1 . Do you like to keep fit? We’re always told that regular exercise is good for our body and mind. More and more people are taking up activities that improve their fitness. But is there a risk that some of us might get obsessed (着迷的) and overdo it?
Well, for some people, fitness has become an obsession as they aim for perfection. And fitness trackers and apps can add to this addiction, especially if someone is driven by achievement and perfectionism. And sharing data on social media means exercising becomes public and competitive, which could cause problems in someone who is vulnerable (脆弱的). Experts say this can lead to a medical condition called orthorexia nervosa, or addiction to healthy eating and over-exercise. Untreated, it can lead to malnutrition and mental health problems.
Too much exercise can also take its toll on someone’s physical health as well. Symptoms of over-exercising include injuries such as a broken leg and a low immune system. So how much exercise is too much? Researches found the ideal pace to jog was about eight kilometers per hour-and that it was best to jog no more than three times a week or for 2.5 hours in total, showing that moderate jogging is possibly more beneficial than being inactive or undertaking strenuous (剧烈的) jogging.
If you’re more of a couch potato than a runner, this might sound like good news. But for amateur (业余的) athletes who can’t help but push their bodies to the limit, the advice from Martin Turner, a sports and exercise psychologist, is, “It’s all about letting go, not being obsessed, learning not to control everything, saying, ‘You don’t need to be perfect.’”
1. What is the main reason for people’s addiction to over-exercise according to paragraph 2?| A．Their need for social support. |
| B．Their addiction to fitness apps. |
| C．Their pursuit(追求)of perfectionism. |
| D．Their concern over health issues. |
| A．Going hand in hand. |
| B．Having a bad effect. |
| C．Making little difference. |
| D．Playing an important role. |
| A．The risk of fitness obsession. |
| B．The importance of mental health. |
| C．The benefits of moderate jogging. |
| D．The symptoms of over-exercising. |
| A．Fiction. | B．Lifestyle. | C．Culture. | D．News |
2 . Exercise could not only benefit your body, but also improve your memory, researchers found recently. In their paper published on Monday, researchers from the University of California in the US and the University of Tsukuba in Japan introduced their experiment and conclusion.
Scientists invited 36 volunteers who were in their early 20s to do 10 minutes of light exercise before taking a memory test in which they were shown pictures like broccoli (西兰花) or picnic baskets and asked to recall them later. The same experiment was repeated with the same group of volunteers without exercising. “The memory task was really quite challenging,” said Michael Yassa, co-author of the study and a neuroscientist (神经科学家) at the University of California. “We used trickily similar items to see if they would remember whether it was this exact picnic basket or that picnic basket.”
Researchers also scanned some of the brains of the participants during the experiment. They found that the brains of those who exercised strengthened their ability to remember things. This suggested that just 10 minutes of light exercise like walking, yoga or Tai Chi might increase memory.
As all the volunteers in the experiment were relatively young, researchers are still working to look at the effects of light exercise on older people. “Our future goal is to try to develop an exercise prescription that can be used by older adults who might have disabilities or limited movements, but can still take very simple exercise and be able to, perhaps, put off the reduction of cognitive (认知的) skills slowly,” said Yassa.
1. What is the function of Paragraph 1?| A．To correct a mistake. | B．To introduce two universities. |
| C．To give practical advice. | D．To present a research result. |
| A．The people in the experiment were disabled. | B．The items to be chosen were extremely similar. |
| C．The time to solve the questions was too limited. | D．The questions to be asked were too complicated. |
| A．Ability. | B．Benefit. | C．Method. | D．Detail. |
| A．Exercise Can Improve Older People’s Cognitive Abilities |
| B．Ten Minutes of Exercise a Day Might Improve Memory |
| C．Exercise Is Beneficial to Both Young and Old |
| D．Advantages of Exercising Regularly |
3 . These days, many gyms require clients to wear masks or face coverings. The good news: research suggests they don't actually hold up your performance.
Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan gathered a group of 7 men and 7 women, ranging from slightly inactive to excellent cyclists and tested the effects of wearing a three-layer cloth face mask, a surgical mask, and no mask on their exercise performance.
The study participants started with a brief warm-up on a fixed bike, then took a progressive intensity exercise test, during which it was vital for them to keep the same pedal rate while the resistance was continually increased until exhaustion (疲惫不堪). Something like the heart rate was recorded every 30 seconds.
The results suggested that wearing a mask had no effect on performance or muscle oxygen levels. Since there was no difference in time to exhaustion between conditions, the highest power reached at the end of each test was similar in mask and no-mask conditions for all participants, Professor Chilibeck explained. Researchers also did not see any effects of the masks during exercise on blood oxygen levels, which wouldn't decrease if breathing was not affected.
And while droplet (飞沫) spread was not measured, all masks used were tested in a previous study in which they were shown to effectively minimize droplet spread, according to Chilibeck. Though the participants represented a wide range of fitness levels, it's important to note that these tests were conducted on a very small sample size, and more research is needed on larger populations to draw sweeping conclusions about the general population.
1. How did the researchers draw the conclusion?| A．By conducting an experiment. | B．By making brief analysis. |
| C．By observing normal cyclists. | D．By doing medical tests. |
| A．Your heart rate may keep stable. | B．You might produce less droplet. |
| C．Your blood oxygen levels will drop. | D．You will feel more tired than before. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Favorable. | C．Disapproving. | D．Objective. |
| A．Why Should We Train with Masks? |
| B．Why Don't Masks Worsen Our Performance? |
| C．Do Masks Affect Our Performance? |
| D．Can We Train While Wearing Masks? |
4 . Are you preparing for a big test? If so, you may want to go play some basketball in between hitting the books. Doctors are starting to find more and more information that suggests a connection between exercise and brain development. Judy Cameron, a scientist at Oregon Health and Science University, studies brain development. According to her research, it seems that exercise can make blood vessels (血管), including those in the brain, stronger and more fully developed. Dr. Cameron claims this allows people who exercise to concentrate better. As she says, “while we already know that exercise is good for the heart, exercise can really cause physical changes in the brain.”
The effects of exercise on brain development can even be seen in babies. Babies who do activities that require a lot of movement and physical activity show greater brain development than babies who are less physically active. With babies, even a little movement can show big results. Margaret Barnes, a doctor, also believes in the importance of exercise. She thinks that many learning disabilities that children have in elementary school or high school can be traced back to a lack of movement as babies. “Babies need movement that encourages and excites their five senses. They need to establish a connection between motion and memory. In this way, as they get older, children will begin to connect physical activity with higher learning,” says Margaret.
Older people can develop their brains as well. Columbia University studied a group of seniors who have a short-term memory of up to 40 percent after exercising just three hours a week. The exercise does not have to be very difficult, but it does have to increase the heart rate. Also, just like the motion for babies, exercise for older people should not be too simple. Learning some new skills or actions, such as with yoga or tai-chi, helps to open up memory paths in the brain that may not have been used for a long time. For most people, any type of physical activity that increases the heart rate is helpful. The main goal is to increase the brain’s flow of blood. And your brain can benefit from as little as two to three hours of exercise a week.
1. What is the main idea of this reading?| A．How to exercise. |
| B．How exercise helps the brain. |
| C．How to get good scores on a test. |
| D．How the brain can change. |
| A．Exercise helps make our blood vessels. |
| B．The brain needs special mental exercise. |
| C．The more exercise, the bigger the brain is. |
| D．Physical exercise helps us think better. |
| A．three hours per week | B．40 hours per week |
| C．three hours per day | D．40 hours per month |
| A．It is easy to remember. | B．It can be done in groups. |
| C．It does not increase the heart rate. | D．It includes learning new motions. |
5 . Race walking shares many fitness benefits with running, research shows, while most likely contributing to fewer injuries. It does, however, have its own problem.
