Hypothermia in humans

January 12, 2007 at 9:48 pm #6754

Participant

Other than body mass and insulation, are there really any major factors that might cause hypothermia in a human being? My entire biology class needs to make a laboratory in which we test hypothermia. We are going to do an actual lab in which students of various builds will go outside and their blood pressure and body temp will be found. People in the group wanted to test for sleep deprivation and food intake. Is it me or should’nt we have only one variable and a control group? It will be tougher for us to make a conclusion by having various variables.

January 12, 2007 at 11:11 pm #66096

kjle

Participant

there’s no doubt it will be harder with more variables, but if you are only considering one, your results will be limited, and possibly not truly accurate

January 13, 2007 at 12:29 am #66109

vlc1500

Participant

only thing is, we are going to do the lab on tuesday during a 1 hour and 30 minute period, so I wanted to get the most we could out of the experiment while keeping it simple. What i meant was that my peers wanted to do 2 variables intertwined….. with the same people.

For example i am of medium build and i do not eat breakfast…… and i have a friend who is also a test subject and he has a large build and eats breakfast. After the experiment it turns out that my larger friend has a higher body temperature than me. I do not feel that it is completley proven that having a larger build will keep u warmer. Same with making a conclusion on breakfast.

by the way, does anyone know of any other factors that help or stop hypothermia from happening?

January 13, 2007 at 1:27 am #66116

kjle

Participant

I see the problem. It probably wouldn’t work to include all these variables into the one experiment. You need a control for each variable, otherwise your results, like you said won’t be accurate. And if you don’t have time to include all of these variables with separate control it won’t be accurate.

January 13, 2007 at 6:18 am #66255

vlc1500

Participant

does race affect thermoregulation even though everyone in my class has been living in Canada since they’ve been born?

January 13, 2007 at 6:21 am #66258

mith

Participant

Living in canada does not change race :). Perhaps you want to know what extent does genes and environment affect thermoregulation?

January 13, 2007 at 6:44 am #66275

sachin

Participant

Hypothermia..Study……. but for what?

January 13, 2007 at 12:24 pm #66344

MrMistery

Participant

lol: the 4 races: white, black, yellow and canadian…

January 13, 2007 at 3:16 pm #66357

mith

Participant

I had to take a class on that, they told me races don’t exist, and you should use grouping by geographic origin instead. They said that molecular biology suggests 5 "races".

January 16, 2007 at 1:04 am #66783

vlc1500

Participant

well, what i meant was " has everyone in my class been acclimatized to toronto?". And if we have been completley acclimatized to toronto, then it would reduce the chance of coming to a false conclusion.

So, what variables change body temp the most?
Eating breakfast, enough sleep, are there any others? Which ones gives us the best chance of getting hypothermia? Does anyone know any other big ones i might be missing?

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