【推荐3】There is virtue in working standing up. It sounds like a fashion. But it does have a basis in science.

That, by itself, may not be surprising. Health ministries ask people for decades to do more exercise. What is surprising is that long periods of inactivity are bad regardless of how much time you also spend on officially approved high-impact stuff like pounding treadmills(跑步机) in the gym. What you need instead, the latest research suggests, is constant low-level activity. This can be so low-level that you might not think of it as activity at all. Even just standing up counts, for it invokes muscles that sitting does not.

Researchers in this field trace the history of the idea that standing up is good for you back to 1953, when a study published in The Lancet found that bus conductors, who spent their days standing, had a risk of heart attack half that of bus drivers, who spent their shifts on their backsides. But as the health benefits of exercise and vigorous(强度大的) physical activity began to become clear in the 1970s, says David Dunstan, a researcher at the Baker IDI Heart & Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia, interest in low-intensity activity --- like walking and standing --- became weaker.

Over the past few years, however, interest has been excited again. A series of studies, none big enough to provide convincing evidence, but all pointing in the same direction, persuaded Emma Wilmot of the University of Leicester, in Britain, to carry out a meta-analysis. This is a technique that combines diverse studies in a statistically meaningful way. Dr Wilmot combined 18 of them, covering almost 800,000 people and concluded that those individuals who are the least active in their normal daily lives are twice as likely to develop diabetes(糖尿病) as those who are the most active. She also found that the immobile are twice as likely to die from a heart attack and two-and-a-half times as likely to suffer cardiovascular disease as the most mobile. Crucially, all this seemed to be independent of the amount of vigorous, gym-style exercise that volunteers did.

The Lie We Tell Ourselves About Going to Bed Early

It is nothing new to most people that adequate sleep improves well-being. One recent study of more than 30, 000 U. K. residents found that people who increased their quantity of sleep over a four-year period got about the same happiness benefits as they would have from eight weeks of therapy, or from winning up to $280, 000 in a lottery. Well-rested people are more social and have more positive emotional experiences with co-workers and romantic partners. A lack of sleep, however, lowers happiness by reducing emotional-memory recall and encouraging a scarcity mindset (稀缺心态).

If all of this seems obvious, why don’t we sleep more? Physical conditions, work, stress, and young kids are all common barriers to proper sleep. However, another barrier comes purely from what scholars call “revenge bed time procrastination”, a habit in which some people put off sleep as a form of rebellion against their own inner authority. The writer Sylvia Plath described it nicely: “I wonder why I don’t go to bed and go to sleep. But then it would be tomorrow, so I decide that no matter how tired I am, I can skip one hour more of sleep and live.” Weirdly, we deprive ourselves of sleep to show some sort of independence from—well, ourselves.

Revenge bed time procrastination seems illogical, in that the perpetrator (行为人) and the recipient of the revenge are the same person. But the explanation is fairly straightforward: It happens because, generally speaking, people dislike being told what to do in other parts of their life, so they fight back by demonstrating their own authority and staying up.

Personal control over our environment— or even the feeling of control—is deeply connected to our emotional balance. Given that sleep is something we can directly control, we may break common-sense rules about getting to bed, because we are unconsciously seeking a better emotional state—until the morning, when the alarm clock fills us with regret.

【推荐2】You know the saying “You’re as young as you feel.” Well, there may be some truth to that, according to researchers at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Ellen Langer, a Harvard psychologist who studies how the mind influences the body, and his colleagues reviewed the scientific literature for evidence that a person’s perception (感知) of their age might influence their health. They published their results in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science.

In one study that Langer led, 47 women had their hair done. The women who thought their new hairdos made them look younger did look younger to objective observers, who were shown before-and-after pictures. The women who thought they looked younger also showed a drop in blood pressure. Another study involving 4, 421 men found that those who became bald at a relatively young age were more likely to get cancer and heart disease than men who did not. Similarly, another study involving 2, 017 men found that those who lost their hair early were more likely to develop heart disease. “We believe that the feelings associated with being older than one’s real age account for some of these health outcomes,” the researchers wrote.

The researchers also described studies that found that women who had children later in life were more likely to be healthier and live longer than those who had children early, which they attributed to the fact that these mothers tend to spend more time with younger women. Similarly, people who marry younger partners tend to live longer than those who marry older partners, according to other studies.

Taken together, the research “supports the general mind-body hypothesis (假说) that when a younger mind is prepared, a younger body can accompany it.” While the mechanism remains unclear, the researchers figured that suggestions associated with aging can “make one unconsciously or consciously aware of old age and trigger a series of physiological processes that can have real effects on short-term and long-term health.”