How Watching Videos Affects Blood Pressure
How Watching Videos Affects Blood Pressure
How Watching Videos Affects Blood Pressure
Abstract
The human body must regulate every system within itself. If even one of these processes fall
out of balance, the whole body could fail. Blood pressure is one acute detail that affects almost
every system in the human body. We conducted a study to find a correlation between blood
pressure and watching different types of videos. Our hypothesis is that the body would make
changes in blood pressure based on a simulated stressful situation through various short
videos. After the stimulation is removed, homeostasis should bring the blood pressure back to
normal. We found that different types of videos did have differing effects on blood pressure, but
the effects were not as significant as we thought they would be. The longest it took a person to
return to a relatively normal blood pressure was only 3 minutes, while the videos were all under
2 minutes long.
Introduction
The human body has many natural mechanisms for maintaining homeostasis. Homeostasis is
the tendency toward a relatively stable equilibrium between interdependent elements, especially
as maintained by physiological processes. One way the body can maintain homeostasis is
through blood pressure and the body can do this through many different ways. The amount of
blood pumped by the heart, the amount of resistance in the veins, and the volume of blood all
affect blood pressure. If the heart speeds up and pumps more blood, there is a higher cardiac
output and blood pressure increases. The arterioles can expand and narrow to change arteriolar
resistance. Expanded arterioles create less resistance, so this lowers blood pressure. The
kidneys can change the volume of blood by increasing or decreasing the amount of urine
produced. Since urine is mainly waste from the blood, more urine being created decreases the
volume of blood, which decreases blood pressure. In the adrenal glands, norepinephrine is
released which is a hormone that makes your heart rate and blood pressure increase, during a
fight or flight situation. Angiotension II triggers the release of anti-diuretic from the
hypothalamus which decreases the blood pressure level. In this experiment, we choose to
measure blood pressure in response to a few types of videos. Previous studies from Medicine
and Science in Sports and Exercise have shown that an increase in TV viewing over a period of
time correlates to an increase in blood pressure over a period of time. We want to examine the
short term effects of homeostasis more closely to find the relationship. In our experiment we will
be showing people short videos that are calming, scary, or appealing. We think that this will
raise peoples blood pressure over a short period of time, especially in the scary video. If people
are scared, stressed, or aroused their blood pressure may raise due to increased heart beat.
We think videos will have an affect on blood pressure.
Materials/Methods:
We conducted an experiment with 3 test subjects. They were all sophomores from San Marin in
other groups in our STEM class. We tested one girl and two boys so we would have both
genders represented. They were from other groups because everyone in our group had already
seen the videos and we needed people who had never seen the videos so they wouldnt know
what they were about when watching the videos. We tested three subjects so we would have
different data to compare and we could make more accurate predictions as compared to only
comparing two people. We made them all watch the same 3 videos: one scary, one happy, and
one appealing. Each video was two minutes long. The scary video had jump scares about every
15 seconds from characters in Five Nights at Freddy's. The happy video was an extra gum
commercial that showed a couples relationship progressing over the years. It was very happy
and had calming music. The appealing video was a Fifth Harmony music video that had
appealing graphics and music. A sphygmomanometer was used to measure blood pressure and
we showed them the videos from a laptop. We first took a baseline blood pressure for each
subject before starting the videos. Then we started the videos and took the blood pressure at 1
minute intervals from the start of the video. We waited until blood pressure returned to normal.
We repeated this process for all 3 videos for all 3 people. The only variable we changed during
the experiment was the person being tested. All other variables remained constant to insure the
quality of our experiment.
Results
Over all three tests, the videos affected the blood pressure of the subjects. With each video,
there wasnt much difference between the results of each subject. This means that each person
reacted the same way as the other people. The first video caused their blood pressures to rise
rapidly but return to normal shortly after. On average, at minute one, all the subjects blood
pressure rose by around 14 mmMg. The second video caused their blood pressure to fall at
about 2 mmMg, but test subject 1s fell 19 mmMg because he is more chronically aroused. After
it fell, it rose back up to normal at minute 2.The third video caused their blood pressure to rise
and then fall but not as drastically as the first video. Test subject 2 and test subject 3s blood
pressure rose 2 mmMg and test subject 1 rose 3 mmMg. Subject 1 and subject 3s blood
pressure lowered at the second minute, but surprisingly subject 2s rose by 11 mmMg.
Conclusion
In the first video, we briefly scared them so this would cause blood pressure to rise, but the
video was only scary for the first time, because they knew what was coming after that. It was not
the most effective video to scare someone, because of the predictability, but we can still see a
clear correlation between being scared and raising blood pressure. The second video was
relaxing and calming so it probably releases tension in the body. This would correlate to
decreasing blood pressure and it wouldnt be very hard for the blood pressure to rise back up to
normal shortly after. The third video also led to a rise in blood pressure. Since it was appealing,
it probably excited our test subjects, which would also correlate to increasing blood pressure.
We could have made this experiment more accurate by testing a larger sample size; however
our results all lead to the same conclusions. This experiment has brought up many new
questions for us. Firstly, Is heart rate also affected in the same way by these videos? Secondly,
would variants of the videos used yield different results? Overall, we see that stressful or
exciting situations increase blood pressure and calming or relaxing situations decrease blood
pressure. Our hypothesis was correct; watching different videos does affect blood pressure in
different ways.