Have you ever considered what processes are going on in your body to allow you to see this website, to navigate to the different pages, and then to recognise and understand the printed material before you?
Physiology is the study of how living things work. It examines the activities and functions of living organisms from the level of the whole organism down to parts of the living cell. Human Physiology forms the basis of understanding of the processes that support life, and is crucial to understanding the abnormalities in life processes that lead to disease.
To understand asthma, we need to understand how lungs work; to understand diabetes, we need knowledge of blood sugar regulation; to understand heart disease the intricacies of heart muscle function have to be explored; and so on, through all the organ systems of the body. In addition to being a discipline in itself, Physiology has a central role in connecting other biomedical sciences, so Physiologists often work with specialists from other disciplines such as anatomy, biochemistry, genetics, microbiology, to learn more about normal life processes, about disease processes, and to develop treatments for diseases.
