Losing your ability to think and remember is pretty scary. We know the risk of dementia (痴呆) increases with age. But if you have memory slips, you probably needn’t worry.
There are pretty clear differences between signs of dementia and age-related memory loss.
After 50, it’s quite common to have trouble remembering the names of people, places and things quickly.
The brain ages just like the rest of the body. Certain parts shrink, especially areas in the brain that are important to learning, memory and planning. Changes in brain cells can affect communication between different regions of the brain. And blood flow can be reduced as blood vessels narrow.
Forgetting the name of an actor in a favorite movie, for example, is nothing to worry about. But if you forget the plot of the movie or don’t remember even seeing it, that’s far more concerning.
When you forget entire experiences, it’s a red flag that something more serious may be involved. Forgetting how to operate a familiar object like a microwave oven, or forgetting how to drive to the house of a friend you’ve visited many times before can also be signs of something going wrong.
But even then, people shouldn’t panic. There are many things that can cause confusion and memory loss, including health problems like temporary stoppage of breathing during sleep, high blood pressure, or depression, as well as medications (药物) like antidepressants. Defense against memory loss is to try to prevent it by building up your brain’s cognitive (认知的) reserve.
Read books, go to movies, take up new hobbies or activities that force one to think in novel ways. In other words, keep your brain busy and working. And also get physically active, because exercise is a known brain booster.
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Many people are longing for the benefits of living a healthy lifestyle, but what does that actually mean? Healthy living is about taking responsibility for your decisions and making smart health choices for today and for the future. A healthy lifestyle is generally characterized as a “balanced life'' in which one makes "wise choices". A healthy lifestyle is a valuable resource for reducing health problems, for relieving life stress, and for improving quality of life.
The right nutrition is necessary to live a healthy lifestyle .Your body requires a well-balanced diet every day in order to maintain (维持)the proper amounts of vitamins, nutrients and minerals needed to maintain a healthy body.
You will need to include fitness as part of your lift. Physical fitness keeps your weight in check, helps you sleep better at night, prevents heart attacks and other health problems, and generally lives a longer lift. Basical1y there are so many benefits of exercising that you really can't live a full life without it.
Emotional stress plays an important role in many illnesses, both directly and indirectly. People are also more likely to smoke, overeat, drink too much, work too hard, argue with others and so on, when they are feeling stressed. Thus, stress management is an important part of your new lifestyle, and relaxation techniques are truly a key part of living a healthy lifestyle.
Being healthy is so important. Just change one thing in your life today. Have a healthy life beginning now. Living a healthy lifestyle will bring you happiness, health and the life of your dreams. You can feel your best at all times of the day.
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Taking a shower is relaxing. You can sing a song, daydream or think about nothing, leaving the real world behind you. But do you know that showering can also benefit your mind? A piece of research by Scott Barry Kaufman, a psychologist from Yale University in the US, interviewed over 3,000 people around the world. It turned out that nearly two-thirds of the interviewees said they had experienced new ideas in the shower and were more likely to have them in the shower than at work. So why does a simple shower have such magic power? Science can explain it.
Showering can help to raise our level of dopamine (多巴胺), a hormone (荷尔蒙) closely related to our creativity. “People vary in terms of their level of creativity according to the activity of dopamine,” explained Alice Flaherty, a famous American neuroscientist. “Taking a warm shower can make us feel relaxed and therefore make the dopamine level rise and bring the ‘Aha!’ moment to us.”
Besides the chemical changes, showering may give you a break from what you feel you have been stuck with. Especially when you have thought hard all day about a problem, jumping into the shower can keep you from the outside world so that you can focus on your inner feelings and memories. In this way, according to American psychologist Shelley H. Carson，author of Your Creative Brain, a showering hour may turn into an“incubation (孵化) period”for your ideas. Compared with sitting in front of a computer, taking a shower is something we do less frequently in our daily lives. When showering，we get a fresh experience with the change of location, temperature and humidity (湿度). “New and unexpected experiences can lead to positive changes in thinking,” explained Kaufman.“Getting off the couch and jumping into the shower may create a distance and force you to think from a new point of view.”
Showering allows us to enjoy the creative juices of our minds, which makes the bathroom an alternative where you get your inspiration. So next time you consider ways to free your mind, count it in.
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My Grandmother is 87 years old. She loves gardening, and she has got a habit of not sitting still as she loves to do some work all the time. In June, while working in the garden outside our home, she slipped (滑倒) and one of her bones was broken.
My father and I took her to the hospital. After examining her, the doctor said that the bone was broken from the joint and that there was no chance that she would ever walk, even after an operation. That was very sad for all of us. I looked into my grandmother’s face. She was looking at me as if I could do something to treat her. We asked the doctor if she could sit, and the doctor said “Yes but only after an operation”.
