Mid-Unit Summary

Throughout this unit concerning the circulatory system and the heart, we have been learning about the functions of the circulatory system, key organs and parts of the body used in the system, and how the system looks like in dysfunction and proper function. The first thing that we covered was a general overview on the parts of the heart and how blood goes through it. The heart has four chambers(the right/left atria, and the right/left ventricles), and the tricuspid and biscuspid valves lay between atria and ventricles, while the semilunar valves are located where the ventricles meet the pulmonary artery or aorta. 

A simple diagram of the heart

As for the transportation of blood, the deoxygenated blood first travels through the right atrium and right ventricle(passing through the tricuspid valve) before reaching the lungs to pick up more oxygen. The newly reoxygenated blood is then sent back to the heart through the left atrium and left ventricle(on its way past the bicuspid valve) to be sent throughout the body to be used. Electrical signals from the heart's nodal system motivate the heart to pump. Other parts of the circulatory system include the pulmonary arteries, pulmonary veins, aortic arch/trunk, common carotid artery, renal vein and artery, and mesentric arteries which connect the lungs, brain, kidneys, heart, small intestine, and large intestine to each other.

Blood vessels are another aspect of the circulatory system, and can be divided into the general terms of arteries, which carry blood away from the heart, and veins, which carry blood to the heart. Veins have one-way valves and store most of the blood volume in the body due to their thinner walls, while arteries are more elastic and contractile to force blood to the areas that need it.

Knowing the general anatomy and physiology of not just blood vessels, but the body in general, we can determine why something is not working in the proper way. Atherosclerosis, as seen from the reading, has the myth of being just clogged particles of fat, but in actuality is much more complicated than that, consisting of a plaque made up of our own inflammatory response entangled with lipoproteins(transporting LDL cholesterol throughout the body) that get stuck in the layers of the arterial wall. Inflammation, which may seem helpful when used for certain functions of the body, in this case is hugely detrimental to our health, illustrating how the natural processes of our body can work against us at times. Aneurysms, on the other hand, which can be just as problematic as atherosclerosis, are the excessive stretching of blood vessels to the point where the walls of those vessels become fragile, even to the point of bursting.

Inside blood vessels, blood, which is composed of cells and plasma, flows. There are three main types of blood cells: red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets, which all have their own purposes in fighting infections and transporting needed nutrients. Diseases such as leukemia, HIV/AIDs, and sickle cell anemia are all examples of dysfunction in the blood, demonstrating how important upkeep of our health is in preventing these diseases.

If there is something wrong with any any aspect of the circulatory system, that tends to lead up to having cardiovascular disease, which could be anything from a heart attack to a stroke. Heart attacks and strokes are often a result of atherosclerosis, which as mentioned before, starts with the consumption of too many foods rich in LDL, often referred to as "bad", cholesterol. Heart attacks are when the supply of blood to the myocardium becomes impaired to the point of killing off cells, and strokes are when the supply of blood to the brain gets cut off. With the risks of heart attacks including cardiac arrest, and strokes being permanent damage to mobility and self-sufficiency, people should be more motivated to prevent situations from ever reaching that point. As the reading "A Strike Against Stroke" points out, stroke should not be something that people should wait for to happen; choices like exercising more, consuming healthier fats rich in HDL as opposed to LDL, and decreasing the intakes of both sodium and alcohol can and will help with lowering the chances of getting a stroke, and people should choose to make these choices before it's too late.

Works Cited

Ma, Kelvin. Artery. Digital image. Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation Inc., 13 Aug. 2016. Web. 27 Oct. 2016.

Ma, Kelvin. Vein. Digital image. Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation Inc., 6 Oct. 2016. Web. 27 Oct. 2016.

Blood Pressure Lab

1. The systole is what produces the "lub" sound when listing to one's heartbeat, and are caused by the opening of the aortic and pulmonary valves, and the closing of the tricuspid and bicuspid valves. On the other hand, diastole is when the opposite happens, when the semilunar valves close and the atrioventricular valves open. Thus, systolic pressure is the pressure when the ventricles contract and diastolic pressure is the lowest pressure in the arteries before the next contraction of the ventricles.

2. Heart rate is measured by either one's hand or a stethoscope. You measure blood pressure by using a stethoscope with a sphymomanometer.

3. Using your thumb to measure pulse may mess up the counting of the other person's pulse, because it emits a pulse as well.

