For those who can stomach it, working out before breakfast may be more beneficial for health than eating first, according to a study of meal timing and physical activity.
Athletes and scientists have long known that meal timing affects performance. However, far less has been known about how meal timing and exercise might affect general health.
To find out, British scientists conducted a study. They first found 10 overweight and inactive but otherwise healthy young men, whose lifestyles are, for better and worse, representative of those of most of us. They tested the men’s fitness and resting metabolic (新陈代谢的) rates and took samples (样品) of their blood and fat tissue.
Then, on two separate morning visits to the scientists’ lab, each man walked for an hour at an average speed that, in theory should allow his body to rely mainly on fat for fuel. Before one of these workouts, the men skipped breakfast, meaning that they exercised on a completely empty stomach after a long overnight fast (禁食). On the other occasion, they ate a rich morning meal about two hours before they started walking.
Just before and an hour after each workout, the scientists took additional samples of the men’s blood and fat tissue.
Then they compared the samples. There were considerable differences. Most obviously, the men displayed lower blood sugar levels at the start of their workouts when they had skipped breakfast than when they had eaten. As a result, they burned more fat during walks on an empty stomach than when they had eaten first. On the other hand, they burned slightly more calories (卡路里), on average, during the workout after breakfast than after fasting.
But it was the effects deep within the fat cells that may have been the most significant, the researchers found. Multiple genes behaved differently, depending on whether someone had eaten or not before walking. Many of these genes produce proteins (蛋白质) that can improve blood sugar regulation and insulin (胰岛素) levels throughout the body and so are associated with improved metabolic health. These genes were much more active when the men had fasted before exercise than when they had breakfasted.
The implication of these results is that to gain the greatest health benefits from exercise, it may be wise to skip eating first.
1.The underlined expression “stomach it” in Paragraph 1 most probably means “______”.
A.digest the meal easily B.manage without breakfast
C.decide wisely what to eat D.eat whatever is offered
2.Why were the 10 people chosen for the experiment?
A.Their lifestyles were typical of ordinary people.
B.Their lack of exercise led to overweight.
C.They could walk at an average speed.
D.They had slow metabolic rates.
3.What happened to those who ate breakfast before exercise?
A.They successfully lost weight. B.They consumed a bit more calories.
C.They burned more fat on average. D.They displayed higher insulin levels.
4.What could be learned from the research?
A.A workout after breakfast improves gene performances.
B.Too much workout often slows metabolic rates.
C.Lifestyle is not as important as morning exercise.
D.Physical exercise before breakfast is better for health.
Sometimes it’s hard to let go. For many British people, that can apply to institutions and objects that represent their country’s past-age-old castles, splendid homes… and red phone boxes.
Beaten first by the march of technology and lately by the terrible weather in junkyards (废品场), the phone boxes representative of an age are now making something of a comeback. Adapted in imaginative ways, many have reappeared on city streets and village greens housing tiny cafes, cellphone repair shops or even defibrillator machines (除颤器).
The original iron boxes with the round roofs first appeared in 1926. They were designed by Giles Gilbert Scott, the architect of the Battersea Power Station in London. After becoming an important part of many British streets, the phone boxes began disappearing in the 1980s, with the rise of the mobile phone sending most of them away to the junkyards.
About that time, Tony Inglis’ engineering and transport company got the job to remove phone boxes from the streets and sell them out. But Inglis ended up buying hundreds of them himself, with the idea of repairing and selling them. He said that he had heard the calls to preserve the boxes and had seen how some of them were listed as historic buildings.
As Inglis and, later other businessmen, got to work, repurposed phone boxes began reappearing in cities and villages as people found new uses for them. Today, they are once again a familiar sight, playing roles that are often just as important for the community as their original purpose.
In rural areas, where ambulances can take a relatively long time to arrive, the phone boxes have taken on a lifesaving role. Local organizations can adopt them for l pound, and install defibrillators to help in emergencies.
Others also looked at the phone boxes and saw business opportunities. LoveFone, a company that advocates repairing cellphones rather than abandoning them, opened a mini workshop in a London phone box in 2016.
The tiny shops made economic sense, according to Robert Kerr, a founder of LoveFone. He said that one of the boxes generated around $13,500 in revenue a month and cost only about $400 to rent.
Inglis said phone boxes called to mind an age when things were built to last. I “like what they are to people, and I enjoy bringing things back,” he said.
1.The phone boxes are making a comeback ______.
A.to form a beautiful sight of the city
B.to improve telecommunications services
C.to remind people of a historical period
D.to meet the requirement of green economy
2.Why did the phone boxes begin to go out of service in the 1980s?
A.They were not well-designed. B.They provided bad services.
