Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Marcia for Radio E and to day
Speaker 1: I will be reading National Geographic Magazine dated January twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five. As a reminder, Radio Eye is a reading
Speaker 1: service intended for people who are blind or have other
Speaker 1: disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material. Please
Speaker 1: join me now for the first article titled The Clues
Speaker 1: of the Arctic Caves by Battatarji. An intrepid climate scientist
Speaker 1: ventures to unexplored caves in northern Greenland where surprising evidence
Speaker 1: of the past could provide new insights into our warming future.
Speaker 1: The helicopter landed on top of the cliff, its blades
Speaker 1: chopping the cold air. Stepping out, Gina Moseley breathed deeply
Speaker 1: and took in the commanding view of Greenland's barren landscape.
Speaker 1: To the south, a frozen lake stretched out for miles,
Speaker 1: eventually giving way to brown and gray plateaus, interrupted by
Speaker 1: the white flash of glaciers in the distance. In the
Speaker 1: other direction, some five hundred sixty miles beyond the horizon,
Speaker 1: was the North Pole. The only other human presence was
Speaker 1: the helicopter pilot and the other passengers. Moseley's life partner
Speaker 1: and this story's photographer Robbie Shown and technical climbing specialist
Speaker 1: Chris Blakely. The weather was mild, just above freezing perfect actually,
Speaker 1: but Moseley knew that storms could blow up at a
Speaker 1: moment's notice, bringing dangerous winds and dense fog. In such
Speaker 1: a case, they'd had to leave immediately or risk being
Speaker 1: stranded in one of the world's most remote and forbidding environments.
Speaker 1: They were poised on the edge separating potential disaster and
Speaker 1: sublime discovery. For more than a decade, Moseley, a British
Speaker 1: paleoclimatologist and caver, had envisioned this moment, hoping to be
Speaker 1: part of the first team to set foot inside the
Speaker 1: wolf Land Cave w O w u L eight, one
Speaker 1: of the most isolated caves on Earth. She dreamed of
Speaker 1: collecting samples that would open a new window into Greenland's
Speaker 1: climate history. She'd first glimpsed a cave in a grainy
Speaker 1: Cold War era reconnaissance photo, its gaping entrance set high
Speaker 1: in a sheer rock wall, resembling an ancient fortress. The
Speaker 1: picture had instantly captured her imagination, But what had planted
Speaker 1: the hook firmly in her imagination was the knowledge that
Speaker 1: no one had been able to set foot inside it.
Speaker 1: For fifteen years, she'd obsessed over the same questions, how
Speaker 1: big was it, how deep did it go? What scientific
Speaker 1: treasures did it hold. Moseley had a bold plan to
Speaker 1: explore the wolf Land Cave and others like it, and
Speaker 1: bring back rock specimens from inside. These mineral deposits could
Speaker 1: reveal what Greenland's climate was like hundreds of thousands, or
Speaker 1: even millions of years ago. More than a window into
Speaker 1: the past, these samples might help scientists pred what future
Speaker 1: warming in the world might look like. She'd run various
Speaker 1: gauntlets to get here, logistical, financial, professional, emotional, But now
Speaker 1: all that remained was to repel toward the mouth and
Speaker 1: see what no human had ever seen. After the helicopter
Speaker 1: flew off, a deep silence fell, and Blakely began rigging
Speaker 1: ropes as the others prepared their gear. Many years before
Speaker 1: she had ever heard of the Greenland Cave, Moseley had
Speaker 1: fallen in love with subterranean worlds. She was twelve on
Speaker 1: a family camping trip in Somerset, England, when her mother
Speaker 1: took her to explore her first cave. I absolutely loved it.
Speaker 1: From the very first moment, she says, she remembers walking
Speaker 1: through a forest and just disappearing underground and away from
Speaker 1: the world above. As a teenager, she would save the
Speaker 1: money she earned from delivering newspapers after school so she
Speaker 1: could spend it on summer caving adventures. Every cave has
Speaker 1: its own personality, Moseley says. Every cave is different. Some
Speaker 1: are wet, some are dry, are deep, some are shallow,
Speaker 1: some vertical, some horizontal, and so every experience is different.
