中午散步對辦公室久坐者的好處

To combat afternoon slumps in enthusiasm and focus, take a walk during the lunch hour.

爲了避免一到下午熱情和注意力出現驟減，你可以在午餐時間散散步。

A new study finds that even gentle lunchtime strolls can perceptibly — and immediately — buoy people’s moods and ability to handle stress at work.

一項新研究發現，甚至連最溫和的午餐時段漫步也能馬上明顯振奮情緒，提高工作中的抗壓能力。

It is not news, of course, that walking is healthy and that people who walk or otherwise exercise regularly tend to be more calm, alert and happy than people who are inactive.

當然，這些都不是新聞：散步有益健康，經常散步或進行其他運動的人通常比不運動的人更平靜、更敏銳、更快樂。

But many past studies of the effects of walking and other exercise on mood have focused on somewhat long-term, gradual outcomes, looking at how weeks or months of exercise change people emotionally.

但是，過去的很多關於散步和其他鍛鍊對心情影響的研究都重點關注長期、漸變的結果，觀察的是幾周或幾個月的鍛鍊對人們情緒的影響。

Fewer studies have examined more-abrupt, day-to-day and even hour-by-hour changes in people’s moods, depending on whether they exercise, and even fewer have focused on these effects while people are at work, even though most of us spend a majority of our waking hours in an office.

很少有研究調查鍛鍊對心情更突然的影響，比如按天或按小時記錄的變化，更少有研究關注它對工作的影響，儘管我們大多數人醒着時的大部分時間是在辦公室裏。

So, for the new study, which was published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports this month, researchers at the University of Birmingham and other universities began by recruiting sedentary office workers at the university.

所以，在本月《斯堪的納維亞醫學科學雜誌》(Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science)發表的一項新研究中，伯明翰大學和其他幾所大學的研究員們開始招募大學辦公室裏久坐的工作人員。

Potential volunteers were told that they would need to be available to walk for 30 minutes during their usual lunch hour three times a week.

他們告訴可能參與的志願者，需要在午餐時間散步30分鐘，每週至少三次。

Most of the resulting 56 volunteers were middle-aged women. It can be difficult to attract men to join walking programs, said Cecilie Thogersen-Ntoumani, the study’s lead author and now a professor of exercise science at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. Walking may not strike some men as strenuous enough to bother with, she said. But she and her colleagues did attract four sedentary middle-aged men to the experiment.

最終參與的56名志願者大多是中年女性。這項研究的主要作者、現澳大利亞珀斯柯廷大學鍛鍊科學教授塞西莉·瑟格森-圖瑪尼(Cecilie Thogersen-Ntoumani)說，吸引男士參加散步項目比較難以實現。她說，有些男士可能覺得散步的運動強度不夠，不值得參與。不過她和同事們還是吸引了四名久坐的中年男士參與實驗。

The volunteers completed a series of baseline health and fitness and mood tests at the outset of the experiment, revealing that they all were out of shape but otherwise generally healthy physically and emotionally.

實驗開始時，志願者們完成了一系列基礎健康和情緒測試，發現他們身材走形，但是身體和情緒基本健康。

Dr. Thogersen-Ntoumani and her colleagues then randomly divided the volunteers into two groups, one of which was to begin a simple, 10-week walking program right away, while the other group would wait and start their walking program 10 weeks later, serving, in the meantime, as a control group.

然後，瑟格森-圖瑪尼博士和同事們隨機把志願者分成兩組，其中一組馬上開始一個簡單的爲期十週的散步活動，另一組等十週後再開始散步活動，在等待期間充當對照組。

To allow them to assess people’s moods, the scientists helped their volunteers to set up a specialized app on their phones that included a list of questions about their emotions. The questions were designed to measure the volunteers’ feelings, at that moment, about stress, tension, enthusiasm, workload, motivation, physical fatigue and other issues related to how they were feeling about life and work at that immediate time.

研究者們爲了評估志願者們的心情，幫他們在手機上安裝了一個特殊的應用程序，包括一系列關於情緒的問題。這些問題意在評估志願者當時的感受，包括壓力、緊張、熱情、工作量、積極性、體力以及對生活和工作的即時感受。

A common problem with studies of the effect of exercise on mood, Dr. Thogersen-Ntoumani said, is that they rely on recall. People are asked to remember hours or days after the fact how exercise made them feel. Given how fleeting and mysterious our emotions can be, recalled responses are notoriously unreliable, Dr. Thogersen-Ntoumani said.

