Unit 3 Reflection

This unit was about the cardiovascular and respiratory systems. The cardiovascular system works through a system of blood vessels, organs, and accessory organs that help the system function. Examples of main organs would be the heart, and examples of accessory organs would be the kidney, liver, small and large intestines. Since the circulatory system is needed to transport oxygen and nutrients to the billions of cells in your body, as well as transport away waste such as urea and carbon dioxide; the system is vitally important to the functions of the body. To better understand the different parts of the heart and the pathway that blood flows through the heart we drew a heart of chalk and walked through it.

In the video we say that the blood enters from the left pulmonary vein into the right atrium, but that was a mistake on our part, we meant to say left. 

The importance of the circulatory system is what makes cardiovascular diseases such as strokes or heart attacks so life threatening. "1.5 million heart attacks in the United Staes occur each year with 500,000 deaths" (Women's Heart Foundation). A heart attack is when blood supply to the myocardium is severely reduced or stopped resulting in damage to the heart cells or death of heart cells. It is usually when one or more of the coronary arteries is blocked, and is often caused by atherosclerosis. It can also be called: myocardial infarction (MI), coronary occlusion, coronary thrombosis. Easily mistaken as a heart attack, a stroke is a brain injury that occurs when blood supply to part of the brain is interrupted. It can also be called a CVA or a cerebrovascular accident.

To avoid cardiovascular disease, people should be aware to how they are treating their bodies. They should monitor  their blood pressure (especially since 40-90% of all stroke victims had high BP before their stroke), control their cholesterol levels, stop/never start smoking, exercise, manage stress, eat a healthy diet, drink alcohol in moderation, monitor their chances of diabetes, and control their weight.

This unit was really interesting to me, but I felt that I missed out on some parts since I was gone for majority of the sheep heart dissection that we did in class.  I felt that I actually understood the material pretty well, and studied by making my own flashcards with pictures and went back to make sure I could understand the essential questions and vocab of each unit. But I think that when I took the test I started to stress myself out and second guess myself, and from there it spiraled down even though I knew the material. This unit in itself went pretty well, but there were some technical issues that I had with the blog that added extra stress and I started to psych myself out before I even took the test. To compare to the Unit 2 Goals, I think that I actually improved on some aspects of them, including sleep, but I think I need to update my goals since a lot of things happened since I created them. For the remainder of the semester, I want to focus on getting back on track with school and grades since I realized that no matter how hard I try at studying, nothing's going to change if I don't change other parts of my life first.