脑卒中日 | 美国CDC、英国BBC 竟然是这样说的。。。

小白老师说：今天是世界卒中日，和大家分享来自美国 CDC 的官宣 《如何预防中风》，以及来自英国 BBC 的纪录片《中风把我变成了同性恋》。从语言上来看，这两家各有所长。前者极简，后者极精，且报道角度刁钻。总之，叹服。

**关键词：**脑卒中（cerebral stroke）即 “中风（stroke）”，又称 “脑血管意外（cerebralvascular accident，CVA）”，是一种急性脑血管疾病。

****美国 CDC 官宣：如何预防中风

这段来自美国 CDC 官网的官宣音频只有 40 秒，简明扼要地告诉我们预防中风的关键是什么。全文六句话，语音纯正，且地道实用，稍加改动就能套用到医博英语考试的作文中，建议跟读、模仿、全文背诵。

点这里练听力，只要 40 秒**▼**

Strokes are the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S., and they don’t just occur in older adults.

中风是美国第四大致死因素，并不只有老年人才会患上这种病。

Anyone can have a stroke at any age.

任何年龄的任何人都有可能中风。

Leading risk factors include high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, smoking, and a family history of stroke.

主要风险因素有血压、高胆固醇、糖尿病、抽烟和家族史。

Most strokes are preventable.

多数中风都可以预防。

Decrease your chances of having a stroke by eating a healthy diet, maintaining a healthy weight, exercising regularly, limiting alcohol consumption, and controlling blood pressure and cholesterol.

健康饮食、维持健康体重、经常锻炼、限制酒精摄入、控制血压和胆固醇，降低中风风险。

As with many health problems, making healthy choices is the key to preventing this common and serious condition.

对很多健康问题而言，做出健康的选择是防止常见严重疾病的关键。

BBC 纪录片 | 一场中风把直男变成同性恋

小白老师说：BBC 报道，英国一名男子中风康复后变成同性恋者，并改变职业，成了一名美发师。英国中风协会发言人科纳尔称，大脑康复过程中，神经元重新连接，会激活大脑中的一些潜意识，因此会出现中风后口音、语言或性取向发生改变的现象。

先来看 BBC 的精彩纪录片**▼**

再来看 BBC 官网的报道，略长，但是难词很少，行文流畅，值得一读▼****

‘The stroke had turned me gay’

Following a stroke, Chris Birch’s personality and sexuality altered dramatically. Now he is trying to rediscover who he is and why these changes may have happened.

“It’s like looking at somebody else, but with my face only younger, and in all fairness, if I met myself I’d probably carry on walking.”

Looking at past pictures of himself, 27-year-old Chris Birch struggles to remember or identify with his old self. He used to be a 19-stone, beer-swilling, party-loving rugby fan from the Welsh valleys, the life and soul of a party. He worked in a bank and loved sport and motorbikes.

After a freak accident in 2011, he says he underwent a big change to his personality. He believes that he has gone from being straight to gay.

“I was doing a forward roll down a grass bank one day and cut off the blood supply to my brain which caused a stroke to happen. It was from there, while I was recovering, that I realised I’d changed,” says Birch, from Caerphilly.

“The Chris I knew had gone and a new Chris sort of came along. I came to the realisation that the stroke had turned me gay.”

Chris Birch does not recognise himself in photographs that were taken before the accident

A stroke occurs when the blood, and therefore, oxygen supply to the brain is disrupted. Without oxygen, any part of the brain can be destroyed as brain cells die, leaving the brain to make new connections, which can affect how a person thinks, moves or feels.

Stroke patients have a 40% chance of suffering another stroke and Birch takes medication to prevent any such reoccurrence. He still has regular brain scans and cannot remember much of his life before the accident. He has also noticed physical changes to his body, for instance when he is tired, his left eye droops.

When Birch’s story hit the headlines last year it sparked a media frenzy and the story went viral. However, some - including media organisations and those close to Birch - questioned whether a stroke could alter a person’s sexual orientation.

There are few known cases of a stroke turning a straight person gay, and major personality changes in stroke sufferers are rare. Even Jak Powell, Birch’s fiance, believes his partner may always have been gay.

“I’ve still got the same opinion that it was just something that was always there,” says Powell.

“People grow up not knowing they are gay and have families and then they realise they are gay, but they don’t have a stroke to realise that.”

Yet Birch disagrees and is convinced that, neurologically, it was the stroke that altered his sense of self. The moment he realised his feelings towards men had changed was a scary period in his life.

“It was a sort of lonely time. It was a time I was afraid to tell anybody because that wasn’t who I used to be, so it shouldn’t be who I am now,” he says.

“You’re afraid to tell people, you’re afraid to have that conversation or even talk about the possibility that I have even changed in some way, and I suppose I dealt with it by moving out of my family home by myself and having to realise who I was all over again.”

A change in sexual orientation in a stroke sufferer is a controversial issue that can divide scientific opinion.

Dr Qazi Rahman of Queen Mary, University of London, an expert in human sexual orientation, has researched the neurological differences between gay and straight men and women.

He has tested hundreds of lesbian, gay and straight volunteers and discovered certain key patterns which reveal if a person might have been born gay or straight.

Rahman says the brains of gay men could be organised differently to those of straight men.

He invited Birch, who has swapped banking for hairdressing, to undergo the computer-based tests to see if he may, indeed, have been born gay. On half of the tests, Birch performed in the “expected direction” for a gay man, and for the other half was within the range of a straight man.

“The bulk of the evidence in the biological sciences of genetics and psychology and neuroscience suggest that sexuality is something you are born with and it develops later on through life,” says Rahman.

“Sometimes it takes something like a neurological insult - which is what a stroke is - to make you reassess those feelings, perhaps that are lying dormant, and bring them into the front of your mind and it is possible that is what has happened with [Birch].”

Yet consultant neuro-psychiatrist Dr Sudad Jawad has worked with young people who have had strokes and has come across a similar case in his practice of a man whose sexuality changed from homosexual to heterosexual.

“Just like a stroke can change you as a person, your behaviour, your personality, the way you think, why not sexual orientation, it is part of the personality of the individual,” says Jawad.

Birch’s case brings to mind other examples of those whose personality has radically altered after a change in their medical history.

Tommy McHugh suffered a stroke in 2001 which unlocked his creative side. He used to be a builder and is now an artist, sculptor and writes poetry.

However before the stroke, McHugh had no interest in art apart from the tattoos on his arms.

In 2008, Cheryl Johnson claimed her personality and taste in literature had changed after a kidney transplant. She swapped popular novels for high-brow books by Dostoevsky.

Debbie McCann , a grandmother from Glasgow, suffered a stroke in 2011 and began speaking with an Italian accent, although she had never been to Italy.

One of the first recorded instances of a personality change after a head injury dates back to 1848, with the case of Phineas Gage . While working as a railroad construction foreman, his head was pierced by an iron bar propelled by an explosion. He survived the accident but suffered behavioural changes and was reported to have permanently lost his inhibitions.

Although science may never be able to reveal what happened after Birch’s accident and the lasting effect of the stroke, he is continuing to rediscover himself and move on with his new life.

He has put away previous pictures of himself - and with them the “old Chris”.

“I’m convinced more than ever looking at these photos that the stroke did turn me gay, because there is no way that I was gay before. I have photos as proof and I have friends as proof and now I have memories as proof.”

“I’m happier now than I ever have been, why would I want to change?”

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