Question

Could you explain to me what the author is stating here" Humans’ biological processes operate in relationship to many influences from the social, cultural, and physical environments, causing disruptions of homeostasis (balance). These relationships allow perturbations induced at one level to affect our psychological and biological well-being.” im guessing here but what im sort of understanding is that social, cultural, and physical environments associated with the human biological process and can impact our psychological and biological well-being ???

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Answer 1

First of all, I'd like to quote the very cliche sentence- "Humans are a social animal". And, the definition of health as per WHO is- "Physical, mental and social well being, not just being free of disease".

Our body is nothing but a big ball of chemicals which are regulating all our systems, any you can name.

Homeostasis is defined is- homo-same and stasis-meaning equilibrium; i.e., a tendency of the body to maintain an equilibrium maintained by the physiological processes.

Now, to maintain this homeostasis, there interplay several feedback loops, just like a domino effect; one falls and it continues to the next.

Suppose, you are at a social gathering and to make it worse; you have public fear. The body releases Adrenalin, the hormone of fight and flight. This way your body is preparing you to handle the stress. Here, a social stress. Adrenalin is going to stimulate several other organs or processes, one being mobilization of glucose to feed the tissues actively, cause constriction of blood vessels of unimportant organs and divert it into brain, lungs, and heart to handle the stress. This disturbs the homeostasis and you feel uneasy, your heart starts to beat faster than ever. You feel psychologically and physically stressed.

Another example, let us take physical and environment linked- High temperature. Our body has a thermostat in the hypothalamus to keep the inner body temperature constant to maintain homeostasis. As outside temperature keeps on increasing, our temperature doesn't increase, why? Because hypothalamus sends instructions to body parts to maintain a constant temperature by various biochemical processes.But, everything has its own threshold, if the increase is humongous, our body gives up. This perturbs the homeostasis and disrupts and impacts our psychological and biological well being.

Even for that matter, love or depression is also nothing but an interplay of hormones and neurotransmitters. Excess or deficiency, both are bad. Hence, influences from the social, cultural, and physical environments, all can disrupt our homeostasis.