Today we’re talking about coffee. We hear a lot of conflicting findings about whether our favorite beverage is good or bad for our health. But recently, an especially rigorous study came out that may finally answer some of our percolating questions.
今天我們來談談咖啡。關于咖啡對健康的影響研究數不勝數，得出的結論好壞參半。但最近，一項特別嚴謹的研究發表了出來，它可能終于回答了一些我們對于咖啡的疑慮。
There’s a good chance that, right now, you’re sipping the very thing we’re talking about. Coffee. It is one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world.
很有可能，現在，你正在啜飲我們正在談論的東西——咖啡。它是世界上消費最廣泛的飲料之一。
It’s true. Here in the U.S., the average person drank almost 89 gallons of coffee in 2016—more than soda, tea and juice combined.
這是真的。2016年，美國平均每人每天喝掉了將近920毫升的咖啡——比蘇打水、茶和果汁加起來還要多。
That’s a lot of java. Or joe, brew, or jitter juice, whatever you like to call it.
那可是相當多的咖啡因或咖啡飲料，隨你怎么叫。
Indeed. Do you drink coffee, Josh?
確實。你喝咖啡嗎，喬希?
Actually I guess I’m one of the few people who doesn’t. I used to guzzle it, though—about 4 or 5 cups a day. But I gave it up a few years ago.
實際上我想我是少數不喝咖啡的人之一。不過我以前會喝，每天4到5杯。但幾年前我戒掉了。
Why? What happened?
為什么?發生了什么事?
Honestly, my stomach started getting upset. I figured I could do without so much acid, you know?
說實話，我的胃開始不舒服。我覺得不用那么多酸也行?
That totally makes sense. But personally, I’m not really functional until I’ve had my morning cup of coffee, and I don’t know if I could give that up.
這完全說得通。但就我個人而言，在我早上喝了一杯咖啡之前，我是不會真正工作的，我不知道我是否能戒掉它。
There are times when I catch the aroma from a coffee shop, and it just smells so good!
有時候我聞到咖啡店的香味，感覺太好聞了!
But listen, I’m still not sure coffee was causing my problems. It feels like every day there’s a new study telling us coffee is good for us or bad for us, for a whole bunch of different reasons. With all these conflicting messages, it can feel like whiplash.
但是，我還是不確定是咖啡引起了我的問題。感覺每天都有新的研究告訴我們咖啡對我們有好處或壞處，由于各種原因，這些矛盾的信息讓人感到頭暈目眩。
Well, it turns out it’s actually really hard to study how coffee or any other food or drink affects our health.
嗯，事實證明，研究咖啡或任何其他食物或飲料如何影響我們的健康真的很難。
Most nutrition studies are observational studies, which compare health outcomes in people who happen to drink coffee to those who don’t. But it’s impossible to rule out other variables that could affect what you’re trying to measure.
大多數營養學研究都是觀察性研究，比較碰巧喝咖啡的人和不喝咖啡的人的健康狀況。但不可能排除其他可能影響你試圖測量的變量。
Plus, you have to rely on people reporting what they consumed weeks or months after they drank it. And most of us can’t even remember what we had for breakfast.
另外，你必須依靠人們在喝了幾周或幾個月后報告他們喝了什么。我們大多數人甚至不記得早餐吃了什么。
So, what’s the solution? Is there another way to study this?
那么，解決方案是什么呢?有其他的研究方法嗎?
Well, there is a way to be more objective. I talked to…
有一種更客觀的方法。我采訪了......
Gregory Marcus, Professor of Medicine and cardiologist at University of California, San Francisco.
格雷戈里·馬庫斯，舊金山加利福尼亞大學醫學教授和心臟病專家。
Marcus and his colleagues took a different approach than most other coffee studies. Instead of just studying people who drank coffee or didn’t, he set up a randomized trial to study coffee’s impact on your heartbeat.
馬庫斯和他的同事們采用了與大多數其他咖啡研究不同的方法。他沒有只研究喝咖啡或不喝咖啡的人，而是進行了一項隨機試驗，研究咖啡對心跳的影響。
They were looking for abnormal heart rhythms called arrhythmias.
