Lecture No. 7 topic: the concept of human adaptation and acclimatization
LECTURE No. 7
TOPIC: CONCEPT OF HUMAN ADAPTATION AND ACCLIMATIZATION
PLAN:
1. The concept of human adaptation and acclimatization
2. General patterns of the adaptive process. Adaptation Mechanisms
3. Conditions affecting adaptation
4. Types of adaptations
4.1. Human biological adaptation
4.2. Human social adaptation
4.3. Ethnic adaptation
1. The concept of human adaptation and acclimatization.
Adaptation
is understood as all types of congenital and acquired adaptive activity, which are ensured by certain physiological reactions occurring at the cellular, organ, systemic and organismal levels
. In the literature, adaptation refers to both the processes and phenomena of adaptation in the life of an individual, and changes in the organisms of entire populations throughout their existence.
Adaptation of the body to environmental conditions can be of a very different nature and affect all aspects of the organization and life of humans and animals.
Modern man, in search of new raw materials and energy resources, expanding economic and production activities, has unusually expanded the boundaries of his habitat and has mastered almost all regions of our planet.
Human adaptation is one of the key concepts in human ecology, as well as in many other disciplines (physiology, anthropology, medical geography, sociology, ethnography, etc.).
Adaptation of a person to a new environment
is a complex socio-biological process, which is based on changes in the systems and functions of the body, as well as habitual behavior.
Human adaptation is a two-way process; a person not only adapts to a new environmental situation, but also adapts this environment to his needs and requirements, creates a life support system (housing, clothing, transport, infrastructure, food, etc.
2. General patterns of the adaptive process. Adaptation Mechanisms
The phase course of adaptation reactions was first identified by G. Selye (1938).
The first phase of adaptation is emergency
develops at the very beginning of the action of both physiological and pathogenic factors.
The second phase (transitional) - persistent adaptation
characterized by the formation of new coordination relationships: enhanced efferent synthesis leads to the implementation of targeted defensive reactions.
The basis of the third phase - sustainable adaptation or resistance
is a change in hormonal levels due to the inclusion of the pituitary-adrenal system.
3. Conditions affecting adaptation
NATURAL FACTORS
. During evolutionary development, living organisms have adapted to a wide range of natural stimuli
The action of factors causing the development of adaptation mechanisms is always complex,
so we can talk about the action of a group of factors of one nature or another. So, for example, in the course of evolution, all living organisms first of all adapted to earthly conditions of existence: a certain barometric pressure and gravity, the level of cosmic and thermal radiation, a strictly defined gas composition of the surrounding atmosphere, etc.
SOCIAL FACTORS.
In addition to the fact that the human body is mobile, the same natural influences as animal organisms, the social conditions of human life, are factors. Associated with his work activity, they gave rise to specific factors to which it is necessary to adapt. Their number grows with the development of civilization.
Thus, with the expansion of the habitat, completely new conditions and influences appear for the human body. For example, space flights bring new sets of impacts. These include weightlessness - a condition that is absolutely inadequate for any organism. Weightlessness is combined with physical inactivity, changes in daily routine, etc.
People penetrating into the bowels of the Earth or making deep-sea dives are exposed to unusually high pressure, humidity, and breathe air with a high oxygen content.
Working in hot shops or cold climates creates factors that require an extended range of adaptation to extreme temperatures. While performing his official duties, a person is forced to adapt to noise and changes in lighting.
Pollution of the environment, the inclusion of a large number of synthetic products, alcoholic beverages in food, abuse of medications, smoking - all this is an additional burden on the homeostasis systems of the modern human body.
As society develops, people's production activities also change. Physical labor is largely replaced by the work of machines and mechanisms. The person becomes an operator at the control panel. This relieves physical stress, but at the same time new factors come to the fore, such as physical inactivity and stress, which negatively affect all systems of the body.
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Another side of the social influences of mechanized labor is the increase in neuropsychic stress, which has replaced physical stress. It is associated with increased speeds of production processes, as well as increased demands on human attention and concentration.
4. Types of adaptations
The mechanisms of human adaptation are very different, therefore, in relation to human communities, they distinguish: 1) biological, 2) social and 3) ethnic (as a special version of social) adaptation.
4.1. Human biological adaptation
Human biological adaptation
–
an evolutionary adaptation of the human body to environmental conditions, expressed in changes in the external and internal characteristics of an organ, function or the entire organism to changing environmental conditions.
