You already know the fact that regular exercise is important for controlling weight and     1     (avoid)a variety of health conditions. But it can also improve your academic     2    (perform). And. if you’re a distance learning student, you may miss out on some of the opportunities for physical activity afforded to more traditional students who routinely walk around campus. But it’s well worth the effort     3     (put) the schedule exercise into practice.

The study, which     4    (publish) in the Journal of Medicine & Science, describes physical activity as     5     vigorous movement that produces sweat and heavy breathing. Mike McKenzie found that students who studied over three hours per day were 3. 5 times     6    (likely) to be exercisers. Over a decade ago, McKenzie     7     (say) researchers discovered a link     8     exercise and focus in children.

More recently, another study by Johnson reveals that even short ”microbursts“ of physical activity throughout the day can have positive effects. Jennifer tells that sitting for long periods of time,     9    college students tend to do, can have a negative health effect. In addition, the study found that five-minute bouts of walking every hour had a positive impact on mood, tiredness, and hunger at the end of a day. This may be     10    (particular)beneficial to students who also work a full-time job and study in the evening and nighttime hours.

2 . Jumping rope is popular but we tend to ignore (忽视) its benefits.     1     A study found that college men who spent 10 minutes jumping rope daily for six weeks improved their cardiovascular (心血管的) fitness just as much as college men who spent thirty minutes jogging for the same time. Here are some benefits of jumping rope.

    2    

Since most of your major muscles are working when you jump rope, the exercise creates a lot of heat in the body. Your body needs to burn more fuel to produce this energy, so it burns lots of calories. It burns more calories than any other exercises, such as jogging, cycling and swimming.

Improves coordination (协调)

Jumping rope requires good coordination, especially as you advance to more skilled moves.     3     It improves coordination by requiring several body parts to communicate in order to complete one movement. The feet must jump in time with the wrists turning in order to create a continuous jumping motion.

Reduces injury risk

With your improved coordination from jumping rope, you’ll be less likely to get hurt either during exercise or in daily activities.     4     As a result, you are more agile (灵活的) and your body awareness is improved greatly. This guarantees fewer injuries.

Improves heart health

Since jumping rope gets your heart pumping, it’s great for your cardiovascular system and heart health. Jumping rope can increase your VO₂ Max (最大摄氧量), the measure of the maximum amount of oxygen a person can breathe during exercise. The higher someone’s VO₂ max, the more cardiovascular endurance (耐受力) they have.

Jumping rope gives us a full-body workout with just one piece of equipment and one move.     5     Jump to some music, or take your rope to a nearby park to enjoy the fun.

4 . One of the presents in my house this Christmas was a late 18th-century volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (大英百科全书). It is a window into the discoveries and thinking of the time. The encyclopaedia is an entertaining reminder of how _______ some of our current truths are bound to be. Certainties in areas we haven’t yet understood will look just as ridiculous as some of these in centuries to come. And one of those we are still remarkably _______ is the effect of food and exercise on our bodies. We’re surrounded by confident _______ on how to eat, how to avoid or reverse obesity (肥胖), and yet the advice seems pointless while the world gets fatter. Much of what we think we know is a pile of assumptions rather than _______ .

Our confusion is the theme of Spoon-Fed, a book by one of Britain’s leading nutrition researchers, Tim Spector of King’s College London. Its subtitle is: “Why almost everything we’ve been told about food is wrong.” It is a call for us to _______ more.

One by one Spector offers answers to recent food _______. Coffee can save our lives, he says. Three to four cups a day reduces the risk of heart disease and may cut the risk of death by 8 per cent. Butter does not damage our hearts, Spector argues, and salt is vital. Eggs have gone “from heroes to villains and back again”. Don’t say no to all red meat on _______ grounds; occasional small quantities of high-quality unprocessed meat provide important vitamins and iron and are “probably good for you“. Exercise is so good for longevity and happiness that it should be considered our No 1 drug, but the one thing for which it’s _______ useless is losing weight. Vitamin pills are a multibillion-pound industry with almost no proven _______ but which can cause real harm. Even vitamin D, which Spector used to study and believe in, he now _______.

Spector also offers more than a set of currently _______ tips. The science of nutrition has not been solved by him, as he would be the first to admit. His most _______ point is that there is no one size that fits all. Our bodies are complex, and our reactions are _______: yet nobody wants to pay for the research that might explain why.

Some combination of food choices, genes, environment and the chemical reactions generated by our microbiome — the unique microbe (微生物的) combinations in our body ― yes different _______ for each of us, leaving some lean and two thirds of us too fat. This is the territory Spector wants to explore further and which might just allow us to _______ the global trend to obesity, with all the risks we’ve witnessed this year.

5 . Are you sitting more than ever?     1     You’re probably sitting while reading this. Sometimes you sit when you are driving or attending a meeting. Other times you sit when you engage yourself in watching a movie or playing computer games. That’s undoubtedly a lot of sitting. The fact is, the amount of time spent sitting has increased over time.     2    

We know sitting too much is bad, and most of us naturally feel a little guilty after a long-time TV watching.     3     A study on nearly 8,000 adults suggests that there’s a direct relationship between the time spent sitting and our risk of early death of any cause. As the total sitting time increases, so does the risk of early death.