Race walkers are conditioned athletes. The longest track and field event at the Summer Olympics is the 50-kilometer race walk, which is about five miles longer than the marathon. But the sport’s rules require that a race walker’s knees stay straight through most of the leg swing and one foot remain in contact with the ground at all times. It’s this strange form that makes race walking such an attractive activity, however, says Jaclyn Norberg, an assistant professor of exercise science at Salem State University in Salem, Mass.
Like running, race walking is physically demanding, she says. According to most calculations, race walkers moving at a pace of six miles per hour would burn about 800 calories per hour, which is approximately twice as many as they would burn walking, although fewer than running, which would probably burn about 1,0000 or more calories per hour.
However, race walking does not pound the body as much as running does, Dr. Norberg says. According to her research, runners hit the ground with as much as four times their body weight per step, while race walkers, who do not leave the ground, create only about 1.4 times their body weight with each step.
As a result, she says, some of the injuries associated with running, such as runner’s knee, are uncommon among race walkers. But the sport’s strange form does place considerable stress on the ankles and hips, so people with a history of such injuries might want to be cautious in adopting the sport. In fact, anyone wishing to try race walking should probably first consult a coach or experienced racer to learn proper technique, she says. It takes some practice.
1. Why are race walkers conditioned athletes?| A．They must run long distances. |
| B．They have to follow special rules. |
| C．They are qualified for the marathon. |
| D．They are good at swinging their legs. |
| A．It’s less challenging physically. |
| B．It’s more popular at the Olympics. |
| C．It’s less likely to cause knee injuries. |
| D．It’s more effective in body building. |
| A．Doing regular exercises. | B．Having a medical checkup. |
| C．Hiring an experienced coach. | D．Getting experts’ opinions. |
| A．Objective. | B．Doubtful. |
| C．Tolerant. | D．Supportive. |
6 . Whether you prefer solo dancing or being involved in a more formalized program, dancing offers the obvious plus to your physical health. You're not only moving your body in a rhythmic way and expressing feelings but also burning calories in your body and getting a workout for sure.
In a recent study, researchers compared the effects of walking, stretching and dancing on the wiring and gray matter of the aging brain. The result showed dancing had the significantly positive effect.
In the experiment, after volunteers in their 60s and 70s with healthy brains didn't show signs of cognitive (认知的) disorder, researchers placed them in three groups at will. One group walked, another group stretched and did balance training and the last group learned country dancing. The arrangements of the dancing became progressively more challenging over time. They all did the assigned activity for one hour a day, three times a week. After a period of six months, the volunteers' brains were re-scanned and compared to their brains when they had begun their voluntary work.
Agnieszka Burzynska, the study's lead author who is currently a neuroscientist and director of the BRAiN Lab at Colorado State University, found only one group showed a memory improvement — the country dancers. The participants who learned country dancing now had richer white matter in the part of the brain that processed memory. White matter usually breaks down as a person ages, which may lead to cognitive decline. Dancing, therefore, protected the brain from aging-caused neurodegeneration. So, dancing is not just an aerobic activity good for your physical health. It helps your brain, too!
Country dancing, ballroom dancing, tango and waltz are all done with others. When you take part in these dances, you're involved in a beneficial social activity as well. You are also cognitively motivating your brain as you learn the steps of the dances. Dancing therefore might be one of the best physical activities you can choose for brain health.
1. What's the purpose of paragraph 1?| A．To add background material. | B．To introduce the topic of the text. |
| C．To raise questions about exercise. | D．To present experimental conditions. |
| A．They were grouped at random. | B．They were under cognitive decline. |
| C．They were all asked to learn dancing. | D．They were all born in the 1960s and 1970s. |
| A．The brain function of volunteers. | B．The cognitive disorder of volunteers. |
| C．The relationship between age and dancing. | D．The effect of dancing on the volunteers' brains. |
| A．How Dancing Affects People's Lifestyle |
| B．Why Dancing Is the Best Social Activity |
| C．How Dancing Helps People's Brain Health |
| D．Why Country Dancing Is Beneficial to People's Health |
7 . A recent study by University of Delaware researchers suggests exercise can help kids to learn and remember vocabulary. The article, published in the Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, details one of the first studies on the effect of exercise on vocabulary learning in children.
