Paper No. :09 Physiology and Sports Anthropology Module :1 Introduction to Physiological Anthropology
Development Team
Prof. Anup Kumar Kapoor Principal Investigator Department of Anthropology, University of Delhi
Paper Coordinator Dr. Rashmi Sinha IGNOU, Delhi
Content Writer Dr. Rashmi Sinha IGNOU, Delhi
Content Reviewer Prof. Satwanti Kapoor Department of Anthropology, University of Delhi
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Physiology and Sports Anthropology Anthropology Introduction to Physiological Anthropology
Description of Module
Subject Name Anthropology
Paper Name 09 Physiology and Sports Anthropology
Module Name/Title Introduction to Physiological Anthropology
Module Id 1
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Physiology and Sports Anthropology Anthropology Introduction to Physiological Anthropology
Contents
Introduction
1. History of Physiology
2. Human Physiology
3. Homeostasis: A defining Feature of Physiology
4. The Scope and Applications of Physiological Anthropology
Summary
Learning objectives
1. To know about Physiology
2. To have an idea about its history and origin
3. To know about the inter-relatedness of Physiology and Physiological Anthropology by knowing about their scopes
4. To know about homeostasis, an important defining feature of Physiology
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Physiology and Sports Anthropology Anthropology Introduction to Physiological Anthropology
Introduction
Physiology is the science of life, which endeavors to appreciate the mechanisms of living, from the molecular basis of cell function to the integrated behaviour of the whole body with a holistic approach. It is the study of function closely related to anatomy a study of form. Due to the recurrent association between form and function, physiology and anatomy are essentially linked and are studied in tandem as part of a medical program. Much of the foundation of knowledge in human physiology was provided by animal experimentation. Research in physiology facilitates in not only understanding the working of the body, but also to comprehend what goes wrong in disease and to identify new treatments for disease. Physiology is an experimental science that forms the basis for biological and clinical sciences that gives an explanation to the detection, prevention and treatment of disease.
1. History of Physiology
Physiological studies date back to ancient civilizations of India (Burma and Chakravorty, 2011, Zimmermann, 2015). Archeological and historical records human physiology, as a discipline started around 420 BC in ancient Greece at the Hippocratic School of Medicine. Hippocrates of Kos (460-370 BC), known as the "father of medicine" along with his students wrote extensively on physiology and established medicine as its own discipline. Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC), whose focus was on the relationship between structure and function, is also regarded as the pioneer of physiology. The treasured thoughts of Aristotle and his stress on the relationship between structure and function marked the establishment of physiology in ancient Greece. Claudius Galenus (c. 126–199 AD), known as Galen, a prominent Greek physician in ancient Rome, dissected animals and established himself an expert anatomist and physiologist. According to him, monkeys who walked on two legs would probably provide researchers with information that are applicable to humans. Galen also known as the "founder of experimental physiology", was the first to use experiments to probe the functions of the. It was Jean Fernel (1497 - 1558), a French physician, who introduced the term "physiology".
There were only sporadic landmarks during the earlier century until the advent of 19th century when physiology started making rapid advancements. Matthias Schleiden (1804-1881), a German botanist, and Theodor Schwann (1810-1882), a German physiologist, co-founders of the cell theory stated that every living thing or organisms are made up of units called cells; with cells being the basic unit structure of everything that lives.
Claude Bernard (1813-1878), a French physiologist, further proposed and discovered the concept of milieu interieur (the environment within) in which he refers to the extra-cellular fluid environment
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Physiology and Sports Anthropology Anthropology Introduction to Physiological Anthropology
which protects tissues and organs of multicellular living organisms. It was American physiologist Walter Cannon (1871-1945), who named it "homeostasis" later. By homeostasis, Cannon meant "the maintenance of steady states in the body and the physiological processes through which they are regulated" (Brown and Fee, 2002). Joseph Lister (1858) worked on the reasons for blood coagulation and inflammation that arose following injuries and surgical wounds. He later discovered antiseptics, whose properties could dramatically reduce surgical mortality rates. During the 1870s, when Harvard University, USA, started a medical physiology program, Henry Bowditch was its first full -time faculty member. Ivan Pavlov (1891) famous for his Pavlov’s experiment observed how dogs' saliva production would respond to various sounds and other stimuli. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology in 1904.
