Posts Tagged: optimal diet unit

The optimal diet has been a long unit of study this semester and included many fun moments and stressful days. I can’t exactly pinpoint certain moments that were particularly better, but just overall activities that seem to stick in my head.

My first favorite learning experience of this unit would be the enzyme lab. It allowed for my group to not only get creative with designing a lab, but taught me to learn from mistakes and improve on an experiment. I mean, its hard not to when our group ended up needing to do 5 trials since the first 3 failed. Although I totally ended up hating the lab after finally finishing, looking back at it I can finally appreciate the experience and how much it helped me learn.

My second favorite learning moment from the optimal diet unit would have to be the VO2max lab. Normally, I can only learn so much from doing lab experiments. However, when the tides turn and I literally become the guinea pig to be tested upon, things really somehow made sense. It also was accompanied by many hilarious moments including student vs professor foot races and professor vs machine moments.

The third and probably most favorite learning experience would definitely be the diet case study project. This project was full of hardships that I honestly can admit would have been pretty impossible to overcome if it weren’t for my group. It also allowed for me to get a glimpse of a real world application of the material we cover in class, and may have led me to rethink of my own diet and how it may actually affect my health.

Overall, this unit and this class in general has been pretty amazing. Although this class has made me lose more sleep than anything ever before and even had me working on a lab report on my 21st birthday (sadface), I am happy I got the chance to be part of this program.

Hello everyone!

Hope you’ve all enjoyed our much needed 3 day weekend. Reflecting on what we’ve learned so far, made me feel guilty eating all of these yummy Easter candies. I have a new appreciation for how hard our metabolism works and much more respect for eating healthy. Most of us take our good health for granted, but I have learned, with great emphasis- the complexity of it all–a lot of work goes into digestion. So, with a new perspective and respect for food, I am grateful for the lessons learned See’s candies will be short one customer this year!

Out of all my experiences with the optimal diet project that we did, there are 3 that stand out the most to me. The first was actually when we received our “patient.” It was enlightening to brainstorm with my fellow group members about what was happening with our patient based on only the given information. This made me feel like some sort of doctor :D, but I think working in a group like that and combining all of our ideas and learning new facts from my friends was a great experience. Second, was when we had to find primary literature sources for the treatment. Since our patient did not have any disease, it was incredibly difficult to find primary sources that only talked about building muscle. We had to think a little until we decided to just google muscle growth or some other related term, and go to the main article that the website cites. This was another great learning opportunity! Lastly, I think of course the final diet “test” was an extremely helpful learning opportunity. We had to diagnose a patient and come up with the treatment on our own. I learned some strategies from my other classmates when we discussed our previous patients in class. However, it took some thinking to connect the information we were getting, as there was a minimal amount of talking between group members this time. Overall, this diet case study project helped us all to connect new information with old given info.

1. The part when we had to search for the diagnosis together as a group was pretty fun as it was competitive. We were determined to be the first group to find the diagnosis and I think we were one of the first few I learnt how the disease affects the patient’s body in a molecular level and could apply what we learnt in Biology to it. Now then I realized that the activity on diagnosis a patient is very related to what we are learning in Chapter 11 now, which is about cell communication as the cellular response is due to the signaling molecules. I also really enjoyed the 2nd diagnosis activity we had, which was to discuss through Google docs among our group members. It was very intense as we had a very limited time. But I think we could have been given a little bit more time for the research on the molecular mechanism Overall, it was a fun learning experience!

2. I also enjoyed the VO2 max lab. We had the opportunity to find out our calorie intake, expenditure, body surface area etc. These are important information that I normally do not take notice of. However, by knowing my net calorie intake, I will know if I am having a balanced diet or not. As for the exercising part, the mountain climbers were really tiring When I did it before spring break, I felt light headedness, most probably because I seldom exercise and my stomach was empty.

3. When we were studying protein synthesis, we were given several materials (beads and a stick) to help us visualize what is happening. That made me better understand the topic as I know where the locations of the various molecules are. Therefore, I think hands-on activities are very beneficial.