好英语网动起来，别坐着
Just as we were all settling in front of the television to watch the baseball playoffs, two new studies about the perils of sitting have spoiled our viewing pleasure.
两项关于久坐危险的最新研究赶在大家围坐电视机前观看职业棒球季后赛的当儿公布出来，实在是让人看比赛的乐趣大打折扣。
The research, published in separate medical journals this month, adds to a growing scientific consensus that the more time someone spends sitting, especially in front of the television, the shorter and less robust his or her life may be.
本月分别发表于两本医学期刊上的研究结果验证了一项科学界逐渐达成的共识：一个人坐着的时间越长，尤其是坐在电视机前面的时间越长，寿命就越短，健康状况也更差。
To reach that conclusion, the authors of one of the studies, published in the October issue of The British Journal of Sports Medicine, turned to data from the Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study, a large, continuing survey of the health habits of almost 12,000 Australian adults.
其中一项研究发表于10月份出版的《英国运动医学杂志》(The British Journal of Sports Medicine)上。研究人员对“澳大利亚糖尿病、肥胖和生活方式研究”——一项针对近1.2万名澳大利亚成年人的持续健康习惯调查——所收集到的数据进行分析后，得出上述结论。
Along with questions about general health, disease status, exercise regimens, smoking, diet and so on, the survey asked respondents how many hours per day in the previous week they had spent sitting in front of the television.
在有关总体健康、疾病状况、运动方案、吸烟与否、饮食习惯等问题之外，该项调查还要求被调查者给出之前一周每天坐在电视机前的时间长短。
Watching television is not, of course, in and of itself hazardous, unless you doze off and accidentally slip from the couch onto a hard floor. But television viewing time is a useful, if somewhat imprecise, marker of how much someone is engaging in so-called sedentary behavior.
看电视本身当然不是件危险的事，除非你看睡着了，然后不小心从沙发上摔到硬地板上。但看电视的时间长短却是衡量一个人是否有久坐不动的坏毛病的有效工具，虽然不太精确。
"People can answer a question like, 'How much time did you spend watching TV yesterday?' much better than a question like 'How much time did you spend sitting yesterday?' " says Dr. J. Lennert Veerman, a senior research fellow at the University of Queensland, who led the new study.
“当问题是‘你昨天花了多长时间看电视’ 而不是‘你昨天花了多长时间坐着’的时候，人们更容易作答，”主持此项研究的昆士兰大学(University of Queensland)资深研究员J·伦纳特·费尔曼博士(J. Lennert Veerman)说。
Australians, as it turns out, watch lots of telly. According to the survey data, in 2008, the year that the researchers chose as their benchmark, Australian adults viewed a collective 9.8 billion hours of television.
结果呢，澳大利亚人可真没少看电视。调查数据表明，在被研究者选为研究基准的2008年，澳大利亚成年人加起来一共看了98亿小时的电视。
Using complex actuarial tables and adjusting for smoking, waist circumference, dietary quality, exercise habits and other variables, the scientists were next able to isolate the specific effect that the hours of sitting seemed to be having on people's life spans.
研究人员使用复杂精算图表，并对吸烟、腰围、饮食质量、运动习惯和其他变量的影响做了相应调整，终于可以独立计算出坐着的时间长短与人预期寿命之间的联系。
And the findings were sobering: Every single hour of television watched after the age of 25 reduces the viewer's life expectancy by 21.8 minutes.
结果令人倒吸一口凉气：25岁之后，人们每在电视机前消磨一小时，预期寿命便会减少21.8分钟。
By comparison, smoking a single cigarette reduces life expectancy by about 11 minutes, the authors said.
论文作者指出，与之相对照，每吸一根烟不过才缩短11分钟的预期寿命。
Looking more broadly, they concluded that an adult who spends an average of six hours a day watching TV over the course of a lifetime can expect to live 4.8 years fewer than a person who does not watch TV.
研究者进一步得出结论：每天平均花6小时看电视的成年人总体上要比不看电视的人少活4.8年。
Those results hold true, the authors point out, even for people who exercise regularly. It appears, Dr. Veerman says, that "a person who does a lot of exercise but watches six hours of TV" every night "might have a similar mortality risk as someone who does not exercise and watches no TV."
论文作者指出，即便对于那些经常锻炼的人，这些结果也同样适用。费尔曼博士表示，对于那些“从事大量健身运动但每天晚上看6小时电视的人，其死亡率与那些不运动也不看电视的人相差无几。”
These rather unnerving results jibe with those of another new study of sitting. Published on Monday in the journal Diabetologia, its authors reviewed data from 18 studies involving 794,577 people. Many of the studies measured full-day sitting time, covering not only hours whiled away in front of the television, but also time spent in a chair at work.
