Our body’s initial reaction during any sort of change is to maintain it’s own stability whether it be physical, mental, or emotional. However, in this post, I will be discussing the physical effects of cold weather and the effects it causes towards homeostasis. Although the goal of homeostasis for everyone is to keep the body internally intact, everyone’s body is different and will respond differently to cold weather. When the temperature of your surrounding environment begins to go down, your body initially reacts to adapt in order to survive. Cold weather has the ability to cause blood vessels to constrict. Your homeostasis is then disarrayed and it is more difficult for your blood to flow to certain parts of your body. This slows down your body’s defenses and while your body is fighting to conserve it’s status of homeostasis, antibodies enter and as a result, we get sick. Unfortunately, a simple cold is not the isn’t the worst result of cold weather. Hypothermia, pneumonia, influenza, and other life threatening illnesses.
There are numerous ways that people have adapted to cold weather in order to help their homeostasis stay leveled. A short-term method that people keep themselves warm is by either bundling themselves up in jackets, wearing gloves, beanies, ear muffs, etc.
A facultative adaptation to fight the cold weather is by drinking hot tea which increases our blood flow which brings us to feel warm.
Other ways that people have adapted to cold weather are sleeping in family groups, participating in indoor activities, insulating their homes, or investing in heater systems in their homes or buying small portable heaters to place in their home.
Studying human variation from this perspective across environmental clines would only be beneficial for us. We would be able to understand what would be occurring when we are in the common situation or our bodies adapting to cold weather and how to prevent from our homeostasis from being unbalanced which is more significant than more would assume. An example of how this would all be used in a productive way is if you know that you usually get sick very easily during the winter or when there is cold weather, you can stock up on hot tea, invest in a heater, be sure to wear a lot of jackets and warm clothes or just stay inside more often than go outside. Doing such simple things can save you from a cold or furthering your simple cold into a more dangerous illness.
In my opinion, I don’t believe that race is a factor in understanding the variation of adaptations previously listed. Race would not necessarily contribute to either the adaptations or one’s own status of their homeostasis.
Good initial description of the cold stress.
ReplyDeleteShort term, facultative and developmental adaptations are all biological/physiological, meaning they are all ways our bodies adjust to an environmental stress by adjusting how our bodies work. The adaptations you have listed are all cultural traits, so you have that adaptation covered, but you are missing the others. Make sure you review this section in the guidelines and in Blackboard to make sure you understand these concepts.
Good discussion on the value of the adaptive approach.
While I agree with your conclusions regarding the value of race to understanding human variation, can you explain how you came to this conclusion? Why can't race help us understand why humans vary the way they do? What is different between race and environmental stresses that allows one to be useful and not the other?
Thank you for the advice Dr. Rodriguez. I'll be sure to take a look at the guidelines once again.
ReplyDeleteI came to the conclusion of race not assisting in understanding human variation because race regards more of the physical aspects that don't involve anything genetically which would not apply to this matter.
Thank you for response and I agree with your thinking on why race is not effective for understanding human variation.
ReplyDeleteTrue statement about how everyone reacts differently to the cold weather, one of my teachers from high school who happened to be from Alaska says we (her students) were crybabies because we would always complain about how cold it was in California during December. She was built for the cold weather because she never wore any sort of jacket or scarf she was adapted to the weather. While we were all shivering she was like whatever and so when I read the statement about how everyone reacts differently to cold weather I thought of her. One thing that I found surprising was that drinking tea helps increase the blood flow. I didn't know that; I just thought that maybe because the tea was hot that was the reason why it helped us get warmer but not because it affects our blood flow. Which is nice to know because every time I'm cold now and I drink hot tea I'll know that my blood is flowing faster which is helping me get warm.
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