瑟格森-圖瑪尼博士說，關於鍛鍊對心情影響的研究存在一個普遍問題——這些研究都是依靠回憶，通常是在幾小時或幾天後讓人們回憶鍛鍊帶來的感受。瑟格森-圖瑪尼博士說，衆所周知，情緒易變而神祕，回憶起來的情緒反應不可靠。

Instead, she and her colleagues wanted in-the-moment assessments from people of how they felt before and after exercise. The phone app questions provided that experience, she said, in a relatively convenient form.

而她和同事們想要的是人們在鍛鍊前後的即時感受。她說，手機應用程序中的問題能相對便捷地記錄這些感受。

Then the first group began walking. Each volunteer was allowed to walk during one of several lunchtime sessions, all of them organized by a group leader and self-paced. Slower walkers could go together, with faster ones striding ahead. There was no formal prescribed distance or intensity for the walks. The only parameter was that they last for 30 minutes, which the volunteers had said would still allow them time to eat lunch.

然後，第一組開始散步。志願者可以在幾個午餐散步時段中任選一個。所有人都由一個小組領導組織，速度自定。走得慢的人可以一起走，走得快的人可以在前面大步走。沒有規定散步的距離或強度。唯一的要求是走夠30分鐘，志願者們之前說過，這樣他們仍有時間吃午餐。

The groups met and walked three times a week.

這些小組每週相聚散步三次。

Each workday morning and afternoon during the first 10 weeks, the volunteers in both groups answered questions on their phones about their moods at that particular moment.

前十週，每個工作日的上午和下午，兩組志願者都回答手機應用程序中關於某個特定時刻心情的問題。

After 10 weeks, the second group began their walking program. The first group was allowed to continue walking or not as they chose. (Many did keep up their lunchtime walks.)

十週後，第二組開始進行散步活動。第一組的人可以自行決定是否繼續（很多人的確繼續進行午餐散步）。

Then the scientists compared all of the responses, both between groups and within each individual person. In other words, they checked to see whether the group that had walked answered questions differently in the afternoon than the group that had not, and also whether individual volunteers answered questions differently on the afternoons when they had walked compared with when they had not.

然後，研究者們比較了所有的回答，不僅是兩組之間的對比，還有個人自身的對比。換句話說，他們想知道，散步組和對照組下午對問題的回答是否相同，單個志願者午餐散步後的下午對問題的回答是否與沒有散步後的下午相同。

The responses, as it turned out, were substantially different when people had walked. On the afternoons after a lunchtime stroll, walkers said they felt considerably more enthusiastic, less tense, and generally more relaxed and able to cope than on afternoons when they hadn’t walked and even compared with their own moods from a morning before a walk.

結果發現，散步之後，人們的回答明顯不同。志願者們說，他們明顯感覺，與午餐沒散步的下午相比，甚至與散步前的上午相比，在散步後的下午，他們更有熱情，不那麼緊張，總體來說更放鬆，處理問題的能力更強。

Although the authors did not directly measure workplace productivity in their study, “there is now quite strong research evidence that feeling more positive and enthusiastic at work is very important to productivity,” Dr. Thogersen-Ntoumani said. “So we would expect that people who walked at lunchtime would be more productive.”

雖然，這項研究的作者們沒有直接評估工作效率，但是瑟格森-圖瑪尼博士說，“現在有強有力的研究證據表明，在工作中感覺更積極、熱情，對提高效率十分重要，所以我們可以想見，午餐時散步的人效率更高。”

As a pleasant, additional outcome, all of the volunteers showed gains in their aerobic fitness and other measures of health at the completion of their 10 weeks of walking.

還有一個令人愉快的附帶結果，所有志願者在完成十週散步活動後，有氧適能等健康水平都提高了。

But, tellingly, many said that they anticipated being unable to continue walking after the experiment ended and a few (not counted in the final tally of volunteers) had had to drop out midway through the program. The primary impediment to their walking, Dr. Thogersen-Ntoumani said, had been “that they were expected by management to work through lunch,” suggesting that management might wish to acquaint themselves with the latest science.

但是，很顯然，很多志願者說，他們預計在實驗結束後無法繼續散步，有幾個人不得不中途退出（他們沒有被計入最終志願者人數中）。瑟格森-圖瑪尼博士說，主要障礙是“管理層期望他們午餐時間繼續工作”，這表明管理層也許應該瞭解一下最新科學發現。