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.
今天我们来谈谈咖啡。关于咖啡对健康的影响研究数不胜数，得出的结论好坏参半。但最近，一项特别严谨的研究发表了出来，它可能终于回答了一些我们对于咖啡的疑虑。
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，现在，你正在啜饮我们正在谈论的东西——咖啡。它是世界上消费最广泛的饮料之一。
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.
这是真的。2016年，美国平均每人每天喝掉了将近920毫升的咖啡——比苏打水、茶和果汁加起来还要多。
That’s a lot of java. Or joe, brew, or jitter juice, whatever you like to call it.
那可是相当多的咖啡因或咖啡饮料，随你怎么叫。
Indeed. Do you drink coffee, Josh?
确实。你喝咖啡吗，乔希?
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.
实际上我想我是少数不喝咖啡的人之一。不过我以前会喝，每天4到5杯。但几年前我戒掉了。
Why? What happened?
为什么?发生了什么事?
Honestly, my stomach started getting upset. I figured I could do without so much acid, you know?
说实话，我的胃开始不舒服。我觉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.
这完全说得通。但就我个人而言，在我早上喝了一杯咖啡之前，我是不会真正工作的，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!
有时候我闻到咖啡店的香味，感觉太好闻了!
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，我还是不确定是咖啡引起了我的问题。感觉每天都有新的研究告诉我们咖啡对我们有好处或坏处，由于各种原因，这些矛盾的信息让人感到头晕目眩。
Well, it turns out it’s actually really hard to study how coffee or any other food or drink affects our health.
嗯，事实证明，研究咖啡或任何其他食物或饮料如何影响我们的健康真的很难。
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.
大多数营养学研究都是观察性研究，比较碰巧喝咖啡的人和不喝咖啡的人的健康状况。但不可能排除其他可能影响你试图测量的变量。
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，你必须依靠人们在喝了几周或几个月后报告他们喝了什么。我们大多数人甚至不记得早餐吃了什么。
So, what’s the solution? Is there another way to study this?
那么，解决方案是什么呢?有其他的研究方法吗?
Well, there is a way to be more objective. I talked to…
有一种更客观的方法。我采访了......
Gregory Marcus, Professor of Medicine and cardiologist at University of California, San Francisco.
格雷戈里·马库斯，旧金山加利福尼亚大学医学教授和心脏病专家。
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.
马库斯和他的同事们采用了与大多数其他咖啡研究不同的方法。他没有只研究喝咖啡或不喝咖啡的人，而是进行了一项随机试验，研究咖啡对心跳的影响。
They were looking for abnormal heart rhythms called arrhythmias.
他们在寻找被称为心律失常的异常心律。
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.
这个话题在我的诊所里经常出现，有各种心律失常的病人会问他们是否可以喝咖啡。传统观点认为，咖啡会增加心律紊乱或心脏电信号问题的风险，这是我的临床分科。然而，我们和其他人普遍没有发现咖啡和心律失常之间的明确联系。
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.
在他们的新研究中，马库斯和他的同事们随机分配了100个人，让他们在两周的时间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.
他们会通过短信收到这些指示，被随机要求喝所有自己想喝的咖啡，或是在某一天完全不摄入咖啡。
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.
研究人员让受试者佩戴心脏监测器、智能健康手表和连续葡萄糖监测器，还让他们在手机上下载了一个收集GPS定位数据的应用程序，这样研究人员就可以看到受试者在什么时候真正去了咖啡店。
With the heart monitors, what were they looking at?
用心脏监测器，他们在看什么?
They were measuring two things: the number of what are called premature atrial contractions and premature ventricular contractions.
他们测量了两种症状：房性早搏和心室早搏的数量。
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.
每个人偶尔都会经历来自心脏上腔的早搏，也就是房性早搏(PAC)，这非常常见。
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，经常出现房性早搏会增加心房颤动的风险，心房颤动是一种危险的不规则快速心跳，与较高的中风、痴呆症和死亡风险相关。还有另一种不规则心跳:
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.
