Final answer:
The body's most common responses to heat stress include sweating, which cools the body. Increased exercise is not a response to heat stress, making it the correct answer to the question regarding the body's responses to heat stress.
Step-by-step explanation:
The body's most common responses to heat stress include symptoms such as sweating, which helps cool the body by evaporation. The symptoms Patient B is showing - weight loss, profuse sweating, increased heart rate, and difficulty in sleeping - can suggest hyperthyroidism.
Thus, one symptom that is not a response to heat stress is increased exercise (option d). In response to cold, one of the body's adaptations can include increased breakdown of stored energy to generate heat, and reduced blood circulation to the extremities to maintain core temperature.
However, increasing blood to the hands and feet would be counterproductive to conserve body heat in cold conditions. When the body is under prolonged stress, it may respond with depression, immune suppression, fatigue, or even a fatal heart attack due to the release of cortisol by the adrenal cortex.
Regarding the multiple-choice options:
- Decreased body temperature (a) is a direct result of sweating.
- Decreased pH of the blood (b) can happen due to increased respiration rates to cool off the body.
- Increased carbon dioxide (c) is produced as a byproduct of increased metabolic activity to cool the body down.
- Increased exercise (d) is not a response to heat stress and therefore is the correct answer.