Lab Report The Effects of Drugs on Cardiac Physiology
The study of cardio physiology was broken up into five distinct parts all centering on the cardiovascular system. The first lab was utilization of the electrocardiogram (ECG). This studied the electrical activities of the heart by placing electrodes on different parts of the skin. This results in a graph on calibrated paper of these activities. These graphs are useful in the diagnosis of heart disease and heart abnormalities. Alongside natural heart abnormalities are those induced by chemical substances. The electrocardiogram is useful in showing how these chemicals adjust the electrical impulses that it induces.
The second part of this lab was a computer simulation program to illustrate a frog’s electrocardiogram using various drugs in an isolated setting. The computer program entitled “Effects of Drugs on the Frog Heart” allowed experimental conditions to be set for specific drugs. The different drugs used were calcium, digitalis, pilocarpine, atropine, potassium, epinephrine, caffeine, and nicotine. Each of these drugs caused a different electrocardiogram and beats per minute reading. The calcium-magnesium ration affects “the permeability of the cell membrane”(Fox). When calcium is placed directly on the heart it results in three physiological functions. The force of the heart increases while the cardiac rate decreases. It also causes the appearance of “ectopic pacemakers in the ventricles, producing abnormal rhythms” (Fox). Digitalis’ affect on the heart is very similar to that of calcium. It inhibits the sodium-potassium pump activated by ATP that promotes the uptake of extracellular calcium by the heart. This in return strengthens myocardial contraction (Springhouse). Pilocarpine on the other hand
acts to decrease the heart rate. It achieves this by assisting in the release of acetylcholine from the vagus nerve. Atropine on the other hand block acetylcholine receptors thus decreasing cardiac rate. By placing potassium directly on the heart, its extracellular concentration increases thus decreasing the resting potential. This brings the resting potential closer to threshold and weakens myocardial contractions. Epinephrine’s action increases the strength of contraction and of the cardiac rate. Caffeine is a stimulant that also increases the strength of contraction and of the cardiac rate. It inhibits phosphodiesterase that breaks down cyclic AMP thus causing an increase in cAMP levels. Nicotine actively binds to the nicotinic receptors causing stimulation of the parasympathetic ganglia.
In this lab, I took two recordings of my heart using an electrocardiogram. An electrocardiogram, EKG pg. 628 Y and pg. 688 D, is a recording of the heart's electrical impulses, action potentials, going through the heart. The different phases of the EKG are referred to as waves; the P wave, QRS Complex, and the T wave. These waves each signify the different things that are occurring in the heart. For example, the P wave occurs when the sinoatrial (SA) node, aka the pacemaker, fires an action potential. This causes the atria, which is currently full of blood, to depolarize and to contract, aka atrial systole. The signal travels from the SA node to the atrioventricular (AV) node during the P-Q segment of the EKG. The AV node purposefully delays
The experiment studies the effects of Red Bull and its major components on the heart rate of a Daphnia. The experiment focuses on the effects of conditions on the cardiovascular system. The Cardiovascular system is responsible for the transport of blood, oxygen, nutrients and waste circulating the body. It consists of the heart, vessels, and blood as in closed circulatory system and hemolymph in open circulatory system, the cardiovascular system is also responsible for thermoregulation in the body. (Gonzalez, 2012). The heart helps pump blood to the lungs and rest of the body. The pumping of heart or the contraction and relaxation of heart determines the heart rate and depends on multiple chemicals that we could influence by using stimulants, depressants, varying temperatures, aerobic, and anaerobic
Cardiovascular Activity And How it Influences the body. Introduction: Cardiovascular fitness is a form of aerobic fitness (Neporent and Egan 1997). There are many different ways of evaluating the amount of oxygen used during cardiovascular fitness and one the methods involved is called VO2 Max. VO2 Max is the maximum amount of oxygen that the body can hold.
I predicted that the blackworms in higher caffeinated solutions would have higher pulse rates, because caffeine is known to increase blood pressure and heart rate. However as far as scientists know, invertebrates are not expected to have a strong response to caffeine like vertebrates do. Also, caffeine in low doses is known to lower pulse rate. The results do not support my hypothesis. The results show that when black worms are placed in caffeinated solutions, their pulse rates on average are lower than those placed in a solution with no caffeine. A possible flaw that may have occurred during experimentation is that the petri dishes were not properly cleansed, or that there were other properties in the water that influenced the outcome. To eliminate these flaws, I could have boiled the petri dishes and water to insure that there were no other properties to influence the data. Further experimentation should be performed with higher doses of caffeine to further insure that caffeine does in fact lower their pulse rate. The insufficient number of trials performed lead to less confidence in my conclusion that caffeine lowers the heart rate in
Caffeine is medically known as trimethylzanthine. Caffeine acts as a cardiac stimulant which means that it increases heart rate.
