【寫在前面】本號為新開號，由牧貓君創立，將定期搬運一些好看、好玩的英文報導原文，並附本人原創的野生翻譯，以作英語學習探討之用。非科班出身，如有錯誤，歡迎批評指正。
今天這篇內容，來自《紐約時報》12月2日報導，原文標題《How Much Exercise You Need to 'Offset' a Day of Sitting》，作者Gretchen Reynolds。
久坐帶來的壞影響，需要多少運動來抵消？
The sweet spot for physical activity and longevity seemed to arrive at about 35 minutes a day of brisk walking or other moderate activities.
身體活動和健康長壽的「極樂點」，似乎維持在一天35分鐘的快走或其他適度活動的區間。
Walking for at least 11 minutes a day could lessen the undesirable health consequences of sitting for hours and hours, according to a helpful new study of the ways in which both inactivity and exercise influence how long we live. The study, which relied on objective data from tens of thousands of people about how they spent their days, found that those who were the most sedentary faced a high risk of dying young, but if people got up and moved, they slashed that threat substantially, even if they did not move much.
根據一份有關不動與鍛鍊如何影響人們壽命的有價值的研究，每天至少散步11分鐘，便會減輕數以時計的久坐對健康所帶來的不受歡迎的後果。
，但如果你起身稍微活動一下，將會大大降低這種威脅，甚至都不用活動太多。
For most of us, sitting for prolonged periods of time is common, especially now, as we face the dual challenges of Covid-related restrictions and the shortening, chilly days of winter. Recent surveys of people’s behavior since the start of the pandemic indicate that a majority of us are exercising less and sitting more than we were a year ago.
對我們大部分人來說，長時間保持坐姿是很常見的，尤其是此時此刻，當我們面臨著新冠病毒相關的隔離，以及日照越來越短的冬日寒冷天氣的雙重挑戰。自病毒大流行以來，關於人們行為的調查就顯示，我們中的大多數，相比一年前這個時候，都要動得更少、坐得更多。
Not surprisingly, there could be long-term health consequences from this physical quietude. Multiple past epidemiological studies show links between sitting and mortality. In general, in these studies, couchbound people are far more likely to die prematurely than active people are.
並不令人驚訝的是，從這種身體靜態之中，可能會產生出長期的健康後果。許多過去的流行病學研究都表明，久坐與死亡存在關聯。總的來說，在這些研究中，沙發宅們比喜歡活動的人更容易英年早逝。
But how active an active person should be if he or she hopes to mitigate the downsides of sitting has remained unclear. If you sit for eight hours at work, for instance, then stroll for half an hour in the evening — meaning you comply with the standard exercise recommendation of about 30 minutes of exercise most days — is that enough movement to undo most of the health risks of too much sitting?
但是一個想要活動起來的人，如果TA希望減輕久坐的弊端，到底需要活動到什麼程度，仍然沒有明確的答案。舉例來說，如果你每天工作久坐8小時，然後在晚上散步半小時——也就是說你遵循了平常日子每天活動30分鐘的推薦運動標準——那麼這對於消除過量久坐的健康風險來說，真的足夠了嗎？
Some past research had suggested the answer is no. A 2016 study involving more than a million people found, instead, that men and women needed to exercise moderately for about 60 to 75 minutes a day in order to diminish the undesirable effects of sitting.
一些過去的研究表明，答案是否定的。一份2016年的研究，調研覆蓋超過100萬人，發現與前述推薦標準不同的是，人們每天需要中等強度運動60-75分鐘，才可以抵消久坐的傷害。
That study, though, like most similar, earlier research, asked people to remember how much they had moved or sat, which can be problematic. We tend to be unreliable narrators of our lives, overestimating physical activity and underestimating how much we sit. But if large numbers of people misremember this way, the paradoxical result is that exercise looks less potent than it is, since the studies』 「active」 people appear to have needed plenty of exercise to gain health benefits, when the objective amount of exercise they actually completed was less, and this smaller amount produced the gains.