这些结果本来已经足够让人心慌意乱，然而祸不单行，随之而来的是另外一项关于久坐的研究结果。在这篇周一发表于《糖尿病学》(Diabetologia)杂志上的论文中，作者对18项研究的数据进行了回顾，这些研究覆盖了794577名研究对象。许多研究对全天的静坐时间进行记录，不仅考察坐在电视机前的时间，也考察工作时坐在办公椅上的时间。
Together, those hours consumed a majority of a person's life. "The average adult spends 50 to 70 percent of their time sitting," the authors report.
加在一起，这些时间占据了一个人一生的绝大部分。“成年人平均有50%到70%的时间是在坐着，”研究者指出。
The researchers then cross-referenced sitting time with health outcomes, and found that those people with the "highest sedentary behavior," meaning those who sat the most, had a 112 percent increase in their relative risk of developing diabetes; a 147 percent increase in their risk for cardiovascular disease; and a 49 percent greater risk of dying prematurely -- even if they regularly exercised.
随后，研究人员对静坐时间与健康结果之间的联系进行了交叉引用分析，并由此发现，那些最爱静坐不动的人，即便经常运动，患糖尿病、心血管病和早死的相对风险也会分别增加112%、147%和49%。
"Many of us in modern society have jobs which involve sitting at a computer all day," says Dr. Emma Wilmot, a research fellow at the University of Leicester in England, who led the study. "We might convince ourselves that we are not at risk of disease because we manage the recommended 30 minutes of exercise a day."
“现代社会中，许多人从事的工作令其整天坐在电脑前面，”主持该项研究的英国莱斯特大学(University of Leicester)研究员埃玛·威尔莫特博士(Emma Wilmot)说：“我们或许会自欺欺人地说，因为我们每天坚持按照推荐标准锻炼30分钟，疾病就不会找上门来。”
But, she says, we "are still at risk if we sit all day."
但她表示，“如果整天坐着，便存在风险。”
Why a seemingly blameless activity like sitting should be detrimental to health, even for those of us who work out, is not fully understood, although it is assiduously being studied at many labs.
坐着，一种看上去无可指摘的活动，为什么竟会对健康带来如此不利的影响，就连从事运动锻炼的人也无法幸免？尽管许多实验室坚持不懈地做着相关研究，其原因仍不完全为人所知。
One partial explanation, however, is obvious. "The most striking feature of prolonged sitting is the absence of skeletal muscle contractions, particularly in the very large muscles of the lower limbs," says David W. Dunstan, a professor at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Australia, senior author of the Australian study, and a pioneer in the study of sedentary behavior.
然而，部分原因是显而易见的。“久坐的最大特点就是骨骼肌几乎不收缩，尤其是下肢的那些大块肌肉，”澳大利亚贝克心脏病与糖尿病研究所(Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute)教授大卫·W·邓斯坦(David W. Dunstan)说。他是上述澳大利亚研究的资深作者，也是久坐与健康这一研究领域的开创者之一。
When muscles don't contract, they require less fuel, and the surplus, in the form of blood sugar, accumulates in the bloodstream, contributing to diabetes risk and other health concerns.
肌肉在不收缩时所需能量较少，多余出来的能量以血糖形式在血液中聚集，从而导致糖尿病风险和其他健康问题。
Thankfully, excessive sitting is theoretically easy to combat. First, cut TV time. "The evidence indicates that four hours per day is in the 'risky' category," Dr. Dunstan says, "while less than two hours per day is in the lower-risk group."
幸好，理论上，老坐着不动应该是一件容易解决的事。首先，你要减少看电视的时间。“证据显示，每天看4小时电视，便属于“风险人群”之列，”邓斯坦教授表示，“而每天少于两小时则属于低风险人群。”
Then look to the rest of your day. When Dr. Wilmot asked a group of volunteers recently to reduce their daily sitting time by an hour, "they came up with lots of ideas," she says, including "putting the garbage bin on the other side of the office, standing during coffee breaks and telephone calls, having standing meetings, standing on the bus."
接下来，你得关注一天中的其他时间。最近，威尔莫特要求一群志愿者把每天坐着的时间减少1小时，“他们想出了很多点子，”她说，其中包括“把垃圾桶挪到办公室的另外一边，茶歇时站着，接电话时站着，开会时站着，搭乘公交车时站着。”
But don't, she emphasizes, cease exercising. "There is absolutely no doubt that exercise is beneficial for health," she says. It just may not, by itself, be sufficient for health.
但她强调说，千万别停止锻炼。“毫无疑问，锻炼有益健康，”她表示。只不过，要想健康，光靠锻炼本身是不够的。
If you exercise for 30 minutes a day, she says, "take time to reflect on your activity levels for the remaining 23.5 hours," and aim to "be active, sit less."
她指出，如果你每天锻炼30分钟，“务必花点时间反思一下剩下那23个半小时你的运动水平。”记住：“动起来，少坐着。”