She got operated on the next day. The operation was successful. The doctor didn’t believe that she would be able to walk on her own. For the next month, she did everything in bed only. All of us tried our best to take care of her. I remember those nights when she used to cry in great pain and we could only give her comfort. Once she said while crying, “I don’t want to live anymore, nothing is left now.” I got so sad listening to that but I told her one thing. I said, “Ma, maybe you have got a broken bone, but all the other parts of your body are working properly. It is OK if you can’t walk, but if you can sit, that would be excellent for us.”
注意:
1.续写词数应为150左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Paragraph 1:
I don’t know exactly what happened to her after she listened to my words.
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Paragraph 2:
After two and a half months, we went to the doctor who had operated my grandmother.
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Major trends that may affect education systems
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which promotes policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world, has been looking at the future of global education. Its head of education, Andreas Schleicher, has been talking about some major international trends affecting education systems around the world.
One trend is the widening gap between rich and poor. In OECD countries, the richest 10% have incomes 10 times greater than the poorest 10%. This inequality is a challenge for schools who want to offer equal and fair access to education for everyone.
Another trend is the rising wealth in Asia. It’s suggested that a large rise in the middle-classes in countries like India will increase demand for university places. Andreas Schleicher asks the question “What values will these newly wealthy consumers want from their schools?”
Increasing migration will also have an impact on education systems. Mobility results in more culturally diverse students eager to learn and develop good life for themselves. But that can be challenge, too, as Andreas Schleicher asks: “How should schools support pupils arriving from around the world? Will schools have a bigger role in teaching about shared values?”
Funding pressure is another issue: as our demand and expectation for education rises and more people go to university, who’s going to pay for it all? The rise in dependency on technology is another concern. What should students learn when many of their talents can be reproduced by machines? And how reliant should we be on learning from the internet?
These are just some of the issues the OECD is highlighting. But they remain irrelevant for hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest children who don’t even have access to school places or receive such low-quality education that they leave without the most basic literacy or numeracy.
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Right Colors for Restaurant Walls?
Have you ever noticed that many restaurants have red or orange walls? This fashion comes from the widely held belief that these two colors stimulate the appetite. Restauranteurs hope that by stimulating the appetites of their customers in this way, they can encourage them to order more food.
A large fast - food chain recently decided to test the belief that the color of the decoration affects how much food their customers order. This company has restaurants in major cities across the US and serves customers of all ages, including small children. The traditional decoration of this restaurant chain includes beige（米色的）paint on the walls. For this test, the company painted the walls in half of its restaurants orange, leaving the other half of its restaurants with their original beige walls. In order to make up for the possible influence of cultural differences between cities, the company made sure that in every city where its restaurants are located, there were both restaurants with orange walls and restaurants with beige walls.
The restaurant chain kept track of exactly what foods were ordered in each restaurant for one year before the walls were painted, and then again for one year after the walls had been painted. They found no difference. On average, customers in each restaurant, whether is had beige or of the company said. “We have proven it.”
The wall s of all the restaurants in the chain have been restored to their original beige color. The company president explained that this color is part of the company’s image. Now that the study is over, people might be confused if they walked into a restaurant expecting beige walls and got orange instead, so the company president explained.
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Why true happiness isn't about being happy all the time
Over the past two decades, the positive psychology movement has brightened up psychological rescarch with its science of happiness and human potential. It argues that psychologists should not only investigate mental illness but also what makes life worth living.
The founding father of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, describes happiness as experiencing frequent positive emotions, such as joy, excitement and satisfaction, combined with deeper feelings of meaning and purpose. It implies a positive attitude in the present and an optimistic outlook for the future. Importantly, happiness experts have argued that happiness is not a stable ,unchangeable feature but something flexible that we can work on and eventually strive towards.
Recent research indicates that psychological flexibility is the key to greater happiness and well-being.For example,being open to emotional experiences and the ability to endure periods of discomfort can allow us to move towards a richer, more meaningful existence. Studies have also demonstrated that the way we respond to the circumstances of our lives has more influence on our happiness than the events themselves. Experiencing stress, sadness and anxiety in the short term doesn't mean we can't be happy in the long term. Putting up with sorrow can make us tougher and lead us to take action in our lives, such as changing jobs or overcoming hardship. Often when people have faced difficulty, illness or loss, they describe their lives as happier and more meaningful as a result.
Unlike feeling happy, which is a temporary state, leading a happier life is about individual growth through finding meaning. It is about accepting our humanity with all its ups and downs, enjoying the positive emotions, and making use of painful feelings in order to reach our full potential.
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