【推荐1】Every couple of years the media delivers terrible news: some obviously harmless aspect of everyday life is in fact going to kill you. Several years ago, the culprit was sitting. “Sitting is the new smoking.” New scientific findings warned that sitting at your desk all day caused metabolic (新陈代谢) changes that could make you die young, but the effects of inactivity could likely be prevented by consciously adding more activity into your day.

How much moving around do you need to undo the damage your chair-based lifestyle is doing to your body? Recently a single, useful suggestion arrived. Enough data had piled up over the years for scientists to conduct an analysis of nine studies. They looked at the fitness tracker (追踪者) data of 40,000 participants across four countries. This analysis now offers a clear answer: 30 to 40 minutes of moderate (适度的) activity a day is enough to prevent the negative health effects of sitting all day. If you get your heartrate up for half an hour a day, you have no greater chance of dying than those not glued to their chairs.

Even better news is what is considered as moderate activity. Running or cycling are great, but even chasing your kids around, dancing in your living room, or planting your roses in the garden counts as long as it gets you breathing heavily.

“Every physical activity matters and any amount of it is better than none,” said Emmanuel Stamatakis, a professor of physical activity who co-edited the special issue of the journal announcing the results.

The basics of good physical health are much easier to gain than many people think. Just a little bit of walking or even mere seconds of super vigorous (剧烈的) exercise have been shown to help people live longer and healthier.

Health diet suggestions and exercise trends can be confusing or unattainable (难以达到的). However, this study on preventing the effects of sitting is a great piece of wellness advice. If your goal is just staying healthy and sensible, attainable amounts of everyday activities will have a big effect.

【推荐3】Exercise makes you happier than wealth, a new study says. Regular physical activity is a huge boost to mental well-being, on par with a pay rise.

Instead of logging extra hours at work in hopes of getting a pay rise, maybe you should hit the gym instead, as it could make you just as happy as that extra money. An interesting new study, published in the Lancet, found that people who are physically active have a greater sense of well-being than those who are inactive — and that active individuals feel as good as inactive people who earn $25,000 more per year.

Researchers from Oxford and Yale Universities used data gathered from more than 1.2 million Americans. They were asked, “How many times have you felt mentally unwell in the past 30 days, for example, due to stress, depression, or emotional problems?”

Participants were also asked about their exercise habits and were able to choose from 75 diverse physical activities, including mowing the lawn, doing housework and childcare, running, weightlifting, and cycling. The researchers found that people who exercise regularly feel bad for an average of 35 days per year, whereas inactive people feel bad for an additional 18 days. From the study:

“Individuals who exercised had 43 percent fewer days of poor mental health in the past month than individuals who did not exercise but were otherwise matched for several physical and socio-demographic (社会人口的) characteristics. All exercise types were associated with a lower mental health burden.”

Social physical activities (i.e. team sports) had an even more positive effect, although cycling ranked highly. (I wonder if that’s because it takes place outdoors, which is always a mood booster.)

It is possible to get too much exercise. From Business Insider’s write-up on the study, “The mental health of those participants who exercised for longer than three hours a day suffered more than that of those who weren’t particularly physically active.” The ideal amount seems to be three to five training sessions per week, lasting 30 to 60 minutes each.

But the takeaway should be that any amount helps, so don’t stress about hitting that perfect balance: “All exercise types were associated with a lower mental health burden than not exercising.”

【推荐2】Ladies, if you find yourselves wandering an unknown city with a man who is questioning your directional abilities, don’t doubt yourselves.

A   recent   small   study   published   in   the   journal   Psychological   Science   found   that   the longstanding theory that women have a more difficult time reading maps wasn’t true.

Historically, men have performed better than women in studies that tested their spatial(空间的)ability.   But   the   leading study   author   Margaret Tarampi   and a   researcher   from the University of California, Santa Barbara theorized that social influences had an effect on this outcome: The cultural belief that women are worse at reading maps could be seen as a stereotype(固有模式) threat, meaning women believe they’re bad at something, so they perform poorly as a result. The researchers also theorized that women performed better at skills that involve a social element. In other words, if reading a map means helping someone else, they might perform better.

Tarampi and her team tested both theories on undergraduate students at UCSB across three separate experiments. And, indeed, the results showed that men scored better than women only when they were mentioned the stereotype of male superiority before the test.

When the researchers did not mention it and gave a social context for reading the map, women’s scores improved across the board. Women also performed better when the test maps simply included human figures, rather than just random objects and landmarks.

So ladies, next time you struggle to figure out whether you should make a left or right at the Louvre, take out your tourist map with a healthy dose of confidence.