20 Time Final Post: The Secret to Eating Healthy

To close my 20 Time project, I gave a TED Talk (below) about my journey throughout this project and what I have learned about this topic and about myself. I think my talk went extremely well. I was pretty nervous - as I always am before presentations - but I rehearsed my presentation multiple times throughout the week leading up to the talk and was able to deliver my talk pretty smoothly, so I'm very proud of myself. Watching the video I think I would definitely give myself a pretty good grade for this talk because I worked really hard on making my talk interesting and engaging and I really think I managed to make it both. Looking at the rubric, I think I had good voice inflection and managed to capture and maintain the attention of the class throughout my presentation. I provided examples while I talked about the process of my project in order to help the class relate to my presentation and fully understand the purpose of the presentation: to encourage people to start something that they've always wanted to try. I didn't come up with a specific product as a result of this project, however, I think I managed to do an excellent job of incorporating what I learned into my talk. I'm very enthusiastic about this topic, tried my best to stay within the time limit (but got a little bit carried away), had a works cited, images, and just tried my best to give an authentic and reflective presentation. 

The experience of preparing and giving this talk was very eye-opening. Most presentations that I've given throughout high school have been about the product and not about me, so it was a little difficult to turn this presentation around and talk about myself and my growth, rather than the product of the project. So, I started brainstorming ideas for what I could center my presentation around and finally realized that the main thing I learned was that in order to do something new, I had to find the motivation to simply start. Once I realized this, the rest of my presentation fell into place pretty quickly. This project was a huge learning process for me and I think it helped me grow a lot in terms of being more conscious about my diet and what I'm eating. I want to be a healthier person and the first step to that is adopting a healthier lifestyle. This is how I hope to continue my project into college: by being more aware of what I'm putting into my body.

It was also really cool to hear about how other people have been spending 20% of their class time. Each person did something very unique and different, which made all of the presentations engaging and interesting. It was really amazing to see how all these people in class around me had their own different and really big ideas of what they wanted to do for this open-ended project. I love how each person - through they found a stopping point for this project - either learned something about their chosen topic and/or decided to continue pursuing that topic throughout college. I think the idea of having a 20 Time project is so great, because every student got the change to explore and learn about something they wanted to. There was so much freedom, which made it a little difficult to navigate and time, but overall made the process of the 20 Time project more rewarding and educational in a way that was directly relevant to our own lives. 

20 Time Final Reflection

Reflection:
For my 20 Time project, as detailed more extensively in my First 20 Time Blog Post, I wanted to work on self-improvement, as I am going to college next year and really need to start eating healthier. I decided to try eating healthier for a month to see how it could improve my mood and/or blood pressure. My initial goal for this project was to continue my normal diet for one month and then switch to a healthier diet with more regular meals for the second month. I decided to document my meals for both months and compare them at the end of the project. In addition, I jotted down how my mood was at the end of each week to see if the healthier diet improved my mood in any way.

The project went pretty well and smoothly. It was a fairly simple project outline - eat unhealthy for a month and then eat healthy for a month - so I didn't expect any road bumps; however, I definitely came across a couple. My first month of the project (detailed in my Second and Third Blog Posts), went pretty smoothly. The main problem I came across was the transition from the first month to the second month. It was pretty difficult to remember to grab breakfast in the morning (even if it was just a cup of yogurt) and it was also pretty difficult to remind my friends that I needed to go to Safeway or MOD during lunch to get a salad, as I discussed in my Fourth Blog Post. We generally grab food from Panda Express or Starbucks for lunch, so it was hard to resist that temptation and train myself to keep some healthy snacks with me in case we decided to go to one of those restaurants. Another bump in the road came when, mid-project, I decided to see how my blood pressure would be different during the two months. As I talked to the bariatrics doctor who advised me during the project, I realized that I wouldn't see a very big change in my blood pressure because the duration of my project was too short and it generally takes a couple months before a drastic change occurs. I would, however, still consider the project to be a success because I definitely did try very hard to start eating healthy and I learned a lot about how it can help me be more awake and productive throughout the day. It was a 2 month-long project, but I hope to use the lessons I learned from it throughout my life by eating healthier.

During this project, I learned how hard it is to start eating healthy, but how easy it becomes once you simply start. I also learned to be more disciplined and conscious about my eating. I'm really glad I had the opportunity to do this project because these are extremely important skills to have now that I'm going to college. If I had the opportunity to do this project over again, I would increase the length of each "treatment" by eating unhealthy for 4 months and then eating healthy for 4 months, so that the change in blood pressure would be more dramatic. Also, I would be much more strict with my diet, as I would occasionally accidentally eat something unhealthy when I went off campus for lunch with my friends or went somewhere for a birthday party. In addition, I would consistently measure my blood pressure throughout the experiment and graph it so that it would be easier to visualize how it was changing. I don't think I'm going to continue the experiment, per se; however, I'm definitely going to continue this habit of eating healthy into college because I definitely feel better (more awake and able to pay attention) when I eat healthier foods.

