Sheep Heart Vivisection

Q.1 The pericardium's purpose is to protect and anchor the heart where it is.
Q.2 Arteries have thicker walls than veins do. Veins have valves to prevent back-flow of blood.
Q.3 The function of the auricle is to expand the blood capacity of the atrium.
Q.4 The vacuum sealing of our heart collapsed the atria, but we could still see that the atria are larger than the ventricle.
Q.6 Anchoring of the heart is important because it keeps the heart in place so it isn't damaged during movement.
Q.8 The function of the semilunar valves is to prevent backflow from the ventricles to the aorta and pulmonary trunk.
Q.9 With valve disease on the right side of the heart, the swelling of feet and ankles is due to blood pooling in the feet because there is nothing to prevent back-flow so gravity will push the blood. If valve disease occurs on the left side of the heart, the complications would be a decrease in blood flow and a lack of oxygen reaching the body.

Q.11 The right side of the heart is significantly smaller than the left side because the left side needs more muscle to pump the blood through the body.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cruHmQiTAA&feature=youtu.be 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cruHmQiTAA&feature=youtu.be

Monday Wellness Reflection

This past Monday, Cole and I had done our Monday Wellness presentation on the benefits and process of weightlifting. This is a very important topic for me because as an athlete and someone interested in going into an athletic profession in the future, I do a fair amount of lifting throughout the year. Since Cole also lifts for baseball, we thought this topic would be something we would be able to teach pretty easily. We could tell that only a few people in class actually did lift, so we thought it would be pretty eye opening for people to see the benefits and science behind lifting. Although that may have been wishful thinking considering the physical activity that early on a Monday was not very appreciated by my fellow classmates.

I learned a lot researching this topic. Going in I only knew what the benefits of weightlifting were and how it affected the body. I didn’t know the science behind how the muscles grow and why they do it. Hypertrophy was the most interesting thing I learned about because it answered most of my questions concerning how muscles grow. I knew that when the muscle got stronger, it got bigger, but I didn’t realize that it was the growth of the fibers not just more fibers being created.

Our topic is very important for health and wellness because it is one of the main ways that people stay in shape. Exercise is one of the pillars of health we learned about in the previous unit. Because weightlifting is so strenuous, it causes the body to work hard, which means it’s using calories and fat stores, ultimately leading to an increase in muscle and a decrease in fat. Lifting can help increase self esteem and relieve stress. It also reduces the risk of colon cancer just like everything else we have learned about this semester.

I would give myself an 8 on this project. I felt that I stuttered a lot during my parts of the presentation and that my activity was not very effective in teaching my classmates about weightlifting. I also think that our project didn’t go into the science of weightlifting as much as it could have. I do however believe that my memes were on point and should receive props for an entertaining powerpoint. I feel that they were essential in keeping the other students engaged and active during the presentation. I think that everyone had an enjoyable experience during our presentation and even though it may not have had a lot of new information, it at least wasn’t very repetative.

I feel like our topic was too general and that made it hard to figure out what to make specific in our presentation. We should’ve chosen a particular lift or gone into more depth about crossfit something like that, but what’s done is done.

On another note, how do people even get colon cancer when going everyday activities helps prevent it?

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Mh2LOkVEhZiiQu3sMHM4_epiJLxrHj5-7rYgCx-0kII/edit?usp=sharing

The Blood Pressure is Too Damn High

The systole pressure is the result of the contraction of the ventricles. It is a higher number than the diastolic pressure which is measured from the ventricle relaxing from the contraction. The equipment used to measure  heart rate is the index and middle finger or the stethoscope. To measure blood pressure a stethoscope and a sphygmomanometer. The problem with using the thumb to measure pulse is that the thumb has its own pulse that would interfere with the measurement. To use a sphygomomanometer take the side with the tubes running out of it and have that running down the arm. Then wrap the sphygomomanometer around the upper bicep so that there is enough space to place the stethoscope on the artery.

