美国国家公共电台 NPR Get Off The Couch Baby Boomers, Or You May Not Be Able To Later

 

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

OK. Being a couch potato is not good for your health. No surprise there. But let's explore exactly what goes wrong if you sit around too much. It can increase your risk of heart disease and stroke. And new research finds that for people 50 and over, it can also make it more difficult to walk and even increase the odds¹ of not being able to walk at all. Here's NPR's Patti Neighmond.

PATTI NEIGHMOND, BYLINE²: If you don't routinely walk on the job, you can probably relate to Liz King (ph). She's 61 years old and busy starting a vegan food company in Denver, but does it pretty much sitting down.

LIZ KING: When you have your own business, you have a little more flexibility³. But I'll tell you one thing that's constant is at least that eight hours of looking at the screen and sitting in the chair.

NEIGHMOND: After that, being glued to the computer doesn't necessarily stop.

KING: The inbox, it's overflowing⁴, an online class that I may be taking, let me take care of a chat session or a group that I belong to.

NEIGHMOND: Then there's about an hour of TV-watching. It all adds up. In fact, epidemiologist Loretta DiPietro with George Washington University says lots of people do a lot more sitting - a two-hour commute⁵ back and forth⁶ to a desk job plus evening TV time can easily top 13 hours of sitting, which is why DiPietro headed a study looking at how prolonged sitting affected⁷ older people's ability to get up and walk. She looked at federal data from questionnaires that asked more than 134,000 older people how much physical activity they did.

LORETTA DIPIETRO: Walking, gardening, housework, exercises, recreational activities.

NEIGHMOND: And even things that might seem pretty lightweight.

DIPIETRO: Puttering, walking to get the mail or walking from a car.

NEIGHMOND: She added up all the activity and compared it to how long people sat. Over 10 years, those who sat the most and moved the least had the greatest difficulty walking, saying they walked really slow or were unable to walk at all.

DIPIETRO: Those people had three-times the risk compared with people in the highest physical-activity category and reporting the lowest amount of sitting.

NEIGHMOND: The biggest culprit in prolonged sitting? TV, mostly because unlike in an office where you get up now and then and walk down the hall, when watching TV, many people just don't budge⁸. DiPietro offers an antidote⁹ - get up every 30 minutes.

DIPIETRO: At least, like, stand up, march in place, jump around, kick your legs.

NEIGHMOND: For only about one or two minutes. A commitment to get moving is always good news for older people, says cardiologist Andrew Freeman with the American College of Cardiology.

ANDREW FREEMAN: The way we want people to exercise is to walk or exercise in whatever form to a level of breathlessness. And for some people, that's just walking at a slow pace.

NEIGHMOND: Liz King breaks up her day with a 20-minute walk - longer on the weekends - and her pace, well, it varies.

KING: If I'm walking solo, I'm probably walking at a more leisurely¹⁰ pace because I tend to take a picture of the occasional wildflower (laughter) or the clouds that are in a wonderful formation.

NEIGHMOND: In a group with people who are speedier, she keeps up. All a big win, says cardiologist Freeman, who says exercise is nature's best medicine. Patti Neighmond, NPR News.

1 odds   

n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别

参考例句：

• The odds are 5 to 1 that she will win.她获胜的机会是五比一。
• Do you know the odds of winning the lottery once?你知道赢得一次彩票的几率多大吗？

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 flexibility   

n.柔韧性，弹性，（光的）折射性，灵活性

参考例句：

• Her great strength lies in her flexibility.她的优势在于她灵活变通。
• The flexibility of a man's muscles will lessen as he becomes old.人老了肌肉的柔韧性将降低。

4 overflowing   

n. 溢出物,溢流 adj. 充沛的，充满的 动词overflow的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• The stands were overflowing with farm and sideline products. 集市上农副产品非常丰富。
• The milk is overflowing. 牛奶溢出来了。

5 commute   

vi.乘车上下班；vt.减(刑)；折合；n.上下班交通

参考例句：

• I spend much less time on my commute to work now.我现在工作的往返时间要节省好多。
• Most office workers commute from the suburbs.很多公司的职员都是从郊外来上班的。

6 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

7 affected   

adj.不自然的，假装的

参考例句：

• She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
• His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。

8 budge   

v.移动一点儿；改变立场

参考例句：

• We tried to lift the rock but it wouldn't budge.我们试图把大石头抬起来，但它连动都没动一下。
• She wouldn't budge on the issue.她在这个问题上不肯让步。

9 antidote   

n.解毒药，解毒剂

参考例句：

• There is no known antidote for this poison.这种毒药没有解药。
• Chinese physicians used it as an antidote for snake poison.中医师用它来解蛇毒。

10 leisurely   

adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的

参考例句：

• We walked in a leisurely manner,looking in all the windows.我们慢悠悠地走着，看遍所有的橱窗。
• He had a leisurely breakfast and drove cheerfully to work.他从容的吃了早餐，高兴的开车去工作。