Blood Pressure Lab Follow-Up

What factors are known to cause increases in blood pressure?

-The factors that are known for increases in blood pressure are hypertension, a high-salt diet, a lack of exercise and alcohol consumption.

Use your knowledge about the heart and the circulatory system to make a hypothesis about how the average blood pressure for a group of people would be affected by manipulating the age and gender of the group members.

-The average blood pressure for a group of people would be higher for people who are older. Also, men will generally have a higher average blood pressure than women.

What sorts of problems might a person develop who has chronic hypertension?

-Someone who has chronic hypertension can develop coronary artery disease, have an aneurysm, heart or kidney failure, and possibly a stroke.

Analyze the result of your experiment. Explain any patterns you observed.

-My experiment showed that younger kids and adults generally had a better blood pressure and were less likely to consume alcohol regularly. The older people get, the more likely their blood pressure will be bad due to lack of exercise.


Did the result of your experiment support your hypothesis? Why or why not? Based on your experiment what conclusion can you draw about the relationship of age and gender to group blood pressure averages?

-My experiment did match my hypothesis because it showed that older people in general got a higher blood pressure. The conclusions that I can draw about the relationship of age and gender to group blood pressure averages is that older men tend to get either blood pressure is then women in general.


During the course of your experiment, did you obtain any blood pressure reading that were outside of the normal range for the group being tested? What did you notice on the medical charts for these individuals that might explain their high reading?

-There were incidents where a teenager would show high blood pressure due to alcohol consumption. There were also times when I would pull up a roomful of around 50-year-old males, and all of them would have healthy blood pressure levels.


List risk factors associated with the hypertension. Based on your observation, which risk factor do you think is most closely associated with hypertension?

-Risk factors associated with hypertension are too much salt in the diet, too much alcohol consumption, and not enough exercise leading to obesity. Based on my observations the risk factors that most closely associates with hypertension would most likely be lack of proper exercise.


What effect might obesity have on blood pressure? Does obesity alone cause a person to be at risk for high blood pressure? What other factors, in combination with obesity, might increase a person's risk for high blood pressure?

-Obesity can have an effect on blood pressure due to the amount of fatty cells in one's body. Obesity alone can cause a small percentage of high blood pressure. Some other factors that can contribute to persons risk for high blood pressure include too much salt and not enough exercise.

Lab: Measuring Blood Pressure

Analysis Questions:

1. Compare the systole to the diastole 

Systolic pressure is the number that the blood pressure cuff reads when the ventricles are contracted. Diastolic pressure is the number that is read when the ventricles relax

1. What equipment is used to measure heart rate? To measure blood pressure?

to measure heart rate you use the rate of your pulse. For this, you can use a stethoscope. To measure blood pressure, you use a sphygmomanometer.

1. Why is using your thumb to measure pulse rate not ideal?

Your thumb has its own pulse rate.

1. In your own words, describe how to use a blood pressure cuff.

To use a blood pressure cuff, you put it above your elbow with the tubes running down the length of your arm to you palm. Your hand should be faced up and relaxed. Close the valve on the pump and pump until the needle reaches around 180. Slowly rotate the valve until the needle starts moving at about 2 mmHg per second. Record observations.

	Test 1	Test 2	Average for all students
Pulse rate (radial)	74	68	71
Pulse rate (carotid)	64	58	61
Stethoscope	62	60	61
Average for individual subjects	66.6	62	64.3

	Subject 1	Subject 2
Blood Pressure (test 1)	122/65	115/70
Blood Pressure (test 2)	125/73	121/81

Unit 2 Reflection

 

Put it all together. What is health?

Health is a balance of exercise, diet and social interaction. Exercise is very important because it reduces the risk of adverse health outcomes such as obesity (a healthy diet is needed to not be obese as well). A healthy diet consists of balance, moderation, adequacy and variety. There are 6 different classes of nutrients that also contribute to a healthy diet: carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, vitamins, minerals, and water. By getting a daily moderation of all these nutrients, it helps the body to function at a high level.

How healthy are you? What about people at SHS? What could/should be done to promote greater health and wellness on campus?

I am pretty healthy because I exercise a lot, I get a good amount of social interaction with people due to school and volleyball, and I eat rather healthy. There are some days where I don't eat that healthy at all but I think that I make up for it in how much I exercise. I think the population at SHS is more healthy than unhealthy just because we have the required health (/drivers ed) that we take in freshman year. We also have a high percentage of people in some sort of sport be it basketball, volleyball, or color guard/ band. To promote even greater health and wellness on campus, we should have assemblies on the importance of health every year, where even just a teacher can present to the whole school just the basics of health.

What were the themes and essential understandings from this unit?

The themes of this unit were the pillars of health (nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress, and social). The essential understandings were the effects of unhealthy versus healthy decisions and habits.

What did you learn?

I learned a lot about how to maintain a really healthy diet and that you need to have a balance of a lot of different things in order to have your body function at its best. I think the best way to sum everything up is by a quote that I read from one of the reading we had to do : "Eat food. Not too much, Mostly plants".

What do you still not fully understand?

It's not that I don't understand it, its more of that I thought it was very interesting: the fact that people who retired from a very stressful or busy work environment were more likely to die at a younger age due to the stress put on them while they were working. It didn't occur to me that people could die from too much stress. But I guess that all the pillars tie into each other which means that if someone is stressed, then they might not be getting enough sleep which can lead to a sleep debt. And I know that if you don't catch up on the sleep debt that you can die from that. (as well as not proper nutrition or exercise)

How will you improve in the next unit?

For the next unit, I will improve by not just taking notes straight from the board, but rather do that as well as listen to what Mr. Orre is saying and write some extra notes on the side where he gives us a little bit of margin space.

Find a real world application that relates to something you learned in this unit.  It could be a college major, a job, a discovery, something from your life, a TED talk, etc.  Link to it, describe it, explain how it relates to this unit, and share anything you think is worth talking about.

One job that relates to all of this is a doctor because they have to know everything about health in order to prescribe the right medications needed to help someone. One example of a doctor that is very well know for his health tips is Dr. Oz. He talks about all sorts of topics such as health supplements, to diet plans to good exercise habits, Here is a link to a video where he talks about ways to reduce stress. http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Dr.Oz+health+talk&FORM=HDRSC3#view=detail&mid=13DDFACA8550C733E91913DDFACA8550C733E919