Given my initial project goals (which I had mapped out in my First 20 Time Blog Post), I would give myself full credit for this project, as I spent a lot of time talking to the bariatrics doctor who was advising me and doing research. Though the project seems simple, it was pretty hard to keep track of everything and completely change my diet for a month. I was also very conscientious about completing my blog posts in a timely manner and giving feedback to other students/commenting on others' blog posts. I was also pretty good about making sure I spent the class time that was allocated towards working on 20 Time to working on and researching for my project, and managed to finish this project on a very strong note. Though I didn't have a specific final product for this project, the graphs I used to keep track of my eating are attached below and what I learned throughout the process of the project is detailed in the Blog posts (links to which are scattered throughout this post). In conclusion, I would recommend other people to try keeping track of their diets for a month (or more if possible) and take the time to analyze what they want to change and then stick to those goals. It's pretty amazing how much better and more awake healthier diets can make you feel.

TED Talk Outline:
1. Talk about unhealthy eating habits and how it's a vicious cycle
2. Process of consciously keeping track of eating
3. Difficulty of eating healthy especially when I was stressed
4. Put reminders on phone for lunch and kept healthy snacks on me at all times
5. Growth and what I've learned

River Clean Up Service Project

This morning, we all met up at the San Tomas Aquino River (4974 Westmont Avenue, San Jose) to clean up the trash that had been accumulating near the river as it was National River Clean Up Day. We put on gloves and walked along the side of the creek picking up trash that had gotten caught in the rocks and trees near the river with trash pickers. Below are some pictures of Divya and I reaching under the trees to collect trash. We worked in pairs, in which one partner carried a black bag for trash and the other partner carried a white bag for recycling. As we walked along the river, we picked up the trash we found and split it into trash and recycling so that the event organizers could discard of the trash appropriately.

It was pretty eye-opening to see how all of the individual pieces of trash we collected added up to a lot of trash, as shown in the images below. We have all been culprits of littering at some point or another. For example, when we're sitting at a table eating lunch and someone else's empty chip bag flies away, it's pretty easy to sit back and let it fly away - after all, it wasn't your chip bag anyways. But, what we don't realize in that moment, is that all these individual pieces of trash accumulate near rivers and pollute the ecosystems there, which can be extremely detrimental overtime as it contaminates our water and injures/kills wildlife.

Individually, each bag didn't seem to contain too much trash, BUT... 

Together, all of our bags added up to a lot of trash

The event organizers also had all of the participants take a survey (shown below) of what items were most common in our bags of trash. What most of us found was that bags of chips, food wrappers, and plastic shopping bags that we handle everyday were the most common. This just goes to show that having clean local creeks really is in our hands. This was an extremely astonishing experience that made me realize how conscious and cautious we need to be of trash disposal. It takes 30 extra seconds to walk to a trash can after lunch and dispose of any trash. Though those 30 seconds may add up to a lot of "lost time," it ultimately outweighs the alternative of having our creeks and rivers polluted. We all need to take more responsibility when disposing of trash because soon, the damage done by pollution and littering will become irreversible. Right now, because we can do something to alleviate the damage, we must. I will definitely be participating in events like this in the future as it is extremely crucial - now more than ever - that we play an active role in keeping our planet clean.

Unit 8 Reflection

In this unit, we talked a lot about the muscular system and how our muscles are classified. We also talked about muscle contraction, What Happens When You Stretch, and the various types of muscle twitch fibers.

The main themes we discussed were how the muscular system enables the movement of bones and fluids, maintains posture and body position, stabilizes the joints, and allows the body to generate heat. Muscles are generally named and classified by the direction of its fibers, size, shape, action, number of origins, and/or location of the muscle. We also talked a lot about the structure of muscles (shown in the diagram below). Each muscle fiber is an individual cell and has its own sarcoplasm and contains many microfibrils. These all make up sarcomeres.

