PLHS - Support for Learning

In Science of late we have been providing a unique service to interested volunteers! Come and get your health MOT courtesy of the ELP Street Doctors!

We have been finding out how to and practising measuring various aspects of health using both low tech and high tech equipment - and decided to put that increasing confidence and experience to use in the greater school community by offering to take the following measurements for our willing volunteers:

• height in metres, using a low tech height stand
• blood pressure in mm of mercury using a high tech sphygmomanometer
• pulse rate in beats per minute using a high tech pulsemeter

We rehearsed explaining to our patients what we were doing - in the hope that this would help both us and them relax, as being stressed is something that can affect your blood pressure and your heart rate. We advised them that the sphygmomanometer might feel a bit funny as it tightened round their wrist but just to relax their hand as this would help.

We were able to advise people what a typically normal blood pressure should be and whether their own reading was in the normal range as prescribed by our simple medical chart. We were also able to work out who was the tallest and the smallest person we measured - and see whether our predications and perceptions as to who is tall and who is small were correct.

When considering aspects of our lifestyles that can cause high blood pressure we spoke about how the following can affect it:

• smoking can cause high BP
• drinking too much alcohol can cause high BP
• eating too much salt or fat can cause high BP
• not doing enough exercise can cause high BP
• being obese can cause high BP
• being stressed can cause high BP

With regard to the last idea that being overly worried or over worked can cause us to have high blood pressure we considered some of the things that we might be able to do to help us relax…these included -

• playing rugby
• walking the dog
• playing Wii Fit
• dancing
• reading a book
• riding a pony
• swimming
• yoga

We decided to try one of these things out as part of our investigation into stress and high blood pressure. Mrs Todd kindly agreed to take us for Yoga lessons, whilst Mrs Binnie agreed to help us make measurements of our stress levels before, during and after the Yoga. Science and health and exercise all coming together in great cross-curricular style whilst introducing a new facet to our skills set. (Om shanti Mrs Todd!)

Mrs B measured all of our blood pressures and pulse rates before the yoga session began. She recorded these in a chart. Whilst we did the yoga she made observations as to how relaxed we looked and behaved and wrote these down. She also helped us getting into some of the more complicated positions whilst Mrs Todd went through the yoga instructions in a calm, quiet way with lovely soothing music to accompany her. After the yoga session, we all had our pulse rates and blood pressures measured again by Mrs B. Once again she wrote the numbers down in a table - and we took this to science with us the next time we were there.

We analysed our data in a simple way, looking for trends - did our blood pressure go “up” or “down”? Did our pulse rates go “up” or “down”? The results were fascinating…

Almost all of us saw a drop in both our pulse rate and our blood pressure when we compared the end of the yoga lesson with the start. One of us stayed roughly the same, whilst one person actually went from being really relaxed to being quite anxious. (We wondered whether this was because they had never seen or done anything like yoga before and felt a little worried about doing it - as lying on the floor in the classroom with your smelly socks in the air is not your usual Thursday afternoon lesson!)

This last week we did some more intricate yoga moves designed for helping our digestive systems improve and we finished off with some relaxing meditation to quiet music. We discussed how some of us felt:

• sleepy
• calm
• peaceful
• quiet
• energetic

after the session and everyone decided it is something they would like to explore further. We went even further when one of the class asked if we could try the “thing the Japanese do outside” - which we have decided is actually Tai Chi .

Watch out for ELPs, teachers and auxiliaries in the school japanese Garden some Thursday in the near future!