Speaker 1: It's new every time. Eventually, her love of caves led
Speaker 1: her to a doctorate in paleoclimate science at the University
Speaker 1: of Bristol. During her undergraduate studies, she had discovered that,
Speaker 1: in addition to being fun to explore, caves are time
Speaker 1: capsules containing data about past climatic conditions in the form
Speaker 1: of mineral deposits accumulated over thousands of years. These deposits
Speaker 1: are formed as water drips into the cave or flows
Speaker 1: through it, leaving behind tiny amounts of minerals that accrete
Speaker 1: over time to grow into sealactites, salagmites, and sheet like flowstones,
Speaker 1: collectively known as spiliothems. These structures provide an archival record
Speaker 1: of the region's past climate, each layer of deposited mineral
Speaker 1: having captured information about the temperature from the time of
Speaker 1: its creation. When evening in two thousand and eight, at
Speaker 1: a gathering of the university's caving society at a local pub,
Speaker 1: Moseley ran into Charlie's Self, a lifelong caver and speleologist,
Speaker 1: Self told her about a sight in Greenland that he
Speaker 1: desperately wanted to visit, the Wolfland Cave. It was photographed
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty eight by two American geologists flying a
Speaker 1: reconnaissance plane over northern Greenland in the jealous Great Grainy image.
Speaker 1: The entrance appeared to be quite large, and there was
Speaker 1: no telling how deep it went. Moseley knew some mountain
Speaker 1: caves could contain miles of passageways, but given the Wolfland
Speaker 1: caves isolated cliff face location, no one had ever explored it.
Speaker 1: Moseley was hooked like a child to a fable. I
Speaker 1: just kind of lit up because I couldn't even imagine
Speaker 1: that there were caves in Greenland, she says. A few
Speaker 1: days later, her self handed her a folder that contained
Speaker 1: the geologists reports maps, another information he'd collected over the years,
Speaker 1: as he tried to solve the logistic challenges of launching
Speaker 1: an expedition. The optimal time a trip could be attempted
Speaker 1: was during a brief summer window, but the closest landing
Speaker 1: strip was about thirty miles away, over treacherous mountain terrain,
Speaker 1: offering little shelter, and in the region named after the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century Sweetest explorer thorieled Wolf. The weather was highly unpredictable,
Speaker 1: threatening to trap a team for potential weeks on end.
Speaker 1: Moseley made photocopies and stuck the papers in a drawer,
Speaker 1: but she couldn't put them out of her mind. I
Speaker 1: kept the whole thing very secret, Moseley says. I didn't
Speaker 1: go around telling people in my discipline. I thought if
Speaker 1: I spoke too soon, I might lose it. Earlier that year,
Speaker 1: on a university caving trip to Crete, she found herself
Speaker 1: in a group led by Robbie Schoene, who was there
Speaker 1: with the Sheffield University Speleological Society. While the others struggled
Speaker 1: to find new caves shown in, Moseley's team had great
Speaker 1: success when shaft gave way to another cave after cave.
Speaker 1: In the evening, they'd return to base camp completely thrilled.
Speaker 1: Most of the others were sunburned because they'd spent the
Speaker 1: whole day on the surface, Shown recalls, and we'd be
Speaker 1: telling them great tales of the big caves that we've found.
Speaker 1: Their shared love of caves proved to be the starting
Speaker 1: point for a romantic relationship a year later. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until several months after they became a couple that Moseley
Speaker 1: fondly pulled out her green Land folder and placed it
Speaker 1: on the table in front of Shown. He was intrigued.
Speaker 1: By this time. He'd worked as an assistant to photographers
Speaker 1: on some ambitious caving adventures, including exploring large underground river
Speaker 1: systems in Papua New Guine and understood what it took
Speaker 1: to execute a high stakes expedition. But the wolf Land
Speaker 1: Cave was something else. I always thought that it's just crazy,
Speaker 1: it's just too big a project to pull off, he recalls.
