A systems view of biological health

Section 2: Theory

9 : Innate survival agendas

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Primary survival agendas underpinning homeostatic adaptation include the optimisation of energy usage and adaptive capacity.

Your body is constantly adapting in many ways to all its internal and external demands – including your use of it. That adaptation obviously has to (also) maintain a normal homeostatic range just to keep you alive. All adaptations made by your body have been honed over billions of years of evolution, and are centred on certain core survival priorities. Survival for every kind of organic Life, from bacteria to whales to sequoia trees and grasses starts at the maintenance of an internal primaeval ocean. On top of this can be seen a few very generic agendas including:

1. minimise resource usage (including energy),
2. maximise adaptability/adaptive capacity,
3. maximise resources and resilience
4. deal with the immediate now, and the less immediate can be put aside for later.
5. "Later" is to be found in a rhythmic movement between rest and activity – mainly affected by the movement of the sun and moon (and stars) in the cosmos, and seen in diurnal, annual, tidal (and other) cycles of Life
6. Plan A response to everything is to use energy – which may be seen externally as movement, but which also has internal manifestations
7. if Plan A fails or has ended its rhythmic cycle, Plan B is to turn off the lights, conserve energy and drop the metabolic state more towards hibernation (trees go through a full Plan A/Plan B cycle over the course of a year).

… with an optimum balance (whatever that might mean) [1] being maintained between these priorities vs. everything else. Characteristics 2 & 3 also imply a priority for optimum Health. 1,2 & 3 employ symbiosis (relationship) and therefore communication as one of their primary tools, and are about being best prepared for whatever future circumstances you might meet. 4, 5, 6 & 7 are exceptionally pragmatic. If you have an infection such as flu and are facing a lion, then the lion is more important because it is immediate – your immune system can use energy to deal with flu later if you survive the lion.

The "Plan A / Plan B" rhythmic polarity goes right back to the very beginnings of Life and can be found in the Krebs (or Acetic Acid) cycle that powers all of Life. If the Krebs cycle is run forwards it produces ATP – the small "rechargeable battery" that supplies power to every living organism. If the Krebs cycle runs in reverse it produces the basic building blocks of Life including lipids and amino acids. Thus, action and "vegetation" (self-repair, recuperation, rest, inactivity) are opposite phases of Life that cannot run at the same time. The fact that this absolutely fundamental metabolic cycle underpins everything that lives means that the polarity of action vs vegetation is also to be found in every living organism. "Higher" organisms with nervous systems have simply continued to with this principle but made managed it in a more sophisticated way by partitioning the nervous system. i.e. the polarised forwards and reverse Krebs cycle came first, and the Sympathetic/Vagus autonomic nervous system simply applies it within a large organism. Once there is more than one cell there is the possibility of different cells acting in different phases, some recuperating and repairing, and others making and using energy. The mitochondria in your body also exists in two states – and is able to reverse its action, stop producing ATP and "vegetate".

Humans also have a cognitive cortical brain that uses an inordinate amount of energy and can work really slowly compared to more instinctive mid and hind brains and the spinal nerve roots. So for humans survival agenda #8 is:

8. switch off the cortex

Thus, IQ tends to drop markedly in a survival situations[2], and one selection criterion for "special forces" candidates is the ability to think clearly under stress. This criterion is less important than their ability to work in a team – underlining the fundamental importance of relationality.

Relationality – both external and internal – degrades under stress, and the world shrinks towards a metaphorical (or even real) tip of a spear. Everything not at that point of contact is de-prioritised. Vision becomes single-focussed, and the peripheral external senses are handed over to non-conscious management gestalts. Internal communication allows for nuanced optimisation, but there is an energy and attention overhead, so functional sub-entities are increasingly loosely coupled to the core identity. Which gives another temporary survival strategy for animals possessing a complex ANS :

1.(a) de-couple internal non-motor communications, starting with the Vagus Nerve