Research Shows Walking Can Lift Depression[卫生类职称英语教材]
New research by German scientists shows that author Charles Dickens was onto a good thing1when he took long, brisk walks to relieve periodic bouts of depression.The author of Oliver Twist and David Copperfield would walk for hours in the 1860s as an antidote to2 intense feelings of sadness which alternated with3 restless euphoria. 1
Aerobic exercise like rapid walking can be more effective at lifting depression than drugs, reported the scientists led by Dr. Fernando Dimeo. 2 The team found that in10 of these patients drugs had failed to bring any substantial improvement.The team devised an exercise regime for the group that involved walking on a treadmill for 30 minutes every day.
3 The intensity of the training programme was stepped up4as the heart rate adapted.A measurement of depression severity was taken at the start and the end of the programme,and patients were asked to rate their own mood regularly over a 10-day period.The researchers in Berlin found that after 10 days of the course six patients felt’“substantially less depressed”. 4 Two were slightly less depressed,while four others remained unchanged. Depression levels overall fell by a third5and on the self-assessed scores by 25 percent, said the researchers whose findings appeared in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
The study was small but the extent of the improvement was said by scientists to be impressive. 5
Nineteenth century doctors would have called Dickens’s condition melancholia since the psychological condition of depression was unknown.Dickens biographer Peter Ackroyd says the author’s son Charles remembers his father’s“heavy moods of deep depression”and many times of“intense nervous irritability”,something modern psychologists would certainly recognize6.
词汇：
brisk adj.轻快的 periodic adj.周期性的、
bout n.(疾病的)发作 antidote n.解毒剂；矫正办法
alternate v.交替 euphoria n.欣快症,异常欣快
aerobic adj.需氧的 regime n.制度
treadmill n.脚踏机 severity n.严重程度
pharmacological adj.药理学的
melancholia n.忧郁症 biographer n.传记作者
irritability n.急躁,易怒
注释：
1.…was onto a good thing：找到了一种好方法
to be onto a good thing：to have found a good,easy or profitable situation找到了一个舒适或有利可图的位置
2.antidote后面常跟介词to,for或against,例如：
an antidote to poison：解毒药
an antidote against snakebite：蛇药
The cat is the best antidote for the rat.猫是鼠的最大克星。
3.alternate后面常跟介词with,between或from…to…如：
Day alternates with night.昼夜交替。
He alternated between high spirits and low spirits.他的情绪忽高忽
