万花筒 2009-07-17&07-18 发短信得肌腱炎？！

13-year-old Bailey Baker's thumbs are in constant motion, sending text messages to her friends again, again and again. Last month may have been her best month ever, when she texted 8000 times. Now she's feeling the pain. Just mainly back and neck problems and thumb numbness¹ and it hurts. Doctor Jane Sadler’s seeing more and more teens who simply text until it hurts. She says parents including Bailey's mother have no idea how much their kids are texting.

 

"I was thinking she was texting about 25 texts a day. Wrong.

We have uncovered a problem."

 

And it doesn't take Doctor Sadler long to isolate² the problem. She gives Bailey the once over

and learns she's texting about 200 times a day.

 

"Well, Bailey, what you have is texting teen tendonitis." That's right. Bailey has TTT.

 

“A lot of them report pain in their thumbs

or their elbows or their back and neck. And when we look into it or investigate a little bit further, we see that commonly the culprit is texting.”

 

Doctor Sadler says back soreness is caused by poor posture³ when texting. Bailey often texts for up to two hours a day. There’s a lot of wear and tear on the thumbs which over time can break down.

 

"What I tell them is , hey, you might be normal now. But when you are 40 or 50, you can get arthritis⁴." Doctor Sadler expects a boom in thumb-joint replacement⁵ surgeries over the next several decades. For Bailey, Doctor Sadler suggested exercises like this to strengthen her hands.

 

School's out, but Bailey got a lesson about the downside of all that texting.

 

"For I don't think texting can mess like make your hands feel so bad."

 

1 numbness   

n.无感觉，麻木，惊呆

参考例句：

• She was fighting off the numbness of frostbite. 她在竭力摆脱冻僵的感觉。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Sometimes they stay dead, causing' only numbness. 有时，它们没有任何反应，只会造成麻木。 来自时文部分

2 isolate   

vt.使孤立，隔离

参考例句：

• Do not isolate yourself from others.不要把自己孤立起来。
• We should never isolate ourselves from the masses.我们永远不能脱离群众。

3 posture   

n.姿势，姿态，心态，态度；v.作出某种姿势

参考例句：

• The government adopted an uncompromising posture on the issue of independence.政府在独立这一问题上采取了毫不妥协的态度。
• He tore off his coat and assumed a fighting posture.他脱掉上衣，摆出一副打架的架势。

4 arthritis   

n.关节炎

参考例句：

• Rheumatoid arthritis has also been linked with the virus.风湿性关节炎也与这种病毒有关。
• He spent three months in the hospital with acute rheumatic arthritis.他患急性风湿性关节炎，在医院住了三个月。

5 replacement   

n.取代，替换，交换；替代品，代用品

参考例句：

• We are hard put to find a replacement for our assistant.我们很难找到一个人来代替我们的助手。
• They put all the students through the replacement examination.他们让所有的学生参加分班考试。