Consumer-producer relationship and homeostasis

Notion of consumers-producers co-operation allows better understanding of the basic mechanisms of homeostasis. This concept refers to the biological variables (BV) that are produced by tissues and organs (producers) and used for provision of functional activity of other organs and tissues (consumers). The rate of BV consumption is a major BV down-regulation factor, which participates in two kinds of imbalance: feedback and feedforward. When consumers are activates prior to producers, BV decrease and up-regulation forces are activated to counteract the decrease (feedback imbalance). Feedforward imbalance appears when producers are activated and BV consumption is postponed or suppressed. Prolonged feedforward imbalance is supposed to lead to chronic metabolic disturbances and diseases (obesitas, atherosclerosis, hypertension, NIDDM, Syndrome X, etc.).