My family has a long history of heart problems. My grandfather on my dads side of the family has had a heart attack, and my dad has had open heart surgery before. When I was younger, I would get a heart screening every 2 years to make sure that nothing irregular was happening to my heart. As I started to get older and get involved with weight lifting, I started to get my heart checked annually. My family is always taking all the precautions to make sure that me and my brothers don’t end up having to go through heart problems.

According to Charles Webb, lifting heavy weights causes blood pressure to rise, which puts extreme stress of the aorta, the heart’s main artery. Aortic dissection is something that people should be aware of if they are lifting heavy weights. Aortic dissection is a split in the walls of the aorta, that lets blood rush in, and can be cause death unless surgery is performed immediately. Everyone who lifts weight should be aware that if they start to feel a sharp, stabbing pain in the heart, they should either get help, or get checked out by a doctor immediately.

The increase in the blood pressure is caused by the subject holding their breath when straining their muscle to get the weight up. This contraction causes your spine to tighten up, which supports your back, causing the blood pressure to rise.

This particular study can be explained in multiple ways. There could be a direct causal relationship where lifting heavy weights causes a higher blood pressure. There could not be a reverse causal effect however, because higher blood pressure does not help you with lifting weights, it only can cause more danger. The confounding variables in this study is whether or not the subject has high cholesterol, high blood pressure, history of heart problems, old age, or anything that can affect the subject’s heart. As always, this study could be because of chance and have no reason behind it. The putative causal variable being measured is lifting heavy weights. The putative response variable being measured is higher blood pressure. The higher the blood pressure, the more the aorta is put under strain. The hypothetical mechanism in this study is the weight lifting that causes the blood pressure to rise. Overall, we can assume that the study is correlated, but we do not know if the relationship is causal or not.

If you do not have a history of high cholesterol, heart problems, or high blood pressure this shouldn’t be a problem for you. However, if you do have any of these problems, you should get your heart screened by a heart doctor at least annually. You never know when your heart could be going through too much stress. A logical person would get their heart checked, even if this study does not prove that it is a causal relationship.

Works Cited

Webb, Charles. “Does Lifting Heavy Weights Hurt Your Heart?” LIVESTRONG.COM. LIVESTRONG.COM, 28 Jan. 2015. Web. 15 Sept. 2016.                          

Almost every one has sustained a concussion at least one time in their lives, whether it was because of a sport or some accident outside sports. However, some people do not know that they have sustained a concussion before because it goes unrecorded. There are fewer concussions recorded on a teenage football practice field than in a game setting, but this is because there are less trained eyes on the practice field compared to the football field when looking for concussions.

According to the University of Pittsburgh, concussions are brain disturbances that can happen from impact to the head. Some symptoms of concussions are loss of memory, nauseous,  vomiting, and sensitivity to light. There are some guidelines that are set in high school’s to prevent and detect concussions. For example, in my school we have the impact test that was a baseline test that every athlete has to take. This test had different simulations that included memorizing shapes, numbers, and patterns. If an athlete had any type of head injury, they would have to retake the impact test, and if they failed they would get diagnosed with a concussion. However, some athletes do not know when they have sustained a certain head injury, so sometimes these concussions get overlooked.

According to Tara Haelle, if more than one concussion occurs to a specific individual over the span of a year, the recovery time increases to 2-3 times longer than if you were to sustain your first concussion. This study provides evidence that every individual who participates in sports should be careful and take precaution if they think that they have a concussion. Tara Haelle also stated in her article that 70 to 90 percent of concussions in sports go unnoticed. That’s an overwhelming amount of people who don’t know that they have sustained a concussion.

In this study, the median went from 11 days of recovery time on the first concussion, to 22 days if the subject had a history of concussions. The science behind this is because the brain cells have not fully recovered from the previous concussion, so it takes longer to heal. Because of this, there are more brain cells that have been damaged. The putative causal variable for this study is how many concussions occurred to the subject before the most recent concussion was sustained. The putative response variable for this study is how long it takes for the subject to heal from the most recent concussion. There is no way this study could be reverse causation because of the passage of time. There could be a third confounding variable behind this study because we do not know if the study was controlled against the third variables. Chance is always a possibility in these studies, but it is highly unlikely. The mechanism that causes the longer recovery time is the impact that damaged more brain cells.

