You will have heard mention of great names like Aristotle and Hippocrates, but you may not know that, over 2000 years ago, they were the early pioneers of human physiology.
But what exactly is human physiology? Simply put, human physiology is the life science study of how the body functions when it is in a well and healthy state; how it works when it is running in a ‘normal’ fashion. It is the study of the body’s ten systems, for example, the circulatory system and the reproductive system, and how they work with each other.
Research into human physiology however, demands that, precisely because you need to study how the body operates normally, it is necessary to study live and well human beings. In the days of Hippocrates and Aristotle however, such subjects and indeed techniques for studying them, were in short supply and so they had to work mainly with cadavers. Working with dead bodies however cannot exactly show you how bodies work in action and so much of their work contributed instead to the science of anatomy – the very much related study of how the body is made up, or the organs and tissues etc. of which the body consists.
Human physiology looks at the body on a cellular level, that is not the study of the individual cells themselves, known as microphysiology, but instead how the body’s cells work together to maintain the body at an optimum balance.
Studies of each system
Whilst the name for the study of the functioning of the whole body is human physiology, this is broken down into separate fields of clinical study for each system and each of these can be further separated. For example, the circulatory system field is cardiovascular physiology and within this there exists cardiology, being the study of the heart, and hematology, the study of blood.
Homeostasis
Homeostasis is the body’s point of equilibrium. It is the point reached when all of its systems are perfectly balanced for maximum efficiency and health. There are many different elements, both internal and external, that can affect homeostasis – for example, the weather. If we are too hot, the body has a method of cooling itself down, of regulating its temperature – by producing sweat. If we have an infection, the body produces more white blood cells to try and fight it off. There are a multitude of ways that our body’s balance can be tilted but there are likewise numerous ways that the body has for trying to maintain the equilibrium.
Pathophysiology
When something goes wrong with the body, for example when the body’s blood sugar levels are too high which can cause diabetes, the study of this imbalanced state is called pathophysiology. Pathophysiology seeks to examine these changes and abnormal circumstances and ultimately tries to find out what goes wrong and to help to put it right. So, for example, studies into diseases, viruses, infections and genetic conditions would all come under the pathophysiology umbrella.
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