A Common Habit Leads to Shocking Harm
Crossing your legs is an extremely common habit; most people don’t even notice that they’re doing it when they sit down. While you may find it comfortable to sit with one knee crossed over the other, it might be causing health problems that you are not aware of.
A study published in Blood Pressure Monitoring stated that sitting with your legs crossed can increase your blood pressure. The reason this happens is because the blood in your legs has to work against gravity to be pumped back to your heart, crossing one leg over the other increases resistance, making it even harder for the blood to circulate. This causes your body to increase your blood pressure to push the blood back to the heart. You won’t feel any immediate effects, but if you sit for long periods of time it’s important that you take note of how long you have your legs crossed for. You shouldn’t have your legs crossed for more than 15 minutes, and it’s important that you get up and walk around at least once every hour.
Crossing your legs can also lead to neck and back pain. Ideally, it’s best for our bodies to sit with our feet planted flat, hip width apart, on the floor, but it’s not easy to maintain perfect posture all day at the office. When you sit with your legs crossed your hips are in a twisted position, which can cause one of your pelvic bones to rotate. Since your pelvic bone supports your neck and spine, this can cause pressure on your lower and middle back and neck.
You also might notice that when you sit with your legs crossed for long periods of time your feet and legs get tingly or have the feeling of being asleep. This is because when one leg sits on top of the other it causes pressure on the veins and nerves in your legs and feet. It can cause numbness or temporary paralysis in the legs, ankles, or feet. While the feeling of discomfort may only last a minute or two, repeatedly crossing your legs until they feel numb can cause permanent nerve damage.
So next time you sit down, try to get yourself in the habit of sitting with both of your feet on the floor. Not only will it help your posture and stability, but it will also save your health in the long run.
1. According to the passage, which is not the problem caused by sitting with your legs crossed?| A．Increase blood pressure |
| B．Cause neck and back pain |
| C．Lead to numbness or temporary paralysis |
| D．Keep in a twisted position |
| A．Go straight |
| B．Move around |
| C．Fall down |
| D．Work against gravity |
| A．Once you cross your legs while sitting, you’ll feel immediate effects. |
| B．The numbness in the legs ,ankles or feet won’t cause permanent nerve damage. |
| C．The perfect posture for sitting is to sit with your feet planted flat and hip width apart. |
| D．As long as you cross your legs for less than 15 minutes, it won’t do harm to your health. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】For a long time in history,numerous scholars have asked the question:what is beauty?As designers update the latest fashions and artists create their masterpieces,what is considered beautiful changes at an alarming pace.Fifty years ago,the full-figured American actress Marilyn Monroe was a symbol of the American aesthetic（美学的）value; today,many Hollywood actresses different in appearance from Marilyn’s have taken her taken per place.However, aesthetic values not only differ from generation to generation,but do so along cultural lines as well.Often,what is considered hating one civilization is just the aesthetic appeal in another.Thus it is difficult to give an absolute definition of beauty.
As fundamental physicists,my colleagues and I like to believe that we are involved in a search for a beauty that affects definition.The beauty that we search for is not what is set up through the work of people and subject to the tastes,but rather what has been laid down by nature Physics allows its students to look past outer appearance,into a deeper beauty.As a human being,I am attracted by the visual appeal of a wave crashing on the beach.As a physicist, however I am able to see the deeper beauty of the physical laws that govern such a phenomenon.
In truth,since Albert Einstein put forward the idea that there might be one main physical theory that governs the universe,aesthetics,have become a driving force in modern physics.Einstein and other later physicists have discovered that:Nature,as its most fundamental level,is beautifully constructed.The extraordinary simplicity of the laws that govern the universes is really breathtaking.As Einstein said, it would seem more likely that we should find ourselves living in a "disorderly world,in no way apprehensible through thinking".Yet we are now closer than ever to a full understanding of the universe's beautiful clockwork.As new discoveries and technologies allow us to examine the physical world on deeper and deeper levels, we find that the beauty itself becomes much deeper.
1. The reference to" Marilyn Monroe" in paragraph 2 mainly serves to .| A．show there is no fixed definition of aesthetics |
| B．provide an example of today's beauty standards |
| C．compare traditions of the East to the west |
| D．discuss her abilities as an actress |
| A．the visual attraction | B．the powerful sounds |
| C．the lovely creatures | D．the physical laws behind |
| A．To detail the functions of physical laws. |
| B．To highlight the range of Einstein's influence. |
| C．To stress the very simplicity of the laws of the universe |
| D．To show that Einstein doubted the beauty of physics. |
| A．emphasize the influence of physics |
| B．present a special way of seeing beauty |
| C．discuss the awareness of across-culture |
| D．argue the traditional ideas on value |
【推荐2】“Sugar, alcohol and tobacco,” economist Adam Smith once wrote, “are commodities which are necessaries of life, which have become objects of almost universal consumption, and which are, therefore, extremely popular subjects of taxation.”