他們在尋找被稱為心律失常的異常心律。
The topic comes up very frequently in my clinic, where patients with various arrhythmias will ask if they can consume coffee. There's this conventional wisdom that coffee increases the risk for heart rhythm disturbances or electrical problems with the heart, which is my clinical subspecialty. And yet, we and others generally have failed to find a clear association between coffee and arrhythmias.
這個話題在我的診所里經常出現，有各種心律失常的病人會問他們是否可以喝咖啡。傳統觀點認為，咖啡會增加心律紊亂或心臟電信號問題的風險，這是我的臨床分科。然而，我們和其他人普遍沒有發現咖啡和心律失常之間的明確聯系。
In their new study, Marcus and his colleagues randomly assigned 100 people to either drink or not drink coffee each day for a period of two weeks.
在他們的新研究中，馬庫斯和他的同事們隨機分配了100個人，讓他們在兩周的時間里每天喝咖啡或不喝咖啡。
And they receive these instructions via text message, and they were randomly assigned to either go ahead and drink all the coffee you want, versus on other random days, avoid all caffeine today.
他們會通過短信收到這些指示，被隨機要求喝所有自己想喝的咖啡，或是在某一天完全不攝入咖啡。
They had participants wear a heart monitor, a FitBit and a continuous glucose monitor. They also had them download an app on their phone that collected GPS location data so the researchers could see when people were actually visiting coffee shops.
研究人員讓受試者佩戴心臟監測器、智能健康手表和連續葡萄糖監測器，還讓他們在手機上下載了一個收集GPS定位數據的應用程序，這樣研究人員就可以看到受試者在什么時候真正去了咖啡店。
With the heart monitors, what were they looking at?
用心臟監測器，他們在看什么?
They were measuring two things: the number of what are called premature atrial contractions and premature ventricular contractions.
他們測量了兩種癥狀：房性早搏和心室早搏的數量。
It's very common for everyone to have an early beat arising from the upper chambers of the heart called premature atrial contractions, or PACs, once in a while.
每個人偶爾都會經歷來自心臟上腔的早搏，也就是房性早搏(PAC)，這非常常見。
But research has shown that having too many of these beats puts you at risk of atrial fibrillation, which is a dangerously irregular, rapid heart beat. This is associated with a very high risk for stroke, dementia, and death. Then there’s the other kind of irregular heartbeat:
但研究表明，經常出現房性早搏會增加心房顫動的風險，心房顫動是一種危險的不規則快速心跳，與較高的中風、癡呆癥和死亡風險相關。還有另一種不規則心跳:
Premature ventricular contractions are early beats that arise from the lower chambers of the heart. Again, we all have those sometimes, but those with more are at higher risk of developing heart failure or a weakening of the heart.
室性早搏是指從心臟下腔產生的早搏。同樣，我們可能都會有這種情況，但頻繁出現室性早搏的人有更高的風險發展成心力衰竭或心臟衰弱。
They found that drinking coffee did not result in more premature atrial contractions—the early heart beats associated with atrial fibrillation. That’s good news for people who were worried about that.
他們發現，喝咖啡并沒有導致更多的房性早搏，這對那些擔心這個問題的人來說是個好消息。
That’s good to know. What about the other bad beats, the premature contractions in the heart’s lower chambers?
很高興知道這個。那其他不好的心跳呢，室性早搏呢?
Those were slightly more common on days when people were told to drink coffee, or on days when they drank more coffee—but not enough to be really worrisome.
受試者在被通知喝咖啡的日子里，這些情況略微更常見些，但還沒到讓人真正擔心的程度。
And that’s not all they found. Coffee consumption was also associated with a higher number of daily steps. On days when people drank coffee—and the more coffee they drank—the more steps they took.
這還不是他們發現的全部。喝咖啡也與每天走更多的步數有關。在喝咖啡的日子里，受試者喝的咖啡越多，他們走的步數就越多。
On days randomized to coffee, people took on average about 1000 more steps, which is highly significant. And in fact, that difference in average steps has been associated with the improved longevity in large epidemiologic studies.
