I remember my high school bio teacher telling us that our body maintains homeostasis through a feedback loop like a house furnace maintains temperature. The furnace kicks on whenever it is needed to heat the house back up to the desired temperature and then shuts off again when that temperature is reached. But wouldn’t it be more efficient to just stay on at a low level always maintaining that temperature? Sort of how a car would maintain its speed. Cruise control works by maintaining the desired speed. Not speeding back up to that speed once it slows to a different speed. Right?
In: Biology
Cruise control works the same way only within tighter tolerances. It does go up and down but within smaller limits. If you hit 70mph it may be allowed to fluctuate up to 70.2 mph and then drop down to 69.8 mph and target in between those 2 speeds. The body isn’t able to respond as fast . How fast it approaches the limits as well as how far it is allowed to overshoot is all part of the design behind the software and hardware capabilities.
Your blood pressure is pretty tightly controlled, and something like hunger is less tightly controlled with larger bounds of what is considered normal.
The system is working to control itself with influence from outside forces acting on it. It can’t ever be static as that would not maintain its desired set point.
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