Cold:
Some side effects of cold weather can put you at risk of a heart attack. “Cold weather acts as a vasoconstrictor, which means it narrows blood vessels” putting a person at risk of a heart attack. Some other severe things are hypothermia, a drop in the body’s core temperature which is less than 95*F. (A normal body temperature is between 97.7- 99.5) There is mild, moderate and severe hypothermia. Under 95 F your body starts to shut down. First, the body will send signals to the brain and then it will try to heat up properly trying to save the vital organs. But once “homeostasis” is interrupted from its stable condition, the body is now in danger.
Short Term:
People will get shivers when they get cold. A part of your brain called the “hypothalamus” gets cold. Not too cold just a little cold. Then a part of your brain makes your muscles shake. Your muscles are moving even though you are not running around. Your muscles shaking creates a lot of heat. you will not stop shivering until your insides get warm.
Facultative: For example, A person from Calfornia that is used to warm weather and their body has never been put through freezing temperature goes to Boston Massachusettes during winter, Their body had to adjust to the freezing cold.
Developmental Adaptation: People living in the Arctic maintain metabolic rates between 13 and 45 percent higher than people not living in the Artic This is an example of developmental adaptation.
Cultural: Are similar ways that will bring people together having the same interests, beliefs, and same clothing to stay warm.
4) Learning from each other from is huge. That is why we study history, to learn from the past, how to fix things that did not work in the past and try again in the present time and from good things that work. Even though they work, can we improve on that to make it better? I believe we can. computers are constantly being improved to work faster and smarter for us.
5) I can not use race as a variation of human adaptations. We are all the same on the inside just different colors on the exterior. We can use cultural identifications, and how humans adapt to certain climates and environmental situations.
Good description of cold stress and its dangers to the human body.
ReplyDeleteGood identification and explanation for your short-term and developmental adaptations.
You don't actually identify a facultative adaptation. These are described in the assignment submodule and an example is vasocontriction.
Yes, clothing can be an adaptation to cold stress. All clothing? Or specific kinds? More information needed here.
"Learning from each other from is huge. "
The question here was more specific: What is the benefit of trying to understand human variation using this approach? What concrete benefits can be the result? What can we do with the information we gain?
"We are all the same on the inside just different colors on the exterior."
While that is true, many of the variations we are studying are on the outside of our body..skin color, eye color, hair type, body shape, etc. So could that mean race IS useful?
To answer this question, you first need to explore what race actually is. Race is not based in biology but is a social construct, based in beliefs and preconceptions, and used only to categorize humans into groups based upon external physical features, much like organizing a box of crayons by color. Race does not *cause* adaptations like environmental stress do, and without that causal relationship, you can't use race to explain adaptations. Race has no explanatory value over human variation.
Great explanation on the stress related to living in cold climates. Your short term is quite interesting. I have never given it much thought as to why or how we shiver.
ReplyDeleteHello Carmen,
ReplyDeleteI contemplated doing my blog post on how we adapt to the environmental stresses of heat or cold as well. After reading your post I think that we learn more about human variation when studying how in different parts of a region, people have learned to adapt and have the DNA needed to survive in certain circumstances. By looking at the biological and physiological ways these people have learned to adapt to the environmental stresses they have been continuously exposed to. Once we have gained this information we can then track patterns to see if there have been any additional changes or a decline in the changes that have occurred to the environmental stress as well, it also teaches us that even if we look similar to someone on the outside it does not necessarily mean that we are the same.