The will to survive

Countless hours are spent in reaching and maintaining homeostasis. The level of work that the body does just to keep itself alive and functioning goes severely unnoticed. While it works towards homeostasis, it’s also working to meet your demands. It tends to do such a good job at it that people often end up being careless. Homeostasis is of so much importance to the body that failure to maintain some level of homeostasis can lead to severe complications, including death. The body will even sacrifice your extremities in order to try and maintain homeostasis.

The great sacrifice

Just as the skin is a reflection of what goes on in the gut, so also your peripherals a reflection of the stress your vitals are going through. When your peripherals start to suffer or decay unexpectedly, you can be certain there is a deeper, underlying problem futher up the chain. But this is not necessarily limited to your peripherals. Your bones, muscles everywhere, digestion, eye sight, hearing, etc, etc, can all be affected. When your vitals are in need of resources and your diet does not provide sufficient resources, your body will ration out your non-vitals.

During times of need, blood flow to the extremities may be reduced. Apart from this causing a reduction of resources being transferred to the extremities and redirecting those resources to the vitals, this causes the extremities to drop in temperature and help maintain temperature homeostasis for the vitals. This is the main reason why frostbite occurs in the extremities before reaching any other part of the body. You may have in some point in your life noticed your hands becoming cold for seemingly no apparent reason. Interestingly, under a calm state and under the same conditions, your hands may remain warm. Such a thing could suggest the level of stress your body is going through at the time.