The environmental stress I chose is
cold climate. When homeostasis is being disturbed, it can cause environmental
stress that negatively affects the life of humans. Ways that negatively affect
humans are by causing harm to their health.
The Body begins by shivering to maintain homeostasis, but shivering can
be uncomfortable and get annoying after a while. When the body is in the process of cooling
down it’s a critical part, it can result in injures such as non-freezing,
Frostbite, or hypothermia which can be deadly. Vasoconstriction, which narrows the blood
vessels also can be considered a natural response from your body to keep your
body warm, but can also cause damage if it’s permanent. Shivering is a
short-term adaption that we as humans use when confronted with cold
climate. Our bodies begin to shake
during cold climate to try to warm the body back up; our body’s muscles have
spasms that help to generate heat for a short period of time. A Facultative
adaption that humans react to the cold climate is vasoconstriction. When the
blood vessels constrict, the flow of blood is restricted, therefore retaining
body heat. The development adaptation that humans use in response to cold
climate is the body, shape and size. People that live in cold climates, have a
tendency to be over weight to keep in their body heat. When the fat is distributed around human’s mid
section it tend to keep the vital organs warmer and uses the fat for
energy. Culture adaptation that we see
in humans that live in cold climates is their clothing. The humans that decide to reside in cold
climates use heavy clothing, such as jackets, pants, scarfs, and gloves. When studying human variation there are many
beneficial outcomes, for instance we get to see how people that have adapted to
the cold could survive, when being compared to someone who isn’t. Adaptation of a group to there surroundings
physically inorder for them to survive become what I consider a race.
Missing images?
ReplyDelete"Ways that negatively affect humans are by causing harm to their health."
Can you offer more specific negative affects that apply to cold stress? How does cold stress hurt the human body?
Good job on the description of shivering as a short term adaptation.
Vasoconstriction is sometimes identified as a facultative adaptation, but it really acts in the short term. It can only be maintained for a short time without risking tissue death. The body eventually switches to alternating vasoconstriction/vasodilation, closing off vessels to maintain body core warmth but occasionally opening them to allow the extremities to receive oxygen and nutrients. Even this doesn't last long, but is more long term than simple vasoconstriction.
Is 'overweight' a good term to use in describing the developmental trait? Perhaps a better way to describe this is to explain it in terms of it's adaptive benefit. Individuals in colder climates have developed a shorter, wider body shape to help retain body heat in the body core, as per Bergmann & Allen's rules. No culturally based judgement, just scientific description.
Good description of the cultural adaptations.
So you get to udnerstand how people adapt to the cold... then what? What can you do with this information? How is the adaptive approach useful beyond just understanding the adaptations?
" Adaptation of a group to there surroundings physically inorder for them to survive become what I consider a race."
That doesn't answer the question. How can you use race to better understand human variation... or is that even possible? Race is a social construct, subject to cultural biases and misconceptions. It is highly variable across cultures. So how can you use something so subjective to understand human variation? Is there a causal relationship between race and variation? Does race cause variation like the environment does? If not, how can you use race to explain variation?
Hello, Erick,
ReplyDeletei enjoyed reading your post and i found it very interesting why we shiver. i always knew it was helping our body in some way but i never knew it was to try and warm us back up! that is cool that our body can do that!