Blood Pressure Virtual Lab

From http://www.mhhe.com/biosci/genbio/virtual_labs_2K8/labs/BL_14/

Follow the virtual lab procedure, and answer the questions below.  Answer in complete sentences. Please leave spaces between questions and your answers.

1. What factors are known to cause increases in blood pressure?

The habits of an unhealthy lifestyle are mostly congruent to the factors raising blood pressure, such as inactivity, malnutrition, and stress.

2. 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.

If a high(er) age range is selected for testing, then their average blood pressure will be high(er).

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

They could have increased risk of heart diseases, kidney failure, and/or cardiovascular problems, such as a stroke.

4. Analyze the results of your experiment. Explain any patterns you observed.

After the analyzing the results of the lab, for people between the ages of 18 & 54, Females had, on average, a lower blood pressure than males in their identical respective age group. This could be attributed to the double standards of society, where men are usually the ones working physically harder, and thus have a higher blood pressure because of the physical taxation. Secondly, I noticed that the more the survey boxes were checked “yes,” the higher the blood pressure of the patient would be. This is most likely due to the link of all of the questions in the survey to be factors in increasing heart pressure. Third, the older the age group was, the higher the average blood pressure would be. This is probably due to the continual process of atherosclerosis inside of our arteries, which lessens the space blood can flow through, and thus increases pressure. Lastly, I noticed a direct relationship of BMI (body mass index) value to blood pressure. A possible cause of this might, again, be due to atherosclerosis, as people with a high BMI usually have more fat.

5. 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?

Yes, it supported my hypothesis because the higher the age group I tested, the more people had hypertension. Also, the females of the group consistently had a lower blood pressure than the males, minus the 11-17 age group.

6. 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?

As, I mentioned before, the questions on the survey seemed to directly tie into the subject's blood pressure, and all of the topics: genetics (family history), a diet high in sodium, a lack of exercise, and whether the subject consumed alcohol were met with an elevated blood pressure when the subject answered positively.

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

Hypertension is caused by a variety of factors, some being: High BMI, alcohol consumption, old age, a high-sodium diet, a lack of exercise, and a genetic history of high blood pressure. The factor most closely related to being the hypertension source would probably be a family genetic history of high blood pressure, as more than half- actually around 70-80%- of the people with the highest blood pressure per age group had little in common other than the fact that they all admitted to having a family history of hypertension.

8. 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?

What I noticed during the data analysis, was that every person that had a BMI of less than 30 did not have hypertension. There were people with a BMI of less than 30 that did have hypertension though, so it can’t be a surefire cause. Virtually all of the other factors mentioned in Q7 can influence your blood pressure, and thus whether you are considered to have hypertension or not.

Lab: Measuring Blood Pressure

Heart Rate Data Table

	Subject 1 (bpm)	Subject 2 (bpm)	Average for Subjects
Pulse Rate (radial)	80	52	66
Pulse Rate (carotid)	60	68	64
Pulse Rate (stethoscope)	72	64	68
Average of Subject	70.7	61.3	66

Heart Pressure Data Table

	Subject 1	Subject 2
Trial 1: Blood Pressure (systolic/diastolic)	109/84	111/71
Trial 2: Blood Pressure (systolic/diastolic)	111/78	120/80

Question 1

Systolic pressure is the highest pressure measured where you can still feel your heartbeat, while diastolic pressure is the lowest pressure measured while you can still hear your heartbeat.

Question 2

To measure heart rate, you can use your fingers (not your thumb) or a stethoscope. To measure blood pressure, use a syphgmomanometer- also known as a blood pressure cuff- in conjunction with a stethoscope.

Question 3

The thumb has its own pulse, and would throw off the results.

Question 4

After wrapping it around your upper arm, place the stethoscope on the artery and begin to use the air pump to increase the pressure. Once there is no longer a pulse, use the valve to slowly release the pressure. The pressure reading at the beginning of the blood flow noise is systolic pressure, while the reading when the noise dissipates is diastolic pressure.

Unit 2 Reflection

         Health is the state your body is in, relative to the complete working functions of the average human. I unfortunately, am not very healthy as the pillar of relaxation and recoup has crumbled for me. I get around two-thirds of the sleep I'm supposed to be getting, and see this phenomenon around campus with extreme frequency. There should be a mandatory time to turn in assignments online, but this cannot be regulated as well with written assignments and studying. A central theme of this unit was the ways to maintain homeostasis in your body, and keep that internal environment from breaking down                                                                                       through external and internal factors.
     I learned a little more about human bodies (their anatomy and physiology) such as the stress hormones like aldosterone and their function, like the production of adrenaline and the increase in retention of certain ions in the organs of the excretory system. I am still confused, however, on the idea that marriage can be good for health, as I didn't acquire that reading and the discussion about it was really short. In the next unit I will probably want to start studying before the day before the test, as this late-night study-session actually impairs my test taking ability. Well, we shall see.


