日行一萬步真的有益健康嗎（雙語）

摘要：無論在紐約或西雅圖亦或是薩克拉門託市的街頭，隨便你問哪個路人，人一天應該走多少步路才達到足夠的鍛鍊量，他們很可能都會告訴你說一萬步。然而日行一萬步真的有益健康嗎？下面一起來看看吧。

If you pluck someone off the street, whether in New York or Seattle or Sacramento, and ask them how many steps people should aim for per day in order to get enough physical activity, they’ll probably tell you 10,000.

無論在紐約或西雅圖亦或是薩克拉門託市的街頭，隨便你問哪個路人，人一天應該走多少步路才達到足夠的鍛鍊量，他們很可能都會告訴你說一萬步。

But is there any medical reason to embrace this number? Not really. That’s because the 10,000-steps-a-day recommendation has nothing to do with sedentary, fast-food-drenched circa-2015 America. Rather, the recommendation first popped up in a very different food and environment: 1960s Japan.

然而，這一數字背後有任何醫學依據嗎?其實不然。一天走一萬步的這一建議與當下久坐不動，愛好快餐的美國人毫無關係。實則這一建議一開始是由飲食與環境都相當不同的日本於20世紀60年代提出的。

“It basically started around the Tokyo Olympics” in 1964, said Catrine Tudor-Locke, a professor who studies walking behavior at LSU’s Pennington Biomedical Center. “A company over there created a man-po-kei, a pedometer. And man stands for ‘10,000,’ po stands for ‘step,’and kei stands for ‘meter’or ‘gauge.’”Whatever the reason for the adoption of this particular number, “It resonated with people at the time, and they went man-po-kei-ing all over the place,”said Tudor-Locke.

“大約是在1964年東京奧運會前後，日本一公司設計出了一款計步器步，名爲‘man-po-kei’，翻譯過來就是‘10000步儀表’”，美國路易斯安那州巴吞魯日潘寧頓生物醫學研究中心步行行爲實驗室的負責人卡特里內·圖多爾·洛克這樣說道。無論這一數字背後的來由是什麼，圖多爾·洛克說，“該計步器在日本很受歡迎，人們去哪兒都穿戴着它。”

The problem, which barely needs stating, is that circa-1964 Japan was markedly different from the circa-2015 U.S. Data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations shows that the average per-capita food supply for Japanese people in 1964 was 2,632 calories, while the average for Americans in 2011 was 3,639. That’s a difference of about 1,000 calories —or, about 20,000 steps for an average-size person.

問題顯而易見，20世紀60年代的日本和如今的美國之間有很大的區別。根據聯合國糧食農業組織提供的數據顯示，1964年日本人均食品供應量爲2,632卡路里，而2011年美國的該數據爲3,639卡路里。這裏就差了將近有1,000卡路里，爲一般人行走兩萬步路消耗的熱量。

More broadly, 10,000 steps is just a bit too simplistic a figure, say nutrition researchers. All the ones I spoke to agreed that there’s nothing wrong with shooting for 10,000 steps, per se, and that walking more is better than walking less. But Tudor-Locke said that “The one-size-fits-all [approach] doesn’t necessarily work.”

更廣泛地說來，一萬步這一數字設置地有點兒過於簡單，營養觀察員如是說。我所交流過的人都認爲每天行走一萬步本質上並沒什麼錯，走的多總好過走的少。但是圖多爾·洛克認爲，這一方法並不適用於所有人。

Her work focuses on the most sedentary slice of the population, and there, it can be a challenge to get people to take 5,000 steps, let alone 10,000. But moving from 2,500 steps a day, say, to 5,000, is a small but important victory for people who don’t get any exercise, and can have important healthramifications. A big European study published in January that looked at the mortality rates for people with different activities levels, in fact, found that “a markedly reduced hazard was observed between those categorized as inactive and those categorized as moderately inactive”—a 20 to 30 percent reduction.

圖多爾·洛克的研究對象是美國最不經常運動的人羣。對於這一部分人來說，日行5,000步已是挑戰，更別提10,000步了。但對於不運動的人來說，從每天2,500步跨越到5,000步已經算是不錯的成果了，同時還有益健康。一月發佈的某大型歐洲研究對不同運動水平的人羣死亡率進行了調查。該研究發現，有一定運動量的人羣死亡率要比沒有運動量的人羣死亡率低20%到30%。

“Focusing exclusively on how many steps you’re getting and neglecting those other aspects isn’t going to lead to an overall improvement in health, unless you’re addressing those other factors simultaneously,” said Jeff Goldsmith, a biostatistics professor at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health.

然而，哥倫比亞大學梅爾曼公共衛生學院生物統計學教授傑夫·戈德史密斯指出，只關注日行多少步而忽略飲食等其它因素是無法總體上提高健康水平的，除非同時考慮到其它這些因素。

Maybe it’s time, given just how unhealthy so many people are and how much they’d benefit from moving around just a little more, to embrace an incremental-improvement approach to exercise. “Stand rather than sit, walk rather than stand, jog rather than walk, and run rather than jog,”wrote Ulf Ekelund, lead author of the European mortality study, in an email. Tudor-Locke distilled things even further: “Just move more than before,”she said.

想到人們現在有多不健康以及鍛鍊給人們帶來的好處，人們是時候應該增加鍛鍊了。研究歐洲病死率的研究員伍爾夫·艾克德隆表示，人們應該能站着就不坐着，能走不就站着，能慢跑就不要走路，能跑步就不要慢跑。圖多爾·洛克進一步總結道：“只要比以前動得多就行。”