In the process of adapting an organism to new conditions, two processes are distinguished - phenotypic or individual adaptation, which is more correctly called acclimatization and
genotypic adaptation
, carried out through natural selection of traits useful for survival
. During phenotypic adaptation, the body directly reacts to a new environment, which is expressed in phenotypic shifts, compensatory physiological changes that help the body maintain balance with the environment in new conditions.
Upon transition to previous conditions, the previous state of the phenotype is restored, and compensatory physiological changes disappear. During genotypic adaptation, deep morpho-physiological changes occur in the body, which are inherited and fixed in the genotype as new hereditary characteristics of populations, ethnic groups and races. In the process of individual adaptation, a person creates reserves of memory and skills, forms vectors of behavior as a result of the formation in the body of a bank of memorable structural traces based on the selective expression of genes.
Adaptive memory structural traces have important biological significance. They protect a person from upcoming encounters with inadequate and dangerous environmental factors.
There are three types of adaptive behavior of living organisms:
1) escape from an unfavorable stimulus;
2) passive submission to him; 3) active counteraction due to the development of specific adaptive reactions.
G. Selye called the passive form of coexistence with the stimulus syntactic
, and the active form of struggle and resistance
is catotactic.
The biological meaning of active adaptation
is to establish and maintain homeostasis, allowing one to exist in a changed external environment.
As soon as the environment or any of its essential components change, the organism is forced to change some of the constants of its functions. A restructuring of homeostasis occurs, adequate to specific environmental conditions, which serves as the basis for adaptation. 4.2. Social adaptation
Social adaptation
is the process of personality formation, training of an individual and his assimilation of values, norms, attitudes, patterns of behavior inherent in a given society, social community, group.
Social adaptation is carried out both in the course of targeted influence on a person in the education system, and under the influence of a wide range of other influencing factors (family and extra-family communication, art, media, etc.). The expansion and deepening of an individual’s social adaptation occurs in three main areas: activity, communication, and self-awareness. In the sphere of activity, both the expansion of the types of activity with which a person is associated, and the orientation in the system of each type of activity are carried out, i.e., highlighting the main thing in it, its comprehension, etc. In the sphere of communication, a person’s circle of communication is expanded, his enrichment content, deepening knowledge of other people, developing communication skills. In the sphere of self-awareness, the formation of an image of one’s own “I” as an active subject of activity, comprehension of one’s social affiliation, social role, formation of self-esteem, etc. are carried out. In the process of social adaptation, three stages are distinguished: pre-labor (covering the period of a person’s life before the start of his work activity and including early childhood and the period of education), labor (conditional boundaries - the period of a person’s maturity, his active participation in work) and post-work, which refers to the period of a person’s life, coinciding, as a rule, with retirement age. True, an increasing proportion of people of retirement age remain active and take part not only in the transfer of social experience, but also in its reproduction. At each stage, there are special institutions of social adaptation: family, preschool institutions, schools, work collectives, informal associations, interest groups, etc. The impact of each of these institutions is determined by the system of social relations existing in society. The presence of spontaneous influences makes the problem of “social adaptation effects” relevant in practical terms, i.e. the nature and depth of this process, its effectiveness, in particular, overcoming negative influences leading to deviant behavior and antisocial influences.
4.3. Ethnic adaptation
Ethnic adaptation
is the adaptation of ethnic groups (communities) to the natural and socio-cultural environment of their habitat areas.
The study of this process and the problems associated with it is mainly the task of ethnic ecology. There is a lot of peculiarity in the socio-cultural adaptation of ethnic groups, determined by linguistic, cultural, political, economic and other environmental parameters. This is most clearly manifested in the ethnic adaptation of immigrant groups in the countries of their settlement, for example in the USA, Canada, Argentina, etc. Currently, problems have arisen in the readaptation of representatives of a single ethnic group among an ethnically homogeneous population, but with a different culture. These are, for example, Germans from the former USSR moving to live in Germany, or Russians from Central Asia and Kazakhstan returning to Russia. At the same time, it is customary to distinguish adaptation related to employment (getting a job), as well as linguistic and cultural adaptation, called “acculturation.”
The normal course of ethnic adaptation can be greatly complicated and delayed by the manifestation of nationalism and racism in the form of discrimination, segregation, etc. A sharp change in the environment can lead to maladaptation.
Socio-psychological adaptation as a psychological category
There are biophysiological and socio-psychological adaptation.
Definition 2
Socio-psychological adaptation is the process of a person mastering certain socio-psychological roles, acquiring a certain socio-psychological status, the desire to optimize and harmonize relationships with the socio-natural surrounding reality.
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