夜夜难以入眠，害怕身体吃不消？研究发现，睡眠不足可以靠运动来补。只要运动量达标，即使睡眠质量差，也可以抵消不良睡眠带来的健康风险。

 

Staying active and fit could help to ward¹ off some of the negative health impacts that would normally result from low-quality sleep, according to a large study of 380,055 middle-aged² people involved in the UK Biobank research project.

英国生物库研究项目的一项涵盖了380055名中年人的大型研究表明，保持活力和健康有助于抵御通常由低质量睡眠导致的负面影响。

 

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 indicates that doing enough exercise could make up for some of the unhealthy impacts of bad sleep.

我们都知道，健康的生活意味着既要有大量的运动，又要有足够的优质睡眠，但现实总是有诸多阻碍。新的研究表明，做足够的运动可以弥补不良睡眠带来的一些不健康的影响。

 

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 option to suggest for patients dealing³ with sleep problems.

虽然运动和睡眠对健康有益的观点并不新鲜，但是这项研究的特别之处在于运动和健康之间的有趣关系，这种关系甚至为医生提供了治疗患者睡眠问题的另一种方式。

 

"We found those who had both the poorest sleep quality and who exercised the least were most at risk of death from heart disease, stroke, and cancer," says epidemiologist Bo-Huei Huang, from the University of Sydney in Australia. "The findings suggest a likely synergistic effect, an interplay, between the two behaviors."

澳大利亚悉尼大学的流行病学家黄伯辉（音译）称："我们发现那些睡眠质量最差、运动最少的人死于心脏病、中风和癌症的风险最大。研究结果表明，这两种行为之间可能存在协同效应，即相互作用。”

 

The weekly amount of exercise recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) is 150 minutes of moderately intensive activity, or more than 75 minutes of vigorously intensive physical activity.

世界卫生组织建议的每周运动量是150分钟的中等强度运动，或75分钟以上的剧烈运动。

 

Participants were grouped into three levels of physical activity (high, medium or low) and were also given a sleep quality score from 0-5 based on the amount of shut-eye they got, how late they stayed up, insomnia⁴, snoring and daytime sleepiness.

研究人员按照参与者运动量的高、中、低三个水平进行分组，并根据他们的睡眠时长、上床时间以及失眠、打鼾和白天嗜睡情况，给他们的睡眠质量打分（最低为0分，最高为5分）。

 

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.

结果发现，在研究期间死于癌症或心脏病风险最高的人是那些睡眠质量最差、同时又达不到世卫组织建议运动量的人。睡眠质量差但运动量达标的人死于癌症或心脏病的风险较低。

 

In the case of all forms of cancer, for example, those at the unhealthiest end of the sleep and exercise scale had a 45 percent higher risk of dying from cancer than those with good sleep scores who kept physically⁵ active. However, that risk just about disappeared for those who didn't score well on sleep but did score well on physical activity.

以各种癌症为例，那些睡眠质量最差、运动量最低的人死于癌症的风险比那些睡眠质量好并坚持运动的人要高出45%。然而，那些睡眠质量不佳但却保持高水平运动量的人死于癌症的风险几乎没有因为睡眠差而增加。

 

"Levels of physical activity at or above the lower threshold recommended by WHO appeared to eliminate most of the detrimental⁶ associations of poor sleep and mortality," write the researchers in their paper.

研究人员在论文中写道：“运动水平达到或超过世卫组织建议的最低运动量，似乎消除了睡眠差和死亡之间的大多数有害关联。”

 

For now it's not clear why more exercise might make up for poor sleep, as far as our health goes. It could be that the increased activity is counteracting⁷ inflammation, or reducing irregularities in glucose⁸ metabolism⁹, suggest the researchers.

从健康角度来看，目前还不清楚为什么更多的运动可以弥补睡眠不足。研究人员认为，可能是增加的运动抵消了炎症，或减少了葡萄糖代谢的不规则性。

 

"Both behaviors are critical for health but, sadly, our society suffers from both a physical inactivity and a poor sleep crisis," says population health researcher Emmanuel Stamatakis, from the University of Sydney.

悉尼大学的人口健康研究员伊曼纽尔·斯塔玛塔基斯说：“这两种行为对健康都很关键，但可悲的是，当今社会人们同时遭受着缺乏运动和睡眠不良的危机。”

 

"Considering that physical activity is perhaps more modifiable than sleep, our study offers people more health incentives¹⁰ to be physically active; and provides health professionals with more reasons to prescribe physical activity to patients with sleep problems."

他说道：“考虑到运动或许比睡眠更可控，我们的研究为激励人们多运动提供了更多健康依据。此外，我们也让医卫人员有更多理由为有睡眠障碍患者开出运动处方。”

 

The research has been published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

该研究被发表在《英国运动医学杂志》上。

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