Epinephrine Essay

In this experiment we explored the effects of being nervous and therefore adrenaline on the human cardiopulmonary physiology. Adrenaline or epinephrine is a hormone that is emitted throughout the body in times of temporary stress or fear. Our theory or hypothesis was that in a uncomfortable interaction with a stranger the person in question would experience a spike in their heart rate and blood pressure. In a recent study on the effects of epinephrine on the heart (Fuenmayor and Gomez 2016) the results showed that when the hormone epinephrine was directly injected into the system there were no harmful effects, however the systolic blood pressure and heart rate of the patient increased to up to 10% higher than the basal reading. This study would …show more content…
The materials we needed for this step were a blood pressure cuff, which could rood both our BP and HR. the next step was to walk down into either Yates building or downstairs on the Anatomy/Zoology building. We had to use the elevator and walk slowly so as not to exasperate ourselves. Following this step, we then had to pick a person to ask a question to. The question was a constant, our standardized variable, it was “Hey, can I borrow your shoes?” The person doing the asking had the cuff attached to their arm, ready for the reading to be taken, and the partner had to stand a few feet behind the person doing the asking with the blood pressure machine ready to take a reading. After asking the question to the stranger, our independent variable, we had to immediately return to our partner and take readings every two minutes until we returned to our basal readings. We recorded these measurements in our lab notebooks until the whole class was able to compile them on an excel document. Our reactions and the change in our heart rates and blood pressure were the dependent variables. Once the first person was totally finished we then switched who was wearing the cuff and who was taking the readings and repeated the