It was during this time that the scientists showed increased interest in how non-human beings function. 20th century witnessed the advent of comparative physiology and ecophysiology. Knut Schmidt- Nielsen and George Bartholomew are prominent physiologists of this field and its advances led to evolutionary physiology becoming a distinct subdiscipline. The first hormone adrenaline from adrenal gland to be identified and synthesized was in 1901 by John Jacob Abel and Jokichi Takamine. In 1911, J. S. Haldane and other respiratory physiologists, climbed to Pike's Peak to study the effect of altitude on human breathing. Charles Best and Frederick Banting who won the Nobel Prize in 1923 isolated insulin in dogs. Their study turned diabetes from a deadly disease to a chronic one. Andrew Huxley and Alan Hodgkin (1952) discovered the ionic mechanism which showed that nerve impulses are transmitted. With the advances in the physiological studies of the heart, Christiaan Barnard, South Africa, performed the first successful human heart transplant in 1967. Physiologists during 1960’s realized that there was a sharp fall in blood pressure in snakebite victims which resulted in their fainting. Continued work resulted in isolation of the compound in the snake venom that blocked ACE (angiotensin converting enzyyme), an enzyme that controls blood pressure. Consequently research on ACE inhibitors, drugs for controlling hypertension (high blood pressure), were developed and later approved by the US FDA.
The discovery of cystic fibrosis gene by Lap Chee Tsui, Jack Riordan and Francis Collins was in 1989. Paul Nurse, Leland Hartwell and Timothy Hunt in 2001 are responsible for discovery of the mechanism that regulates cell growth, division and death.
2. Human physiology
Human physiology is the scientific study of normal body function to understand the cause-and-effect mechanisms of how cells, tissues, organs, and body systems work when in a healthy state. Human physiology seeks to understand the mechanisms that work to keep the human body alive and 5
Physiology and Sports Anthropology Anthropology Introduction to Physiological Anthropology
functioning (Hall, 2011), through scientific enquiry into the nature of mechanical, physical, and biochemical functions of humans, their organs, and the cells of which they are composed. The principal level of focus of physiology is at the level of organs and systems within systems. The endocrine and nervous systems play major roles in the reception and transmission of signals that integrate function in animals. It is a study of normal biological function, from cell to tissue, tissue to organ, and organ to system, as well as how the organism as a whole accomplishes particular tasks essential to life. In the study of physiology, the emphasis is on mechanisms— on exactly how a particular function is performed. For example, how is the heartbeat produced, and how is the heart rate regulated? How do we digest dietary fat? How is the blood sugar concentration regulated? The answers to these questions contain cause and-effect sequences. Human physiology is a part of the more general science of mammalian physiology, which is a subcategory of vertebrate physiology. The study of human physiology gains significance because it is the major scientific foundation of medicine and other health applications. This relationship is recognized by the Nobel Prize committee, which awards prizes in a category called “Physiology or Medicine.” (http://cristinafisiologia.org/arquivos/equilibrio_homeostase/fox_2009_chapter01_introd_physiol.pdf).
It is a useful discipline for an understanding of physiological processes and mechanisms basic to all health professions. Homeostasis is a major aspect with regard to such interactions within plants as well as animals. The biological basis of the study of physiology, integration refers to the overlap of many functions of the systems of the human body, as well as its accompanied form. It is achieved through communication that occurs in a variety of ways, both electrical and chemical (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiology).
3. Homeostasis: A defining Feature of Physiology
An understanding of human physiology remains incomplete without the mention of homeostasis. During Aristotle’s era physicians agreed that food health was one way or another linked to a balance among, the multiple life-sustaining forces (“humors”) in the body. It took rather a very long time to understand this process. The advent of ordinary microscope, led to the breakthrough that the human body is composed of trillions of cells and each of cell is packaged to allow movement of certain substances at the same level and not others to move across the cell membrane. During the 19th and 20th centuries, it became evident that most cells are in bond with the interstitial fluid which in turn, was found to be in state of flux, with water and solutes such as ions and gases moving back and forth through it between the cell interiors and the blood in nearby capillaries.