Speaker 1: Scientists are eager to learn about climate history because it
Speaker 1: holds clues to the planet's future. Earth has experienced extreme
Speaker 1: changes in climate throughout its existence. See sawing between two
Speaker 1: fundamentally different states, one hot and one cold, referred to
Speaker 1: as greenhouse and ice house. Earth, respectively. Scientists agree that
Speaker 1: there were probably four major ice house periods time in
Speaker 1: Earth's history with permanent, large scale ice cover before the
Speaker 1: one that began about two point six million years ago
Speaker 1: and continues to day. Within any ice house period, there
Speaker 1: are relatively colder and warmer times when glacier's advance or retreat,
Speaker 1: known as glacial and interglacial periods. Before the last glacial
Speaker 1: period ended about eleven thousand, five hundred years ago, much
Speaker 1: of North America in continental Europe was covered in ice.
Speaker 1: We want to understand that these past climates better, says
Speaker 1: Christo Buidzart, a climatologist at Oregon State University. How does
Speaker 1: the ocean interact with the atmosphere on these long time scales?
Speaker 1: How sensitive are the ice sheets to temperature change? If
Speaker 1: we add an x amount of carbon dioxide, how much
Speaker 1: warming would we see? Globally? Greenland and Antarctica hold special
Speaker 1: places in the hearts of paleoclimatologists. That's because both locations
Speaker 1: have ice that hasn't melted for hundreds of thousands of years,
Speaker 1: providing an uninterrupted climate record. Ice cores drilled from ice
Speaker 1: sheets in Greenland have helped researchers reconstruct the history of
Speaker 1: its climate dating back about one hundred thirty thousand years,
Speaker 1: but the ice record there doesn't go any further. When
Speaker 1: Moseley heard about the cave in Greenland, she knew that
Speaker 1: one way to push beyond the one hundred thirty thousand
Speaker 1: year old record was to look for spiliothems, which can
Speaker 1: stretch back several hundred thousand years. But it wasn't until
Speaker 1: five years later, after she'd begun a research position at
Speaker 1: Innsbruck University, that she began seriously thinking about making the trip.
Speaker 1: The wolf Land Cave still seemed out of reach, but
Speaker 1: among the papers that self had given Moseley was a
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty article authored by William Davies and Daniel Crinsley,
Speaker 1: the same geologists who had photographed northern Greenland from the air.
Speaker 1: The men had been able to explore other caves on
Speaker 1: the more accessible northeastern side of Greenland. What most excited
Speaker 1: Moseley was the authors mentioned of a flow stone deposit
Speaker 1: four inches thick formed of coarsely crystalline calcite on the
Speaker 1: floor of one of the caves, topped by stubs of stalagmites.
Speaker 1: This was proof that the caves contained spiliothems that could
Speaker 1: be brought back and studied in the lab, and since
Speaker 1: no one had ever constructed a cave based climate record
Speaker 1: of Greenland, it would be an important contribution to science.
Speaker 1: But first she had to get there. Researching polar out fitters,
Speaker 1: she found an explorer named Clive Johnson. She explained she
Speaker 1: wanted the cheapest trip she could get. He stripped out helicopters,
Speaker 1: which was a big cost, mose says, but that meant
Speaker 1: the group would have to make a punishing track across
Speaker 1: rugged terrain carrying all their gear. The new figure seemed unattainable. Determined,
Speaker 1: Mosely applied for small grants and reached out to potential donors.
Speaker 1: In the end, a total of fifty nine individual and
Speaker 1: institutional sponsors, including the National Geographic Society, provided the funds
Speaker 1: she needed, about one hundred twenty five thousand dollars. On
Speaker 1: July twenty nine, twenty fifteen, Moseley in shown, along with
Speaker 1: three others, boarded a plane from a Danish military base
Speaker 1: and flew to an air stripped next to Centrum Lake
Speaker 1: in northeast Greenland. Along with their camping gear and rations.
Speaker 1: The group had brought along an inflatable boat and an
Speaker 1: outboard engine. The plane flew off, leaving them to chart
Speaker 1: their course through the Brown Arctic wilderness. After crossing the lake,
Speaker 1: the expeditioners set up base camp and then began a
Speaker 1: three day trek to the valley where the caves were located.
Speaker 1: Most team members had put in one of physical training
Speaker 1: to prepare for this arduous hike. Each had taken courses
Speaker 1: on how to defend themselves in case they ran into
Speaker 1: polar bears, including the best ways to set up a
Speaker 1: camp and how to use flares and rifles a last resort.
