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Now you"re probably thinking,"Well, OK, one in 300 chance of lowering my cholesterol. Why not, doc? Give me the prescriptionanyway." But you should ask at this point for another statistic, and that is," Tell me about the side effects." Right? So for this particular drug, the side effects occur in five percent of the patients. And they include terrible things--debilitating muscle and joint pain, gastrointestinal distress--but now you"re thinking, "Five percent, not very likely it"s going to happen to me, I"ll still take the drug." But wait a minute. Remember under stress you"re not thinking clearly. So think about how you"re going to work through this ahead of time, so you don"t have to manufacture the chain of reasoning on the spot. 300 people take the drug, right? One person"s helped, five percent of those 300 have side effects, that"s 15 people. You"re 15 times more likely to be harmed by the drug than you are to be helped by the drug.
prescription[pr"skrpn]：n. 处方；药方；对策
debilitating[d"bltet]：adj. 使衰弱的；动词debilitate的现在分词形式.
gastrointestinal[ɡstron"testnl]：adj. 胃肠的
现在你可能在想，“好吧，还有300分之1的机会可以降低我的胆固醇。为什么不服用呢？医生，给我开这个药。”但是你应该问医生，有关这药的另一个统计数字，那就是，”告诉我这药的副作用。”对吧？ 那么针对这种药，副作用会发生在5%的患者身上。这些副作用包括一些可怕的情况——肌无力，关节疼痛和肠胃不适 —— 但你可能觉得：“才5%的比例，不太可能发生在我身上，我还是会服用它。”但是，请等等。记住在压力下，你可能思维混乱，不能考虑清楚。所以，要提前思考一下你该如何做，这样你就不用事到临头时再去进行一连串的推理了。300人要服用这药，才会有一个人受益，对吧？300人中5%的人会受药物副作用的影响，也就是15人。你受药物副作用伤害的可能性是你受益于药物的15倍。
Now, I"m not saying whether you should take the statin or not. I"m just saying you should have this conversation with your doctor. Medical ethicsrequires it, it"s part of the principle of informed consent. You have the right to have access to this kind of information to begin the conversation about whether you want to take the risks or not.
ethics["eθks]：n. 道德规范；道德标准；伦理学
consent[kn"sent]：n. 同意；赞成；v. 同意；答应
我并不是想表明你该不该服用他汀类药物。我只是说，你应该咨询你的医生。医德要求我们这样做，这是知情同意原则的一部分。你有权力要求知道这类信息，有权和医生谈你是否愿意承担这样的风险。
Now you might be thinking I"ve pulled this number out of the air for shock value, but in fact it"s rather typical, this number needed to treat. For the most widely performed surgery on men over the age of 50, removalof the prostate for cancer, the number needed to treat is 49. That"s right, 49 surgeries are done for every one person who"s helped. And the side effects in that case occur in 50 percent of the patients. They include impotence, erectile dysfunction, urinary incontinence, rectal tearing, fecal incontinence. And if you"re lucky, an you"re one of the 50 percent who has these, they"ll only last for a year or two.
removal[r"muvl]：n. 移动；搬迁；除去；开除
prostate["prɑstet]：n. 前列腺
现在你可能会想我为了制造震撼的效果凭空捏造了这个数字，但实际上，这个治疗所需人数 是相当具有代表性的。对于50岁以上的男性，做的最多的手术是为治疗前列腺癌而切除前列腺，治疗所需人数是49。是的，49个患者做了手术才会出现一个受益的人。而这种情况手术的副作用会发生在50%的患者身上。这些副作用包括阳痿，勃起功能障碍，尿失禁，直肠撕裂，大便失禁。如果你“有幸”成为了50% 受副作用影响的人中的一个，这些副作用通常只会持续1-2年。
So the idea of the pre-mortem is to think ahead of time to the questions that you might be able to ask that will push the conversation forward. You don"t want to have to manufacture all of this on the spot. And you also want to think about things like quality of life. Because you have a choice oftentimes, do you I want a shorter life that"s pain-free, or a longer life that might have a great deal of pain towards the end? These are things to talk about and think about now, with your family and your loved ones. You might change your mind in the heat of the moment, but at least you"re practiced with this kind of thinking.
