【有文稿】睡觉太多也不好

Lincoln: A new study shows that too much sleep might be bad for you. Wu You, this sounds – frankly – very suspect. I don't know if I/m convinced by this. Please tell us what's going on here. WY: A new study in Australia revealed that too much sleep is bad [for] people's health. Scholars from the University of Sydney found that those who sleep more than nine hours a day and lack exercise are more than four times likely to die early. Lincoln: All right. Well, first of all, they said nine hours a day, so we're going to assume they mean nine hours a night; you're not sleeping nine hours in the middle of your day, presumably, but I don’t understand this. This seems to be quite spurious. I mean, I'm not a researcher, and I’m sure the researchers have been doing their job very well, but it's very hard to believe that sleeping well and sleeping long is actually bad for you, Nick. Nick: I think, for me, it all hinges on that little part at the end, there, where it says “and lack of exercise”, so I think – I mean, we all know that lack of exercise is bad for you. I mean, maybe it’s a fact that you’re spending so much time sleeping that you just don’t have time to do your exercise, and that's what's bad for you. Lincoln: Well, perhaps the fact that you sleep so much is symptomatic of something else. Maybe you have some sort of iron deficiency, or things like that. Those are symptoms that could lead to or are root causes for sleeping longer, so maybe a little bit of confirmation bias there. Who knows? WY: The study also found that lack of sleep – less than seven hours a night – also increases people's risk of early death four-fold, so can I say – is it a fact that it's only safe for you to sleep for eight hours a night? Lincoln: I put it to you that it's actually very difficult, as a modern person, as a working person, to sleep eight hours a night, every single night. That's… you know, you're living a very disciplined life if you do manage to do that. WY: But it also says that the sleep of around seven hours, and then combined with smoking or a high alcohol intake could possibly lead to an early death, so in that case, they are combining the different factors together, not only the sleep thing. Lincoln: So, this person is living… the person, you know… (Nick: The hypothetical person) Let’s call him Patient X. That person is drinking a lot, smoking a lot, not sleeping very much, and what the study’s saying is that this person is actually at risk. Nick: And it's the sleeping that's the problem! Lincoln: I put it to you that there's nothing in the world where drinking more and smoking more doesn't put you at a higher risk factor. WY: It varies [according to] different [people]. Someone, just like Maggie Thatcher, sleep only four hours a night. These kind of factors that the study has revealed is only talking about people who live sedentary lives. It probably has more issues to do with this, and I think they are encouraging more people to do exercises and sleep around eight hours a night. Lincoln: Yeah, whenever we talk about these kinds of health issues, it always comes back to the idea of just having a good balance, just having a good – you know – exercising, trying to eat as well as you can and getting as much rest as you can. WY: And also, another study holds much significance for people in China that struggle with overtime work and insufficient sleep. Data from Peking University's Institute of Social Science Survey Center shows that Chinese people sleep 7.33 hours on average in a day, and work for around 8.66 hours per day on average. Lincoln: Oh, really? That's very interesting. My mind goes back to this story during the World Cup, of Chinese workers staying up very late, and some people actually dying. Look it up again – during the World Cup, there were people that would, you know, go to work, stay up very late, and then come to work the next day. I'm actually going to get up very early tomorrow morning for that very reason, getting up at four o'clock in the morning to watch a football game, so we'll see how I am during the day tomorrow!