外刊阅读 | 国家地理 | 冷水浴对你的身体有什么影响？

  扫码加关注     

    精彩文章读不停              

星标我，不迷路！

That’s why it’s crucial that we understand how these games influence us so that we can sieve out our actual values from those of the designers. Otherwise, the games are playing us.

sieve    v.过滤

这就是为什么我们必须了解这些游戏如何影响我们，以便我们可以从设计师的价值观中筛选出我们的实际价值观。否则，游戏就是在玩我们。

This is what a cold plunge does to your body

冷水浴对你的身体有什么影响

1

Ringwood simply calls her hobby “swimming,” but wellness influencers and winter aficionados alike have begun to promote polar plunges and cold-water swimming as an antidote to everything from depression to diabetes.While cold plunges have a long history and a newfound enthusiasm, physiologists say that there’s not much evidence supporting the claims of these health benefits.

Nor is the activity without risk. Extreme temperature shifts and strain on the cardiovascular system can potentially trigger heart attacks, even death, says François Haman, a physiologist at the University of Ottawa in Canada.“It’s actually extremely dangerous, mainly because everything most people know is from social media. There's very little knowledge around it,” Haman says. “It’s the biggest jolt a human can experience—like a bolt of lightning. That’s how dangerous it is. You can go into cardiac arrest.”

When your body encounters cold water, it can be shocking—literally. Physiologists call this the “cold shock” response. Temperature receptors in your skin sense the frigid water, triggering the constriction of blood vessels in your extremities to preserve heat in the body’s core. This causes you to gasp for air and your heart rate to skyrocket.Experts say that being in cold water is more dangerous than cold air. Water conducts heat much more effectively than air, meaning that it can draw the heat from your body more quickly and efficiently, Mercer says. You can become hypothermic swimming in any water that’s below your body’s natural temperature if you stay in long enough.

According to proponents, cold plunges can improve blood pressure and insulin sensitivity, as well as decreasing inflammation, improving immunity, and benefitting metabolism. It might also help relieve arthritis pain.But while there is some scientific research to back up these claims, Denis Blondin, a thermal physiologist at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, says that many of these studies included only a small number of participants who were overwhelmingly young men of European descent, which limits what scientists can say more broadly and in other populations.There’s also a lot of variation in the temperature of the water used, duration of immersion, and the setting of the immersion (in a lab versus outdoors). All these differences make it hard to compare different studies, Blondin points out.

Your hands and feet are more cold-tolerant than your trunk, due to the high oxygen and nutrient needs of vital organs. As a result, the extremities can cool markedly without impacting the body’s core temperature. These reflexes and alterations are incredibly powerful, but even they have their limits. If the body’s inner temperature starts dropping, then it’s time to get out of the water and get warmed up—fast.The best way to determine if you’ve hit this point is by understanding shivering. Mild shivering in the limbs—caused when your muscles rapidly tighten and relax—is an efficient way for the body to generate heat. Shivering from more central muscle groups is stronger and far more uncomfortable. This is a sign that you’re getting too cold and it’s crucial to start warming up before you lose muscle control.

Journal：Nationalgeographic(December 28, 2023)

Title：This is what a cold plunge does to your body

Category：Health and Science

There’s a lot that we don’t know, and I would say most of the stuff we see in podcasts and such are not things that are definitive and set in stone. We find they tend to over-extrapolate things.

还有很多我们不知道的，我想说的是，我们在播客中看到的大多数东西都不是确定的，一成不变的。我们发现他们倾向于过度推断。

Many of these studies included only a small number of participants /who were overwhelmingly young men of European descent, which limits what scientists can say more broadly and in other populations.

主干是：Many of these studies（主语）+ included（谓语）+ only a small number of participants（宾语），who were overwhelmingly young men of European descent 是定语从句，修饰限定先行词participants。which limits what scientists can say more broadly and in other populations 是非限制性定语从句，修饰整个主句，其中，what scientists can say more broadly and in other populations 是宾语从句，作为limits的宾语，表示“科学家能够更广泛地或在其他人群中做出的结论”。

翻译：这些研究中的许多只包括了少数参与者，且绝大多数是欧洲血统的年轻男性，这限制了科学家能够更广泛地或在其他人群中做出的结论。

“If you’ve stopped shivering, your ability to actually generate heat has now stopped,” Hill says. “A light bulb should go off that something is starting to go a little bit south.”

翻译练习，欢迎大家文末留言打卡，下期推送文章公布答案哟，一起阅外刊学英语吧！

获取完整版PDF 下载后及时转存：

网盘链接：https://pan.quark.cn/s/e79e82d75f49

点击下方链接查看往期文章 ↓ ↓ ↓记得点关注哟

扫码关注我的视频号

分享，收藏，点赞与在看，至少我要拥有一个吧↓↓↓