Two and a half centuries on, most countries impose sort of tax on alcohol and tobacco. With obesity levels putting increasing pressure on public health systems, governments around the world have begun to toy with the idea of taxing sugar as well.
Whether such taxes work is a matter of debate. A review of Mexico’s taxation found a fall in purchases of taxed drinks as well as a rise in sales of untaxed and healthier drinks. By contrast, a Danish tax on foods high in fats was abandoned a year after its introduction, during claims that consumers were avoiding it by crossing the border to Germany to satisfy their desire for cheaper, fattier foods.
The food industry has, in general, been firmly opposed to such direct government action. Nonetheless, the renewed focus on waistlines means that industry groups are under pressure to demonstrate their products are healthy as well as tasty.
Over the past three decades, the industry has made some efforts to improve the quality of its offerings. For example, some drink manufactures have cut the amount of sugar in their beverages.
Many of the reductions over the past 30 years have been achieved either by reducing the amount of sugar, salt or fat in a product, or by finding an alternative ingredient. More recently, however, some companies have been investing money in a more ambitious undertaking: learning how to adjust the fundamental make-up of the food they sell. For example, having salt on the outside, but none on the inside, reduces the salt content without changing the taste.
While reformulating recipes is one way to improve public health, it should be part of a multisided approach. The key is to remember that there is not just one solution. To deal with obesity, a mixture of approaches-including reformulation, taxation and adjusting portion sizes-will be needed. There is no silver bullet.
1. According to Adam Smith, sugar, alcohol and tobacco were .| A．profitable to manufacture |
| B．in ever-increasing demand |
| C．no longer considered necessities of life |
| D．subjects of taxation almost everywhere |
| A．It brought a lot of problems on the border. |
| B．It did not work out as well as it was expected. |
| C．It could not succeed without German cooperation. |
| D．It met with firm opposition from the food industry. |
| A．A successful but complex solution. |
| B．An effective and hopeful solution. |
| C．A single easy quick way. |
| D．A long way. |
| A．Efforts to make sugar healthy and tasty. |
| B．Approaches to adapting to consumers’ needs. |
| C．Different ways to cope with health problems. |
| D．Government taxation on sugar, alcohol and tobacco. |
【推荐3】A selection from the trolley
The trolley problem used to be a popular question in philosophical ethics(伦理学).It runs as follows: a trolley, or a train, is speeding down a track towards a junction(三叉路口). Some evildoer has tied five people to the track ahead, and another person to the branch line. You are standing next to a lever(操纵杆) that controls the junction. Do nothing, and the five people will be killed. Pull the lever, and only one person dies. What is the ethical course of action?
In a paper just published in Nature, a team of psychologists and computer scientists, led by Edmond Awad of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), describe a different approach.
They created a website which presents visitors with a series of choices about whom to save and whom to kill. The website proved a hit. In the end it gathered nearly 40m decisions.
The strongest preferences, expressed by respondents from all over the world, were for saving human lives over animal ones, preferring to save many rather than few and prioritising children over the old.
Iyad Rahwan, a computer scientist at MIT and one of the paper’s authors, says that many people dismiss the trolley problem as pointless as it is unlikely to arise in real life. He is unconvinced. The specific situations described by the website may hardly ever occur, he says.
| A．But all sorts of choices made by the firms producing self-driving cars will affect who lives and who dies in indirect ways. |
| B．Rather than asking philosophers for their thoughts, they decided instead to ask the public. |
| C．That seems to conflict with most people’s moral preferences. |
| D．The preference for saving women, for instance, was stronger in places with higher levels of gender equality. |
| E．There were weaker preferences for saving women over men, pedestrians over passengers in the car and for taking action rather than doing nothing. |
| F．The excitement around self-driving cars, though, has made the problem famous. |
【推荐1】When we talk about healthy brain ageing we are really discussing one of two things: how to minimise ongoing damage to the hardware of the brain, mostly by keeping its blood supply as good as possible; or how to improve the operation of the brain's software.
There is plenty of evidence that older people who stay mentally active, by learning a new language, doing crosswords or taking part in other intellectually challenging activities,preserve full cognitive function for longer. They have spent more time doing cognitively demanding activities over a lifetime, and they are, to some extent, buffered from the physical effects of brain ageing and degenerative diseases. We call this buffer "cognitive reserve"－ a back-up reservoir of brain function that can protect from the consequences of brain damage, allowing us to Continue to perform well. For example, people with a higher IQ, longer education or cognitively challenging employment have been found to have a lower risk of developing dementia.
| A．We think it can be built up throughout life for everyone. |
| B．Though there is not enough scientific research about it, many suggestions have been put forward. |
| C．This is despite the fact that their brains actually show normal amounts of age- and disease-related damage. |
| D．However, studies about the potential of cognitive reserve for optimising the brain's resilience leave much to be desired. |
| E．Many ways of doing this have been suggested, but few have scientific weight behind them. |
| F．Yet there's still much to discover about the potential of cognitive reserve for optimising the brain's resilience. |
【推荐2】Whether it's Chinese social media like Sina Weibo, or Western media like Instagram an Facebook, videos can go viral in mere hours.
