Page 178 - South Mississippi Living - September, 2026

HEALTHY LIVING
story by Dr. Nickie Harris-Raye
Homeostasis is your body’s way of automatically keeping
things steady inside, even as things change outside or in your
environment. Your body makes these changes so you can
function properly and survive. If you keep this balance, you stay
healthy. If you lose it, you may become sick or even face life-
threatening problems.
In a state of homeostasis, some of the systems that self-
regulate to stay at normal levels are: blood sugar, blood pressure,
energy, acid levels, oxygen, proteins, temperature, hormones,
electrolytes.
Homeostasis works through three main parts: the receptor,
control center, and effector. These parts team up to keep you
in balance by noticing changes and taking action to adjust your
body’s systems.
A key part of homeostasis is that your internal environment
stays steady thanks to a self-regulating system that works within
a narrow range. Feedback and feedforward are two ways your
body does this. In a feedback system, your body uses information
about what’s happened inside you to decide what to do next, so
it can adjust to changes in your environment.
There are two types of feedback systems: negative and positive.
Negative feedback helps your body stay within a healthy
range by responding when things get out of balance. Positive
feedback speeds up certain processes, so that the results build on
themselves and create bigger changes in your body.
Homeostasis is a key idea in understanding how your body
keeps things stable. It’s not something that just stays the same all
the time—instead, your body is always making small adjustments
to help you survive.
Your life and health depend on your body’s ability to maintain
homeostasis. If this balance is disrupted, you can get sick.
Medical treatments and therapies often focus on helping your
body get back to a balanced state—restoring homeostasis. If this
doesn’t happen, serious illness or even death can occur.
178 | September 2026 www.smliving.net | SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living