oftentimes["fntamz]：adv. 屡次；常常
所以，事前剖析是要提前想好你想问医生的问题，这样会深入推进你和医生的对话。毕竟你不想事到临头再来思考所有事情。而且你也需要考虑一下生活质量。因为通常你是有选择的， 你想要较短的没有痛苦的人生，或想要较长的最终要承受巨大痛苦的人生呢？这些都是现在需要谈论和思考的问题，和你的家人，爱人一起。你可能会在事发时改变你的想法，但至少你练习了这种思维方法。
Remember, our brain under stress releases cortisol, and one of the things that happens at that moment is a whole bunchon systems shut down. There"s an evolutionary reason for this. Face-to-face with a predator, you don"t need your digestive system, or your libido, or your immune system, because if you"re body is expending metabolism on those thing sand you don"t react quickly, you might become the lion"s lunch, and then none of those things matter. Unfortunately, one of the things that goes out the window during those times of stress is rational, logical thinking, as Danny Kahneman and his colleagues have shown. So we need to train ourselves to think ahead to these kinds of situations.
bunch[bnt]：n. 串；束；一群；捆；n. 突出物；凸起；vt. 使成一束(或一群等)；vi. 隆起；成束成群
predator["predtr]：n. 食肉动物；掠夺者；（动物的）捕食性天敌
digestive[da"destv]：adj. 消化的；助消化的；n. 消化药
libido[l"bido]：n. 欲望；性欲；生命力
metabolism[m"tblzm]：n. 新陈代谢
请记住，我们的大脑在压力下会释放皮质醇，在那一刻发生的一件事是你整个思维系统似乎停工了。这里有一个进化方面的原因。和一个捕食者面对面时， 你不需要你的消化系统，性欲或者免疫系统的帮助。因为如果你的身体忙着在这些事情上进行新陈代谢，你就不能迅速作出反应，那么你可能会成为狮子的午餐，然后那些事情也就不重要了，不幸的是，在紧张时，其中一件会出错的事情是理性地，有逻辑地思考。Danny Kahneman和他的同事已经证明了这点。所以，我们需要培养自己超前思考的习惯，去面对这类事情。
I think the important point here is recognizing that all of us are flawed. We all are going to fail now and then, The idea is to think ahead to what those failures might be, to put systems in place that will help minimize the damage, or to prevent the bad things from happening in the first place.
这里很重要的一点是，要认识到我们所有人都不是完美的。我们都会不时地经历失败，事前剖析就要超前思考可能的失败会是什么，井然有序地做事有助于把伤害减到最小，或者在第一时间防止糟糕的事情发生。
Getting back to that snowy night in Montreal, when I got back from my trip, I had my contractor install a combination lock next to the door, with a key to the front door in it, an easy to remember combination. And I have to admit, I still have pilesof mail that haven"t been sorted, and piles of emails that I haven"t gone through. So I"m not completely organized, but I see organization as a gradual process, and I"m getting there.
pile[pal]：n. 堆；大量；绒面；桩；<俚>大笔钱财；高大的旧建筑；v. 堆积；积累；拥入；夸张
说回到我在蒙特利尔那个冰天雪地的晚上，当我从欧洲返程回到家时，我的承包商在门旁边安装了密码锁，还有一把钥匙以及一个简单易记的密码。我不得不承认，我还是有一堆没有分类的信件，以及一堆没有处理的邮件。所以，我还没能完全做到井然有序，但我把井然有序做事 看成是一个渐进的过程，也正在慢慢实现这个目标。
注：文章来源TED：How to stay calm when you know you"ll be stressed。作者：Daniel Levitin.
本文如果对你有帮助，请点赞收藏《英语学习：有压力时你如何保持镇静（三）》，同时在此感谢原作者。
