【推荐1】Sleep to Lose Weight

A recent study found that people who sleep less tend to be fat. Experts said it's time to find out if more sleep can fight obesity.

Nowadays, the most popular method to keep fit is doing more exercise and eating less. Some people even take weight-loss drugs to keep slim, which is unhealthy and harmful to your body. "     1    As a result, we’ve failed to recognize the value of good sleep," said a physician.

Men sleep an average of 27 minutes less than women, and overweight and fat patients sleep less than patients with normal weights. In general, fat people just sleep about 1.8 hours less a week than those with normal weights.    2    Only an extra 20 minutes of sleep per night contributes to a lower BODY MASS INDEX （身体质量指数）.

We caution that this study does not establish a cause-and-effect relationship between limited sleep and fatness.    3    Therefore, let's stay thin by sleeping more!

Here are some other advantages of sleeping more.

• You'll learn better.

This isn't just for children. Adults who get enough sleep also do better on tests of short-term memory.

•    4    

After getting enough sleep, you will find yourself feeling happy and delighted.

• Lower stress.

    5    With that people can better control their blood pressure.

【推荐2】When it comes to exercise, less is not more—but it’s certainly better than none. Physical inactivity accounts for as many as 23% of all deaths from major chronic (diseases).     1     Some people say that they have no free time for physical activity at all.

    2     While light activity is good, moderate activity is even better, and health experts encourage everyone to have at least 30 minutes a day of moderate physical activity.     3     As recent studies have confirmed, “lifestyle” activities, such as walking, house cleaning and gardening, are as effective as a structured exercise program in improving heart function, lowering blood pressure and keeping or losing weight.

In one study, overweight middle-aged men and women who learned behavioral skills to make them more physically active, such as walking around airports or train stations while waiting for a departure, reduced their body fat percentage and improved their heart function as much as individuals participating in structured programs at a fitness center. In another study, fat women ranging in age from 21 to 60 who adopted a more active lifestyle lost as much weight as women in a low-impact aerobics(有氧运动)program.     4    

There are different levels and types of activities, like aerobics and muscle exercise.       5     Besides, short periods of exercise during the day are nearly as beneficial as one long session.

【推荐3】The book A Big Fat Crisis: The Hidden Forces Behind Obesity Epidemic— and How We Can End It by Deborah Cohen, a senior natural scientist, is very popular now.     1     But according to this book, the following are some misunderstandings of obesity or being overweight.

1. If you’re obese, blame your genes.

    2     Yet, between 1980 and 2000, the number of Americans who are obese has doubled—too quickly for genetic factors to be responsible. At restaurants, a dollar puts more calories on our plates than ever before, because restaurant meals usually have more calories than what we prepare at home, so people who eat out more frequently have higher rates of obesity than those who eat out less.

2. If you’re obese, you lack self­control.

Research shows that if we are faced with too much information, we have a tendency to make poor choices on diet.     3     Even, the most vigilant (警觉的) people may not be good controllers of themselves.

3.     4    

Although the US Department of Agriculture estimates that fewer than 5 per cent of Americans live in the “food deserts”, about 65 per cent of the nation’s population is obese. For most of us, obesity is not related to access to more fresh fruits and vegetables, but to the choices we make in supermarkets.

4. The problem is not that we eat too much, but that we don’t exercise.

Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign is based on the idea that if kids exercise more, childhood obesity rates will decrease.     5     In fact, although a drop in work­related physical activity may explain up to 100 fewer calories burned, leisure physical activity appears to have increased.

【推荐1】Fancy a trip down a wormhole? Calculations suggest that this might be possible, because these entrances through space-time could stick around forever.

Wormholes are essentially a pair of connected black holes. Two types could theoretically exist. A non-traversable wormhole is like a room with two doors that can be used only from the outside—the doors are black holes through which things can enter, but never escape. “These are not very interesting, as any astronaut who is brave enough to venture in won’t be able to make it back to tell the story,” says Diandian Wang at the University of California.

Traversable(能横过的) wormholes are also possible, but until now we didn’t know whether they could exist for long enough for anything to pass through them. For such a wormhole to form, space-time needs to naturally change shape. In classical physics, this can’t happen. But the rules of quantum mechanics(量子力学) allow space-time to do so for brief periods.

Wang worked on a scenario(设想) involving string theory, in which the fundamental ingredient of reality is tiny strings. If one of these strings breaks, it can create a traversable wormhole with black hole-like entrances either end that allow both entry and exit.

Although researchers had shown that this was a possibility before, it seemed that the energy involved would always break the wormhole.

Now, Wang and his team have calculated that the curvature of space-time could counteract this acceleration, keeping the fake black holes still and allowing the throat of the wormhole to remain open. This scenario is extremely unlikely, and becomes even more unlikely, the longer the wormhole is and the larger the black holes are. Thanks to quantum mechanics, though, the probability of it happening isn’t zero. Wang’s team also calculated that, once a traversable wormhole exists, it could remain stable for at least as long as the universe has been around.

“The work shows how wormholes could be created from scratch,” says Aron Wall at the University of Cambridge. But he points out that they couldn’t be used to time travel or move faster than light.

【推荐2】The largest-ever study of the link between city walkability and high blood pressure has been considered as evidence of the “invisible value of urban design” in improving long-term health outcomes, say researchers. The study of around 430,000 people aged between 38 and 73 and living in 22 UK cities found significant connections between the increased walkability of a neighborhood and reduced risk of high blood pressure among its residents (居民).

The results remained the same even after lifestyles and physical environment were changed, though the protective effects were particularly pronounced among participants aged between 50 and 60, women, and those living in heavily populated areas and poor neighborhoods.

The paper was published in the International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health. With high blood pressure a major risk factor for chronic (慢性的) and particularly heart diseases, researchers at the University of Hong Kong and Oxford University said the findings showed the need to take notice of the health-influencing factor in urban design.

“We are spending billions of pounds in preventing and curing heart diseases — if we are able to invest in creating healthy cities through small changes in the design of our neighborhoods to make them more activity-friendly and walkable, then probably, we will have significant savings in future healthcare expenses.”

Poorly designed spaces generally reduced walking and physical activity, promoting the lifestyles of long time sitting down and not moving, and were harmful to social communication, and as such related to poorer mental and physical health.

Because walkability was “based on the potential (潜在的) design of the city”, said Dr. Chinmoy Sarkar, cities could be adapted or designed to encourage it. “Such investments in healthy design are likely to bring in long-term gains as they are lasting and common.”