It’s Easier Said Than Done To Live In A Healthy Balance, Isn’t It?

Why, oh why must good health come in equilibrium?

We are familiar with the concept of extremes.

We know that there is only a range of temperatures that the human body can tolerate and an even narrower range of temperatures that the human body finds comfortable.

And as such, it is unpleasant for us to be in environments that are too cold, such as in a tundra, or in environments that are too hot, such as in the desert. Overexposure to extreme temperatures can easily lead to death.

If we want to live in such environments comfortably, we’d have to introduce temperature control measures such as heating or air-conditioning.

Because we want to maintain a comfortable equilibrium that we enjoy being in.

Ditto for the settings in our body

Our bones are in a constant state of dynamic equilibrium, as are our joints.

Even the acidity in our blood is well regulated — it is in a state of dynamic equilibrium on its own, with the bicarbonate buffer system in the blood tightly regulating the pH of the blood.

What does dynamic equilibrium mean, though?

We’d need to look at a reversible chemical reaction to find out more:

Dynamic equilibrium occurs when, for a reversible reaction, the rate of the forward reaction equals the rate of the reverse reaction. Since the two rates are equal, it looks like nothing is happening, but in reality the reaction is continuously occurring at its stable rate.

It means that there is a constantly ongoing forward reaction as well as a continuously ongoing reverse reaction.

For instance, in our bones, the forward reaction occurring is the synthesis of new bone minerals from the soluble calcium in our blood.

The reverse reaction is the destruction of old bone minerals, such that the calcium can then be solubilized and reabsorbed back into the blood.

When a bone is in dynamic equilibrium, the rate of new bone mineral being synthesized is equal to the rate of old bone mineral reabsorbed into the blood.

A similar analysis can be extended to our joints.

Unfortunately, the body has so many interconnected pathways and networks.

Which is a bummer, of course.

Most processes in dynamic equilibrium are dependent on other processes in dynamic equilibrium to maintain their dynamic balance.

What a mouthful, isn’t it?

But what that does mean is that a process that has gotten into a state of dis-equilibrium can force another process currently in equilibrium to get into a state of disequilibrium too.

Let’s look at Newton’s first law of motion, for instance. It states that

if a body is at rest or moving at a constant speed in a straight line, it will remain at rest or keep moving in a straight line at constant speed unless it is acted upon by a force.

And that’s the important thing to note here.

If I were to roll a ball along a flat, horizontal surface, it will eventually come to a stop even though Newton’s first law of motion will state that it will keep moving.

And that comes from the unseen forces of friction, which act as an opposing force on the ball — this causes the ball to come to a stop eventually, no matter how smooth or slippery we engineer the surface out to be.

When the ball is constantly moving, it is in a state of dynamic equilibrium.

But when it stops, its state of dynamic equilibrium is changed.

Because of those invisible frictional forces that we can’t see.

So a pathway in the body that has gotten into a state of disequilibrium can affect another pathway that is still in equilibrium and force that the second pathway to get into a state of disequilibrium, too.

Let’s go back to look at our bones again.

Because if one pathway can affect multiple other parallel pathways, the damage can be quite insidious but significant.

How much more quickly would the body go into disarray?

One of those big problems is, of course, the idea of a dysregulated inflammation mechanism, which, unsurprisingly, has its own balance and equilibrium based on the forces of the pro-and anti-inflammatory cytokine signaling networks.

Because this inflammation balance can be thrown out of sorts by poor lifestyle choices, though it takes many years of neglect for us to get to that state of dysregulation.

But when the balance is shifted to favor the pro-inflammatory signaling networks…

We’d find that the increased pro-inflammatory signaling accelerates the rate of bone mineral reabsorption back into the blood, while the rate of bone mineral formation is not significantly affected by the enhanced pro-inflammatory signaling. Hence, the risk of developing osteopenia/osteoporosis is increased:

In the same way, the enhanced pro-inflammatory signaling will affect the rate of joint cartilage destruction, and hence the risk of developing osteoarthritis would increase.

So while there may be medical interventions to control the rate of joint or bone degeneration in the body, we have to note that these interventions do not necessarily address the root cause of the inflammation dysregulation.

Therefore, the idea to counteract or prevent most of these degenerative diseases is to work on the inflammation signaling mechanisms. Much of that would revolve around healthy eating, exercise, stress management, and better quality sleep.

People will tend to say that we ought to “reduce” inflammation.

But that’s a unidirectional process.

We want, really, to achieve a balance between the pro-and anti-inflammatory signaling mechanisms, such that the inflammatory response is well regulated in the body.

That’s just me being more technically accurate!

And if we can get that inflammatory signaling network well regulated, it would be much harder for us to develop the degenerative diseases that come about from a dysregulated inflammatory signaling mechanism!

Unfortunately, living a healthy lifestyle isn’t as lucrative as the revenue generated from the sales of an expensive patented pharmaceutical drug, is it?

Joel Yong, Ph.D., is a biochemical engineer/scientist, an educator, and a writer. He has authored 5 ebooks (available on Amazon.com in Kindle format) and co-authored 6 journal articles in internationally peer-reviewed scientific journals. His main focus is on finding out the fundamentals of biochemical mechanisms in the body that the doctors don’t educate the lay people about and then deconstructing them for your understanding — as an educator should.

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