Speaker 1: What they weren't ready for was the mosquitoes, relentless clouds
Speaker 1: of them. At one point, I counted more than two
Speaker 1: hundred bytes on my arm, Mosley says. They also weren't
Speaker 1: prepared for the scale of the landscape. There's nothing to
Speaker 1: give a sense of proportion shown, says. You see a
Speaker 1: river and think it's just a short walk, but it'll
Speaker 1: take half a day to reach it. They ended up
Speaker 1: documenting twenty six caves, including several that had not been
Speaker 1: explored previously, and collected sixteen spieliothem samples. They treked back
Speaker 1: to camp over two days, with their backs nearly bursting
Speaker 1: with pieces of flow stones. I got this little video
Speaker 1: of Gina with my phone shown, says she can barely
Speaker 1: walk because she's got this massive rocksack full of samples.
Speaker 1: Their hand hard work paid off. A radio chemistry analysis
Speaker 1: of one sample showed that it was formed between five
Speaker 1: hundred thirty seven thousand and five hundred eighty eight thousand
Speaker 1: years ago. Since the creation of spiliothems requires the drip
Speaker 1: or flow of water, the very existence of the sample
Speaker 1: analyzed by the researchers indicates that Greenland was wetter and
Speaker 1: warmer back then. Moseley led two more Greenland expeditions to
Speaker 1: other caves in twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen. With each
Speaker 1: punishing trip and a glowing collection of spiliothems, she was
Speaker 1: traveling back in time and creating a detailed archival record
Speaker 1: of Greenland's paleo climate. Still, the wolf Land Cave loomed.
Speaker 1: I couldn't get it out of my head, Moseley says.
Speaker 1: But accessing it would require more funds and more planning.
Speaker 1: She'd need a helicopter, and there would need to be
Speaker 1: an advanced trip to cache aviation fuel Finally, in July
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, after the birth of the couple's daughter,
Speaker 1: weeding out pandemic lockdowns and raising about four hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars from more than a dozen supporters, including an award
Speaker 1: from Roelix's Perpetual Planet Initiative. Moseley's shown in their three
Speaker 1: members of their expedition team took off from Iceland and
Speaker 1: flew to wolf Land, about thirty miles from the large
Speaker 1: cave and a cluster of others they'd identified. The team
Speaker 1: planned for the helicopter to fly them back and forth
Speaker 1: from base camp to the rock formations, allowing them to
Speaker 1: explore the whole area. For that to happen, the weather
Speaker 1: had to hold. On the first day of exploration, the
Speaker 1: visibility was good. It felt like a dream, Moseley says.
Speaker 1: As the helicopter approached the cliff, they could see the
Speaker 1: mouth of the cave again without any familiar objects for
Speaker 1: scale reference. The opening didn't seem that big. Blakely, the
Speaker 1: technical climbing specialists remarked, well, that's an anti climax. Blakely
Speaker 1: and Showne headed out to scout the site. Once atop
Speaker 1: the cliff, Blakely built an anchor point and began repelling
Speaker 1: to cave entrance. He had been gone for some time
Speaker 1: when Shown heard him shout for more rope. He had
Speaker 1: one hundred fifty meters shown thought. Shown came down after him,
Speaker 1: wondering how Blakely could possibly have run out of rope.
Speaker 1: He looked down and saw Blakely. I saw how small
Speaker 1: he looked in comparison to the cave entrance Shown recalls,
Speaker 1: and I thought, oh, my goodness, this is a giant cave.
Speaker 1: The pair returned with the exciting news. With great anticipation,
Speaker 1: four members of the team ventured out and down the
Speaker 1: cliff to the entrance. Together, they finally stepped inside. It
Speaker 1: felt as if they had walked into a cathedral. The
Speaker 1: cave ceiling was at least one hundred thirty feet high.
Speaker 1: Birds nesting inside the caves soared high above their heads.
Speaker 1: There was a turquoise icy pool near the entrance. Mostly
Speaker 1: says The floor was strewn with huge boulders the size
Speaker 1: of cars. At the back of the cave, they observed
Speaker 1: several passages high up and large hoar frost crystals covering
Speaker 1: the walls. Impressed as she was by the mammoth's size,
Speaker 1: Moseley also had reason to be disappointed there were no speliothumbs.
