"What Happens When You Stretch"

"What Happens When You Stretch" Bradford D. Appleton 1993

This article discusses what happens when a person stretches. According to Appleton, when a person stretches their muscle fiber, it begins with the sarcomere which stretches, decreasing an area of overlap and allowing the muscle fiber to elongate, also helping realign disorganized fibers. The length of a stretched muscle is the number of fibers that were stretched. When a person stretches quickly, the nerves causing the contraction and relaxation of the muscles fire rapidly as well, increasing muscle length. The lengthening reaction causes muscles to relax and is controlled by the golgi tendon organ, preventing muscle, tendons, and ligaments from injury. Reciprocal inhibition is a bit like the lengthening reaction as they both inhibit things from contracting. Stretching also has dynamic and static parts: static occurs when the muscle is being stretched and dynamic occurs quickly in response to the increase in muscle length. This relates to my Monday Wellness project first semester since I did my subject on stretching and how it is beneficial. I also went into the physical components of stretching and muscle fibers during my presentation and it was interesting to go in depth regarding the reactions that are immediate results of stretching muscle fibers.

"Another reason for holding a stretch for a prolonged period of time is to allow this lengthening reaction to occur, thus helping the stretched muscles to relax. It is easier to stretch, or lengthen, a muscle when it is not trying to contract" I like this quote because it seems odd that a person would want to stop contracting muscles as that is what makes them stronger but that the lengthening reaction actually helps relax the muscles. Since the contraction stretches them originally, the lengthening reaction makes it easier to stretch.

"You also want to relax any muscles used as synergists by the muscle you are trying to stretch." I think this is helpful information since they work as opposites and it is not something that is commonly thought of. For example, if a person is stretching their calf, they want to contract the shin muscles, or the hamstrings use the calves as synergists and relax them.

"Triggers" This word was used quite often in the articles, such as when it mentioned triggering the lengthening reaction or reciprocal inhibition or the stretch reflex. The word "trigger" helps embody how the body works since, to maintain homeostasis, the body and hormones and reactions must continue and send out signals to keep the body in balance. Thus, reactions are triggered by hormones or other signals sent throughout the body.

Unit 6 Reflection

This unit was all about the bones in the human body- the skeletal system. We discussed the microscopic and macroscopic characteristics of the skeletal system such as the types of bones, compact and spongy, and what those bones are made of. In addition, it was about the different types of joints that connect those bones and how they all work together to make up the function and structure of the skeletal system. To help with this, we had labs looking at the human skeleton and bone cells, and even a lab dissecting an owl pellet to organize the skeleton of a rat in the Owl Pellet Lab. I would like to learn more in depth about the differences between different animal skeletons to be able to understand the evolution of some species and I would like to learn more about the functions of less known bones in the human skeleton. I think I have gotten more advanced so to speak when doing my labs since now I try to inquire further as to details in the lab rather than just answering the questions I am required to answer. I have been a little sloppy in maintaining my New Year's goal to research further but I have looked up minor details.

20 Time Blog #1: Does Yellow Make You Happy?

Does yellow make people happy? Oftentimes when a person is asked his or her favorite color and why, he or she will say: because it's pretty, because it calms me, because it reminds me of family and so forth. But how much of an effect does this color have on a person? For me, during 20 Time,I hope to find out, in more depth, how the color of one's shirt affects a person's perception.  20 Time is where we get 20% of our class time to work on a pet project of ours, whether it is to raise awareness of a cause or to discover the answer to a question.I chose this project simply out of curiosity since I had just read an article on how the color of a person's plate can affect how much they consume. For this project, I will form an experiment with carefully formed questions to determine the reaction of the person the test subject, person wearing the different colored shirts, interacts with. Using the Likert Scale, I will record the responses to be able to compile data that will indicate if and how people feel differently towards different colors. Most significantly, my progress will be measured by the completeness of the questionnaire which I feel must ask the right questions so to speak. My goal at the end of this is to be able to determine how people perceive color and the effect it has, whether or not I get a chance to finish my experimentation. I have begun a drafted list of questions and will continue to perfect them in the weeks coming.

Owl Pellet Lab

In this lab we dissected an owl pellet to find the skeleton of the animal that the owl ate and recognize and compare that skeleton to the human skeleton. To do this we used forceps to break through the excess feathers and dirt in the pellet and to be able to extract the bones. Through this, we found that the animal the owl had eaten was a rat. We could determine this since the length of the skull was larger than 25 centimeters, significantly larger than a mouse's skull. In addition, the structure of the rat's skeleton was much unlike the structure of a bird's since it's head was shaped differently and it had teeth. These were clear signs that it was a rat since they correspond with the structures of a rat as well.

The rat's skeleton was similar to the skeleton of human's in that it has similar rib structure and vertebrae. The ulna and radius, fibula and tibia, of the rat are also similar to that of human's.
Some differences are the cranium, which is curved downward and has a more elongated mandible. In addition, the scapula of the rat is placed differently than that of humans' and the humerus has more of a role in the rat's movement so it appears to place more prominently. The humerus and scapula of our rat's skeleton was left connected, providing a better perspective on their connections.

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

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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.