In conclusion, a smart individual will pay more attention to if they are obtaining these injuries and if they are getting checked out when they do. If a concussion is spotted, the necessary recovery time must be obtained in order to protect themselves from getting another concussion.

Works Cited

Haelle, Tara. “Childhood Concussion Studies Butt Heads.” Scientific American. Scientific American, 09 June 2013. Web. 14 Sept. 2016.        

University of Pittsburgh University Marketing Communications Webteam. “Concussions.” Neurosurgery at the University of Pittsburgh. UMC Web Team, n.d. Web. 14 Sept. 2016. 

It is very common for someone to be driving, and start to daydream. This has happened to me before when I got home from a routine trip to the store, and when I got home I didn’t remember driving during most of the trip. This happens when I am familiar with my area and my mind starts to wander when I am driving. According to William Hampton, in 65,000 fatal crashes during 2010-2011, 62 percent were related to daydreaming. Daydream driving is very dangerous because you may think that you have control of what is going on around you, but it is almost like your body goes on auto-pilot.

There is another article by Ron Claiborne that states that dozing off could be related to a term called micro-sleep. This is when you doze off without noticing you are dozing off. According to the same article, there was a study done on one particular individual who had stayed up for 32 consecutive hours and was driving down a road. He had a brain wave monitor hooked up to him, with observers in the car to see what he was doing. After the drive, they recorded that he had fell into micro-sleep 22 times, even though the driver only remembered dozing off twice. This term micro-sleep is caused by sleep deprivation. Micro-sleep is a very dangerous thing that anyone can go through without even knowing it, constantly dosing off and having your subconscious drive can be one of the most dangerous actions while driving.

Both of these problems relate to each other because they put other drivers on the road in danger. There is a direct causation relationship for these ideas, because you have to be conscious when you are driving in order to be driving in a safe manner. Both daydream driving and micro-sleep driving prevents you from having full consciousness while driving, and makes you extremely vulnerable for a dangerous crash to occur. In the micro-sleep study, the individual stayed up and made himself sleep deprived, and tried to drive. This is a direct causal relationship because the sleep deprivation caused him to go into micro-sleep multiple times. We can rule out the reverse causal relationship because micro-sleep does not cause you to be tired. There is no third confounding variables because the only thing that causes micro-sleep is sleep deprivation. Lastly, chance could be an explanation for this study but it is highly unlikely because of the fact that he was sleep deprived, and that caused him to micro-sleep.

The mechanism for this particular study is sleep deprivation, because sleep deprivation causes micro-sleep to occur. The putative causal variable is whether or not the sample is sleep deprived and the putative response variable is whether or not the sample goes through micro-sleep on their drive.

In conclusion of this study, everyone should get a normal amount of sleep daily before driving, in order to prevent loss of consciousness at the wheel. This will help make the roads even more safe than they already are.

Works Cited

Hampton, William. “Just How Dangerous Is Daydreaming While Driving?” Popular Mechanics. Popular Mechanics, 30 Jan. 2015. Web. 11 Sept. 2016.

NOTEBOOK, REPORTER’S, and By Claiborne Ron. “‘In the Blink of an Eye’: Dozing While Driving.” ABC News. ABC News Network, 03 Dec. 2012. Web. 11 Sept. 2016.

What’s up everyone!

My name is Jack Regar, I am a freshman and I am from Harrisburg, PA. It is about an hour and a half away from here and I grew up rooting for Penn State all of my life. I am an intended Recreation Parks and Tourism Management major, specifically the commercial side. I plan to incorporate my love with sports and combine it with business to go into a sports management job.

During high school I always strived in science classes but it was never my favorite subject to learn, so that is why I do not plan to be a science major. I was recommended this course from my academic advisor who told me that everyone likes this course because it is truly a unique way to look at the world. I am excited to see the different concepts we are all going to learn.

In my free time I enjoy doing things that give me leisure. Things that let me get away from my responsibilities and let me enjoy the moment. My summer roommate and I always loved to cliff dive, you can see a short video Here.

Finally, I always enjoyed volunteering at the Special Olympics, so here is a picture of one of my best friends and I after he competed at the Special Olympics.