glucose tolerance test diet preparation

- even when you're resting, your brain and body are hard at work maintaining stability inyour internal environment. it's a process called homeostasis. it's how you maintain your temperature,

glucose tolerance test diet preparation, heart beat, metabolism, all that, even though external conditions change, and it's also a stateyour body strives for when you get out of balance.

you've experienced this before if you've ever been exercising and you get out of breathand really hot and sweaty, and then afterwards, your body cools you offand lowers your heart rate. that's homeostasis at work. and it also works when you take drugs. so, for example, if you take amphetamines, which raise your heart rate,

then your body quickly triesto lower your heart rate and get you back to normal, and what's really interesting, is how smart your brain is about this. if you're a regular drug user, then you probably havecertain ritualistic behaviors that lead up to thedrugs entering your body. for example, you mightalways take your drugs in a certain location, after eating,

or a certain time of day. so, let's say you're a cocaine addict, and you're always in one particular room when you inject yourself with cocaine, it's your preferred method of entry, and it takes you a few minutesto set out your needle, set up your space, kind of get ready, and after a few times doing this, your brain starts to recognizethat these external cues,

like the room, the needles, thewhole process of setting up, means that your body is about to get a nice big dose of drugs. so, rather than wait for thecocaine to enter your body and then start regulateyour normal functions, your brain tells yourbody to get a head start. it starts lowering your heart rate before you even take the drugs, and that's why after a while

your body needs a higherdose to reach the same high. okay, so imagine you startout at a certain level, we'll call that homeostasis, and when your brain knowsthe drugs are about to come, it starts adjusting your bodily functions. so, it lowers your heart rateand metabolism, et cetera, and then it takes even more of those drugs to get up to your high point. but what would happen ifyou get all those cues,

but then you don't get the drug? so, your body's already pre-adjusted, preparing to get the stimulant, but nothing comes to counteract the lower heart rate, lower metabolism. you would experience a crash, because there's no high to counteract that slowing down thatyour brain has initiated. okay, so let's imagine theother side of it, though,

that you're in a newlocation when you take drugs. so, your body doesn'thave time to pre-adjust, but you take that same level of drugs, and that's why a lot of people overdose when they take drugs in a new location, because if their bodydoesn't know it's coming, it doesn't pre-adjust, but they take the samehigh level of the drug, then their body's notprepared for that amount,

and it causes an overdose.