We then went on to discuss how muscles contract (as shown in the diagram below) in what's known as the sliding filament theory. The main steps in muscle contractions are that the motor neurons send an impulse to the muscle that trigger acetylcholine to be released from vesicles. The acetylcholine binds to receptors that activate the second action potential. Then, calcium ions are released from the sarcoplasmic reticulum and into the cytoplasm. The calcium then binds to proteins that are wrapped around actin filaments. The binding of binding of the calcium ions causes myosin filaments to bid to and pull on the actin filaments, which causes the sarcomere to shorten, causing the muscle to contract. We also discussed the various muscle twitch fibers: slow twitch fibers, fast twitch A fibers, and fast twitch B fibers, and how each fiber is specialized for the type of exercise being done by that person. We also talked about how strenuous exercise can cause hypertrophy (when the muscle cells increase in size) and hyperplasia (when the muscle cells increase in number). We also discussed the difference between ligaments and tendons, the effects of muscle inactivity, and why our muscles get sore after exercise. In addition to these, we talked about the weight training basics like overload, progression, rest and recovery, and how the various muscle contractions are used in weight training.

Some unanswered questions I still have about the muscular system are: do muscles contract faster in people who work out more? where and how exactly does lactic acid fermentation occur in muscles?

In addition, we did a really cool Chicken Dissection to compare the anatomy of a chicken to our own anatomy, which furthered my understanding of the muscular system because it allowed me to visualize the different muscles and how they function. In addition, we did an activity on Creating a Better Joint which also helped me understand how various tendons, muscles, and blood vessels work together to keep a muscle from suffering any injuries. Throughout this unit, I've been pretty busy as we've had a lot of family visiting, so it's been hard to stay up to date with all the work. However, when it came time to study for the test, I remembered that the VARK questionnaire we did last semester told me that I learn better when I look at diagrams and draw/label pictures. Thus, I reviewed my chicken dissection and creating a better joint assignment in order to be able to visualize the various joints and muscles of the body.

I also looked back at my New Years Resolutions and realized that I've been meeting them a lot better now. I've been sleeping before 12 most days as I've realized that I do much better on tests and can concentrate much better in class when I sleep earlier rather than when I cram throughout the night. I've also noticed that I'm a lot more confident now that I was earlier in the semester. Now that all the college forms have been filled out, it's become more of a reality that I will be attending college next year. I'm so unbelievably excited to meet new people and learn new subjects that even my friends and family have noticed that I stand straighter and am overall much more willing to talk to people and reach out to people confidently.

20 Time: Trying to Be Healthy for a Month

In the past month I've learned that it is incredibly difficult to suddenly start eating healthy. When I'm stressed (especially during AP testing weeks), I constantly find myself reaching for a bag of hot cheetos or walking towards the cafeteria to buy some cinnamon buns during tutorial. This was a pretty big setback during the first week and a half of this month, so I started bringing a box of cut fruit to school so that I would always have something healthy to munch on for when I got hungry. This proved to be an extremely successful tactic to make sure my snacks are healthy too because I rarely found the need to buy food from the cafeteria or eat hot cheetos when I had fruits in my backpack or on the table next to me. I've learned that I have a pretty hard time eating healthy when I'm stressed and often skip meals because I don't get hungry or just forget to eat. This project has forced me to be more conscious of what I eat and kept my meals regular and in check.

The next steps for my project will be to compare my recordings about my mood and sleepiness from the two months and compare how my blood pressure and possibly my BMI were affected by my month of eating healthy. The bariatric doctor I have been talking to mentioned that it may be difficult to find solid evidence of a change in these readings, however, because the diet change was only for a month. Typically, she said, it takes around 3-4 months to see actual results. I never considered myself to be a binge-snacker, but after this project I think it's safe to say that binge-snacking is a huge problem, especially for people with anxiety and people who are stressed out. I think a lesson I learned that other people can apply to their lives is how to conquer binge snacking: always keep a healthy alternate snack option nearby so that when you get hungry, you will eat that instead of searching the kitchen for junk food.

The table I used to keep track of the foods I ate during meals is below:

Creating a Better Joint

Abstract: For this project, I chose to find a way to fix “shin splints.” For this project, I first researched the bones and muscles that make up the lower leg or what we call our shins. I focused on one specific type of shin splints - the medial tibial stress syndrome. What I found is that medial tibial stress syndrome occurs when the muscles of the lower leg are strained and pull on the periosteum. This may cause inflammation and irritation, so I began to think of ways to reduce stress on the lower leg. I hypothesized that if the areas surrounding the periosteum of the shin bone were more heavily supported by muscles, it would make it harder to strain the shin. Thus, I decided to design my better shin with more muscles and tendons surrounding the tibia bone as I believe these additions would make the shin harder to strain.

