Physiological Balance

PHYSIOLOGICAL BALANCE, the comparison of the intake and expenditure of substances participating in the organism's metabolism. Establishing a balance is important for the physiologist because it gives him an idea of which processes predominate in the organism (whether substances are accumulating in it or the previously stored substances are being expended). Different food substances play, as is known, an unequal role in the organism, and therefore it is necessary, in a careful study of metabolism (see), to establish a balance for each substance (or even chemical element) separately. Since organic food substances are the source of energy for the human organism, in addition to the balance of substances, it is possible to establish a balance of energy. The latter is established in its income part by the heat of combustion of food substances, and in its expenditure part by heat dissipation and the amount of mechanical work. Balance disturbance is a term for defining a mild disorder of nutrition in an artificially fed infant of early age, proposed by Prof. Finkelstein in 1906 to denote such a state in which, despite sufficient nutrition in terms of weight and calories and proper intervals between feedings, the infant does not give a proper increase in weight and falls behind in development, especially when compared with a normally developing one. According to the latest classification of Finkelstein, balance disturbance corresponds to dystrophia simplex.