When there are extreme cold temperatures or long exposure to cool temperatures it can cause severe recreations in your body. The most severe is death by hypothermia. Hypothermia is a condition that causes abnormally low body temperature, normally dangerously low. It can also cause frostbite, a medical condition that freezes a specific part of the skin. Short term allows the circulation to return to the parts affected. Long term frostbite can cause permanent damage to the exposed skin. The results of pennant damage is removal or if untreated gangrene. This could cause minimal usage of hands and feet. It could also cause an infection in the body.
When you don't have ways to adapt and address the cold it could also limit your general movement. You would want to limit you body to the exposure so it would cause you to hold your body together in a crouched huddling position to try and keep the heat from escaping your body.
The cold can also make you susceptible to getting illnesses. If these illness occurs it is harder to recover if you are still exposed the the cold weather and nothing to shelter you from it. This will also make it more difficult to complete daily tasks. When your ill you get exhausted easily which makes it hard to find the motivation and strength to carry out any necessary actions.
Short-term adaptation of exposure to the cold is the Metabolic Rate of the human body. It has shown to increase in the humans that have constant exposure to the cold climates. The Metabolic rate can increase up to 30% in the winter, even when the body is still. This is a reaction that can also decrease when needed. Also, constant exposure to extreme weather can assist your body into adjusting to the cold and not feeling such an extreme difference.
A Facultative adaptation is called Vasoconstriction. This is when the body's blood vessels and arteries constrict which causes less blood flow. This reduces the radiation of heat and causing the body to retain it's heat. Which keeps your body internally warmer.
The Developmental adaptation is when the humans of a cold region develop short and robust body types. This cause them to retain more heat (layers of protection from the cold). Larger bodied humans tend to be more to insulated by fat. Thus even people from colder states have been known to consume more calories in the winter months. They say that is a response to the cold weather.
The Cultural adaptation of the cold is clothing. Warm clothing was a reaction of wanting to be mobile in the cold weather. People used furs and leathers to shelter themselves. Nowadays people have clothing with insulation to protect them from the elements.
I think it is important to understand the adaptations of humans to the cold because if you encounter that type of environment you will know how to survive. There is severe consequences to not being able to protect yourself from the cold, ultimately death. If we all experience a severe climate change there will be a way to survive if you have an understanding of the adaptations to it.
I think knowing how these adaptations have an influence on how we look is important because it gives us a simple understanding as to why we all look different from eachother. It is a mere reaction of our body to the environment we dwell in. Looking at just race doesn't give as much insight to the internal reaction of the human body only a way to be categorized by our appearances.
Evening Blair,
ReplyDeleteI liked your post-- it was cool to know that you actually come from pretty harsh conditions yourself too! I can't imagine being in cold like that-- nor the means it would take to fend for not only myself, but my animals as well (I own horses). Nice pictures as well-- I covered the same topic but completely forgot mine!
Good images!
ReplyDeleteGood explanation of the negative impacts of cold stress on the human body.
A short term response is immediate. No time passes between the exposure to the stress and the adaptation. Changes in metabolic rate actually take a significant time response and it requires the turning on a gene pathway to take place, so this doesn't qualify as a short term adaptation. An example of a short term adaptation is shivering. Quick and immediate.
Good facultative trait.
Correct identification on the developmental trait, but clarification is needed on the process. It is less the issue of layers of insulation and more directly the relationship between the surface area and the body mass. In cold climates, the ratio between the surface area and body mass is low, meaning there is less surface area to reduce the chance of heat loss from the body. This is explained as Bergman and Allen's rules in the assignment folder.
Good cultural adaptation.
More information and knowledge is always a good thing, but can you think of a more concrete way this information can be used? Can understanding the way cold stress impacts the body have any medical implications, such as using hypothermia as a medical treatment to slow the body's metabolism? Can new clothing that helps deal with cold stress be developed?
"Looking at just race doesn't give as much insight to the internal reaction of the human body only a way to be categorized by our appearances."
It goes deeper than this, because you need to ask if race gives ANY insight into human variation. In order to use one factor (i.e., the environment) to explain another (adaptations) you need to have a causal relationship between the two. We see that with the environment, which causes our adaptations to appear. Does race have that causal relationship as well? No, it doesn't. Race doesn't cause adaptations. In a sense, adaptations "cause" race, since they are used as the basis to define race which is just a social construct, subject to bias and interpretation, based upon external phenotypes. Without that causal relationship, race is useless in explaining human variation. It provides no insight at all.
I like the pictures that you picked and I like how you used some of your own life experience to help explain.
ReplyDeleteI found it interesting that our blood vessels constrict. I never knew that. I also didn't know that the metabolic rate increases. Its amazing how our bodies adapt in extreme weather. Because I live in SOCAL and the temperature is always constant for the most part. I take for granted how my body has a way to adapt should it need to.
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