在隨機喝咖啡的日子里，人們平均多走了大約1000步，這非常有意義。在大型流行病學研究中，這種平均步數的差異與壽命延長有關。
The study couldn’t show why people increased their steps on days when they drank coffee. Maybe they were just walking to the coffee shop or the bathroom more! But regardless, an extra 1,000 steps per day has been linked to a six to 15 percent lower risk of death in other studies.
這項研究無法說明為什么人們在喝咖啡的日子里會增加步數。也許他們只是更多地去咖啡店或洗手間!但無論如何，在其他研究中，每天多走1000步與降低6%至15%的死亡風險有關。
So coffee might actually make people perk up and move around.
所以咖啡可能會讓人們精神起來，四處走動。
Yup, I guess the coffee drinkers were full of beans. But there was a downside to drinking coffee, and it probably won’t surprise you.
是啊，我猜喝咖啡的人腦子都進水了。但喝咖啡也有缺點，你可能不會感到驚訝。
Ummm, let me guess. People slept less?
嗯，讓我猜猜。睡得更少?
Bingo. The study participants got about half an hour less sleep on average on the days they drank coffee compared with the days they didn’t.
是的。研究參與者在喝咖啡的日子里比不喝咖啡的日子平均少睡半個小時。
But the results varied a lot from person to person depending on whether they were fast or slow coffee metabolizers—which is determined by your genetics.
但結果因人而異，這取決于他們是咖啡代謝快還是慢——這是由基因決定的。
The researchers gave participants a genetic saliva test to determine which type of coffee metabolizer they were.
研究人員對參與者進行了唾液基因測試，以確定他們屬于哪種咖啡代謝者。
So the fast caffeine metabolizers actually exhibited no significant relationship between coffee consumption and sleep, whereas the slow caffeine metabolizers exhibited the worst effects on sleep. In fact, the slow caffeine metabolizers, on average, had almost an hour less sleep when they were exposed to coffee.
在快速咖啡因代謝者身上，咖啡攝入和睡眠之間沒有表現出明顯的關系。而慢速咖啡因代謝者則表現出最負面的影響：喝咖啡時，他們的平均睡眠時間少了近一個小時。
I never had an issue with sleep when I was drinking a lot of coffee. But I wake up at a ridiculous early hour in the morning–I’m talking 5 o’clock–so I’m usually zonked by 10 PM anyway.
當我喝了很多咖啡時，我從來沒有睡眠問題。但是我早上起得很早——我說的是5點——所以我通常到晚上10點就累壞了。
I don’t usually find that coffee keeps me up at night, but I try not to have caffeine after about 3 or 4 pm. Still, this study has me wondering if I should quit drinking it earlier in the day.
我通常不會發現咖啡讓我在晚上睡不著，但我盡量在下午三四點后不攝入咖啡因。盡管如此，這項研究還是讓我想知道我是否應該在一天的早些時候停止喝咖啡。
If someone suffers from insomnia, we have found here in a randomized trial that there are meaningful effects on sleep—to such a degree that it really should motivate a good trial off of coffee to really try to tackle insomnia.
如果有人患有失眠癥，我們在一項隨機試驗中發現，咖啡對睡眠有很大的影響，以至于它真的應該激發人們嘗試喝咖啡來真正解決失眠問題。
Ok, that part is pretty much a no-brainer. But overall, the study does seem like fairly positive news for those who enjoy their brew.
好吧，這部分很簡單。但總的來說，這項研究對那些喜歡喝咖啡的人來說似乎是一個相當積極的消息。
Yes, it is pretty good news. It confirms other observational studies that have not shown a higher risk of heart arrhythmias.
是的，這是個好消息。它證實了其他觀察性研究，這些研究并未顯示心律失常的風險更高。
And some studies have shown that drinking coffee is linked with a lower lifetime risk of diabetes and death overall—which could be a result of the higher activity levels that drinking coffee might produce.
