你的生活有目標嗎?答案可能會影響你的壽命

Does Your Life Have Purpose? The Answer Could Affect How Long You Live.

你的生活有目標嗎？ 答案可能會影響你的壽命。

Having a strong purpose in life may have not only mental benefits, but also physical ones.

在生活中擁有一個強烈的目標可能不僅有精神上的好處，也對身體有益。

A new study suggests that purposeful living is linked to decreased risk of early death in those older than age 50. The new results were published Thursday (May 23) in the journal JAMA Network Open.

一項新的研究表明，有人生目標的生活可以降低50歲以上人羣的早逝風險。 新的研究結果發表在週四(5月23日)的JAMA Network Open雜誌上。

A group of researchers at the University of Michigan analyzed data from nearly 7,000 people older than 50 who were enrolled in a national study that began in 1992 and who filled out a psychological questionnaire in 2006.

密歇根大學的一組研究人員分析了近7000名50歲以上人羣的數據，這些人蔘加了1992年開始的一項全國性研究，並於2006年填寫了一份心理問卷。

Participants were asked to rank how strongly they felt about statements such as "I enjoy making plans for the future and working to make them a reality" and "my daily activities often seem trivial and unimportant to me"; the people were then given a "life purpose score."

實驗者被要求對諸如"我喜歡爲未來制定計劃並努力使其成爲現實"和"我的日常活動對我來說往往是微不足道和不重要的"這樣的陳述進行排名，然後給這些人打一個"人生目標分"

The researchers then compared these scores with mortality rates of the participants over the next five years. During that time, 776 of the participants died.

接着，研究人員將這些分數與未來五年參與者的死亡率進行比較。 在此期間，776名實驗者死亡。

Participants with the lowest life-purpose scores were more than twice as likely to die during the follow-up period, compared with participants with the highest life-purpose scores, the study found. In particular, those with lower life-purpose scores were more likely to die from heart or blood conditions.

研究發現，在隨訪期間，生活目標分數最低的實驗者死亡的概率是生活目標分數最高的參與者的兩倍多。 尤其是那些生活目標得分較低的人更有可能死於心臟或血液疾病。

The findings held even after the researchers took into account certain factors that could affect people's sense of life purpose or their risk of death, such as whether the participants had depression.

即使研究人員考慮了某些可能影響人們生活目標感受或死亡風險的因素，比如參與者是否患有抑鬱症。但是研究結果依然成立。

"There seems to be no downside to improving one's life purpose, and there may be benefits," said lead author Aliya Alimujiang, a doctoral student at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. "Previous research has suggested that volunteering and meditation may improve psychological well-being."

密歇根大學公共衛生學院的博士生Aliya Alimujiang說：“改善一個人的生活目標似乎沒有任何不利因素，只會有好處。” “之前的研究表明，志願服務和冥想都可以改善心理健康。”

The next step for this research will be to determine if interventions designed to increase life purpose really work, and if increasing life purpose leads to good health outcomes such as improved quality of life, she added.

她補充說，這項研究的下一步將是確定旨在增強生活目標的干預措施是否真的有效，以及增強生活目標是否會帶來諸如提高生活質量等好結果。

According to the researchers, there are several possible reasons why having a life purpose might extend life span.

根據研究人員的說法，人生目標會延長壽命是有原因的。

Past studies have shown that stronger well-being, including purposeful living, decreased the activation of genes that trigger inflammation in the body. Inflammation, in turn, has been previously linked with an increase in risk of early death, according to the study.

過去的研究表明，更強的幸福感，包括有目的的生活，會減少體內炎症基因的激活。反過來，炎症則會增加早逝的風險。

Yet another study found that a stronger purpose in life was linked to lower levels of the "stress hormone" cortisol and lower levels of inflammatory molecules in the body. But no studies have directly measured such molecules or biomarkers and related them to health outcomes or mortality.

然而，另一項研究發現，生活中強烈的目標與較低水平的"應激激素"皮質醇和較低水平的炎症分子有關。 但是沒有研究直接測量這些分子或生物標誌物，並將它們與健康結果或死亡率聯繫起來。

One limitation of the study is that the researchers couldn't exclude the possibility of "reverse causality" among participants with a chronic or life-threatening illness.

這項研究的一個侷限性是，研究人員不能排除患有慢性或重大疾病的參與者之間存在"反向因果關係"的可能性。

In other words, the chronic or life-threatening illness could have been driving people to have a lower purpose in life.

換句話說，慢性或重大疾病可能已經驅使人們在生活中有一個較低的目標。

In a follow-up analysis, when the researchers excluded people who had a chronic or life-threatening illness, their results still held true, but there was a higher likelihood that these results could have been due to chance, the authors noted.

在後續分析中，當研究人員排除了患有慢性或重大疾病的人時，他們的結果仍然是正確的，但作者指出，這些結果更有可能是偶然的。