Tracking My Nutrition

For three consecutive days I tracked everything I ate and realized many things about my diet. I found that on all days I ate sufficient dairy and grains but never had enough protein. Also, I found that on the days I didn't have color guard practice, I ate enough veggies but when I did have practice, I didn't eat veggies. From the activity we did in class I learned that many foods contain trans-fats but don't have enough to be required to put them on the label so I am sure some of the fats I ate were from hidden trans fats. On all three days I saw that I did not usually get close to my max allowed calories but I did get sufficient nutrients and also filled the empty calorie limit and the saturated fat limit. These show that the foods I ate didn't have many calories, but were still unhealthy with the amount of fat. 

On all three days I barely had any protein or fruits, which makes sense because I am very close to being vegetarian and also just don't many fruits. I always had a good amount or even too much grain and dairy because, as unhealthy as it is, my diet relies on carbs and milk. I have yoghurt every morning for breakfast and I drink lots of milk throughout my day. The carbs tho are because I eat some kind of pasta almost everyday because it is very easy to make and it is my favorite food. I definitely need to eat more nutrient rich foods because I had far too many empty calories and I need to each some form of protein on a regular basis. Also, I should be exercising daily or at least do more than my color guard practices three times a week since those practices are not constant working out but a form of endurance, which is good, but not enough. 

Specifically I need to balance out the kinds of nutrients I get since, as you can see from the graphs, I have an abundance of dairy and grains but nowhere near as much protein, fruits, and vegetables. I could easily incorporate eggs into my diet to get some protein but I would need to lessen the quantity of carbs I eat. Also, I could simply eat an apple or two to get some fruits in my diet rather than relying on vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower for those components. All in all, I really just need to get out of my food comfort zone and find nutrient rich foods that fulfill the requirements of a good diet but I find good enough to eat on a regular basis. 

Finally, I need to find healthier food options plus exercise to balance it all out since I am definitely overweight and have lots of fat on my body in places where I don't want it. That is also the same advice I would give to someone else; find a nice balance of exercise and food and find nutrient rich foods rather than eating a lot of food with little nutrients. Nutrient rich foods have very few empty calories and would give you the required nutrients in fewer calories than many different foods with the same nutrients but many more calories. Balance really is the answer to any dietary question but balance definitely does not mean equal parts, it means less bad stuff and more good stuff rather than all of each. 

What is Health?

Health to me involves more than just the body; mental health is just as important. The part of health I am strongest at is social because I have lots of close friends that I can count on even though I am a very introverted person. The rest of the pillars I struggle at greatly mainly due to school and of course the stress that comes from school. I want to learn more about sleep and stress because those are my weakest areas and they are very important to a high schoolers life.

Reflecting on Unit 1

In this first unit we learn pretty much just the basics of anatomy to set us up for everything else we are going to learn. We started off with terms of how to simply describe the parts of the body and how to identify where specific spots are on the body. We performed a post-mortem examination on a banana to put the vocabulary in use. We used terms like anterior/posterior, superior/inferior, proximal/distal, medial/lateral, and sagittal to describe where the wounds were located on the body.

We next learned about the different kinds of tissues that make up all the organs and organ systems in our bodies. The four types of tissues are:

Epithelial                                       Muscle                                   Connective                              Nervous  

Epithelial Cells cover every organ and make up our skin. Epithelial tissue can be made of three different types of cells, squamous, cuboidal and columnar. Epithelial tissues are made to protect our bodies from infections and secrete/absorbs substances to provide what we need for our body. 

There are three different types of muscle tissues: skeletal, cardiac, and smooth all with unique functions and structures. Skeletal muscle is for voluntary movement of our limbs. The cardiac muscle tissue is exactly what you would expect as it is the type of muscle in the heart to push blood throughout our body. Smooth muscle makes up the walls of the organs to move nutrients and other stuff around our digestive system. Smooth and cardiac are both involuntary. 

Connective tissues are the most varied classification because they make up everything that isn't covered in the other types of tissues. I don't quite understand everything about connective tissues since it is such a broad category with many different types of cells. The picture shows bone, but there is also fat cells, collagen, cartilage, and blood all within the extra-cellular matrix. 

Nervous tissue is the simplest in a sense because its only purpose is to send signal through out the body and let cells communicate with each other. 

We learned, through the sugar tasting experiment, that the structure of a thing, directly relates to is purpose, and in the context of the lab, how it tastes.

In the next unit, I plan to apply all the terms and general concepts we learned so far to the upcoming units so I retain as much as possible and simply build on the concepts rather than throwing it all out and restarting. 

Need a Tissue?

Today we looked at many different types of tissues through a microscope so we got to see what they actually look like. The different type of epithelial cells we looked at were: stratified columnar, lung lining, ciliated columnar, and human skin. Even though all of these are linings, they all looked very unique.
The stratifies columnar that we looked at was a type that is found in the urethra and some glands, but my partner and I both agreed it most likely came form the urethra. The lung lining looked very stringy and was stratified squamous so it had many layers to it. The ciliated columnar was very interesting to look at because cells made the tissue look like a feather. The human skin cells that we looked at were as one would expect skin tissue to look like, the squamous cells on top and a think connective tissue layer underneath. 
We also looked at a few types of connective which also looked very unique to one another. The different types we looked at were two kinds of cartilage and bone. The different types of cartilage we looked at reflected what purpose they had; the ear cartilage looked solid but pliable and the developing looked incomplete like it was growing. The bone was the coolest to look at because it reminded me of a spider web. The bone had circular growth which is most likely a result of building strong supports.
The only type of nervous tissue we looked at was one that we identified as peripheral nerves at the intersection of nerve fibers.
We looked at all three types of muscle tissues: skeletal, cardiac, and smooth. The cardiac and skeletal both had striations while the smooth did not. These types of tissues help move the body and move blood and nutrition around.

Human Skin

Epithelial Ciliated Columnar

Developing Cartilage

Human Skeletal

Elastic Cartilage (Ear)

Cardiac Muscle

Bone

Smooth Muscle