        The implications of not getting enough sleep are highly prominent in my life, as I have seen in my daily life, like the one time I was so tired from pulling an all-nighter to write an essay, finish a project, and study for a test, I ended up with a low C on it. I wasn't able to process information and ended up sleeping with my eyes open for a good half of the test. This will hopefully reinforce my choices in the future about whether I should sacrifice sleep for extra studying time.


My goals were to get physically stronger by reinforcing as many of the pillars of health as possible, and that the end result would show itself at the 7 mile march at the Rose Parade, a strenuous test of both physical and mental strength.

Nutrition Analysis

        During the Falcon Market activity and Supertracker assignment, I (re)learned the major food groups and the nutrients present in each. I now know to stay away from trans fats, or also known as hydrogenated fats, as they increase the risk of heart disease. I was able to reevaluate my diet, according to what the Supertracker website had limited me to, but I still feel that, with the physical activity I do and my rate of metabolism, the calorie limit per day is a little low. I was, on two out of the three days recorded on Supertracker, far exceeding my recommended limit for sodium intake, and this makes sense, as I seem to feel a little more thirsty the days I consume salty, or high sodium-content foods. To remedy this problem of sodium, I could try to ask my parents to put less sauce in home-made foods, or just tell them that I will add the sauce (the main source of sodium) into the food myself, to monitor and regulate my sodium balance. Also, I find myself lacking in vegetables. This can easily be rectified, through, with a side of salad or cucumbers to each meal, and is easily found in asian markets. If I were to pose as a dietician or the like, I would probably advise them to look carefully at ingredient labels, as I've learned that foods with less than one gram of trans(hydrogenated) fats are allowed to round down on the nutrition labels, but still are required to state it in the ingredients and manufacturing list.

9/16

9/15

9/17

What is "Health"?

         Through all of the information my brain sifts through each day, there are buried pieces of my own failure to maintain my well being, transmitted as pangs of pain, bouts of weakness, and an unfocused mind. I assume that these symptoms result from not sleeping enough each night, having more stress than normal placed upon my shoulders, and not eating right. I exhibit, though, plenty of social activity and exercise, mostly because of school-related activities. I would prefer to know more about health in general, but also the side effects and plainly visible symptoms of deprivation of each pillar so that it can be indicated to me.

Unit 1 Reflection

        Unit 1 was about the underlying structure of the anatomy physiology course, with terms classifying sections of the body with also some focus on general tissues and molecular structure.
The main, overarching themes of this unit were the optimization of structure for function; how our bodies' cells specialized into different tissues and, thus, organ systems to maintain homeostasis; and the four macromolecules inside us and other living things.

I was able to understand and review terms from some other science classes (Biology, Chemistry) and also learn more about how, where, and why my body has specific tissues, for example, the lining of my stomach, and also identify and describe them.

I still have a few questions about the structure of cartilage as it was only briefly talked about in the notes and I was not able to find any samples of it during the tissue lab. Also, I am interested in compact bone tissue, as it has a unique structure that is not explained on the poster, but I expect to get to it in a later chapter/unit.

During the next unit I hope to be able to draw more connections to the lab while working in the classroom, as I had to take it home and review terms to fully understand the things I was looking at through the microscope.

During this unit, I actually was inspired to research- on my own- the specifics of taste, not just the taste buds on the tongue (during the sweetness lab of course) and how their placement and number were correlated to one's genes. The edges of the tongue are actually the most taste receptive, with the little spots on its surface being the taste receptor sites.

Tissue Lab Relate and Review

         This lab was mostly a review lab for me, mostly reaffirming my knowledge (just in time for the unit 1 test), while also going a little bit more in depth than the cursory descriptive terms, such as squamous, cuboidal, columnar, stratification, and physical characteristics like nucleus count. Instead, using the slide names and posters, seeing which tissue structures were in each different regions or organs of the body allowed me to further understand the relations between the structure and function of the cell arrangements. For example, the connective tissue in the form of red and white blood cells on the "blood smear; human" sample revealed small, but circular red blood cells to create the most volume out of limited surface area and optimize the supply of oxygen moving around the bloodstream. In contrast, the slightly larger white blood cells were few and far between, but contained a visible dyed nucleus, showing its efficiency (with its large size) to engulf viruses and bacteria and use its nucleus to create immune cells. While connective blood cell tissue is spread apart between its cells, other tissues, especially the "stratified columnar epithelium; human" sample and the "human skeletal muscle" sample have little to no palpable space between cells, and thus confining the extra-cellular matrix to quick transport between cells and collagen fibers to strengthen the tissue's shape.