Speaker 1: Even if any had formed in the past, they were
Speaker 1: likely to have been crushed by the boulders that covered
Speaker 1: the floor. There were, however, the other caves to explore
Speaker 1: in the vicinity, but bad weather slammed shut the window
Speaker 1: of opportunity. Low clouds and strong winds, combined with fog
Speaker 1: and snow, made it risky to fly the helicopter. The
Speaker 1: team had to wait hoping for the weather to turn.
Speaker 1: We spent a lot of time sitting around a base camp,
Speaker 1: drinking cups of tea and dreaming about what we could
Speaker 1: be doing if, Moseley says. But the weather did lift,
Speaker 1: allowing two teams to explore the other nearby caves. Moseley
Speaker 1: and Shone discovered one that had several passages with walls
Speaker 1: covered in ice and ice crystals. Shown was preparing to
Speaker 1: photograph it. One Blakely, rigging ropes to another cave, called
Speaker 1: on the radio he'd spotted spiliothumbs. Mosey and Shown raced
Speaker 1: to collect what would prove to be the only cave
Speaker 1: samples they'd bring back from the trip. What's the thing
Speaker 1: about expeditions? To unknown places. Shown says, you never really
Speaker 1: know how they're going to turn out, but you also
Speaker 1: never really know where science will lead you. Several months
Speaker 1: after returning from wolf Land, dating analysis came back for
Speaker 1: the handful of Spiliothum samples they were about to collect
Speaker 1: able to collect in twenty fifteen. In twenty nineteen, the
Speaker 1: dating methods Moseley's lab normally uses can go back only
Speaker 1: about six hundred thousand years, but she'd found a lab
Speaker 1: in China that used a method that could go much
Speaker 1: further back in time. According to their analysis, samples collected
Speaker 1: in twenty fifteen in twenty nineteen are several million years old,
Speaker 1: a stunning result. The samples grew during a time when
Speaker 1: atmosphere carbon atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were either similar to today
Speaker 1: or where they're protected to be going projected to be
Speaker 1: going in the near few decades to centuries, Moseley says,
Speaker 1: her voice rising with enthusiasm. Study of the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: five three specimens continues, and Mosey is hopeful that they
Speaker 1: too will reveal deep insight into Greenland's past. But the
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen and twenty nineteen results are thrilling, Perhaps a
Speaker 1: thrilling as climbing down a cliff face to reach a
Speaker 1: cave no one has ever entered before. It's a world
Speaker 1: where the atmosphere, the composition resembles the present. We can
Speaker 1: learn a lot about the state of the Arctic climate
Speaker 1: under those conditions to better inform ourselves about the future.
Speaker 1: She says. That's exciting, but perhaps also terrifying. But pushing
Speaker 1: herself and pushing the science into the unknown is just
Speaker 1: where Moseley wants to be. Perched on the edge of discovery.
Speaker 1: High Arctic Caving Greenland hosts some of the world's northernmost
Speaker 1: caves and one of its most unforgiving environments. In twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, a team of scientists launched a mission into
Speaker 1: its icy, unexplored cliff side caverns to search for spaleothums,
Speaker 1: layered mineral deposits holding clues to Earth's earliest climate history.
Speaker 1: Next article The truth about Dry January by Rachel Fairbank.
Speaker 1: What happens when you quit alcohol for a month is
Speaker 1: more sobering than you might think. Every year, millions of
Speaker 1: people across the world pledged to give up alcohol for
Speaker 1: a month during what many call now Dry January. The
Speaker 1: tradition started over a decade ago in the United Kingdom,
Speaker 1: and by twenty twenty four, more than twenty percent of
Speaker 1: Americans were participating. Others are taking breaks from alcohol later
Speaker 1: in the year thanks to a similar movement called sober October.
Speaker 1: Such month long challenges may be appealing because they represent
Speaker 1: a different kind of resolution. Instead of committing to a
Speaker 1: complete lifestyle change, people can experiment with how sobriety feels.
Speaker 1: Then they can reflect on whether it makes sense to
Speaker 1: quit or modify their alcohol consumption to state the obvious.
