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Cycling does the body good.
騎自行車對身體有益。
New data from Tour de France cyclists finds that those athletes live an average of six years longer compared with their counterparts in the general population and die less often from heart-related ailments, damping concerns that extreme, intense exercise increases the likelihood of death from cardiovascular reasons.
來自環法自行車賽(Tour de France)車手的最新數據顯示，車手們的平均壽命比普通同齡人要長六年，死于心臟相關疾病的頻率也較低。這打消了極限高強度運動會增加死于心血管疾病可能性的疑慮。
The new study, which will be presented Tuesday here at a meeting of the European Society of Cardiology, examined 786 French cyclists who competed in the Tour de France between 1947 and 2012 and the cause of death for those who died over that time.
這項最新研究對786名于1947年至2012年間參加環法自行車賽的法國車手及死亡車手的死因進行了研究。研究結果于9月3日在歐洲心臟病學會(European Society of Cardiology)的會議上進行了發布。
The data also give limited reassurance that doping with erythropoietin, known as Epo, doesn't appear to dramatically increase the risk of heart attack or early death among elite cyclists--at least in the near term.
數據也在一定程度上表明，服用促紅細胞生成素似乎不會大幅增加精英車手心臟病發作或早逝的幾率──至少短期內不會。
The findings offer 'good proof that sports--even if the sport is very, very intensive--among healthy people, without any heart disease, is still beneficial,' said Eloi Marijon, one of the study authors and a cardiologist at the European Georges Pompidou Hospital and Paris Descartes University.
該項研究的作者之一、歐洲喬治蓬皮杜醫院(European Georges Pompidou Hospital)及巴黎第五大學(Paris Descartes University)心臟病學家埃洛伊・馬里恩(Eloi Marijon)說，研究結果“有力地證明對于沒有任何心臟疾病的健康人來說，運動依然是有益的，即使是強度非常大的運動。”
The results 'laid to rest' concerns over exercise intensity with cycling, though the results don't necessarily generalize to marathon running, said Donna Arnett, chair of epidemiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and past-president of the American Heart Association, who is chairing the session at which the data will be presented.
阿拉巴馬大學伯明翰分校(University of Alabama at Birmingham)流行病學系系主任、曾任美國心臟協會(American Heart Association)會長、負責主持該項研究數據發布會議的多納・阿爾奈特(Donna Arnett)說，研究結果消除了人們對騎自行車運動強度的疑慮，不過結果并不一定能夠推廣到馬拉松長跑。
Cardiovascular concerns about high-intensity exercise stemmed from a small number of studies on marathon runners, which used advanced imaging ando other measurement tools and found some detrimental signs on the heart immediately after races, prompting some doctors to worry that there may be drawbacks to such extreme exercise.
高強度運動會造成心血管疾病的擔憂源自少數幾項對馬拉松運動員的研究。通過高級成像及其他測量工具，研究發現比賽結束后運動員的心臟有受損跡象，致使一些醫生擔心這類極限運動可能有弊端。
But those findings were likely normal wear and tear that occurs after strenuous physical activity when muscles are pushed and a greater volume of blood courses through the heart, and they go away after the body recovers, as some previous studies have shown, said Alfred Bove, professor emeritus at Temple University in Philadelphia and a former president of the American College of Cardiology, who wasn't involved in Tuesday's study.
費城天普大學(Temple University)名譽教授、曾任美國心臟病學會(American College of Cardiology)會長的阿爾弗雷德・博夫(Alfred Bove)說，但這些研究結果可能只是正常的慢性勞損，部分以往研究顯示，高強度的身體活動后，肌肉會受到擠壓，流過心臟的血液量也會增加，在身體恢復后就會消失。博夫并未參與9月3日的研究發布會。
'Now that we have better windows into physiology, we're beginning to see things we don't understand,' he said.
他說：“現在有了更好的研究生理學的窗口，我們開始逐漸了解不懂的東西了。”
Such changes may be more easily observed using new imaging and measurement tools. And, many findings about the heart are based on sick patients and shouldn't necessarily be extrapolated to healthy athletes, according to Dr. Bove.
這種身體變化用最新的成像和測量工具可能更容易觀察到。而且博夫表示，許多心臟相關的研究都是針對病人所做，不一定適用于推測健康運動員的情況。
Another question with the study was whether it could shed light on the cardiac effects of doping with Epo, a medication used to treat anemia and other conditions by increasing the number of red blood cells in the bloodstream. Relatively little is known about the long-term effects of doping with Epo, which is used by endurance athletes to enhance their performance by training harder and is banned by the international cycling community in competition. But, when there is an overproduction of red blood cells in the bone marrow, a condition called polycythemia, heart attacks and strokes can result.
另一個有關該項研究的問題是，它是否對服用促紅細胞生成素對心臟的影響具有指導意義。促紅細胞生成素是一種通過增加血液中紅血球數量治療貧血及其他癥狀的藥物。耐力運動員通過服用這種藥物同時加大訓練強度來提高成績，但國際自行車界禁止在比賽中使用該藥物。研究人員對服用促紅細胞生成素帶來的長期影響知之甚少。不過當骨髓中紅血球過量時，就會出現一種名叫紅血球增多癥的癥狀，從而導致心臟病和中風發作。
It wasn't known which cyclists in the study were using what performance-enhancing substances, so the insight that could be gleaned from the study about Epo was limited.
尚不清楚該項研究中哪些車手用過哪些有助提高成績的藥物，因此從該項研究中得到的有關促紅細胞生成素的見解很有限。
But, because the use of Epo was thought to be common among cyclists in the Tour de France in the 1990s, researchers expected that if Epo was linked to heart attacks, they would see an uptick in the number of deaths among riders in the past 20 years, as compared with competitors in previous decades, according to Dr. Marijon.
不過，馬里恩說，由于促紅細胞生成素的使用被認為在20世紀90年代環法自行車賽的車手中比較普遍，研究人員推測，若促紅細胞生成素會造成心臟病發作，那么過去20年間的死亡的車手人數與之前相比會有所上升。
Instead, they observed no difference in the rate of death by decade, suggesting that 'probably there is no strong or immediate association with doping' and heart attack, said Dr. Marijon. He urged caution in interpreting the results and said that more research is needed over a longer period of a time.
馬里恩說，但是他們并沒有觀察到以十年為周期的死亡率有什么差別，這表明“服用促紅細胞生成素與心臟病發作之間并沒有很強或直接的關聯”。他敦促大家在解讀研究結果時應謹慎，并表示需要更多的研究及增加研究的時間段。
The study also is being published Tuesday in the European Heart Journal.
該項研究同時于9月3日發表在《歐洲心臟期刊》(European Heart Journal)上。
