Unit 3 Reflection

The most recent unit I studied was about the cardiovascular system. In the unit I learned about the heart, lungs, arteries and veins, types of blood, and the functions and dysfunctions of the heart. Most importantly I learned how all these body parts work together.

The cardiovascular system starts with the heart. The electrical signals from the SA node travels to the AV node eventually causing the ventricles to contract simultaneously. Since the heart is like a circuit, I will start with how blood flows in the body from the right atria. As the right atria contracts, the blood passes the bicuspid valve and enters the right ventricle. After the right ventricle contracts, blood flows into the pulmonary artery. From the pulmonary artery, blood travels to the lungs. In the lungs blood becomes oxygenated through venules, arterioles, and the capillaries. From the lungs blood travels to the pulmonary vein which leads to the left atria. After the right atria contracts, the blood passes the tricuspid valve into the right ventricle. After the right ventricle contracts, blood flows to through the aorta to the rest of the body. Illness and disease can occur in the heart. Cardiovascular health is defined by blood pressure as well as heart rate. Some diseases and illnesses include stroke and heart attacks. A heart attack is commonly mixed up with a stroke as they both include a clogged artery, however, they are different in their locations. A heart attack is a clogged coronary artery (located on the heart) where as a stroke is a clogged artery in the brain. (A stroke can also be caused by an aneurysm).

To promote cardiovascular health, an individual should consume healthy fat (HDL) and restrict their salt intake. Genetic make up and history also take a role in the individuals risk for heart disease. Other ways to prevent heart disease include exercise and low-stress levels. Although an individual may take all precautions to prevent heart disease, genetics may still make the individual more susceptible. A question on this matter that I had was just how important genetics are in increasing risk for heart diseases.

For me, this unit went very well. I enjoyed learning about the cardiovascular system and its functions and dysfunctions. Some success I felt I had in this unit was the ability to memorize the function and anatomy of the heart as well as where the items were located. I had unfortunately forgotten about the unit test until the day before. I felt as though I did very well for a last minute study session. What I learned from this experience is to get ALL of my work done before I allow myself to get side tracked or at the very least create a list of my homework and paste it on my desk.

Citations in order of appearance)
"The Organs of Cardiovascular System Organ System Anatomy."Wwwinvestinlibyaorg. N.p., 21 Sept. 2014. Web. 09 Nov. 2015.

Jill. "Heart Labeling Diagram." Pintrest. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.

Arzim, Zell. "Is There a Link between Heart Disease and Menopause."Linkedin. N.p., 19 Nov. 2014. Web. 9 Nov. 2015.

Blood Pressure Lab Analysis

Systole is the blood leaving the heart and entering the arteries. The arteries then carry blood to the lungs or other organs requiring oxygen. The opposite of systole is diastole which carries blood from the oxygen-requiring organs to the heart. We measure heart rate with a stethoscope or an index finger, and a clock. We use the finger or the stethoscope to find the heart rate and we count the number of beats per minute. When measuring heart rate, do not use your thumb. The reason behind not using your thumb is that it has an awkward beat of its own. We measure blood pressure with a cuff, rubber tubing, pressure gauge, and a pump as well as a stethoscope. We do this by pumping air into the cuff through the rubber tubing. The pressure gauge is to measure what the pressure inside of the cuff is. To use the cuff, place it around someones upper bicep. After doing this, add air to the cuff, inflating it to approximately 150. Then, slowly release the air from the tube by gently twisting the seal on the pump. Listen for when the blood starts to flow and when it does, record the pressure, it will be your numerator. Then as you continue to let air out, listen for when you can't hear the heart beat anymore, and the pressure when that occurs will be your denominator.

Unit 2 Review

Health is the balance of all aspects that effect an individual. These aspects include social, mental, physiological, and nutritional. In these regards, I am most certainly not healthy. I stay up way too long playing video games on the weekend, work on homework for way too long, and eat a horrible diet. My diet mainly consists of meat and carbs. This diet is extremely unhealthy I do not eat any fruits, vegetables, or milk products. If you view one of my previous posts where I track my diet for a weekend, you can see that I ate literally 0 fruit. At SHS there is a similar trend. Most of the students at SHS receive up to 6 hours a night and take 3 AP classes, making their lives extremely strenuous. Little do they know that the stress that they are causing themselves could lead to chronic illness, fatigue(which will eventually work against them when they try to stay up late) as well as affect the way they will respond to more stress.

To promote a greater wellness on campus would require a reduction in homework load. Another possible solution to deter students from taking these stress inducing classes would be to take away the grade bump given to the students for taking the AP class. If this grade bump is taken away then the students would have no desire to take the class unless they were genuinely interested.