Children ages 6 to 12 were taught new words before doing one of three things- swimming , taking part in CrossFit exercises or completing a coloring sheet. The children who swam were 13% more accurate in follow-up tests of the vocabulary words.
It makes sense to the lead researcher, Maddy Pruitt, herself a former college swimmer. “Motor movement helps in learning new words,” she said, explaining that exercise is known to increase levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor(脑衍生神经营养因子).Then why did swimming make a difference while CrossFit did not? Pruitt attributes(归因) it to the amount of energy each exercise demands of the brain. Swimming is an activity the kids could complete without much thought or instruction. It was more automatic, while the CrossFit exercises were new to them. The children needed to learn the moves, which required mental energy.
Pruitt conducted the research as part of her Master s Capstone Project and graduated in 2020. She now works as a speech-language pathologist (病理学家) at a primary school in South Carolina, where she puts her findings into practice.
“My sessions are very rarely at a table,” she said. “I’ll take my kids out to the playground or we’ll take a walk around the school.”
Pruitt’s adviser and coauthor Giovanna Morini is building on the findings in her lab. Morini said most research into exercise examined it from the angle of a healthy lifestyle, not much entering the area of language acquisition.
“We are so excited about this study because it applies to clinicians, caregivers and educators who can put it into practice, Morini said.” It’s simple stuff, nothing out of the ordinary. But it could help boost the outcomes.
1. What were all the children asked to do in the study?| A．Complete vocabulary tests. | B．Teach others new words. |
| C．Identify different colors. | D．Share swimming skills. |
| A．The way of the study. | B．The subject of the study. |
| C．The applications of the findings. | D．The reasons for the study result. |
| A．By setting up clinics with other researchers. |
| B．By training the students to swim regularly. |
| C．By adding physical exercise to her sessions. |
| D．By asking the students to learn complex words. |
| A．Kids Are Supposed to Exercise Before Studying |
| B．Exercise Contributes to Kids’ Vocabulary Growth |
| C．Swimming Does Good to People’s Physical Health |
| D．Research Should Be Done on Language Acquisition |
8 . Even light activity such as housework might help to keep the brain young, researchers say, adding to a growing body of evidence that, when it comes to exercise, every little helps.
Writing in the journal Jama Network Open, the international team of researchers report how they came to their findings by studying at least three days of activity-tracker data from 2,354 middle-aged adults from the US, together with the participants' brain scans.
From the latter, the researchers worked out individuals' brain volume, a measure linked to ageing: about 0.2% of the volume of the brain is lost every year after the age of 60. Loss or shrinkage (萎缩) of brain tissue is linked to dementia (痴呆), Spartano noted.
After taking into account factors including sex, smoking status and age, the team found that every extra hour of light physical activity per day was linked to 0.22% greater brain volume, equal to just over a year's less brain ageing. What's more, those who took at least 10,000 steps a day had a 0.35% greater brain volume than those who took, on average, fewer than 5,000 steps a day—equivalent to 1.75 years' less brain ageing.
However, the study has limitations. It used mainly white participants, and cannot prove cause and effect. The authors add that not all time spent sedentary is necessarily "bad" for the brain—particularly if people are engaged in a task that takes a lot of thinking.
Dr James Pickett, head of research at Alzheimer's Society, said, "Don't worry if you're not hill-running, but find something you enjoy and do it regularly, because we know that what's good for the heart is good for the head."
1. What can be inferred from the statistics in Paragraphs 3&4?| A．Loss of brain tissue is linked to disease. |
| B．Light physical activity raises the brain volume. |
| C．Taking 10000 steps per day is best for our brain. |
| D．Light physical activity slows down the brain ageing. |
| A．Sitting. | B．Walking. | C．Sleeping. | D．Working. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Supportive. | C．Objective. | D．Indifferent. |
| A．Regular exercise makes you happy. |
| B．The more exercise, the better. |
| C．Doing what you like regularly is beneficial. |
| D．Light physical activities are the best. |
9 . Staying active and fit could help to reduce some of the bad health effects usually from bad sleep, according to a large study of 380, 055 middle-aged people who took part in the UK Biobank research project.
