Allostasis

And think about allostasis the way that I think about it is juggling, you're keeping all the balls in the air and you're adjusting to keep them all in the air.

And so homeostasis is the body's experiences something and then makes adjustments to return back to where it was.

Allostasis is the body kind of managing and regulating all a bunch of different Um, things going on inside the body and the brain, and it has to predict based what to do.

Like, oh, I predict this is going to happen.

Like in juggling.

If you are running up a mountain, I want your heart rate to climb.

If your child steps toward traffic, we want a surge of energy available before you've had time to consciously think about what to do, right? So there is a concept in biology called allostasis, right? Now, homeostasis is often described as stability.

Allostasis is closer to stability through change.

So you can kind of think of this as the organism or the body is continually adjusting its physiology, right, its stress response, its nervous system, based on what it predicts is coming next.

So that means that health is not static.

And so your body is therefore needing to continually adapt to change to bring you back to homeostasis.

And this process is called allostasis.

Allostasis meaning maintaining stability through change.

So let's say it's 21 degrees Celsius in the That could be temperature homeostasis.

But then you do a high-powered yoga class, you're in the sun and the temperature is rising.

Whereas I would argue that social homeostasis is actually, you know, it's something that can be dynamic.

And actually one thing that, you know, maybe allostasis is another term that's come up.

Allostasis.

I should have said that.

No, no.

What does that mean?

Allostasis means anticipating change and having change to meet an anticipated challenge.

So you can talk about how it is, but basically the idea is that if you are under your preferred level of social homeostasis, then you might feel lonely.

It does.

But the shift started with a relatively modern biological framework called allostasis.

Allostasis.

Yeah.

So for a long time, biology focused on homeostasis.

You get hot, so you sweat to cool down.

Got it.

Allostasis, on the other hand, proposes that the brain is actually a prediction machine.