I Aint Got No type. Good Health is the Only Thing That I Like

Health is the balance between pheromones and the five pillars of health; nutrition, exercise, social, sleep, and stress. When it comes to myself, I believe that my lifestyle is pretty healthy except for my nutrition. I eat out a lot and eat generally large portions of protein and small amounts of fruits and vegetables. Other than that, I get around 7 hours of sleep and try to lead an unstressful lifestyle.

Here at SHS I feel that most don't have healthy amounts of stress and get very little amounts of sleep. A way to help make students more healthy would be to have teachers communicate and try to limit the amount of things that conflict during the week like having a test in 2 different classes on the same day.

The main theme of this unit is how to lead a healthy life. How different aspects of life affect one's overall health. Not everyone has the same standards for health and that you know your own health more than anyone else and should be able to make decisions on how you live your life. In this unit, I learned specifically how pheromones work in the body and how some diseases happen when they don't function how they are supposed to.

Something I still don't fully understand in the unit is what is something healthy to eat? What exactly is bad besides trans fat-y foods? What is a healthy diet?

Next chapter I will try my best to make sure that I keep my notebook up to date because doing it before class is awful.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/weight-gain-possibly-tied-to-later-bedtimes/?ref=health
This article describes the effect of how sleep affects the weight of adolescence.

My health goals for after this football season is to lose 25lbs. I will work to eat more vegetables and fruits while keeping up on my weightlifting. A healthy life is important to me because I want to live a long life. I know when I have reached my goal when I weigh less then 175lbs.

"My stomach had the rumblies... that only hands could satisfy" - Carl

Throughout the Falcon Market lab, we looked at the different amounts of trans fat and saturated fat in common foods and drinks that average people eat every day. After going over the portions of what we should eat and how much of specific minerals like sodium to intake, we were given the assignment to record what we eat for 3 days. The results are shown below.

 Out of the 3 days, I had eaten barely any fruits and only about 50% of the daily recommended amounts of vegetables. I also had consumed almost twice the amount of sodium I should have all 3 days. To balance out my diet, I should eat a banana or apple for breakfast in the morning because I almost never eat breakfast and this would help reach my daily fruit need. I should also cut down on the number of times I eat out a week too or at least replace my normal food choices with more healthy alternatives like sushi or salads.

If I were to coach someone on health and nutrition, I would definitely tell them to do a lot of grilling, and BBQing. I find that BBQs are one of the best times to get all of the basic food groups taken care of while also enjoying a meal with friends and family. Most BBQs include a salad, hamburgers, hot dogs or even fish, beans, and fruits to tie you over till the meal is ready.

Healthy. Hearty, Happy. Honey Nut Cheerios

To me, health isn't always a big consideration in my life. I don;t always eat well, I don;t get nearly the amount of sleep I should be, but one thing I always do, is making sure I can handle stress. Out of all the pillars of health, dealing with stress is my strongest because I have seen how stress can change people. I have been improving the amount of exercise I get and keeping myself active, preparing for the end of my football career, but I need to work on my nutrition next. It's something I have been doing this year, eating more vegetables, brown rice, chicken and lean meat, drinking more water, attempting to limit the amount of soda I drink (which is quite hard when going off campus for lunch). I want to learn more about how to recover from injuries quickly and healthily, how to best do the reconditioning process. That's something that is important to me especially because my body is different from others. I have extremely flexible joints and almost a lack of certain connective tissues.

Unit 1 Reflection

This unit was about the basic structure of the anatomy of the body, more specifically
the cells that make up the major portions of the body. There were a lot of things I learned that I had forgotten since biology freshman year, like the different functions of the organelles. Some of the essential things we learned in this unit, like how to describe the location of injuries and things of interest in or on the body, I'm still a little shaky on. I also am not 100% certain on the visual differences between the 4 cell types we learned about. But I did learn how to use the resources that are given to us, better and how the shape of a cell can often show its function.

