Lab

1. This lab is to gather information the fluctuations are body rates goes through during different activities.

2. During this activity I expect to see my blood pressure and respiatory rates to soar with activity because I am out of shape. I expect my rates when active to be somewhat close together.

3. The materials I will be using are a blood pressure monitor I bought at Walgreens and my kids trampoline and jump rope to get my heart rate up.

4. see chart above

5. My rates pretty much did what I expected of them. The trampoline was the most fun and I think that's why my rates were higher there.

6. Not quite sure I was using my cuff properly.

7. Most of my rates were somewhat similar I think due to the activities I did.

What is food?

I read the essay about slowfood usa. While I think it's a great idea to slow down and make more things from scratch the reality of the situation is that most people are to busy to do this. Americans are on the go constantly so to sit home and make things from scratch everyday would never work..well, maybe if you are a stay at home mother. Something that I have read before although not mentioned in this article would be to start a group where it follows somewhat the idea of slow food usa but, it's more of a group effort. If you were to get seven friends to make a home cooked meal for seven families you could essentialy have a home cooked meal every night by trading meals with the other members. Not only would that give families the opportunity to eat better it's also a bonding moment with friends and families and a chance to experience different types of foods you yourself might not normally make.

Nutrition Blog

Today was a bad day for me to keep track of my eating habits. I have been working on homework all day and a little depressed because of a tiff with my boyfriend so I didn't really eat much. But, I did post what I had to eat today.
-How healthy a daily diet do you think this is? Why?
This diet is not healthy at all. As I stated before today was a somewhat stressful and sad day so I didn't take the time to eat. I definelty ingested a bunch of empty calories.
-What would you change about this day's eating, if anything?
I would eat and I would try to make sure that I ate the recommended servings in each of the food groups.
-Do you find this kind of nutritional tracking helpful? Why or why not?
I actually find this kind of tracking helpful. It would be interesting to do this for a week and find out where my weaknesses are on the food pyramid.

Unit 2 Section 2

In this section we learned about nutrition and the effects it can have on the body. Some of the topics I will be reviewing are digestion and glucose and diet.

Digestion is the bodies way of mechanically (cutting and chewing) and chemically breaks down food in order for our body to use it. Digestion is a multi-stage process in the digestive system. It usually takes place in for differents steps:

1. ingesting the food

2. mechanical and chemical digestion

3. absorbtion; where our body absords the nutrients it needs

4. egestion; removal of the undigested food by means of defecation.

Glucose is a sugar the body uses for energy. We get glucose through carbohydrates. Body cells use fatty acids as an energy source the brain requires glucose. Highly refined foods such as white bread, cookies, etc have a high glycemic index which could cause the blood glucose level to rise rapidly and causing the pancreas to produce and overload of inculin to bring it back under control.

When we hear the word diet most people associate it with trying to lose weight. That's not the case here. When I refer to diet I am meaning your overall eating pattern and habits. It has been proven that your diet can have adverse effects on your health. A vitamin D deficency can cause bowing of the legs, lacking in vitamin B can cause dermatitis and a diet deficent in vitamin C can cause your gums to bleed.

Blood Pressure Lab

Immunity and Microbes

Artifical Immunity via a vaccination.


Immunity (medical), a state of having sufficient biological defenses to avoid infection, disease, or other unwanted biological invasion, and is related to the functions of the immune system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immunity)

There are two types of immunity. Active immunity and passive immunity. Active immunity is when our body naturally creates an immunity to a disease or illness. Passive immunity is when we transfer antibodies or immune cells to fight a disease.

Some disorders of the immune system area autoimmune disease which is were our body attacks it's own cells. The cause for this disease is unknown. There's multiple sclerosis which is when the T cells attack the myelin sheath of nerve fibers. When a person has a immune deficency, their body is unable to protect itself from disease. AIDS is probably one of the most know and most feared immune deficiancy disease. Due to their weekend immune system most AIDS patients die due to secondary infections or cancer.

MICROBES

Microbes are microscopic organisms, such as bacteria. Microbes can live everywhere, even on inanimate objects. Microbes aren't always harmful infact the can be useful to us. Many drugs and foods that we eat/use contain bacteria in them.

Our body has three lines of defense to help keep harmful bacteria away. They are:

1. Our skin and mucous acts as a barrier to keep bacteria out.
2. Our white blood cells kick in to fight infection if bacteria does get in.
3. We have specific defenses that overcome an infection by killing the disease causing agent.

Blood

"The human body contains about 5 liters of blood, and the heart pumps this amount of blood with every beat! " (Sylvia Mader; Human biology 10e)

Blood supplies the tissues with oxygen, supplies nutrients, removes waste, clots when the body is injured, it serves as a messaging system, it regulates the bodies ph and body temperature.

Blood is a tissue therefore it contains cells and cell fragments. These fragments are suspended in plasma. The cells and the cell fragments make what is called formed elements. Formed elements contain red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. They are formed in red bone marrow. Blood contains plasma which is the liquid that carries substances in the blood.

Red blood cells transport oxygen. They don't have a nucleus and instead have hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is the pigment that makes red blood cells and blood red. Each hemoglobin molecule can transport 4 molecules of oxygen. Each red blood cell contains approximately 280 million hemoglobin molecules.

Some common disorders associated with red blood cells are anemia, which is when you red blood count is low. Some symptoms of this would be fatigue, lack of energy, etc. A hereditary red blood cell disorder is sickle cell disease. This is when the person's red blood cells are sickle shaped and rupture as they pass through the capillaries.

White blood cells are the ones that helps our body to naturally fight off infection and disease. A lot of times doctors are able to tell there is some sort of infection in your body just due to the white blood cell count. White blood cells are larger than red blood cells and contain a nucleus. There are two classifications for white blood cells. They are granular leukocytes and agranular leukocytes. They are called this because some have noticeable granules and some don't. The granual leukocytes are neutrophils which account for 50 - 70 % of all white blood cells. They are usually the first ones to respond to a bacterial infection. Then there's the eosinophils which contain a bilobed nucleus. They don't quite know the function of this. They do know that if you have a parasite or an allergic reaction they reproduce quickly. The last of the granular leukocytes is the basophils. This cell releases a histamine when you have an allergic reaction. The histamine dilates your blood vessels, but cuts off the air tubes that lead to the lungs.

The agranular leukocytes are lymphocytes and monocytes. Lymphocytes are 25 - 35% of white blood cells. They are responisble for specific immunity to certain pathogens and toxins. Lymphocytes are called T cells and B cells. The AIDS virus attacks the T-cells. Then you have monocytes they are the largest of the white blood cells. They live in the tissue and become dendritic cells which work as a "vacuum cleaner" to clean up cellular debris.

Some disorders associated with white blood cells are sever combined immunodeficency disease which is when the stem cells lack an enzyme therefore the body can not fight of any infections. There is also leukemia which is caused by uncontrollable white blood cell proliferation.