Brrrrrrrr It's Cold

   

   The environmental stress I have chosen is cold weather. This environmental stress can negatively impact the survival of humans by disturbing homeostasis. An example of this would be the profound effect that changes in weather can have on the overall health of a human being and their well being. There have been known cases of large rises in mortality rates in cold waves. Cold weather can cause direct deaths from sicknesses such as hypothermia, influenza, pneumonia and more. Homeostasis is the body’s process of attempting to maintain a certain desired state of stable physiological balance.  Humans must maintain homeostasis to stay alive. No matter what the out door temperature is the human body must maintain its inner temperature by using hormones to control the body’s conditions. Cold weather negatively impacts human’s homeostasis process by hurting our chances of survival by disturbing this process. Cold weather can negatively affect the process by causing sicknesses such as frostbite and hypothermia that your body will have to work on eliminating rather than giving the main focus to the homeostasis process. When frostbite occurs, your tissues are basically freezing, meaning that the skin has reached 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Growing up in Missouri, I have definitely had my fair share of time in the cold weather. I have found that the places affected by the cold most due to poor insulation and preparation tend to be noses, ears, feet, cheeks and hands. Hypothermia is another sickness cause by these cold weather temperatures. Hypothermia is when the core temperature of your body is at 95 degrees Fahrenheit for a long period of time. This will disrupt the body’s homeostasis process and in turn the brain will not work as well as it should be, you could loose consciousness, muscles will grow weak, and it will become hard to breathe. For many people, hypothermia can result in death.

                  Dealing with the cold is a part of our life therefore humans have adapted to this stress. Modern day humans have it pretty easy to prevent a lot of these negative disruptions. A short-term adaption would be heaters. People are able to stay warm nowadays is in their own homes. No longer do we rely just on blankets and fireplaces, but almost all homes have heating and air conditioning systems now. This is such a positive adaption for humans in relation to cold weather stresses. If the weather gets cold you juts go to a machine on your wall and hike up the temperature so that you and your family can stay warm. I was in St. Louis this past winter break and even when the temperature was below 20 degrees and there was inches of snow outside, my house was nice and toasty thanks to these modern heating systems.

         A facultative adaption would be where you choose to live. Facultative means it is occurring optionally in responses to certain circumstances, for example this is why I choose to live in California; to avoid the cold weather. Where you decide to live will obviously affect the type of weather you will have to deal with and can help prevent you from suffering in the cold.

   A developmental adaption that would be found currently would be the use of tools and proper clothing. Many people travel from different locations, from the heat to the cold and back all of the time. A way that they have been able to do so and stay healthy in these varying and sometimes extreme temperatures is by being prepared with the proper clothes and gear. People take trips to climb snowy mountains, go skiing, and many more winter activities that require warm clothes. New fabrics have been developed and in turn helped humans to become more easily adapted to these cold weather conditions for longer periods of time. For those people who are crazy enough to brave these extreme conditions, another positive human adaption is the development of new survival tools available for purchase at many stores across the country. People that just to climb snowy mountains now have an upper hand because they can buy picks, sleeping bags, and hiking tools that were specifically made to help them in the cold

         A cultural development could be food and diet.  Diet is important for humans when it comes to surviving in the cold and this is exhibited in other animals as well. Bears and other animals that hibernate consume many high calorie and fatty meals before hibernation to help their bodies work and stay warm and healthy. Think about a cold winter day, your nose is stuffy and you don’t want to get out of bed, so what does your mom make you? Soup. Although humans don’t hibernate, the food we consume does help us to stay warm and healthy during cold weather. People love to eat soups and hot teas or cocoa during the winter months to warm up their bodies.       

        

   Studying anything having to do with human variation always has a positive benefit because you are gaining knowledge that will only help you in the future. Knowledge is power and this information will help us to hopefully save peoples lives in the future by coming up with preventative methods. This information can be used in many productive ways, one being how doctors use it to treat patients that have been affected by these cold weather caused sicknesses.

         Race is not something that defines a human being in any way, shape, or form. If someone is cold, they are cold and their skin color or ethnicity is not going to make a difference in the situation. The study of environmental influences on these adaptions is a much better method of understanding, learning, and preventing than learning about how to do so through race. Racial traits may be one part of a person, but they do not impact how the person will react In extreme weather conditions. It does make sense for scientists to take age into consideration when researching new methods and ways to stay warm in the cold though, just because this can play a strong role in how people react.