The Side Effects of Overexercising

If you are putting in too many hours at the gym or training too hard for sports, your body may begin to respond negatively. Overexercising is common among athletes and fitness enthusiasts with a variety of side effects, both physical and mental.

One person’s definition of excessive (过量的) exercise might differ from another’s. 【小题1】 The main sign of it is declining physical performance in your sports, despite ongoing or increased amounts of training.

If you are overexercising, you might notice the negative physical effects first. You might experience unexplained weight loss and decreased appetite. Overexercising can also cause ongoing muscle and joint pain unrelated to a specific injury, difficulty sleeping or not feeling rested when you wake up. 【小题2】

If you are not feeling your usual excitement for sports, or if you do not feel mentally prepared for exercise or competition, you could be experiencing the mental effects of overexercising. 【小题3】 For example, increased anger, or a lack of enthusiasm you once felt toward your sports. This condition can also cause other poor performances in your life.

【小题4】 The first and most vital step for treatment is simply recognizing that you have the condition. Then follow a training schedule that varies your training load and includes adequate rest. 【小题5】 Whether the rest period last for weeks or several months depends on the individual.

Most earthquakes occur within the upper 15 miles of the earth's surface. But earthquakes can and do occur at all depths to about 460 miles. Their number decreases as the depth increases. In comparison with the total number of earthquakes each year, the number of disastrous earthquakes is very small

The extent of the disaster in an earthquake depends on many factors. If you carefully build a toy house with an erect （直立的）set, it will still stand no matter how much you shake the table. But if you build a toy house with a pack of cards, a slight shake of the table will make it fall. An earthquake in Agadir Morocco, was not strong enough to be recorded on distant instruments, but it completely destroyed the city. If a building is well constructed and built on solid ground, it will resist an earthquake. Most deaths in earthquakes have been due to faulty building construction or poor building sites. A third and very serious factor is panic. When people rush into narrow streets, more deaths will result.

The UN has played an important part in reducing the damage done by earthquakes. It has sent a team of experts to all countries known to be affected by earthquakes. Working with local geologists and engineers, the experts have studied the nature of the ground and the type of most practical building code for the local area. If followed, these suggestions will make disastrous earthquakes almost a thing of the past.

There is one type of earthquake disaster that little can be done about. In certain areas, earthquakes take place beneath the sea. These submarine earthquakes sometimes give rise to seismic sea waves. The waves are not noticeable out at sea because of their long wave length, but when they roll into harbors, they pile up into walls of water 6 to 60 feet high. The Japanese call them "tsunamis", meaning "harbor waves", because they reach a sizable height only in harbors.

Tsunamis travel fairly slowly, at speeds up to 500 miles an hour. An adequate warning system is in use to warn all shores likely to be reached by the waves, but this only enables people to leave the threatened shores for higher ground. There is no way to stop the oncoming wave.

Changing the wording about expiration dates (有效期) on perishable (容易腐坏的) food items could help reduce food waste, according to a new study. “With very few exceptions, the date labels (标签) that are used in the United States are not standardized,” said Brad Rickard, a researcher working on this study. “And they’re not food safety dates; they’re just food quality dates.”

In a survey of consumers, the researchers asked participants to rate, on a 1-5 scale (5 being extremely likely), their likelihood of discarding (丢弃) 15 different food items that were one day past the stated date code (代码) in the first section of the survey, the question included only the expiration date code; the second section repeated this exercise but with both a date code and a date label that included one of 10 different wording variations.

Four of the date label variations followed those that have been widely adopted in the U.S.: “Best if used by”; “Best by”; “Use by”; and “Sell by”. The other six featured a date label and a biosensor, an indication of food quality. Biosensors which detect microorganism growth and change colors accordingly — are popular in some European markets, but are not as common in the U.S.; for the survey, the researchers chose biosensors with the colors green (fresh), blue (less fresh) and purple (past fresh).

Survey results showed an increase in discard intentions with the “Use by” and the “Best if used by date label, implying that foods with these date labels were more often discarded and replaced. Rickard also said the innovation of the biosensor technology impressed the U.S. survey participants, and when it was presented to participants as green, it led to significantly lower discard rates.

One of the unintended consequences of a more uniform approach to date labels, the researchers note, is a potential increase in food waste depending on the wording of the label, as well as an increase in the re-purchasing of perishable items high in protein, fat and cholesterol (胆道醇). “If you tell all food companies to change all their ‘best by’ dates to ‘best if used by’ dates, that might actually increase food waste,” Rickard said.