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Osteoporosis
骨質疏松癥
Today’s word is: osteoporosis!
今天的詞是：骨質疏松癥！
Yep, osteoporosis. Now, you’ve heard this word before, and you know it has something to do with bones. But can you actually explain what it is?
是的，骨質疏松癥。你以前聽說過這個詞，也知道它與骨頭有關，但是你能解釋它到底是什么嗎？
The answer is straight-forward. It comes down to the fact that we human beings need calcium in our blood–it allows us to do all sorts of neat things, from contracting muscles to conducting nerve impulses. Where to get some calcium? Food is a good idea. But what if there isn’t always calcium-rich food to be had, as was probably the case for most of our long evolutionary history?
答案很簡單。它可以歸結為一個事實，人類的血液里必須有鈣，那樣我們才能做各種事情，從收縮肌肉到神經沖動。鈣從哪兒來呢？食物是不錯的主意，但如果以后沒有含鈣豐富的食物，我們的后代應該怎么辦？
Best to store some for a rainy day. Store it where? The skeleton works! Then, when the blood runs low on calcium, a signaling device called the parathyroid gland can activate a process by which calcium is taken from the skeleton and put back into the blood.
我們要未雨綢繆，但是要儲存在哪兒呢？骨骼上。那么，當流動的血液中鈣含量過低，一個叫做甲狀旁腺的發信號裝置就會激活一個流程，致使骨骼中的鈣流失到血液里。
Which is just what happens. This is a great short-term fix, but what about the poor skeleton? Eventually it will suffer from the loss of its own calcium–bones will become brittle.
那就是會發生的。這只是一種短期的修復，但是可憐骨骼怎么辦呢？最后就會因缺鈣，骨頭會變得脆弱。
What can we do? Two things. Help your body get more calcium by eating fatty fish and vitamin-D rich dairy products. Why vitamin D? Because that causes the small intestine to increase its calciumuptake, bypassing the need to grab extra from the bones. Under a doctor’s supervision, calcium tablets might also be helpful, along with the old standard–more exercise. Weight-bearing exercise helps keep bones strong and less likely to fall prey to the body’s own mechanisms in later age.
我們能做些什么？兩件事。多吃富含脂肪的魚和含有豐富維生素D的乳制品，幫助身體得到更多的鈣。為什么是維生素D呢？因為它會使小腸增加它的鈣攝取量，就不需要從骨骼中獲取。在醫生的監督下，鈣片也可能是有用的，同時要多做運動。負重運動能夠使骨骼強壯，在老年時期就不會為人體自身機制所折磨。