Another interesting characteristic that came into notice was that most of the common physiological variables found in healthy organisms such as humans-blood pressure; body temperature; and blood- 6
Physiology and Sports Anthropology Anthropology Introduction to Physiological Anthropology
borne factors such as oxygen, glucose, and sodium ions, for example-are maintained within a predictable range despite external environmental conditions not remaining constant. It was Claude Bernard, who came up with constant internal environment that is a perquisite for food health. This concept was later refined by the American physiologist Walter Cannon, who coined the terms homeostasis to this process.
When changes start to occur, sensory information evokes physiological responses that act to defend the internal environment against the changes. Thus, much of physiology involves the study of physiological mechanisms that maintain homeostasis. Homeostasis may be defined as the dynamic constancy of the internal environment. The terms dynamic and constant seem contradictory. However, this definition of homeostasis refers to the active, dynamic physiological control processes that must fight changes in order to maintain relatively constant conditions within our body. The internal environment here refers to such conditions as deep body temperature, blood volume and the concentrations of different molecules, blood pressure, and many others (http://cristinafisiologia.org/arquivos/equilibrio_homeostase/fox_2009_chapter01_introd_physiol.pdf). It is clearly understood that homeostasis as a state of reasonably stable balance between physiological variables, but then it is too simple a fact to what it is. Infact there is nothing like physiological variable that is constant over long periods of time, rather some variables fluctuate widely on an average value during the day, yet surprisingly are said to be in balance. This is possible because homeostasis is a dynamic, not a static, process.
Let us understand by the variation in the concentration of glucose in the blood during a day. After taking the meal, carbohydrates in food are broken down in the intestines into glucose molecules, which are then absorbed across the intestinal epithelium and released into the blood. Consequent to it, blood glucose levels rise significantly within a short time after eating. Now if we talk of stable or static internal environment, then such a huge variation in the blood level of glucose is not consistent with the idea. What holds significance is that once the concentration of glucose in the blood increases, compensatory mechanisms brings back the glucose level to the level it was before the meal. These homeostatic compensatory mechanisms do not, nonetheless, exceed any considerable degree in the opposite direction; which means that the blood glucose levels generally do not decrease below the pre- meal level, or even if they do so, it’s only slightly. In the case of glucose, the endocrine system is foremost accountable for this adjustment, but then number of control systems may commence to regulate other processes.
4. The Scope and Applications of Physiological Anthropology
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Physiology and Sports Anthropology Anthropology Introduction to Physiological Anthropology
Physiology is the study of how living organisms function and with respect to human beings, its scope has wide spectrum. At one end of the spectrum, it includes the study of individual molecules-for example, how a particular protein’s shape and electrical properties allow it to function as a channel for ions to move into or out of a cell. Hence, Physiologists concern lies in the function and integration-how parts of the body work in concert at various levels down to individual molecules of organization and, consequently, in the entire organism so as to gain to an understanding of the function of the whole body. According to Claude Bernard “After carrying out an analysis of phenomena, we must….. always reconstruct our physiological synthesis, so as to see the joint action of all the parts we have isolated…….” (Widmaier et al. 2014).
The interaction of human physiological fitness and environment with respect to their health & morbidity play an important role. In the past decade, the growing epidemic of health risks has led to health promotion strategies focus solely on behavioural change and toward ecological approaches that engage communities in fostering environment and behavioural changes. This general trend coincides with the increased popularity of interdisciplinary and participatory approaches to health promotion, creating new opportunities for anthropologists to play a role in community health promotion. The health promotive capacity of an environment is understood, not simply in terms of the health effects of separate environmental features (e.g., air quality, seismic safety, or social climate), but more broadly as the cumulative impact of multiple environmental conditions or occupants’ physical, emotional, and social well-being, over a specific time interval (Stokols, 1996).
It is undeniable that plenty of new physiological information and understanding is in offing due to significant landmark sequencing of the human genome. The application to the working of the cells and organ systems will offer an ever-sharper view of how out bodies work the moment the functions of the proteins encoded by the genome are revealed. The assimilation of molecular biology with physiology has led to the need for a new term to describe this growing area of research- physiological genomics, an upcoming area of research with molecular biology answers the question on changes and mechanism at the level of gene in the body in reaction to some external or internal stimulus.
