Exercise and Longevity

 

健身与长寿的关系

ONE sure giveaway of quack medicine is the claim that a product can treat any ailment.

如果有人宣称他的药能包治百病，我们一般就能确定这是个庸医。

There are, sadly, no panaceas.

因为世上根本没有所谓的灵丹妙药。

But some things come close, and exercise is one of them.

但有些事情却类似这种药，比如说健身就是其中之一。

As doctors never tire of reminding people,exercise protects against a host of illnesses,from heart attacks and dementia to diabetes and infection.

所以医生们总是不厌其烦的建议人们，锻炼身体可以让人百病不侵，从心脏病到老年痴呆、糖尿病甚至细菌感染等等。

Dr Levine and her team were testing a theory that exercise works its magic,at least in part, by promoting autophagy.

莱文博士和她的团队验证了一个理论：锻炼的神奇功效是通过、至少是部分通过促进细胞自噬作用来实现的。

This process, whose name is derived from the Greek for "self-eating",is a mechanism by which surplus,worn-out or malformed proteins and other cellular components are broken up for scrap and recycled.

这一过程的工作原理是将剩余的、代谢完的、或变质的蛋白质和其它细胞成分进行降解、破碎后，再循环利用的过程，其名称源于希腊语的“自我吞噬”。

To carry out the test,Dr Levine turned to those stalwarts of medical research,genetically modified mice.

为了用实验证明这一点，莱文博士使用了医学研究中那些惯常用到的转基因小白鼠。

Her first batch of rodents were tweaked so that their autophagosomes- structures that form around components which have been marked for recycling-glowed green.

她的第一批实验小鼠细胞内的自噬体为被标记成了荧光绿色，自噬体是由包绕着待循环再利用的细胞成分所构成。

After these mice had spent half an hour on a treadmill,she found that the number of autophagosomes in their muscles had increased, and it went on increasing until they had been running for 80 minutes.

之后，小白鼠们放在跑步机上进行了半小时的锻炼，她发现小鼠肌肉内的自噬体增多了，跑到80分钟后这中增长就停止了。

To find out what, if anything,this exercise-boosted autophagy was doing for mice,the team engineered a second strain that was unable to respond this way.

如果说锻炼促进了小白鼠自噬体的增加，那么为了找出原因，研究团队对另一种小白鼠进行了试验，但没能收到相同的效果。

Exercise, in other words,failed to stimulate their recycling mechanism.

换句话说，锻炼没能够刺激它们的再循环机制。

When this second group of modified mice were tested alongside ordinary ones,they showed less endurance and had less ability to take up sugar from their bloodstreams.

当这第二组转基因小白鼠与普通小白鼠一同测试后，发现它们的耐力更差，从血液中获取糖分的能力也更低。

There were longer-term effects, too.In mice, as in people, regular exercise helps prevent diabetes.

从长远的效果来看，小白鼠和人类一样，规律的锻炼能起到预防糖尿病的作用。

But when the team fed their second group of modified mice a diet designed to induce diabetes,they found that exercise gave no protection at all.

但是，当研究团队对第二组转基因小白鼠饲喂一种专门能诱发糖尿病的食物后，她们发现锻炼也没法保护小鼠免遭糖尿病的侵害。

Dr Levine and her team reckon their results suggest that manipulating autophagy may offer a new approach to treating diabetes.

莱文博士和她的团队对实验结果进行分析后认为，人为控制自噬作用可为治疗糖尿病提供新的方法。

And their research is also suggestive in other ways.

她们的研究对其它方面也有建设性的启发。

Autophagy is a hot topic in medicine,as biologists have come to realise that it helps protect the body from all kinds of ailments.

细胞自噬机制成为了医学领域的一项热门课题，生物学家们逐渐意识到细胞自噬作用还能帮助人类机体抵御各种疾患。