The wide range of viral videos suggests that popular concepts are largely random. After all, what links the recent broom challenge to funny internet cat videos?
According to scientists from Stanford University, US, the popularity of a video can be predicted by looking at how certain areas of a person's brain react within the first few seconds of a video. This method has been called neuroforecasting（神经预测）.
The team made the finding by recruiting（招募）36 volunteers to watch a range of videos while being scanned with an FMRI—a machine that can monitor the changes in blood oxygen and flow.
Participants were shown 32 different videos and were monitored according to their brain responses in four different areas. The results showed that specific brain activity during the first four seconds of a video could effectively predict a person's thoughts on a video and whether they would keep watching.
Using the FMRI results, the Stanford team consistently saw increased activity in the nucleus accumbens（伏核）and decreased activity in the anterior insula（前脑岛）parts of the brain while the participants were watching the most popular of the 32-vidco selection.
According to the study, these two brain regions are related to the feeling of expectation we get when we're not certain of something's outcome.
Stanford neuroscientist（神经学家）and the study's author Brian Knutson said: "If we examine our subjects' choices to watch the video or even their reported responses to the videos, they don't tell us about the general response online ... Only brain activity seems to forecast a video's popularity on the internet.”
He added, “Future research might also systematically analyze the video content, so content creators can use these findings to make their videos more popular.”
In the future, the team aims to use this type of FMRI experiment to understand "whether processes that generate individual choice can tell us something about choices made by large groups of people”. According to Knutson, this could apply to shopping trends, charity support and general money-spending.
1. What did scientists from Stanford University find?| A．There are differences between viral videos in different cultures. |
| B．People's reported response can predict the popularity of a video. |
| C．There are links between viral videos under different subjects. |
| D．Viewers' initial brain activity can forecast the popularity of a video. |
| A．All four areas monitored displayed increased activity. |
| B．One area got more active while another became less active. |
| C．Areas related to the feeling of uncertainty got more active. |
| D．The activity of areas related to the feeling of expectation increased. |
| A．The participants' choices to watch the videos help them make the finding. |
| B．How long the subjects watched the videos also mattered to their conclusion. |
| C．Our brain activity can show something we ourselves don't realize. |
| D．When the video was beyond the viewers‘ expectation, it is generally popular. |
| A．Exploring the link between individual and general choices. |
| B．Interviewing content creators how they make videos. |
| C．Discouraging more charity organizations. |
| D．Applying their findings to arresting criminals. |
【推荐3】One of the most firmly established idea of manliness(男子汉) is that a real man doesn’t cry. Although he might cry a bit at a funeral, he is expected to quickly regain control. Crying openly is for girls. One study found that women cry significantly more than men do—five times as often, on average, and almost twice as long per period.
Historically, however, men usually cried, and no one saw it as shameful. For example, in the Middle Ages, knights(骑士) cried only because they missed their girlfriends. In The Knight of the Cart, no less a hero than Lancelot cries at a brief separation from Guinevere. There’s no mention of the men in these stories trying to hold back or hide their tears. They cry in a crowded hall with their heads held high. Nor do other people make fun of this public crying; it’s universally regarded as an expression of feeling to show love.
So where did all the male tears go? The most obvious possibility is that this is the result of changes as we moved from an agricultural(农业的) society to one that was urban(城市的)and industrial(工业的). In the Middle Ages, most people spent their lives among those they had known since birth. If men cried, they did so with people who would sympathize(同情). But from the 18th to 20th centuries, the population became increasingly urbanize, and people were living in the midst of thousands of strangers. Furthermore, changes in the economy required men to work together in factories and offices where expressions of feelings and even personal conversations were discouraged as time wasting.
Yet human beings weren’t designed to hide their feelings, and there’s reason to believe that restraining tears can be harmful to your well-being. Research from the 1980s has suggested a relationship between stress-related illnesses and not enough crying. Crying is also, somewhat related with happiness and wealth. Countries where people cry the most tend to be richer and more confident.
1. In history, people considered it ________ for men to cry in public.| A．manly | B．shameful | C．acceptable | D．funny |
| A．By offering descriptions. | B．By asking questions. |
| C．By comparing facts. | D．By listing numbers. |
| A．Tony who lives alone and never expresses himself. |
| B．Peter who is outgoing but sometimes cries in public. |
| C．Arthur who is under great stress but never shed a tear. |
| D．Adam who sometimes cries but quickly regain control. |
| A．Men Don’t Cry. Why? | B．Crying Is for Women |
| C．Who Cry More? Men or Women? | D．Crying Makes a Weak Man |
