COLD
- The body's temperature is regulated, and will react if the outside temperature changes. The body must respond to weather changes in order to survive. For example, if a person falls into an icy pond, the body pulls the blood to important organs to try and warm the body up again. Essentially, any minor change can disrupt the body's homeostasis. Cold weather can cause the blood vessels in certain parts of your body to constrict. The homeostasis is disrupted because now it is harder for oxygenated blood to flow to certain parts of the body. Consequently, the body's defenses are slowed down. So while the body is trying to adjust to the cold weather, germs are then able to flourish for a moment and that causes the body to get sick. There are four different adaptions that environmental stresses known as:
- Short Term - is a bodily function that is responding to early hypothermia or simply just feeling cold. When the bodies temperature drops, the shivering reflex is triggered which reacts to maintain homeostasis. Muscle groups around the vital organs begin to shake in small movements, creating warmth by expanding energy. Increased muscular activity results in the generation of heat.
- Facultative - An example of a facultative adaptation would be, increasing your bodies metabolic rate. By doing things that force our body to boost metabolism, warmth is produced within our body. Examples: drinking water, eating healthy protein snacks, moving around, anything that will increase metabolism.
- Developmental - In colder climates, humans tend to have more body fat, and more body mass due to the weather conditions. Eating more food, causes their bodies to stay warm and insulated.
- Cultural - Different cultures deal with the cold in a variety of ways in order to stay warm. Warmer layered clothing can be used to insulate and trap heat, home appliances, such as heaters and indoor fires. Alcohol is used in some cultures to keep their body temperatures up temporarily.
- There are many benefits when studying "Human Variation". First, we understand the use of the word "race", which has more to do with human variation, rather that the color of a person's skin or their nationality. Secondly, the information can be useful to anyone who would like to relocate to a more colder region. They would have a better understanding of how to deal with the colder climate and also the people who live in these areas.
Great images and great formatting! It helps the reader to open a post that invites you in to enjoy it.
ReplyDeleteThe body does respond to extreme cold by pulling body warmth into the core to keep vital organs functioning. Reflexes and functions do slow down as the extremities start to freeze and the bodies defenses do start to decline, which secondarily make us more susceptible to illnesses, but the primary danger of cold stress is the freezing of extremities (frostbite), the shutting down vital organs as temperatures continue to decline, and ultimately death. Those are the things that can be directlly attributed to cold temperatures. The others are secondary and indirect.
Good description of your short term and facultative traits. Yes, extra body weight helps as a developmental trait (this could be facultative as well), but why? It does act as insulation around the torso, but you also see reduced length of the limbs. This shorter, squatter body shape reduces body surface area, reducing the loss of heat through the skin so it can be retained in the body core. This is related to Bergmann & Allen's rules. Make sure you check that out.
Good description on the cultural adaptation.
"Race is simply a way to categorize a population by several different affiliations."
Yes, that is correct, but you seem to want to redefine race to correct the problems with its use. You can't do that! It is what it is. So if you can't change the definition of race or the way it subjectively categorizes humans by their external appearance, is it really all that useful? Why not just use the adaptive approach which explains "why" human variation exists and ignore "race" and the bias and problems that come with it?
Hey Josh great post! I liked your take on the body's adaptations to cold as opposed to my post which was about heat. Your post was very informative and your pictures really added to the information being given. It was really interesting to learn that the body reacts to cold by shivering, I never knew this was an actual reaction to cold! Overall nice job! :)
ReplyDeleteI didn't know alcohol was used for heat. That is something new to be and probably because it's something that is not done in my culture. And I didn't know in colder places people tend to be more fat. So I wonder if the people who are more prone to being more fat is because they are made to adapt in colder climates.
ReplyDeleteAlcohol ISN'T used for heat. It is actually maladaptive to drink alcohol when you are cold since it can actually drop your body temperature a bit.
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