Unit 5 Reflection

In this unit, we learned about diabetes, the endocrine system, the digestive system, and the lymphatic system. Instead of learning mostly about the anatomy and physiology of the structures in these systems, we learned about how the structures in these systems interact with other systems in the body and with different kinds of hormones in the body. One of the main themes of this unit was hormones, and how changes in levels of hormones can affect the body's systems. After we learned about the basic anatomy and physiology of the digestive system, we learned about what the body does with the nutrients absorbed from food and how hormones regulate how these nutrients are stored through the Fed State, Fasting State, and Starving State. When learning about fuel metabolism, we primarily focused on insulin, glucagon, adrenaline/noradrenaline, and cortisol. Then, we proceeded to learn about diabetes and its causes, and how it is related to the malfunction of insulin production.; we learned about the differences between Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is mostly genetic and is caused by a complete inability to produce insulin. On the other hand, Type 2 is not genetic and is induced by insulin resistance. Furthermore, we learned about the endocrine system and and how hormones were secreted or stopped through a chain reaction through many glands but starting at the brain. Lastly, we learned about the basic anatomy and physiology of the lymphatic system. The lymphatic system is somewhat like a separate circulatory system that helps to absorb lipids and aids immunity.

I thought that this unit was one of the hardest units that we had ever learned, as it required lots of detail and the learning of new terms, especially for the different kinds of hormones and the glands that they came from. There were so many new terms to learn and many of the glands and hormones sounded similar to each other, so I easily confused the terms. However, this task was made easier after watching this video on YouTube:  it is a crash-course video on hormones in the human body. It was also difficult to connect the themes we learned in this unit to other units, since I usually forget some of the material learned in the previous few months. However, I felt that learning about the different fuel metabolic states was relatively easier because we also received a reading packet that made the content easier to understand.

For the fuel metabolism subject, I read an article called "Stress, Metabolism, and Liquidating Your Assets", that went into detail about what the hormones specifically do to the body and how stress and change the hormonal balance in the body. I also conducted a Digestive System Lab (http://jhan496.blogspot.com/2016/01/digestive-system-lab.html) , for which we measured the approximate lengths of our digestive systems.
Relating to this unit, I want to learn more about how genetics affect one's hormonal and digestive health, as I have read articles stating that genetics can determine the type of gut bacteria a person has; I want to know the extent to which genetics control one's hormonal control, and how much can be controlled by environmental factors.
From my New Years Goals (http://jhan496.blogspot.com/2016/01/new-years-goals.html), I feel like I have been improving in my effort to not slack off in this class. Even though I do have classes with a harder workload, I have been making sure to turn in everything despite absences in order to maintain a clean gradebook. I have also been making progress on my cello piece, and I am planning to maybe play this piece in another competition in late spring.