bestology 2023 Week 8 – Homeostasis

Homeostasis

Week 8

What would happen if you chugged half a gallon of water after a hard workout? Would you swell up like a water balloon?  Have you ever wondered how our bodies change and grow so much once puberty hits and then plateaus out for much of our adult life? Homeostasis is the balance that occurs within your life keeping you alive. If we get hot, we sweat and if we are cold we shiver. Once our brain notices we are sweating or shivering, then our body responds to try to keep us at 98.5 degrees. We drink too much, we pee it out. Homeostasis is working to keep your water levels in your body at a constant, regulating your sugar levels, pH levels, internal temperature, blood-oxygen levels, and more. Homeostasis helps you maintain a constant internal environment that is optimal for keeping you balanced and healthy.

Watch to learn more: What Is Homeostasis? » Science ABC

Homeostasis in the human body (Photo Credit: VectorMine/Shutterstock)

When you work out, how do you feel? Do you feel your heart pounding? Are you sweating and breathing hard? Those bodily reactions or physiological factors are all part of your body maintaining a state of homeostasis.

When you exercise, can you name what bodily factors are affected?  What must you do when exercising or after to keep your body at a state of balance or homeostasis? Read this article to find out: How Does the Body Maintain Homeostasis in Response to Exercise?

Homeostasis keeps you internally regulated, but what keeps you self-regulated? Are you good at multitasking and balancing all of your stressors? Be honest, normally we don’t make a change and actually try a calm down strategy until we are at our whits end or desperate. We are normally self-centered, we lose focus of how we affect others or if something is healthy for us or not. That is why we need to know our weaknesses so we can make changes, practice our self-regulation skills so they are more available in ‘the heat of the moment.’ You need a better balance.

In your journal, answer the following questions:

• How does your body react when you exercise? What is it telling you that you need when that happens?
• If you have strong self-regulation skills, how will that affect your future and grades?
• Guess how is your homeostasis is affected by your anger escalating?

When your anger escalates, your blood pressure changes, heart rate increases, and your breathing are more shallow therefore not allowing enough oxygen to your brain to think more clearly. Drinking water helps your brain to get more oxygen, thus your breathing is affected and slows down, and then you are able to choose how to react. So, make a habit of drinking more water.

Resources

• Best Robotics 
• What Is Homeostasis? » Science ABC
• How Does the Body Maintain Homeostasis in Response to Exercise?
• Self-Regulation Skills:  Why They Are Fundamental
• Calm Down Rooms and options
• Homeostasis Examples – YouTube
• Homeostasis in Plants and Animals– YouTube
• Personal Health Series Screen Time
• Personal Health Series Screen Time Answer Key
• Balance time online

 Research/Reflect/Brainstorm

 Grab a notebook or your journal and answer the following after watching this video Self-Regulation Skills: Why They Are Fundamental :

• What are the self-regulation skills and define each one? Which one do you struggle with the most?
• If you have strong self-regulation skills, how will that affect your future and grades?

Next check out the link Calm Down Rooms and Options then pick which calm down strategies you prefer to try when you are upset. Write down the website and a new one to try for next time you have a need to cool off.

 Activity

 Group –  Watch the following video Homeostasis Examples then each group creates a presentation in google slides or the program of your choice to explain how other items in this world have homeostasis.

Here is an additional video if needed. Homeostasis in Plants and Animals

Individual – Write down all of your responsibilities. Write down what expectations are on your shoulders each day and week. What are you involved in? What do they expect from you? What chores do you have? What is your weekly schedule?  Now write down what takes you away from things? Be honest. What is your life missing? What do you need to do and you haven’t done yet? Last, make two columns. Write on the left column Life Giving and on the right column Life Taking.  On the left write what helps you from your schedules, expectations, and responsibilities. On the right write what is life-taking. Life taking are things that are distracting you from what you should be doing. They are also things that are unhealthy, what takes you away from your responsibilities, and things that take a lot of time and do not make a difference in your productivity.

BEST connection 

Homeostasis means balance, a balance in the body that controls body functions and keeps you healthy and safe. How can we take this body balance and relate it to BEST robotics?

BEST is not your ordinary robotics competition. It is not just about building robots and programming them. BEST is all that and so much more. BEST balances so many cross-curricular activities making it appealing and interesting to all types of students, not just the engineer.

How does BEST incorporate a balance across the different disciplines in education or in school to make it very attractive to so many people? What would happen if we took away those other aspects and made it just a robot competition?

Community Connection

Your cell phone can be such a helpful and toxic thing. Photos can help us recall important information, recall great memories, and get us to put in jail if they are inappropriate and you share it. Phones can also keep us safe, keep us on track with time management but they can also take us away from the balance we need to keep sane, healthy, and complete our responsibilities. Is your online time giving or taking away from your life and healthy relationships?  Take this screen time quiz to see if you have an imbalance.

Worksheet:  Personal Health Series Screen Time

Answer Key:  Personal Health Series Screen Time Answer Key

Now read this article on online balance. Balance time online

So, do you have a healthy balance of online and tech time? Probably not! Let’s be real finding a balance sometimes seems impossible and we don’t want to miss out on anything. But what about the real-life relationship that are in front of you. Why do we ignore people sitting next to or across from us? When you text instead of having a real conversation, you are saying the person or social media site is more important than the person in front of you.

Try filling out this handout on your screen time this week and next. Notice the trend then find the balance. Your relationships, health, and mental health depend on you making a change now.

Worksheet:  Personal Health Series Screen Time-Tracker

Bloom’s Taxonomy: create, explore, evaluate, generate, include, identify, list, observe, reflect, review, use, and write

Workforce Skills – list workforce skills related to this lesson

Critical thinking, materials evaluation, reading comprehension, science, writing, research