Research Shows Walking Can Lift Depression
　　New research by German scientists shows that author Charles Dickens was onto a good thing1 when he took long, brisk walks to relieve periodic bouts of depression. The author of Oliver Twist and David Coppeifield 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 in 10 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 up4 as 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 third5 and on the self-assessed scores by 25 per cent, 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 轻快的 periodic 周期性的
　　bout (疾病的)发作 antidote 解毒剂;矫正办法
　　alternate .交替 euphoria 欣快症,异常欣快
　　aerobic 需氧的,有氧健身法的 regime 制度
　　treadmill 跑步机 severity 严重程度
　　pharmacological 药理学的 melancholia 郁症
　　biographer 传记作者 irritability 急躁,易怒
　　注释:
　　1.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...，例如：Day alternates with night.昼夜交替。
　　He alternated between high spirits and low spirits.他的情绪忽高忽低。
　　He often alternates from one extreme to another.他常走极端。
　　step up：逐步增加
　　4.fell by a third：下降了三分之一。介词by可以用来表示升高、增加或降低、减少的程度。
　　5.something modern psychologists would certainly recognize:而这些病情现代心理学家一定能够识别出来。something 是前面“heavy moods of deep depression”and many times of “intense nervous irritability”的同位语，something后面是个定语从句,省去关系代词that。
　　练习：
　　A. The number included five who had not found any relief using drug treatment.
　　B. Long and brisk walks are not necessarily beneficial to every person.
　　C. They studied 12 people with severe depression that had lasted an average of nine months.
　　D. The outcome indicated a clinical benefit which could not be obtained with pharmacological treatment currently available, they said.
　　E. This is also the advice that experts from the Free University in Berlin are giving today.
　　F. According to the regime, intense activity lasting three minutes was alternated with walking at half speed for three minutes.
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