Homeostasis

Homeostasis is the body's continual adjustment of internal conditions such as temperature, blood sugar and pH to keep them within a narrow range that supports life.

The concept comes from classical physiology and describes negative feedback: a sensor detects a change, a control center compares it with a set point, and an effector pushes the variable back. Shivering when cold, releasing insulin after a meal and breathing faster when carbon dioxide rises are all homeostatic responses. Homeostasis is dynamic rather than static; values drift and are corrected constantly, and set points themselves can shift with illness, age or time of day.

The word appears often in writing about the endocannabinoid system, which does help cells fine-tune signaling and is reasonably described as a homeostatic regulator of neurotransmitter and immune activity. That description is sometimes stretched into a claim that cannabinoids restore balance to the whole body, which no evidence supports. CBD's influence on specific homeostatic processes has been studied mainly in laboratory models, and general balance is not a measurable clinical outcome.