但是這份研究，與大多數相似題材的早期研究類似，要求人們記錄每天動態或坐姿的情況，這一要求可能會產生問題。我們天生就並非敘述生活的可靠材料，往往高估身體活動，而低估久坐的情況。但如果大部分人都按照這種傾向而記憶錯誤，矛盾的結果就是——運動看起來並沒有實際上那麼關鍵有力，如果研究中「愛動的人」看似需要大量運動才能獲取健康益處，但他們實際完成的運動量客觀上較少時，說明這些較少的運動量已經可以產出益處。
So, for the new study, which was published last week in a special issue of the British Journal of Sports Medicine devoted to the World Health Organization’s updated physical activity guidelines and related research, many of the authors of the 2016 review decided to, in effect, repeat that earlier research and analysis, but, this time, use data from people who had worn activity monitors to objectively track how much they moved and sat.
因此，在開頭那篇上周剛剛發表在《英國運動醫學》雜誌專刊上，並被世界衛生組織最新的身體活動指南和其他相關研究引用的新研究發表後，許多2016年回顧的作者都決定，實際上，重複早期的研究和分析，但是這次改為從佩戴活動監測設備的人群收集數據，以客觀地追溯他們到底活動與正坐了多久。
The scientists wound up gathering results from nine recent studies in which almost 50,000 men and women wore accelerometers. These studies』 volunteers were middle-aged or older and lived in Europe or the United States. Combining and collating the nine studies』 data, the scientists found that most of the volunteers sat a lot, averaging close to 10 hours a day, and many barely moved, exercising moderately, usually by walking, for as little as two or three minutes a day.
科學家們緊張地從9份近期的研究中收集結果，涵蓋了佩戴加速度計的大約5萬名男男女女。這些研究的志願者們都是中年或更高年齡組，住在歐洲或美國。整合併核對9份研究的數據，科學家們發現大部分志願者常常正坐，平均每天10小時，許多人幾乎不活動，運動也是中等強度，通常是散步，時長每天低至2-3分鐘。
The researchers then checked death registries for about a decade after people had joined their respective studies and started comparing lifestyles and life spans. Dividing people into thirds, based on how much they moved and sat, the researchers found, to no one’s surprise, that being extremely sedentary was hazardous, with people in the top third for sitting and bottom third for activity having about 260 percent more likelihood of premature death than the men and women who moved the most and sat the least. (The researchers controlled for smoking, body mass and other factors that might have influenced the results.)
研究者們接著檢查了人們參加研究後大約10年的死亡登記，並對比了生活方式與壽命長短，按照運動和正坐的比重，將參加研究的群體分為三類。研究者發現，毫不出乎意料地，幾乎絕對久坐的人群處於高危狀態，坐得最多、動得最少的三分之一，遭遇過早死亡的可能性，是生活方式完全相反的人群的260%。（研究者已經排除了吸菸、體重和其他影響結果的因素。）
Other combinations of time spent sitting and moving were less alarming, though, and even heartening. People in the middle third for activity, who exercised moderately for about 11 minutes a day, were significantly less likely to have died prematurely than people who moved less, even if all of them belonged to the group that also sat the most.
其他正坐與運動的組合，風險要更小一些，甚至結果喜人。運動量處於中間三分之一的人群，基本上每天中等強度運動11分鐘，極大地減小了過早死亡的可能性，即使他們同樣處於「坐得最多」的標籤組。
Crunching the numbers further, the researchers concluded that the sweet spot for physical activity and longevity seemed to arrive at about 35 minutes a day of brisk walking or other moderate activities, an amount that led to the greatest statistical improvement in life span, no matter how many hours someone sat.
進一步分析數據，研究者的結論是：身體活動和健康長壽的「極樂區」，似乎維持在一天裡35分鐘的清爽散步或其他適度的活動區間，這是在壽命長度中最能夠產生數據改善的運動量，無論當事人每天久坐多久。
Of course, this study was observational and does not prove that exercise caused people to live longer, only that physical activity, sitting and mortality were linked.
當然，這份研究是觀察性的，無法證明運動導致了人們的長壽，只能證明身體活動、久坐和死亡三者具有相關性。
But the results strongly suggest that if we sit all day, as so many of us do, we should aim, too, to get up and move, says Ulf Ekelund, a professor of epidemiology and physical activity at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences in Oslo, Norway, who led the new study. 「Brisk walking is excellent moderate exercise,」 he says, and, in half-hour stints — or even less — might help to lengthen our lives.
但是研究結果強烈表明，如果我們整日久坐，就像大部分人一樣，我們應當關注時不時起身活動活動，位於挪威奧斯陸的挪威運動醫學院流行病學和體育活動系教授Ulf Ekelund說。「快走就是很棒的中等強度運動，」他說，以半小時或以內為單位——將會延長我們的壽命。
——全文完