室性早搏是指从心脏下腔产生的早搏。同样，我们可能都会有这种情况，但频繁出现室性早搏的人有更高的风险发展成心力衰竭或心脏衰弱。
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.
他们发现，喝咖啡并没有导致更多的房性早搏，这对那些担心这个问题的人来说是个好消息。
That’s good to know. What about the other bad beats, the premature contractions in the heart’s lower chambers?
很高兴知道这个。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.
受试者在被通知喝咖啡的日子里，这些情况略微更常见些，但还没到让人真正担心的程度。
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.
这还不是他们发现的全部。喝咖啡也与每天走更多的步数有关。在喝咖啡的日子里，受试者喝的咖啡越多，他们走的步数就越多。
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.
在随机喝咖啡的日子里，人们平均多走了大约1000步，这非常有意义。在大型流行病学研究中，这种平均步数的差异与寿命延长有关。
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.
这项研究无法说明为什么人们在喝咖啡的日子里会增加步数。也许他们只是更多地去咖啡店或洗手间!但无论如何，在其他研究中，每天多走1000步与降低6%至15%的死亡风险有关。
So coffee might actually make people perk up and move around.
所以咖啡可能会让人们精神起来，四处走动。
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，我猜喝咖啡的人脑子都进水了。但喝咖啡也有缺点，你可能不会感到惊讶。
Ummm, let me guess. People slept less?
嗯，让我猜猜。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。研究参与者在喝咖啡的日子里比不喝咖啡的日子平均少睡半个小时。
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.
但结果因人而异，这取决于他们是咖啡代谢快还是慢——这是由基因决定的。
The researchers gave participants a genetic saliva test to determine which type of coffee metabolizer they were.
研究人员对参与者进行了唾液基因测试，以确定他们属于哪种咖啡代谢者。
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.
在快速咖啡因代谢者身上，咖啡摄入和睡眠之间没有表现出明显的关系。而慢速咖啡因代谢者则表现出最负面的影响：喝咖啡时，他们的平均睡眠时间少了近一个小时。
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.
当我喝了很多咖啡时，我从来没有睡眠问题。但是我早上起得很早——我说的是5点——所以我通常到晚上10点就累坏了。
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.
我通常不会发现咖啡让我在晚上睡不着，但我尽量在下午三四点后不摄入咖啡因。尽管如此，这项研究还是让我想知道我是否应该在一天的早些时候停止喝咖啡。
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.
如果有人患有失眠症，我们在一项随机试验中发现，咖啡对睡眠有很大的影响，以至于它真的应该激发人们尝试喝咖啡来真正解决失眠问题。
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，这部分很简单。但总的来说，这项研究对那些喜欢喝咖啡的人来说似乎是一个相当积极的消息。
Yes, it is pretty good news. It confirms other observational studies that have not shown a higher risk of heart arrhythmias.
是的，这是个好消息。它证实了其他观察性研究，这些研究并未显示心律失常的风险更高。
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风险，这可能是喝咖啡可以提高活动水平的结果。
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，对于咖啡对你是好还是坏的问题，可能没有一个简单的答案。这取决于你喝了多少，而且因人而异。
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.
我认为总的来说咖啡的安全性应该是令人放心的。我认为进行营养研究的挑战之一是，它往往存在某种目的导向性，特别是来自媒体的导向性，但我认为这也是人类想要寻求答案的天性，这对我有好处吗?有坏处吗?究竟是有好处还是有坏处呢?它总得有好处或者有坏处。而现实是，咖啡的影响很复杂。
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!
咖啡对每个人的影响是不同的。因此，如果喝它让你感到不适，就别喝。但如果适度地喝咖啡能让你心情愉悦，那就继续喝吧～
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!
内容来自 VOA英语学习网：https://www.chinavoa.com/show-8837-243618-1.html