“Sit less, move more” is what the Heart Association encourages us to do.     4     It is like telling someone to just ”exercise“ without telling them how. Exercise guidelines are always more practical. For example, the Center for Disease Control recommends adults do exercise for two hours and 30 minutes every week, plus muscle strengthening activities two or more days a week. We need similar guidelines for sitting.

    5     “It would probably be like, for every 30 continuous minutes of sitting, stand up and move or walk for five minutes at a quick pace,” Diaz, the lead researcher said, adding that the study has put us a step closer to the satisfying guidelines. But more researches are needed to confirm their approach.

6 .                                                                                      You May Need a Few Minutes of Brisk Activity

Walking from room to room, running up and down stairs to deliver folded laundry, or taking a jog around the block... Which ones would best help or hurt your brain? A recent study attempted to a answer that question by strapping( 绑上) activity monitors to the thighs of nearly 4,500 people in the United Kingdom and ________ their 24-hour movements for seven days. Researchers then examined how participants’ behavior affected their short-term memory, problem-solving and processing skills.

Here’s the good news. People who spent “even small amounts of time in more vigorous activities—as little as six to nine minutes—compared to sitting, sleeping or gentle activities had ________ cognition scores,” said study author John Mitchell.

Moderate physical activity is ________ defined as brisk walking or bicycling or running up and down stairs. Vigorous movement ________ dancing, jogging, running, swimming to biking up a hill—basically any activity that is able to ________ your heart rate and breathing.

The study found that doing just under 10 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) each day led to ________ in study participants’ working memory. In addition, 10 minutes of MVPA had its biggest impact on executive processes such as ________and organization.

The cognitive improvement was ________, but the research found that the benefits grew the more time a person spent ________in the activity of an energetic workout, Mitchell said.

“Now that we don’t monitor participants’ cognition over the course of many years, the results of this study may simply be telling us that those individuals who move more tend to have higher cognition on average,” he said. “While on the other hand, the results do also imply that even making ________ changes to our daily lives can have ________ consequences for our cognition.”

There was bad news as well. Spending more time sleeping, sitting or engaged only in mild movement was linked to a negative impact on the brain. The study found cognition declined 1% to 2% after replacing an ________ portion of MVPA with eight minutes of sedentary (久坐的) behavior, six minutes of light intensity or seven minutes of sleep.

Additional studies need to be done to ________ these findings and to better understand the role that each type of activity plays ________ our cognitive abilities. However, Mitchell said, the study “highlights how even very modest differences in people’s daily movements— less than 10 minutes— can be linked to the ________of quite real changes to our cognitive health.”

8 . Whether someone makes you angry, you’re upset with yourself, or you’re just having a bad day, one of the best ways to direct your angry energy is through exercise. That angry energy can build inside of you.     1     If you’re looking to direct your anger through exercise, there are exercises suitable for it.

Running is a very effective technique to calm anxieties. The focus it takes to run and the endorphins your body releases will take your mind off whatever is frustrating you. Be sure to adequately warm up and stretch before you run!     2     You can enhance the benefits by running in an area that is free of distractions like around a lake or through a peaceful part of the city.

A challenging yoga practice is a great way to control your anger to help you get through it. You may be so frustrated that getting started in a yoga practice may seem impossible.     3     You can focus on directing your angry energy into each of the movements. It may also help you to have the support of the group to help you get involved.

    4     Conditioning classes are a great opportunity to focus your angry energy into hitting a heavy punching bag while also burning a lot of calories. These classes are often challenging, so you can use your anger to help you get through the difficulty of the workout. Focus on your breathing, your technique, and harnessing your anger to deliver strong punches.

Cycling is a serious cardiovascular (心血管的) workout and you can use your anger to help you push through the difficulty of it. When you go for a ride outdoors, the extra focus it takes to navigate the outside world can provide a helpful distraction from your frustration.     5    

10 . Much of our thinking about health is based on wishful thinking. But science provides clear and simple advice for a healthy life. Graham Lawton explores the evidence. Graham proves that you don’t have to be a health and fitness extremist to be reasonably healthy. He has rounded up the latest and strictest health research and changed it into useful advice on all the big health questions: diet, weight loss, exercise, sleep, ageing and so on.

Graham, New Scientist feature writer, is not the common health expert. He sometimes eats fast food. He has a gym membership but rarely uses it. And he takes medicine to keep his blood pressure under control. He neither has a diet plan nor a 6-week program to keep fit and thin.

But he does have a much better weapon: science. In a talk, Graham explains the basic science, tells people some of the secrets of science, teaches people to use the ability of judgement to tell the good from the bad, and helps them to see beyond the headlines. The talk allows people to eat healthily, lose weight, and sort the truth out from science facts.

But he loves outdoor sports. Last year Graham cycled over 1,200 miles and ran the same distance of 15marathons. He often goes swimming outdoors and walks up eight flights of stairs to his desk instead of taking the lift. He eats his five copies of fruit and vegetables a day, keeps enough water in his body, and doesn’t eat much meat. Despite all the bad habits, his good ones seem to be winning. Graham is 50, but his “biological age” was recently measured as 45.