells increase in number, post-nerve receptors may increase in number following...