Some essential themes and essential understandings from this unit include:
- Sleep is necessary for a balanced life
- A healthy diet keeps the body from becoming hormonally imbalanced and provides nutrients to grow up healthy
- Stress needs to be balanced otherwise you will end up hurting yourself in the long run
- One hormone imbalanced will lead to more becoming imbalanced

Some things that I do not fully understand is why I get so tired earlier and earlier in the day. I am constantly nodding off in classes and such. I believe it to be the fact that my diet is not optimal for my work load and that I changed my sleeping schedule while in Costa Rica. Academically I do not understand why our body needs sleep and why we dream.

To succeed in the next unit I will not go on a trip to Costa Rica and fall behind in all of my classes.

A profession that would match this unit would be a Nutritionist.

Health goals) Gain muscle mass, eat a healthier diet, get more sleep
Actions I will take) Sleep when my body tells me to, eat more fruit
A healthy life is important to me because I want to live as long as possible.
I will know I have reached my goals when I sleep for at least 8 hours a day and eat one fruit a day for a month.

Health Collage

To me, health is the overall well being of a person, mentally, physically, and socially. For me, the pillar I am strongest at would be the exercise pillar. I say this because I work out every other day and play water polo every day. The pillars I need to improve most on would be both the sleep and stress pillar. I need to improve in these pillars because I am always getting less than 8 hours of sleep (6 if I'm really lucky) and I can never seem to just let a mistake I made go. In regards to health I really want to learn more about how the body functions based off of a well balanced life vs a unbalanced life and compare the two.

Laughter Presentation: Reflection

The reason I chose this topic was because I wanted to make people feel better and enjoy their experience during the Monday Wellness assignment. I soon found that laughter would be the perfect topic to use for my Monday Wellness as laughter would cheer up the class and took a major role in my everyday life. My whole goal with choosing the topic was to make the class’s  Monday better. When I chose this topic, I expected there to be only mental health benefits. However, as I researched the function of laughter I soon found that it took a far greater role. This role was, in summary, to keep our hormones in balance. Finding out that laughter was a hormonal buffer was probably the most interesting fact I found during my research.

Laughter connects to our unit in health in many ways. For instance, I found that laughter affects the main three healths in our body: mental, physical, and social. As I said earlier though, laughter's most notable role in our body is a hormonal buffer. By this I mean that if there is more cortisol in our blood stream, laughter will help to lower the secretion of this hormone. By lowering the amount of cortisol in the blood stream, blood vessels can dilate and pump more oxygen to the organs.  You may think that cortisol is just one hormone and doesn’t control much. However, during my research of laughter, I also researched the vast effects of cortisol on the human body and other hormones as well. For example, cortisol not only affects the amount of stress we feel but also affects the size of blood vessels in the cardiovascular system. Laughter not only affects cortisol levels, but beta-endorphins as well. These beta endorphins are neurohormones that help us to perceive pain. Essentially, laughter helps us to reduce pain. The way laughter affects mental health is in how we deal with stress. Laughter has been shown to help improve conditions of post traumatic stress disorder. Socially, laughter helps us to make a social tension reliever. These are just some of the many incredible benefits of laughter.

If I were to rate myself on a one to ten grading scale I would probably grade myself as a 9.5. I would give myself this grade because I was the first one of my class to present and did two people’s worth of work in the same amount of time, probably even less. Now that I think about it I probably should have gone last. Anyways, I feel as though my delivery of the speech could have been much better. I say this because I often slurred my words together and forgot certain aspects to my slides. If I were to do this assignment again I would likely partner up with someone so that I wouldn’t have to do all the work. Not only would having a partner during this project help workload wise, but would also help comfort me when it’s my turn to present. Ultimately, I believe that I did a fair job on the project, but I could have much better if I had more time, a partner, and sleep.

P.s. Other things that sparked my interest during this project included:

• the anatomy of the larynx and epiglottis
• the physiology of the larynx
• the hypothesis of how laughter developed during evolution
• how laughter affects humans in such a small (hormones) way, but has such a huge impact (relaxation of muscles).

Link to Presentation) https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/16ly_56PMxn4wImYWnlPQ-OGIFj68nsafMeMFp-KoqJI/edit#slide=id.g666b793a3_0_354

Unit 1 reflection

In unit one of anatomy and physiology, the class learned about the types of tissues that make up the body, the anatomical terms for locations on the body, as well as the organelles of the red blood cell. However, the major portion of time spent on this unit was the study of histology. Some of the common themes that we learned were that, the perspective of the one preforming the autopsy is the wrong one and that form fits function. The essential understanding of form fitting function is that if the form of something altered in any way, than the function will also be altered.

