What is Allostasis?
The varying adaptive responses taken by the body in order to maintain homeostasis. Homeostasis is the body's drive to keep everything working within normal ranges needed to function and sustain life. Allostasis is how the body actually accomplishes this difficult feat when your body is put through a number of stressful situation on a daily basis. In order for allostasis to do its job in the body, it uses physiological, psychological, and behavioral mechanisms. When your body is placed under stress, allostasis can manipulate hormone levels, enzymes, blood sugar, oxygen levels, body temperature, etc, within your body while altering your behavior as well.
How Does Allostasis Relate to Injuries?
Just about anyone that has competed or trained for any length of time has likely sustained one form of injury or another in their lifetime. Sometimes injuries can heal with no problems. On the other hand, one injury can set off a chain reaction that leads to other injuries in the body.
For example -
When injured in one area of the body, the body will alter its movement patterns to reduce pain and injury. Altering movements patterns places more stress on other areas of your body. This can be ideal in the short term, as someone with an injury can continue working out with tolerable pain and less damage to the current injury. However, the long term consequence of altered movement patterns can cause negative consequences by the adaptations that occurred to reduce the pain and damage to the original injury. Altered movement patterns formed during the time of injury can often increase biomechanical stress on other muscles and/or joint systems as they attempt to pick up the slack for the damaged/injured area.
It is important to recognize and know that whenever the body is in a stressful environment that we expose ourselves to, allostasis will take the short term approach to reduce further stress on the body. The body will always choose to maintain homeostasis and minimize the immediate stress it enduring no matter what. This means that the same adaptations can be beneficial in one sense in your body's short term response to the injury and yet potentially damaging to long term injuries.
When dealing with an injury, as humans we must listen to our body's and provide it will the rest and recovery that is needed. Continuing to train through a current injury that the body compensates for, will only lead to other injuries down the road.
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me or comment on this post!
Happy Injury Free Running! :)
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