Human cardiovascular physiology and health status constitute a significant aspect in our system. The monitoring blood pressure as the continuum of cardiovascular risk across levels provides a framework for differentiating levels of risk associated and for defining treatment thresholds and therapeutic goals. Heart rate proves to be the best predictor after myocardial infarction, in patients with congestive heart failure, as well as in patients with diabetes mellitus or hypertension (Disegni et al, In the context of this large and growing disease burden, strategies to improve population health require consistent and comprehensive measures of the contribution of major risk factors to premature mortality and disability. These estimates can elucidate the potential for prevention and provide an important input into health 8
Physiology and Sports Anthropology Anthropology Introduction to Physiological Anthropology
planning and other cost-utility decisions. Therefore, the importance of modifiable cardiovascular health risks, such as blood pressure, should not be overestimated or under estimated (Vasan et al. 2001).
Cardio-respiratory fitness is generally considered the most important component of health related fitness and is considered a major predictor of hypertension threat. It is basically skill of the cardiorespiratory system to react satisfactorily and safely to the blood, oxygen and other nutritional requirements of the body organ and tissues, particularly the working muscle during physical activity. Elevated levels of cardiorespiratory fitness regularly neutralises increased mortality allied with elevated blood pressure and reduce risk of developing hypertension among healthy normotensive persons. The individuals with low fitness as compared with fit individuals are predisposed to higher incidences of hypertension. Physical fitness is the ability to meet the demands of life with vitality and vigilance without experiencing fatigue and have enough energy to enjoy leisure time’s activities too. Physical performance tests are conducted to analyse a person’s fitness level using direct calorimeter, treadmill, ergometer test and step test methods to access physical fitness.
Physiological anthropology aids in studying the adaptation of human cardiorespiratory function with diverse environmental condition i.e. heat, cold and high altitude. Over the last decade, mounting epidemiological and clinical evidence has led to a increased anxiety about the possible harmful effects of ambient air pollution on pulmonary and cardiovascular system depending; physiological anthropology also facilitates in understanding the impact of air pollution on cardiorespiratory functions.
Many physiologists are actively involved in research on the physiological foundation of a wide range of diseases. Some disease where physiology has “gone wrong” or Pathophysiology, in such cases understanding of physiology is important for the study and practice of medicine.
Summary
Physiological studies date back to ancient civilizations of India Physiology is the science of life, which endeavors to appreciate the mechanisms of living, from the molecular basis of cell function to the integrated behaviour of the whole body with a holistic approach. Physiology is an experimental science that forms the basis for biological and clinical sciences that gives an explanation to the detection, prevention and treatment of disease. Archeological and historical records human physiology, as a discipline started around 420 BC in ancient Greece at the Hippocratic School of Medicine. Hippocrates, Aristotle, Claudius Galenus and Jean Fernel were major contributors. There were only sporadic landmarks during the earlier century until the advent of 19th century when physiology started making rapid advancements. Matthias Schleiden, Theodor Schwann, Claude 9
Physiology and Sports Anthropology Anthropology Introduction to Physiological Anthropology
Bernard, Walter Cannon, Joseph Lister, Henry Bowditch and Ivan Pavlov made significant impact. 20th century witnessed the advent of comparative physiology and ecophysiology with significant contributions from Knut Schmidt-Nielsen, George Bartholomew, John Jacob Abel, Jokichi Takamine, Haldane, Charles Best, Frederick Banting, Andrew Huxley, Alan Hodgkin, Christiaan Barnard, Lap Chee Tsui, Jack Riordan, Francis Collins, Paul Nurse, Leland Hartwell and Timothy Hunt. Human physiology is the scientific study of normal body function to understand the cause-and-effect mechanisms of how cells, tissues, organs, and body systems work when in a healthy state. Human physiology seeks to understand the mechanisms that work to keep the human body alive and functioning The endocrine and nervous systems play major roles in the reception and transmission of signals that integrate function in animals. Homeostasis is a major aspect with regard to such interactions within plants as well as animals. The biological basis of the study of physiology, integration refers to the overlap of many functions of the systems of the human body, as well as its accompanied form. The scope and applications of physiological anthropology is immense.
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Physiology and Sports Anthropology Anthropology Introduction to Physiological Anthropology