Excretory, Respiratory, and Endocrine System : Medical / Nursing Essay Paper

Running Head: Excretory, Respiratory, and Endocrine System

Excretory, Respiratory, and Endocrine System
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Excretory, Respiratory, and Endocrine System

In medical science, in any living organism, the maintenance of a constant internal environment is defined as Homeostasis. As a matter of fact, all living beings carry out some or many forms of integral regulation. It is another matter that the living being, one way or another, may come across a place to make a habitat where variation in the external environment has to be tolerated for survival.

As per dictionary and physiological definitions, homeostasis is metabolic equilibrium actively maintained by several complex biological mechanisms that operate via the autonomic nervous system to offset disrupting changes. In human beings not excluding other mammals, homeostasis leads to a naturally well-arranged chain of automatic control mechanisms, which make relatively all conditions constant for all the body cells, precisely providing what each one really needs or requires as a result. Negative feedback mechanisms regulate these inevitable conditions and situations. Whether inside an egg or the uterus, the same approach is also applied in embryonic development. In this way, animals take further steps as a rulemaking sure that conditions are held stable in their favor unless the living possibility is all there.

Excretory, respiratory, and endocrine systems are all interrelated and contribute to the homeostasis of the body. The excretory system is related to homeostasis of the body in terms of its functionality. It is usually assumed that the kidneys make the blood clean by filtering it. But it is not that much true as the filtration process only works to release solids out of the body. Furthermore, urea is not a "dirty" substance as it generally becomes rank when bacteria grow in the urea. Urea is only one of the waste substances that the kidneys release out of the body, and there are other organs of excretion directly related to homeostasis of the body besides the kidneys. (Tilman, D. 11)

In living organism, all requirements of the body cells consist of supply of raw materials for growth and respiration such as glucose, oxygen, and many other foods and added supplements, waste substances excretion e.g. urea and carbon dioxide; appropriate physical conditions e.g. solute concentration (balance of water/salt), temperature, pH and hygienic conditions for example nonexistence of infecting viruses, bacteria etc. With reference aforementioned information, when it comes to kidneys, they carry out two processes can be seen as homeostasis features:

• • Excretion or in easy words removal of waste substances that are formed in the cells of the living body.
• • Osmoregulation: control of water/salt equilibrium in the blood ensuring a provision of constant osmotic environment around the cells of the body.

Now linkages of the respiratory system with the homeostasis of the body are quite evident as supply of oxygen and glucose via the blood is kept fairly constant thus metabolic equilibrium is actively maintained by respiration process all the times. And as far as the endocrine system is concerned, it keeps up continuing control using chemical signals and homeostasis (including metabolism, nutrition, excretion and water/salt balances. Along with homeostasis, the endocrine system works in parallel with the nervous system to control maturation and growth of living body. Different functions of endocrine systems work to maintain glucose levels within a homeostatic range as well. (Smith, R. J., D. W. Wilmore. 94-95)

There is strong evidence from experimental studies of the normal flora. For example, pathogen have an absolute requirement for molecular hydrogen, and, in the presence of sulfate, sulfate-reducing bacteria compete directly for hydrogen with the methanogen population. The activities of methanogenic and sulfate-reducing bacteria have been found to be mutually exclusive in the gut, and this effect can partly be explained by direct resource competition between these two microbial populations (Gibson 769-770). Resource-ratio theory thus would predict that the function of the normal flora could be changed by altering the sulfur:organic carbon supply ratio to the host. As predicted by this theory, the relative activities of methanogenic and sulfur-reducing bacteria can be altered experimentally by manipulating the relative availability of sulfur in the diet. In a study, Christl et al. (2001) fed six methanogenic (flatusproducing) volunteers a diet enhanced with sulfate for three weeks, and in half the subjects the activity of pathogen was inhibited and a pronounced stimulation of sulfate reduction occurred. Enhancement of sulfate reduction in the other three subjects likely did not occur because their normal flora was initially devoid of sulfate-reducing bacteria and thus could not respond in the short term to the increase in sulfur supply. 

Works Cited
Christl, S. U., G. R. Gibson, T. H. J. Florin, and J. H. Cummings. 2001. The role of dietary sulphate in the regulation of methanogenesis in the human large intestine. Gastroenterology 98: A164.
Gibson, G. R.2001. Physiology and ecology of the sulphate-reducing bacteria. J. Appl. Bacteriol. 69: 769-797.
Smith, R. J., and D. W. Wilmore. 2001. Glutamine nutrition and requirements. J. Parent. Ent. Nutr. 14(Suppl.): 94-99.
Tilman, D. 2000, Plant Strategies and the Dynamics and Structure of Plant Communities. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.