一些研究表明，喝咖啡可以降低患糖尿病和死亡的風險，這可能是喝咖啡可以提高活動水平的結果。
In the end, there may not be a simple answer to the question of whether coffee is good or bad for you. It depends on how much you consume, and each person is different.
最后，對于咖啡對你是好還是壞的問題，可能沒有一個簡單的答案。這取決于你喝了多少，而且因人而異。
I think, on the whole, these data should be generally reassuring regarding the safety of coffee. I think that one of the challenges in conducting nutrition-based research is that there tends to be a kind of a natural hunger, especially from the media, but I think this is just human nature to know to conclude, okay, is this good for me? Or is this bad for me? Which one is it? It's one or the other. And the reality is that the effects of coffee are complicated.
我認為總的來說咖啡的安全性應該是令人放心的。我認為進行營養研究的挑戰之一是，它往往存在某種目的導向性，特別是來自媒體的導向性，但我認為這也是人類想要尋求答案的天性，這對我有好處嗎?有壞處嗎?究竟是有好處還是有壞處呢?它總得有好處或者有壞處。而現實是，咖啡的影響很復雜。
Coffee affects each person differently. So if drinking it makes you feel bad, skip it. But if, like me, you enjoy it in moderation, go ahead and have that latte!
咖啡對每個人的影響是不同的。因此，如果喝它讓你感到不適，就別喝。但如果適度地喝咖啡能讓你心情愉悅，那就繼續喝吧～
Today we’re talking about coffee. We hear a lot of conflicting findings about whether our favorite beverage is good or bad for our health. But recently, an especially rigorous study came out that may finally answer some of our percolating questions.
There’s a good chance that, right now, you’re sipping the very thing we’re talking about. Coffee. It is one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world.
It’s true. Here in the U.S., the average person drank almost 89 gallons of coffee in 2016—more than soda, tea and juice combined.
That’s a lot of java. Or joe, brew, or jitter juice, whatever you like to call it.
Indeed. Do you drink coffee, Josh?
Actually I guess I’m one of the few people who doesn’t. I used to guzzle it, though—about 4 or 5 cups a day. But I gave it up a few years ago.
Why? What happened?
Honestly, my stomach started getting upset. I figured I could do without so much acid, you know?
That totally makes sense. But personally, I’m not really functional until I’ve had my morning cup of coffee, and I don’t know if I could give that up.
There are times when I catch the aroma from a coffee shop, and it just smells so good!
But listen, I’m still not sure coffee was causing my problems. It feels like every day there’s a new study telling us coffee is good for us or bad for us, for a whole bunch of different reasons. With all these conflicting messages, it can feel like whiplash.
Well, it turns out it’s actually really hard to study how coffee or any other food or drink affects our health.
Most nutrition studies are observational studies, which compare health outcomes in people who happen to drink coffee to those who don’t. But it’s impossible to rule out other variables that could affect what you’re trying to measure.
Plus, you have to rely on people reporting what they consumed weeks or months after they drank it. And most of us can’t even remember what we had for breakfast.
So, what’s the solution? Is there another way to study this?
Well, there is a way to be more objective. I talked to…
Gregory Marcus, Professor of Medicine and cardiologist at University of California, San Francisco.
Marcus and his colleagues took a different approach than most other coffee studies. Instead of just studying people who drank coffee or didn’t, he set up a randomized trial to study coffee’s impact on your heartbeat.
They were looking for abnormal heart rhythms called arrhythmias.
The topic comes up very frequently in my clinic, where patients with various arrhythmias will ask if they can consume coffee. There's this conventional wisdom that coffee increases the risk for heart rhythm disturbances or electrical problems with the heart, which is my clinical subspecialty. And yet, we and others generally have failed to find a clear association between coffee and arrhythmias.
In their new study, Marcus and his colleagues randomly assigned 100 people to either drink or not drink coffee each day for a period of two weeks.
And they receive these instructions via text message, and they were randomly assigned to either go ahead and drink all the coffee you want, versus on other random days, avoid all caffeine today.