In the next unit, I plan on staying on top of studying and going over my notes at least 5 mins a night to raise my temp check grades. But one fo the things that will also help me in the next units, is that I am also taking sports med, so I am getting almost double the instruction and review on the body. A very important job that is majorly dependent on anatomy and physiology is Athletic Training. Being an athlete myself, the Schools athletic trainer, Liz, has been a necessary part of my athletic career, especially with the number of injuries that I seem to obtain throughout my sports seasons.

"Cardiac Muscle with Intercalated Disks." Histology Atlas. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 
     Sept. 2015. <http://www2.palomar.edu/users/ggushansky/histology/ 
     index.htm>. 

"Muscle Cells." Bloguez. Bloguez, 17 Feb. 2011. Web. 8 Sept. 2015. 
     <http://picfind1.bloguez.com/picfind1/page2487/>. 

photo courtesy Matt Zung's Mom

Tissue Lab Review

In this lab, I learned the different shapes and sizes of different cells in the body. I have only really looked at cells from a mouth swab, so seeing how even though all the cells in the body started as a small collection of cells, become so diverse. It was cool how cells from the same tissue type were similar but also had enough differences that you couldn't tell without knowing the tissue type prior. The size and shape of the cells helped to figure out the function of what the cells composed. For example, the cells in the blood smear slide were very populated but weren't touching to allow them to flow through the blood stream without clogging anything up. Or like how the lung tissue was shaped in an almost tubular fashion to allow oxygen to flow through the cells.

My poor blood cell drawing

My even worse lung cell drawing

Why Are We Not Funding This? - Peter Griffin

     Stem cell research has been a controversial topic in the world, mainly due to the high importance of embryos to the research on, but its potential to the world is great, from regrowing limbs, to curing fatal diseases, stem cells could do almost anything. The reason stem cells could do anything is because unlike the rest of the cells in the human body, stem cells are not specialized but can create any other cell in the body. Because of their different properties, stem cells are their own classification with the different types of stem cells under the general banner of stem cells. Because stem cells can have different forms during different parts of human life, their size and shape can't be defined. Stem cells have all the same organelles as the other cells in the body.

Stem Cell Basics: Introduction. In Stem Cell Information [World Wide Website]. Bethesda, MD: National Institutes of               Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2015 [cited Sunday, August 30, 2015] Available at                               <http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/pages/basics1.aspx>

ExteremTech. Ziff Davis, 8 July 2014. Web. 30 Aug. 2015. 
     <http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/ 
     185959-woman-grows-a-nose-on-her-spine-after-experimental-stem-cell-treatment-goe 
     s-awry>. 
"Eukaryotic Cell Organelles." Real Life Science. WorldPress, 23 Sept. 2014. Web. 
     30 Aug. 2015. <http://reellifescience.com/2014/09/23/ 
     exploring-the-cell-by-dr-jessica-hayes/#more-736>. 

WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYW

In the Sweetness Lab, out of the 8 different carbohydrates that we tested, only 3 of them; the sucrose, glucose, and fructose tasted sweet; while the rest; galactose, maltose, lactose, starch, and cellulose; were very bitter. The 3 that tasted sweet were all monosaccharides, while the ones that tasted the most bitter/horrible, were polysaccharides. This shows that the smaller structures were sweeter than the larger structures. Every day I consume at least 3 or more of these carbohydrates, like the lactose in milk, the fructose in Gatorade, and cellulose in vegetables.

According to an article written by Veronique Greenwood for BBC, the reason that things taste sweet may not be the amount of sugars that are in the object, but rather the concentration of 7 volatiles. The leading scientist behind this discovery, Linda Bartoshuk, and her team had tested a wide variety of heirloom tomatoes to see how their tastes fit with the amount of sugars and volatiles they contained. They also tested blueberries and strawberries, of which strawberries are sweeter but have less sugar than blueberries. This is because strawberries have more than 30 volatiles and blueberries have very few. 
Greenwood, Veronique. "The Real Reason Sweet Tastes." BBC. N.p., 11 June 2015. 
     Web. 30 Aug. 2015. <http://www.bbc.com/future/story/ 
     20150610-the-smells-that-make-sweet-sweeter>.