The environmental stress that I have chosen is heat. Heat
can be very stressful especially if your put in a situation where you have to
work in hot conditions. It would make it hard for you to fully perform your
duties or even concentrate. For example your body would begin to sweat which is
a sign that your body is trying to cool down. Maybe even while taking a test in
a cold room. Your body begins to shiver because your body is trying to produce
heat. I think affects us both physically and emotionally. Heat affects are body
from having its normal internal body temperature.
Cultural Adaption
A. People tend to stay indoors until the sun
has gone down and it’s not so hot outside. It is hotter in the beginning of the
day rather than later, plus there is more shade where people could cool off.
B. Another way people have adapted to heat is to wear
certain clothing. People can now where shorts, muscle shirts or tank top
shirts, hats, sandals and glasses. This type of clothing really cools off the
body due to all the openings in the clothing.
C. A very important
thing to consider when dealing with heat is your diet. The main thing to have
on those hot days is a lot of water which also replenishes you when you’re
losing all that sweat. You can eat cold foods especially ice cream which you’ll
see a lot of people doing on hot days to cool off.
D. And finally another way people have adapted to heat is to
move out of that area they live or the current environment they are in and move
to another state or environment which is cooler.
I think the benefits of studying human variation from environments
helps us find out how people around the world adapt to a certain environmental
stresses. It helps better understand how and what they do to easily adapt to
all types of environments. This is very beneficial and we could use it for
other cultures who need help adapting or need ideas.
In my opinion I think race wouldn’t help understand the different
types of variations because I think the environment shapes us. I think the environment
plays a bigger a role and is more important and it’s what shapes the humans
today. Our traits are formed by how we are adapt to the current environment.
I will enhance your comments on the danger of working in high heat conditions by adding that when one does find themselves in that situation, the reason it is so dangerous is because surface blood vessels get bigger and the pulse rate goes up. This action puts a strain on your heart and circulatory system. If you have a weak heart, you are more likely to suffer from stroke or perhaps even a heart attack. It is important that measures are taking to help cool the body down by (1) allowing your body to sweat and (2) replacing your electrolites so that the blood vessels do not have to work so hard. Eventually, I believe that barring any weak heart condition, people can adapt to the heat when exposed on a regular basis.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in high school I trained horses. As you may imagine, this particular endeavor is done outside, during the day. Imagine being outside, performing physically strenuous work in July when the weather is 105 degrees.
ReplyDeleteI wore long sleeved cotton shirts and pants. It actually kept me much cooler than exposing my skin directly to the sun for hours at a time. It also kept me much more hydrated, since sweat did not have the chance to evaporate off at a very fast pace due to the barrier created by my clothing.
If you take a drive up the 126 or the 5 into central California and see farm workers during the day you will see the same thing...they are covered from head to toe to protect them from the sun. Anyone who works outside, day after day in the sun, eventually learns this trick.
Taking clothes off may provide a temporary relief, but that only lasts for so long before it becomes a painfully bad idea. Clothing is protection...perhaps the best protection humans have from overexposure to solar radiation when there is no choice but to stay outside.
Clothing is protection from both cold AND heat. Interesting when you think about it that way. Nudists are just screwed.
Lets get a little more scientific/biological about the impact of heat stress on the human body. We need to keep an internal temperature around 98.6 degrees F. Why? What happens when this temperature changes? How does this hurt us?
ReplyDeleteThe guidelines asked that you provide four adaptations to your chosen stress, one for each of the four different types of adaptations: short term, facultative, developmental and cultural. I only see four cultural adaptations, so I suspect you misread the guidelines. Of the cultural adaptations you list, shelter, clothing and diet all qualify. Migration isn't an adaptation to heat stress... that is escaping heat stress!
Take time to review the assignment folder and the information on the adaptations to heat stress to see what should have been included in the adaptation section of this assignment.
I agree with your point on the benefits of the adaptive approach, but can you give some practical, concrete examples of how we can use this information? For instance, if we know that a short term adaptation to heat stress is evaporative cooling, can we use this information for designing hiking or exercise clothing to help with evaporation?
I agree with your conclusions in the final section and I understand that this can be difficult to explain. It is easy to see why the adaptive approach works but harder to explain why race doesn't. Race is a subjective social construct, not a biological one, so how could we use it to objectively understand biological traits?
Also, images?
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