We all know that a healthy life means getting both plenty of exercise and enough good-quality sleep, but reality often gets in the way. The new research shows that doing enough exercise could make up for some of the unhealthy impacts of bad sleep.
While the health benefits of exercise and sleep are nothing new, it’s the relationship between them that is interesting in this particular study－it could even give doctors another way to suggest for patients dealing with sleep problems.
“We found those who had both the poorest sleep quality and who exercised the least were most at risk of death from heart disease and cancer,” says the expert, Bo-Huei Huang, from the University of Sydney in Australia. “The finding suggests an interplay(相互影响) between the two behaviors.”
The weekly amount of exercise recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) is 150 minutes of moderately intensive(密集的) activity, or more than 75 minutes of extremely intensive physical activity. Those with the highest risk of dying from cancer or heart disease during the study period were those with the worst quality sleep and who didn’t meet the WHO recommended guidelines for exercise. That risk went down for people with poor quality sleep but who did meet the exercise guidelines.
The research has been published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
1. What is the purpose of the first paragraph?| A．To give examples. |
| B．To lead to the topic |
| C．To attract readers’ attention. |
| D．To compare two things. |
| A．factors | B．effects | C．quality | D．reality |
| A．150 minutes daily | B．More than 75 minutes weekly |
| C．150 minutes weekly | D．More than 75 minutes daily |
| A．A medical journal | B．An entertainment magazine |
| C．A sports textbook | D．A travel brochure |
10 . The benefits of regular exercise are well documented but there’s a new bonus to add to the ever-growing list. New researchers found that middle-aged women who were physically fit could be nearly 90 percent less likely to develop dementia in later life, and as they did, it came on a decade later than less sporty women.
Lead researcher Dr. Helena Horder, of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, said : "These findings are exciting because it’s possible that improving people's cardiovascular （心血管的）fitness in middle age could delay or even prevent them from developing dementia. "
For the study, 191 women with an average age of 50 took a bicycle exercise test until they were exhausted to measure their peak （最大值的） cardiovascular capacity. The average peak workload was measured at 103 watts.
A total of 40 women met the criteria for a high fitness level, or 120 watts or higher. A total of 92 women were in the medium fitness category; and 59 women were in the low fitness category, defined as a peak workload of 80 watts or less, or having their exercise tests stopped because of high blood pressure, chest pain or other cardiovascular problems.
These women were then tested for dementia six times over the following four decades. During that time, 44 of the women developed dementia. Five percent of the highly fit women developed dementia, compared to 25 percent of the women with medium fitness and 32 percent of the women with low fitness.
"However, this study does not show cause and effect between cardiovascular fitness and dementia, it only shows an association. More research is needed to see if improved fitness could have a positive effect on the risk of dementia and also to look at when during a lifetime a high fitness level is most important. " She also admitted that a relatively small number of women were studied, all of whom were form Sweden, so the results might not be applicable to other groups.
1. What is on the ever-growing list mentioned in the first paragraph?| A．Positive effects of doing exercises. |
| B．Exercises suitable for the middle-aged. |
| C．Experimental studies on diseases. |
| D．Advantages of sporty woman over man |
| A．To predict their maximum heart rate. |
| B．To assess their cardiovascular capacity |
| C．To change their habits of working out |
| D．To detect their potential health problems |
| A．It aimed to find a cure for dementia. |
| B．Data collection was a lengthy process. |
| C．Some participants withdrew from it. |
| D．The results were far from satisfactory. |
| A．More Women Are Exercising to Prevent Dementia |
| B．Middle-Aged Women Need to Do More Exercise |
| C．Fit Women Are Less Likely to Develop Dementia |
| D．Biking Improves Women's Cardiovascular Fitness |
