Unit 5 Reflection

This unit was about the digestive system and how to maintain our body's homeostasis through our diets, exercise, and mental and physical awareness. We also learned about fuel metabolism and the different stages our body goes through while absorbing and digesting our food- fed state, starving state and fasting state. These states maintain glucose levels in our bodies through insulin and glucagon, adrenaline and noradrenaline and cortisol. Some strengths of mine during this unit were the digestive system's parts etc. because it went through and orderly and linear pattern but the hormones, specifically glucagon and insulin, were difficult for me
We did a digestive system lab where we learned about the length of our digestive system. This lab helped to explain to me the intricacy of our bodies and the course of food in the bodies. I want to learn more about the diseases involved with the hormones such as hypo and hyperthyroidism.  I did follow through with my New Years goal a little since I did research some diseases- hyper and hypothyroidism.


http://anatomyandbeyond.blogspot.com/2016/01/digestive-system-lab.html

• 
  

Digestive System Lab

1. In this lab I measured the lengths of different structures in my body: mouth, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, and large intestine. Then I tied them all together to form the length of the digestive system in my body. Astonishingly it formed 9.1575 meters.

2. The length of my digestive system is over 5 times my height. I think my digestive system is able to fit inside my abdomen because it is folded and packed tightly together.

3. On average, I think it takes a few hours for food to more through the entire digestive system. When I researched it, I found that it takes approximately 24 hours for food to go through. I think that because the food has to go pass over 9 meters, it takes this long for food to fully digest.

4. Digestion is different from absorption because digestion involves the mouth and the stomach working to break down the food in preparation for absorption. Absorption involves the small and large intestines with mostly chemical digestion. It's role is to provide nutrients for the body.

5. What triggers certain reactions in the digestive system?

DIGESTIVE ORGAN	COLOR and LENGTH (CM)
mouth	white/10.2
esophagus	red/43
stomach	green/18
small intestine	yarn/675.64
large intestine	gold/168.91
TOTAL	915.75

SMART Goals

An overarching goal I have for this semester, and year overall, is to not procrastinate and to get things done before switching to something else. I am motivated by this and so thus will not procrastinate on not procrastinating. To follow through with this I will finish homework and whatever else I need to do first before going on Facebook to talk to friends or whatever else I want to do. I plan to be finished with homework by 10:30 every day, especially if I do not have many extracurricular activities on that day.

Another goal I have for this semester is to dig more deeply into the topics the class pursues. For at least every other lesson we have, I will do further research on something that interests me in that lesson. I will keep a google doc of this to hold myself accountable as well. Since anatomy and physiology is heavily dependent on building on what has been learned I think this will be a helpful and interesting goal.