4. First, secure the sphymomanometer to the patient's arm. Stick the end of the stethocope underneath the band, slightly above the elbow, and make sure that the pump is securely closed before pumping the sphymomanometer until the pressure reaches about 150. Then, slowly twist the screw on the pump until air is being let out slowly, and take notice of the number at which you can hear the heartbeat, which is the systolic pressure. The second number you should include would be when you can no longer hear the heart beating is the diastolic pressure.

Heart Chalk Walk

For this assignment, we were tasked with drawing a human heart out of chalk in the hallways. We then walked through the heart, listing out the specific route that blood takes when it travels through the heart and body, as shown by the video below. Deoxygenated blood first enters through the superior and inferior vena cava, coming from the body where the oxygen was last dropped off. These veins lead right into the right atrium, and then pass through the tricuspid valve to get to the right ventricle. The right ventricle then pumps blood back out through the pulmonary valve into the pulmonary artery, where the blood is sent immediately to the lungs to pluck up more oxygen. The newly oxygenated blood then travels from the lung to the pulmonary veins, which opens up to the left atrium. Oxygenated blood is pumped through the bicuspid valve to the left ventricle, where it is then pumped out through aortic valve and aorta to reach parts of the body where oxygen is necessary. The cycle then repeats itself over and over again, picking up and dropping oxygen throughout the body. 

Unit 2 Reflection

Themes and Essential Understandings

FAIL. Digital image. Flickr. Yahoo, 17 Oct. 2009. Web. 10 Oct. 2016.

Health is the culmination of a person's nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress, and social habits, which all collaborate to determine that person's overall level of wellness. In terms of my own health, I feel that I am definitely not reaching my highest potential, and a number of things can be done to improve my general health. The people at SHS, students especially, are also not the healthiest, due to the massive amount of stress that I know that people feel concerning grades and the subsequent lack of sleep that students are resorted to adopting in order to do all the things they want to. Things that could be done to promote healthier lifestyles of the people on campus would be reducing stress given to students by giving out less "busywork" to do at home and providing time before tests or at the beginning of class for students to meditate and relax before doing whatever they need to do. The essential takeaways from this unit were that good health is entirely dependent on the care that a person has in ensuring that their nutrition, sleep, stress levels, exercise, and social interactions are sufficient/in balance, and that a deficiency in any of these categories could lead to a worse quality of life. Overall, things that I gleaned from this unit were the importance of maintaining the 5 Pillars of Health, and the consequences that one can face when some of the needs for each category aren't met. For example, a key to regulating nutrition is incorporating enough varied nutrients in one's diet, whilst still keeping in check the excess consumption of nutrients such as carbohydrates, which could eventually lead to insulin resistance and even diabetes.

Falcon Market

Nutritional Analysis

 Some things that I think I still do not fully understand after this unit are the final calculations of the Nutrition Analysis; somehow the numbers that I calculated for how many calories that I should be eating per day did not match up with the numbers I calculated for the Falcon Market.

In the next unit, I hope to not only try and be more active and regular in my studying, so that studying for the unit test isn't put off until the last moment, but also to to apply things that I have learned in this unit to any topics that we may learn about in the future.

Being a chiropractor was one occupation that I could find relating to this unit. The job description entails     using specific techniques to stimulate spinal movement and improve certain bodily functions without the use of drugs; however, the reason why I chose to relate this career to our unit is that it not only focuses on the physiology of the body, but also apparently the dietary/nutritional aspects of health. 

After the conclusion of this unit, the entire class filled out a Goals Sheet for health as a basis for what we want to accomplish in terms of bettering our health individually.

Sleep Diary

From this Sleep Diary assignment, I was able to discern much more than the average times that I woke up an slept at. After recording several pieces of data for 6 days(we started on a Wednesday) I calculated averages for how much I slept at night, how many times that I woke up at night, number of caffeinated beverages I had throughout the week as well, and the results surprised me. On average, I had about 8 hours of sleep throughout the week, which was more than I was expecting; I usually went to bed at 12:15, no matter what part of the week it was, and woke up at 8:00 on average, considering that I had a few free firsts on school days. As I expected, on typical schools days where I had only slept for 7 hours or less, my overall energy levels were slow to reach peak alertness, and crashed much sooner than on days such as Saturday, where the added hours to my sleep schedule kept me wide awake into times when I would have been way drowsier otherwise. Seeing the effects of my sleep on my overall productivity and ability to concentrate has helped convince me of the extreme importance that sleep has on our health. Even a few hours missing from my sleep schedule, which I previously through nothing of, really affected me more than I thought in terms of sleepiness during the day, and led to me having to take short naps during the day when I could have been doing more productive things such as homework.