Main Body: Medial tibial stress syndrome (commonly known as “shin splints”) is a very common cause of shin pain in runners, tennis players, and even dancers, and is primarily the result of the overuse or repetitive strain of the sheath surrounding the bone, which then causes inflammation and pain. In medial tibial stress syndrome, when the muscles of the lower leg are strained, they start to pull on the periosteum (the sheath that surrounds the the shin bone), which rapidly causes pain and inflammation. This injury normally results when a person suddenly overuses the shin muscles by running too far too fast, training on hard surfaces, failing to stretch before running, wearing worn out shoes and running on your toes. There are also a number of factors that can increase the likelihood of getting medial tibial stress syndrome: overpronation, oversupination, inadequate footwear and training too quickly.

Medial tibial stress syndrome - shown in the image above on the left - mainly affects the shinbone (tibia) and the calf muscles that surround the tibia, like the tibialis anterior, soleus and gastrocnemius. The tibialis anterior muscle (the muscle I focused on) is a very long and slender muscle located on the anterior side of the leg below the knee. It originates from the proximal edge of the tibia and it runs vertically down the front of the leg, parallel and lateral to the tibia.

One design feature that may reduce the frequency of the medial tibial stress syndrome is adding more muscles around the shin bone (the tibia). The addition of muscles would bolster the shin and reduce the inflammation and pain that occurs when the shin is overused. Because there is more muscle padding, the muscles will be less likely to tear or wear out when overused and will be more resistant to strain from workouts. In addition, more tendons to connect the newly added muscles to the tibia bone would support both, the bone and muscles of the shin. Because tendons are strong collections of fibrous collagenous tissue, they will make movements like pronation and supination (which can cause shin splints) much easier to do, while the added muscles will prevent overpronation and oversupination from causing damage to the shins.

In addition, these newly added muscles and tendons would need support from the three main arteries of the lower leg: peroneal (fibular) artery, anterior medial malleolar artery, posterior tibial artery, and anterior tibial artery. The posterior tibial artery and anterior tibial artery both run down the course of the lower leg and distribute nutrients to the superficial and deep muscles surrounding the tibia. These three arteries would need to be slightly longer so that they can provide nutrients to the additional muscles.

As a track and field sprinter, I’m especially familiar with shin splints. I’ve had shin splints many times, especially when the season starts and we rapidly begin full-speed training or when I immediately start sprint workouts after not having run for a couple days. Sprinters most commonly get shin splints from to overtraining because the muscles in the shin and/or the tibia bone are damaged. The “easy fix” that athletic trainers give to sprinters that show early symptoms of medial tibial stress syndrome is to wrap their ankles and shins with athletic wrap in order to hold the muscles in place. The point of this is to try to stabilize the muscles for the short term. In the long run, though, sprinters are advised to warm up their muscles before running and to strengthen their muscles. Adding more muscles and tendons around the tibia would accomplish all of these goals and act as a sort of “permanent tape” to reduce the chances of a person getting shin splints. The tendons would stabilize the muscles and hold them in place and the additional muscles would support the tibia, all of which would make the shins stronger and more resistant to sudden exercise.

One potential setback from this modification to the shin is that adding more muscles could limit the range of motion for the shin. In much the same way that wrapping ankles and shins limits the ankle joint from dorsiflexion, plantar flexion, inversion, and eversion, these modifications may limit movement as they will make the lower leg much more bulky. However, when the lower leg is pronated and supinated, these modifications will definitely support the shin and prevent injury.

Discussion: I arrived at the idea for this design when I began reading more in depth about the functions of muscles and tendons and how they work together to create movement in and around joints. While researching, I realized that what I needed to prevent the shin from medial tibial stress disorder was to reduce the stress on the tibia. Thus, I concluded that adding more muscle and tendons around the shin bone (tibia) would act as a cushion and make the shin more stable and secure from injury. This assignment definitely furthered my understanding of the functions of muscles and tendons, how they work together to enable movement, and how they work together to prevent injury.

Because we cannot actually redesign our joints, we must rethink how we treat our bodies instead. Because this injury normally results from overuse of the shin muscles, we must ease into workouts, train on softer surfaces, remember to stretch before running, wear shoes that are intact and try not to run on our toes. All of these will decrease the likelihood of getting medial tibial stress syndrome by controlling pronation and supination and preventing injuries that are caused from poor or worn out footwear and training too quickly.

Works Cited:

"Arteries of the Lower Limb." TeachMeAnatomy. N.p., 15 Feb. 2017. Web. 09 May 2017.

"Shin Pain (Shin Splints)." Summit Medical Group. McKesson Corporation, 2014. Web. 09 May 2017.

"Shin Splints and Stress Fractures." Chiro Up. ChiroUp, 10 Mar. 2017. Web. 09 May 2017.

