Question

1. How does the body remove heat during and after aerobic exercise?

2. Explain the anaerobic threshold.

3. During exercise, are the muscles or the body’s surface/skin the priority destination for blood?

4. Explain how oxygen and ATP affect exercise.

Answer 1

The hypothalamus, through nerve impulses, stimulates sweat glands in the skin to produce fluid, which also comes from the increased skin blood flow. As the sweat evaporates from the skin, it remove heat and cools the body.

The Anaerobic Threshold (AT) is the physiological point during exercise at which lactic acid begins to accumulate in the muscles, which seen around the the point during increasing intensity exercise that anaerobic functioning become more dominant. That's why it's also called Lactate threshold (LT).

Muscles need more blood during exercise because the metabolic cost of muscle contraction can be prolonged, skeletal muscle blood flow needs to be matched to the metabolic demands of the contracting muscles. Secondly, regulation of blood pressure is also needed to ensure there is adequate perfusion pressure to all organs.

During exercise your muscles have to work harder, which increases the demand for oxygen this's why your breathing and heart rate increases which helps to pull more oxygen into your bloodstream. As you exercise, the oxygen that reaches your muscle never leaves but rather converts the available glucose into ATP. More energy is required during the time of exercise so more ATP should be produced during this time. ATP binds to myosin, moving the myosin to its higher energy state releasing the myosin head from the actin active site. ATP can then attach to myosin, which allows the cross-bridge cycle to start again leads to firther muscle contraction.