Cardiovascular disease is currently the leading cause of death in the United States. It is responsible for one in four deaths every year, about 600,000 mortalities. This disease affects men and women, as well as every ethnic group. Coronary artery disease is the most common cardiovascular disease, representing approximately 400,000 deaths per year of the aforementioned 600,000 total deaths from cardiovascular diseases as a whole. In 2010 alone, coronary artery disease cost the United States $108.9 billion for health care services, medication, and lost productivity. These chilling statistics, published every year by the American Medical Association, demonstrate the immediate need for new and innovative ways to prevent, detect, and treat coronary heart disease. This paper will explore the molecular biology behind the disease while explaining the current treatments and prevention that are available today, why they work and what can be done to improve them.
Norepinephrine is the neurotransmitter released by sympathetic nerves (e.g., those innervating the heart and blood vessels) and, within the brain, those of the locus coe...
The heart serves as a powerful function in the human body through two main jobs. It pumps oxygen-rich blood throughout the body and “blood vessels called coronary arteries that carry oxygenated blood straight into the heart muscle” (Katzenstein and Pinã, 2). There are four chambers and valves inside the heart that “help regulate the flow of blood as it travels through the heart’s chambers and out to the lungs and body” (Katzenstein Pinã, 2). Within the heart there is the upper chamber known as the atrium (atria) and the lower chamber known as the ventricles. “The atrium receive blood from the lu...
"Potassium: Heart Benefits and Side Effects." WebMD. WebMD, n.d. Web. 22 Apr. 2014. (This source is credible because it is a medical cite that discusses halth benefits or conditions).
Arrhythmia I am doing my report on Arrhythmia. It affects the cardiac muscle, the heart. Arrhythmia causes three types of problems. It causes the heart to pump too slowly (bradycardia), it causes the heart to pump too fast (tachycardis), and it causes the heart to skip beats (palipations).
AIM: - the aim of this experiment is to find out what the effects of exercise are on the heart rate. And to record these results in various formats. VARIABLES: - * Type of exercise * Duration of exercise * Intensity of exercise * Stage of respiration
Investigating the Effect of Exercise on the Heart Rate Introduction For it's size the heart has the huge capacity of pumping large amounts of blood, in the average adult's heart beats 60 to 100 times a minute, pumps between 70ml and 100ml of blood with each beat, circulates 5 to 6 litres of blood around the body per minute and about 13 litres of blood per minute during vigorous exercise. The heart will beat more then 2.5 billion times during an average lifetime. This investigation will be looking at the effect of exercise on the heart rate. Aim The aim of this investigation is to find out how exercise affects the heart rate, using research & experimenting on changes and increases in the heart rate using exercise. Research â— The heart The normal heart is a strong, hardworking pump made of muscle tissue.
The heart is a pump with four chambers made of their own special muscle called cardiac muscle. Its interwoven muscle fibers enable the heart to contract or squeeze together automatically (Colombo 7). It’s about the same size of a fist and weighs some where around two hundred fifty to three hundred fifty grams (Marieb 432). The size of the heart depends on a person’s height and size. The heart wall is enclosed in three layers: superficial epicardium, middle epicardium, and deep epicardium. It is then enclosed in a double-walled sac called the Pericardium. The terms Systole and Diastole refer respectively and literally to the contraction and relaxation periods of heart activity (Marieb 432). While the doctor is taking a patient’s blood pressure, he listens for the contractions and relaxations of the heart. He also listens for them to make sure that they are going in a single rhythm, to make sure that there are no arrhythmias or complications. The heart muscle does not depend on the nervous system. If the nervous s...
Caffeine acts much like stress, increasing heart rate, blood pressure and levels of stress hormones, Caffeine consumption can double your blood levels of the stress hormones cortisol and epinephrine causing
Analysis of Aspirin Tablets Aim --- To discover the percentage of acetylsalicylic acid in a sample of aspirin tablets. ----------------------------------------------------------------- In order to do this, the amount of moles that react with the sodium hydroxide must be known. This is achieved by using the method of back titration.