Through the process of several labs and video guides, I learned about histology, anatomical terms, and cellular organelles. During the histology portion of this unit we were able to look at several different types of tissues under a microscope. This lab helped me to understand the idea that each tissue is specialized in both form and function. The four main types of tissues were, nervous, muscular, epithelial, and connective.


 One the basis of anatomical terms I was able to identify the location of a wound or other mark on the body using anatomical terms thanks to the Anna the banana lab. The cell portion of the unit I had remembered from my previous years in biology. Thanks to the comprehensive video guides and lab, all information covered in the unit was understood.

To improve my learning experience I am considering drinking caffeine, not because the class is boring, but because I am almost always so tired from staying up really late and super sore from water polo. This unit relates most directly to a pathologist. A pathologist would need to know the way pathogens effect a tissue and how to combat its effects.

"      Animal Tissues." Everything Maths and Science. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Sept. 2015.

       9AP Chapter 40 - Animal Form and Function (basic)." Quia -. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Sept. 2015.

       Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 10 Sept. 2015.

Relate and Review: Tissue Lab

Today in class there were several types of tissue on display under several different microscopes. The lesson taught the class the different types of tissues and how to identify them based off of their look and key features. For example, the lesson included a piece of cardiac tissue that included the disks in between the muscle as well as the branches the tissue makes. The lesson also helped us to look for distinct differences between the tissue types. Examples of the variations in tissues we looked at includes the fibrous strands found in muscle tissue and the difference in patterns between regular and irregular connective tissue. To further the classes understanding of the material, this lab challenged the class to identify where the tissue was located and how its anatomy affected its function. For example, the neuron cells located in nervous tissue are specialized with axons to relay messages to the next cell where the standard red blood cell uses fatty acids to communicate. The axon is specialized in the way that it conducts electrical impulses away from the cell body.

Another example of a type of tissue being specialized for its location and anatomy would be the muscular tissue. The muscular tissue is broken into three categories, each based off of location, anatomy, and function. One of the most fascinating, in my opinion, would be the cardiac tissue. The cardiac tissue's function is based off its anatomy and location as such. The cardiac tissue is only located in the heart, making it a very specialized tissue. The purpose of the tissue is to contract, pumping blood through the hearts vessels as it does. The anatomical component that allows the tissue to contract are the small disks that are intertwined within the tissue.




Citations in order of appearance:

Graphic 1) "The Cell Diagram of a Neuron - Cell Diagram." Cell Diagram. N.p., 09 Apr. 2012. Web. 05 Sept. 2015.

Graphic 2) "Muscle and Nervous Tissues." - Jim Campbell. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Sept. 2015.

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Macrophage

The macrophage, classified as a multitude of tissues ranging from blood to bone marrow, can be found in the bone marrow of our skeletal system. After being formed in the bone marrow the macrophage is released into the blood stream. The macrophage does not have a defined form but is almost free flowing. However, its internal organelles look very similar to a red blood cells, containing lysosomes, mitochondria, a nucleus, and vesicles as well.




This cell has many functions, most of which deal with keeping the body in good health. However, the most notable function of this cell is to create a long term resistance to pathogens. The macrophage does this by engulfing a pathogen and ingesting it. After eating the pathogen, the macrophage produces a protein on the surface of its cell. This protein is called an antigen. After displaying this antigen, another cell from the immune system called a helper T-cell will identify the protein and send a message to the B-cell. The B-cell will then start producing more of the antigen to help to rid of the pathogen.


Mandal, Aananya. "Macrophage Function." News-Medical.net. News-Medical, 24 Mar. 2010. Web. 31 Aug. 2015.

"Macrophage | Cell." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 31 Aug. 2015.

"INTRACELLULAR EVASION OF THE CELL-MEDIATED RESPONSE." ParaSite. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Aug. 2015.

Bitter Sweet Synphony

In today's lab we tested various carbohydrates ranging from monosaccharides to polysaccharides. As my group and I tasted these carbohydrates we noticed that the more complex the sugar, the worse it tasted. This result was somewhat expected. Since we know that cellulose, a polysaccharide found in plant cell walls, tastes bitter and fructose, a monosaccharide used in fruit, tastes sweet, we can infer that with the more rings found in a carbohydrate, the more bitter it will taste. But what allows us to taste sweetness? What allows us to taste bitterness? Nervous cells located on the tongue allow us to taste both sweetness and bitterness. The taste we associate with sweetness is made from sugar, which is made of glucose and fructose. The reaction starts when the proteins on the tongue are altered, causing the nervous cells in the tongue to send a message to the brain. This message is the perception of taste. The same process occurs when we eat something sour.