C.They had too short a history. D.They lost to new technologies.
3.The phone boxes are becoming popular mainly because of ______.
A.their new appearance and lower prices B.the push of the local organizations
C.their changed roles and functions D.the big funding of the businessmen
Some important dates in China’s fighting Covid-19 before May 7,2020 | |
Jan 20, 2020~ Feb 20,2020 | Jan 23: Wuhan declared temporary outbound (向外的) traffic restrictions. Jan 24: National medical teams began to be sent to Hubei and wuhan. Jan 27: The Central Steering (指导) Group arrived in Wuhan. Feb 18: The daily number of newly cured and discharged (出院) patients exceeded that of the newly confirmed cases. |
Feb 21, 2020~ Mar 17,2020 | Feb 21: Most provinces and equivalent administrative units started to lower their public health emergency response level. Feb 24: The WHO-China Joint Mission on Covid-19 held a press conference in Beijing. Mar 11-17: The epidemic (流行病) peak had passed in China as a whole. |
Mar 18,2020 ~Apr 28,2020 | Apr1: Chinese customs began NAT (核酸检测) on inbound arrivals at all points of entry. Apr 8: Wuhan lifted outbound traffic restrictions. Apr 26: The last Covid-19 patient in Wuhan was discharged from hospital. |
Apr 29, 2020~ May 7,2020 | Apr 30: The public health emergency response was lowered to Level 2 in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. May 7: The State Council released Guidelines on Conducting Covid-19 Prevention and Control on an Ongoing Basis. |
1.What happened between January 20 and February 20?
A.The Central Steering Group arrived in Wuhan.
B.The WHO-China Joint Mission on Covid-19 held a press conference.
C.The last Covid-19 patient in Wuhan was discharged from hospital.
D.Beijing lowered its emergency response level.
2.From which date were private cars allowed to go out of Wuhan?
A.January 23. B.March 11. C.April 8. D.May 7.
Being good at something and having a passion for it are not enough. Success _______ fundamentally on our view of ourselves and of the _________ in our lives.
When twelve-year-old John Wilson walked into his chemistry class on a rainy day in 1931, he had no _______ of knowing that his life was to change _________. The class experiment that day was to _________ how heating a container of water would bring air bubbling (冒泡) to the surface. _________, the container the teacher gave Wilson to heat _________ held something more volatile (易挥发的) than water. When Wilson heated it, the container _______, leaving Wilson blinded in both eyes.
When Wilson returned home from hospital two months later, his parents _________ to find a way to deal with the catastrophe that had ____________ their lives. But Wilson did not regard the accident as ____________. He learned braille (盲文) quickly and continued his education at Worcester College for the Blind. There, he not only did well as a student but also became a(n)____________ public speaker.
Later, he worked in Africa, where many people suffered from ____________ for lack of proper treatment. For him, it was one thing to __________ his own fate of being blind and quite another to allow something to continue __________ it could be fixed so easily. This moved him to action. And tens of millions in Africa and Asia can see because of the ____________ Wilson made to preventing the ____________.
Wilson received several international ____________ for his great contributions. He lost his sight but found a __________. He proved that it’s not what happens to us that ____________ our lives-it’s what we make of what happens.
1.A.depends B.holds C.keeps D.reflects
2.A.dilemmas B.accidents C.events D.steps
3.A.way B.hope C.plan D.measure
4.A.continually B.gradually C.gracefully D.completely
5.A.direct B.show C.advocate D.declare
6.A.Anyway B.Moreover C.Somehow D.Thus
7.A.mistakenly B.casually C.amazingly D.clumsily
8.A.erupted B.exploded C.emptied D.exposed
9.A.deserved B.attempted C.cared D.agreed
10.A.submitted to B.catered for C.impressed on D.happened to
11.A.fantastic B.extraordinary C.impressive D.catastrophic
12.A.accomplished B.crucial C.specific D.innocent
13.A.deafness B.depression C.blindness D.speechlessness
14.A.decide B.abandon C.control D.accept
15.A.until B.when C.unless D.before
16.A.opposition B.adjustments C.commitment D.limitations
17.A.preventable B.potential C.spreadable D.influential
18.A.scholarships B.rewards C.awards D.bonuses
19.A.fortune B.recipe C.dream D.vision
20.A.distinguishes B.determines C.claims D.limits
—Do you know anything about Zhang Zhongjing?
—______ He has been honored as a master doctor since the Eastern Han Dynasty.
A.How come? B.So what? C.By all means. D.With pleasure.
The speed of 6G will exceed 125 GB/s, ______ a new generation of virtual reality.
A.allowing for B.accounting for C.calling for D.compensating for