Speaker 1: Research clearly shows many benefits to cutting down on your
Speaker 1: overall alcohol use. According to the World Health Organization, no
Speaker 1: level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health. But
Speaker 1: does a single month without it make a meaningful difference
Speaker 1: in your life? The answer is yes. There are several
Speaker 1: ripple effects to consider. Alcohol harms are bodies in many ways.
Speaker 1: The most prominent effects are on the liver, but there
Speaker 1: are secondary effects on other organs such as the heart,
Speaker 1: gastro intestinal tract, pancreas, and brain. The severity of the
Speaker 1: impacts depends on how much you consume, which influences how
Speaker 1: long alcohol stays in your bloodstream. Blood alcohol levels are
Speaker 1: a major factor that damages the organs, says Paul Thomes,
Speaker 1: a researcher who studies treatments for alcohol damage at Auburn University.
Speaker 1: As Thombs explains, the liver first breaks alcohol down into
Speaker 1: a acidtelehyde, which is highly toxic and unknown carcinogen. In turn,
Speaker 1: the acetelehyde gets broken down very quickly into a less
Speaker 1: toxic chemical called acetate. However, if this process gets delayed
Speaker 1: or disrupt because of either high blood alcohol levels or
Speaker 1: another underlying factor, such as medications that interfere with liver metabolism,
Speaker 1: then stealhyde can build up in the body. How long
Speaker 1: the toxic molecules are being accumulated in the cells and
Speaker 1: tissues determines the degree of damage, though says, Heavy alcohol use,
Speaker 1: often defined as consuming five or more drinks a day
Speaker 1: for men or four or more drinks a day for women,
Speaker 1: has been associated with long term health problems, including high
Speaker 1: blood pressure, heart disease, liver disease, and an increased risk
Speaker 1: of developing certain types of cancer. Such continual consumption can
Speaker 1: also weaken the immune system and impair proper functioning of
Speaker 1: the brain. Even moderate alcohol use, no more than one
Speaker 1: drink a day for women, two for men, increases overall
Speaker 1: risk for chronic disease. What's less clear, though, is just
Speaker 1: how quickly the body can recover when a person stops drinking.
Speaker 1: The effects are going to be different for different place people,
Speaker 1: depending on how long they have been consuming alcohol, says
Speaker 1: sch Shazad Merwat, a liver disease specialist with the University
Speaker 1: of Texas Health System. Most of the research on abstaining
Speaker 1: from alcohol is focused on heavy drinkers, but it's generally
Speaker 1: good news. Within weeks, the liver can start to reverse
Speaker 1: the damage done in most early stages of alcohol related
Speaker 1: liver disease, which starts with the accumulation of fat, then
Speaker 1: progresses to chronic inflammation, scarring, and ultimately cirrhosis. The liver
Speaker 1: has an enormous regenerative capacities, says Carrie Mints, a psychiatrist
Speaker 1: and medical director the Harris House Foundation. The first three
Speaker 1: stages are reversible. During abstinence from alcohol, a patient may
Speaker 1: be able to halt the progression of cirrhosis to live longer.
Speaker 1: Although the condition is irreversible, there are other immediate gains.
