What is Health?

     To me, being healthy implies being fit physically and mentally. I think I am good at maintaining a nutritional and social wellbeing, but I think I should work on exercising more, and stressing out less (which leads to sleeping more). If I can manage to fix my stress levels and exercising habits, I will greatly improve my health! I would like to learn some quick exercises that can keep my body fit, while not wasting time. This way, I will have more time to do my work (and reduce stress). Hitting two birds with one stone!

Unit 1 Reflection

Unit 1 Reflection

     Unit 1 was about the introduction to Anatomy and Physiology and histology (which is the study of tissues). We learned about the different kinds of anatomical terms used to identify locations of various parts of the body in relation to each other. The main theme of this year was that form fits function. We also learned about the form and function of four different kinds of tissues: epithelial, connective, muscle, and nervous. Epithelial tissue covers a body surface or lines body cavities. Connective tissue fills space between organs and tissues and provides structural and metabolic support for other tissues and organs. Muscle tissue is composed of myosin and actin and exists in three forms: skeletal, cardiac, and smooth muscle tissue. Nervous tissue transmit electrical signals from sensory receptors to effectors. We learned about how the different structures of tissues affected the specialization of each type of cell.
     We did a lab in which we were given the opportunity to look at different types of tissues under the microscope. This is a cross-section of a peripheral neuron.
     We also did a lab in which we learned about the different kinds of carbohydrates and how their structure affects their sweetness level. We tasted sucrose, glucose, fructose, galactose, maltose, lactose, starch, and cellulose.

     Something that I think I could work on becoming better at is recognizing different types of tissues on images from microscopes. Through practice, I think I will be able to become more efficient in recognizing them. For the next unit, I will complete the tests at the end of each chapter so I can make sure that I know all of the material.

     I want to become a neurosurgeon, so learning about these different kinds of tissue can make it easier to understand concepts in a college-level class, as I will know the fundamentals because of this class. 

Tissue Lab Relate and Review

9/3/15

Relate and Review

     Even though there are only 4 main different kinds of tissues, epithelial, connective, muscle, and nervous, there are many subcategories. Today we looked at different types of tissues in each category. The tissue slide that stood out to me was the peripheral nerve cell. This stood out to me because over the summer I took a course in cognitive neuroscience at Berkeley. We looked at samples of nerve cells there as well. The difference was that these two slides of nerve cells looked completely different. This made me understand the diversity that can exist in the different categories of tissues. Another tissue slide that was interesting was the human cardiac muscle. The branching of the cells is unique to only the cardiac muscle cells as it is used to increase the efficiency of pumping blood throughout our bodies.

Neuron