They had participants wear a heart monitor, a FitBit and a continuous glucose monitor. They also had them download an app on their phone that collected GPS location data so the researchers could see when people were actually visiting coffee shops.
With the heart monitors, what were they looking at?
They were measuring two things: the number of what are called premature atrial contractions and premature ventricular contractions.
It's very common for everyone to have an early beat arising from the upper chambers of the heart called premature atrial contractions, or PACs, once in a while.
But research has shown that having too many of these beats puts you at risk of atrial fibrillation, which is a dangerously irregular, rapid heart beat. This is associated with a very high risk for stroke, dementia, and death. Then there’s the other kind of irregular heartbeat:
Premature ventricular contractions are early beats that arise from the lower chambers of the heart. Again, we all have those sometimes, but those with more are at higher risk of developing heart failure or a weakening of the heart.
They found that drinking coffee did not result in more premature atrial contractions—the early heart beats associated with atrial fibrillation. That’s good news for people who were worried about that.
That’s good to know. What about the other bad beats, the premature contractions in the heart’s lower chambers?
Those were slightly more common on days when people were told to drink coffee, or on days when they drank more coffee—but not enough to be really worrisome.
And that’s not all they found. Coffee consumption was also associated with a higher number of daily steps. On days when people drank coffee—and the more coffee they drank—the more steps they took.
On days randomized to coffee, people took on average about 1000 more steps, which is highly significant. And in fact, that difference in average steps has been associated with the improved longevity in large epidemiologic studies.
The study couldn’t show why people increased their steps on days when they drank coffee. Maybe they were just walking to the coffee shop or the bathroom more! But regardless, an extra 1,000 steps per day has been linked to a six to 15 percent lower risk of death in other studies.
So coffee might actually make people perk up and move around.
Yup, I guess the coffee drinkers were full of beans. But there was a downside to drinking coffee, and it probably won’t surprise you.
Ummm, let me guess. People slept less?
Bingo. The study participants got about half an hour less sleep on average on the days they drank coffee compared with the days they didn’t.
But the results varied a lot from person to person depending on whether they were fast or slow coffee metabolizers—which is determined by your genetics.
The researchers gave participants a genetic saliva test to determine which type of coffee metabolizer they were.
So the fast caffeine metabolizers actually exhibited no significant relationship between coffee consumption and sleep, whereas the slow caffeine metabolizers exhibited the worst effects on sleep. In fact, the slow caffeine metabolizers, on average, had almost an hour less sleep when they were exposed to coffee.
I never had an issue with sleep when I was drinking a lot of coffee. But I wake up at a ridiculous early hour in the morning–I’m talking 5 o’clock–so I’m usually zonked by 10 PM anyway.
I don’t usually find that coffee keeps me up at night, but I try not to have caffeine after about 3 or 4 pm. Still, this study has me wondering if I should quit drinking it earlier in the day.
If someone suffers from insomnia, we have found here in a randomized trial that there are meaningful effects on sleep—to such a degree that it really should motivate a good trial off of coffee to really try to tackle insomnia.
Ok, that part is pretty much a no-brainer. But overall, the study does seem like fairly positive news for those who enjoy their brew.
Yes, it is pretty good news. It confirms other observational studies that have not shown a higher risk of heart arrhythmias.
And some studies have shown that drinking coffee is linked with a lower lifetime risk of diabetes and death overall—which could be a result of the higher activity levels that drinking coffee might produce.
In the end, there may not be a simple answer to the question of whether coffee is good or bad for you. It depends on how much you consume, and each person is different.
I think, on the whole, these data should be generally reassuring regarding the safety of coffee. I think that one of the challenges in conducting nutrition-based research is that there tends to be a kind of a natural hunger, especially from the media, but I think this is just human nature to know to conclude, okay, is this good for me? Or is this bad for me? Which one is it? It's one or the other. And the reality is that the effects of coffee are complicated.
Coffee affects each person differently. So if drinking it makes you feel bad, skip it. But if, like me, you enjoy it in moderation, go ahead and have that latte!
內容來自 VOA英語學習網：http://www.yolenny.com/show-8837-243618-1.html
