I’m an 8th grader, and am making flash cards. In the study guide, there’s something about a life process called regulation. I don’t really get what it does – I want to make my study set easy for me to understand. First day of this unit, so I’m hoping making a good study set will help me do well. Thanks!
In: 6
The body’s chemistry works best under some very specific conditions. “Regulation” is when the body notices that something is deviating from the ideal, and sets off a cascade of responses to bring things back under control.
For example: If the body temperature drops, then the body reacts in a whole bunch of ways to warm it up: shivering, burning calories, changing blood flow, making you “feel cold”, etc. Similar cascades occur when your body is too warm, or there’s not enough water, or not enough blood sugars, or too much blood sugars.
A lot of this is controlled by part of the brain called the “hypothalamus”, but that’s just the controller, it relies on many other organs (and other parts of the brain) to get the job done.
Without regulation, life would be difficult, or much shorter. For example, diabetes is a disease where our bodies lose the ability to regulate blood sugars properly. Diabetic patients have to take conscious control of regulation themselves, with testing of their sugar levels, careful attention to their diet, and (if things go wrong) emergency dosing with glucose (sugar) (if their blood has too little sugar) or an injection of insulin (if their blood has too much)
Latest Answers