你的頭骨變了嗎？

The hours we spend scrolling through our smartphones appear to be changing our skulls. This may be the reason why some people — especially the younger crowd — are developing a weird, bony spike just above their necks.

長時間看智能手機可能正在改變我們的頭骨，這可能就是為什么有些人，尤其是年輕人，在脖子上方長出了奇怪的骨骼突出。

The bony skull bump — known as an external occipital protuberance — is sometimes so large, you can feel it by pressing your fingers on the base of your skull.

這種顱骨腫塊被稱為枕外隆突，有時很大，你把手指按壓在頭骨底部可以摸到。

"I have been a clinician for 20 years, and only in the last decade, increasingly, I have been discovering that my patients have this growth on the skull," David Shahar, a health scientist at the University of The Sunshine Coast, Australia, told the media in a fascinating feature about the changing human skeleton.

澳大利亞陽光海岸大學的健康科學家David Shahar在一個關(guān)于正在變化的人類骨骼的知名專題節(jié)目中對媒體說：“我做了20年的臨床醫(yī)生，就在過去的十年間，我發(fā)現(xiàn)越來越多的病人頭骨上都有這種突出。”

A cause-and-effect relationship hasn't been identified, but it's possible that the spike comes from constantly bending one's neck at uncomfortable angles to look at smart devices. The human head is heavy, weighing about 10 lbs. (4.5 kilograms), and tilting it forward to look at funny cat photos (or however you spend your smartphone time) can strain the neck — hence the crick people sometimes get, known as "text neck."

雖然并未證實存在因果關(guān)系，但這個突出很有可能就是由長時間低頭以不舒服的角度看智能設(shè)備造成的。人類的頭很重，約10磅(4.5kg)，將頭前傾去看搞笑的貓咪圖片(或者看智能手機上別的內(nèi)容)會拉伸脖子，導致人們有時會痙攣，也被稱為“短信脖(長時間低頭使用電子設(shè)備引起的頸椎疾病)”。

Text neck can increase pressure on the juncture where the neck muscles attach to the skull, and the body likely responds by laying down new bone, which leads to that spiky bump, Shahar told the media. This spike distributes the weight of the head over a larger area, he said.

Shahar對媒體說短信脖會增加頸部肌肉與頭骨連接處的壓力，身體對此做出的反應(yīng)就是增加一塊新的骨頭，所以就長出了尖尖的突出。他說這個突出會把頭部的重量分散到更大的面積上。