Tortora, Gerard J. Introduction to the Human Body. New York: Wiley, 2006. Print.

Reading Notes: What happens when you stretch?

1. "When a muscle is stretched, some of its fibers lengthen, but other fibers may remain at rest. The current length of the entire muscle depends upon the number of stretched fibers." When a muscle is stretched, the fibers of the sarcomeres lengthen. The length of a muscle when it's stretched depends on how many of the fibers in the sarcomeres are stretched and how many remain at rest. The more a muscle is stretched, the more fibers are stretched, and so the longer it will be.

2. "There are two kinds of muscle fibers: intrafusal muscle fibers and extrafusal muscle fibers." Extrafusal fibers are made up of myofibrils and have intrafusal fibers (a.k.a muscle spindles) that lie parallel to them. Both of these fibers work and move together when muscles stretch. Thus, when a muscle lengthens, they lengthen together and when muscles contract, these fibers contract together.

3. "With extensive training, the stretch reflex of certain muscles can be controlled so that there is little or no reflex contraction in response to a sudden stretch. While this type of control provides the opportunity for the greatest gains in flexibility, it also provides the greatest risk of injury if used improperly." When a muscle is suddenly stretched, the result is generally a reflex contraction. This is why we generally hold stretches for a couple minutes and must ease into and ease out of them: to avoid the reflex contraction, as it can make muscles much more prone to injury.

Relate and Review:

In this article, I learned that there are many ways by which muscles work together and stretch. When a muscle stretches, the sarcomeres (bundles of muscle fibers) spread out and elongate. Because the connective tissue simultaneously stretches with the sarcomeres, the muscle fibers lengthen. One of the main sources of body perception are sensory receptors in the muscles known as proprioceptors. The two main kinds of muscle fibers are extrafusal fibers and intrafusal fibers, which run parallel to the extrafusal fibers. These two fibers work together to enable stretching of the muscles. There are also two types of muscle fibers: nuclear chain fibers and nuclear bag fibers. Nuclear chain fibers are generally used in static stretching, which nuclear bag fibers are used in dynamic stretching. This relates to the Wellness Project that I did last semester about static and dynamic stretching and furthered my understanding of how muscles work differently depending on what kind of stretch is being done.

Chicken Dissection

Last class, we did a chicken dissection in order to compare how similar the muscles of a chicken are to the muscles of a human. When we dissected the breast of the chicken, we found the pectoralis major and the pectoralis minor, which are shown in the image below. In birds, these two muscles, with the humerus and sternum, help lift the wing vertically and dorsally. This is extremely similar to the anatomy of humans, in which the pectoralis minor and major pull the shoulder up and down. Thus, we can see how the bones of the skeletal system and muscles in the muscular system help humans and animals move.

Pectoralis Major (white) - makes up the bulk of the breast muscle
Pectoralis Minor (yellow) - thin and triangular in shape

Many other similarities can be seen between the anatomy of a chicken and that of humans. In fact, many of the structures are homologous. The deltoid, biceps brachii, and the triceps humeralis, for example, are all structures involved in moving the wings of birds and also, similarly, are involved in moving the arms of humans. A third similarity can be seen in the flexor carpi ulnaris and brachioradialis of birds and humans, which aid in flexing and pulling back the hand.

Another important concept related to muscles that we learned is the origin and insertion of muscles. This can best be seen in the movements of the first wing segment/drumette of the chicken. The triceps humeralis works to straighten the arm or wing and the biceps brachii works in flexing the arm or wing. The chicken's upper arm also has the deltoid, which raises the arm. The origin of the arm is the shoulder, as that's where it attaches to the body. The insertion includes all the muscles that move in order to flex and extend the arm.

Deltoid (blue) - round and triangular muscle at the upper most part of the shoulder
Biceps brachii (green) - lies between the shoulder and the elbow
Triceps humeralis (white) - the main bone of the upper arm 

Some additional pictures from the chicken dissection and the functions of the muscles depicted are shown below:

Thigh (black)
Drumstick (blue)
Both aid in moving the legs 

Iliotibialis (red) - extends the thigh and flexes the leg

Sartorius (blue) - flexes the thigh, allowing the crossing of the knee
Biceps femoris (yellow) - flexes the leg
Semimembranosus (green) - extends the thigh
Semitendenosus (white) - extends the thigh
Quadriceps femoris (red) - flexes the thigh and extends the lower leg

Gastrocnemius (blue) - extends the foot and flexes the lower leg
Peroneus longus (black) - extends the foot
Tibialis anterior (yellow) - flexes the foot

Trapezius (yellow) - pull the shoulders back
Latissimus dorsi (green) - extend/pull the wing or arm