Speaker 1: In a twenty eighteen study of ninety four moderate to
Speaker 1: heavy drinkers who gave up alcohol for a month. Researchers
Speaker 1: found that participants experienced improvements in insulin insulin resistance, blood pressure,
Speaker 1: and weight loss, while their peers who continued to drink
Speaker 1: did not. The benefits of a dry January may be
Speaker 1: greatest for the heaviest imbibers, but even in lighter drinkers
Speaker 1: you can have noticeable health effects. Mintz says. For instance,
Speaker 1: researchers have found that some people develop healthier skin and
Speaker 1: resolve stomach issues. Alcohol has been shown to disrupt the
Speaker 1: microbial composition of the gut, a condition called dysbiosis, and
Speaker 1: damage to the lining of the intestines, causing some contents
Speaker 1: to spill over into the bloodstream in the gut. This
Speaker 1: dysbiosis can be reversed, but not completely, even after three
Speaker 1: to five weeks. Tomes says, it takes a longer time
Speaker 1: to restore the gut microbiome and the damage caused to
Speaker 1: the gut. A month without drinking can improve your well
Speaker 1: being in other ways, too. Alcohol use can contribute to
Speaker 1: poor sleep, to press or anxiety, says Stephen Tait, a
Speaker 1: physician at Stanford University who specializes in addiction medicine. For
Speaker 1: some regular alcohol consumption may also be an attempt to
Speaker 1: self medicate underlying sleep or mood disorders. By giving it
Speaker 1: up for a month, they have the chance to unentangle
Speaker 1: whether alcohol is causing or masking such health issues. It
Speaker 1: can be very insightful, Tates says in his experience, a
Speaker 1: defined period of sobriety can also help people better understand
Speaker 1: their relationship with alcohol, including whether their consumption has gotten
Speaker 1: out of control. It's sometimes hard to realize when you
Speaker 1: slip into an addiction, Tate says. It's tricky to know
Speaker 1: where that line is, and sometimes people don't realize it
Speaker 1: until they're already across it. Researcher are now finding that
Speaker 1: some dry January participants will adopt better habits even after
Speaker 1: their month long experiment is over. Many of the participants
Speaker 1: tracked in the UK study reported drinking significantly last six
Speaker 1: months after they abstained for a month. A larger survey
Speaker 1: of more than eight hundred fifty adults who took part
Speaker 1: in Dry January showed a similar benefit, with those people
Speaker 1: also reportedly drinking less six months after their drinking hiatus
Speaker 1: than they typically had before. Given the issues that alcohol
Speaker 1: can cause, especially at higher blood alcohol levels. Any reduction
Speaker 1: in consumption is a good thing. If you are drinking less,
Speaker 1: you are at a lower risk to incur some of
Speaker 1: those damages. Mintz says next Enchanted Sudha a journey above
Speaker 1: remarkably distinct from the rest of Saudi Arabia. Suda's traditions, nature,
Speaker 1: and way of life are unlike anywhere else on Earth.
Speaker 1: Nestled in the Asir region, Suda's mountains reach over ten
Speaker 1: thousand feet three three thousand, fifteen meters above sea level,
Speaker 1: making them the highest point in the country. Given its
Speaker 1: unique terrain, geographical position, and culturally focused people, the area
Speaker 1: offers an unmissible opportunity for intrepid travelers to immerse themselves
Speaker 1: in the regions human and natural wonders, traditions in the
Speaker 1: clouds obscured in the verdant heights of Suda, a group
Speaker 1: of men danced to the beat of tradition and the
Speaker 1: rhythm of communal spirit. These are the flower Men, embodiments
Speaker 1: of a time passed and symbols of heritage across the region,
Speaker 1: donning black robes embroidered with gold and carrying ceremonial swords.
Speaker 1: This cultural dress is a key part of their tribal identity.
Speaker 1: Many of the flower Men have roots in Rijal Alma,
Speaker 1: a village over nine centuries old and located at the
Speaker 1: crossroads between the south of the Arabian Peninsula and the Levant.
Speaker 1: While its location connected merchants to the holy cities of
Speaker 1: Mecca and Medina, naturally becoming an important ancient trade route,
Speaker 1: its geographical positioning also helped the village to fight off threats.
Speaker 1: What was once designed for defense against the elements and
Speaker 1: enemy attacks now protects and presuer the culture of Suda's
Speaker 1: local people. Being perched atop the highest peaks in the kingdom,
Speaker 1: the landscape is bright and colorful, a stark contrast to
Speaker 1: the arid desert that defines much of the country. With
Speaker 1: this color comes plenty of biodiversity, including tree frogs, butterflies, birds, lizards,
Speaker 1: and more. Determined to help preserve and protect the wildlife
Speaker 1: in the region, conservationists have embarked on a re wilding
Speaker 1: project in the Red Rock region of Sudha. Among the
Speaker 1: species being supported is the Nubian Ibex, an elusive desert
Speaker 1: dwelling goat species native to the region. Suda inspires an
Speaker 1: adventurous way of life that rubs off on all who visit.
Speaker 1: Adventures drawn to its rugged terrain and high altitudes find
Speaker 1: in Suda both a challenge and a sanctuary. This is
Speaker 1: particularly two for Suda's local athletes. This concludes readings from
Speaker 1: National Geographic Magazine for today. Your reader has been Marsha.
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