Name: Sự tiến hóa của sự lười biếng: Tại sao con người lại chống đối việc tập gym | Daniel Lieberman: Phỏng vấn đầy đủ (The evolution of laziness: Why humans resist the gym | Daniel Lieberman: Full Interview)
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My name is Dan Lieberman. I'm a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University, and I'm the author of Exercised, Why Something We Never Evolved to Do is Healthy and Rewarding.

Tên tôi là Dan Lieberman. Tôi là giáo sư về sinh học tiến hóa con người tại Đại học Harvard, và tôi là tác giả của cuốn sách "Exercised: Tại sao việc chúng ta chưa bao giờ tiến hóa để làm lại có lợi cho sức khỏe và mang lại niềm vui".

Chapter 1. How Evolution Shaped the Human Body

Chương 1. Cách tiến hóa đã định hình cơ thể con người

If you want to understand anything about human beings, from our behavior to our biology, right, there are sort of two ways of thinking about humans and the way we are. One is a kind of a mechanistic set of explanations, right? You know, how does my immune system work? You know, how do my muscles work? You know, how does my brain, you know, create memories and how do I speak, etc. Those are the kind of bread and butter of most aspects of biology. But our bodies weren't engineered. They're not machines. They evolved. And so if you want to understand why we do what we do, why our brains work the way they do, why our feet work the way they do, why we run, you know, why our immune systems function the way they do, the only explanation for those sets of questions is an evolutionary question, you know, because evolution explains why things are the way they are. And so, you know, good biology combines both how questions, processes, with ultimate questions, you know, why explanations, which have to be evolutionary. And on top of that, because we're humans, I think you also have to add on anthropology, because just as there's an old expression, nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution, I would say that nothing about human behavior makes sense except in the light of culture and in anthropology.

Nếu bạn muốn hiểu bất kỳ điều gì về con người, từ hành vi đến sinh học của chúng ta, thì có hai cách tiếp cận để hiểu con người và cách chúng ta tồn tại. Một là cách giải thích theo hướng cơ học, đúng không? Bạn biết đấy, hệ miễn dịch của tôi hoạt động nh

And we need to understand the cultural component to our behaviors as well. So a really kind of full, complete explanation of anything, including exercise, but it could also be diet, it could be language, it could be anything, we really need to integrate not just, you know, standard sort of physiology and, you know, other kind of branches of biology, but we also need to think about them from an evolutionary perspective. And it always helps to include an anthropological perspective.

Và chúng ta cũng cần hiểu thành phần văn hóa trong hành vi của mình. Vì vậy, để có một giải thích toàn diện và đầy đủ về bất kỳ điều gì, bao gồm cả tập luyện, chế độ ăn uống, ngôn ngữ hay bất kỳ điều gì khác, chúng ta thực sự cần tích hợp không chỉ các kh

I started off my career as kind of a head guy. I studied fossils, and I was interested in, you know, when humans evolved and why we had sort of the shape heads we do. We have very weird heads, by the way. And I got very interested in the topic of how we stabilize our heads when we run. So if you ever, like, watch somebody running, and you see that they have a ponytail, right? That ponytail will do like this crazy figure eight, right? And it's kind of fun to follow somebody when they're running that way. And that ponytail is like an accelerometer on the head. It's telling you the forces that are acting on the head. And yet, despite all those crazy forces, we managed to keep our heads really still. And most animals, the way they keep their head still is they have, you know, a neck that comes out the back of the head, and the neck comes out of the front of the thorax, and they can kind of flex and extend their neck and keep it still. But we can't, because we have tiny little short necks that come out of the bottom of our heads. We're like pogo sticks when we run. And so I did some experiments on how we stabilize our head when we run. And that led to the realization that we have these special adaptations that evolved around two million years ago that only function to stabilize the head when you're running. And as I said, they showed up like two million years ago in the fossil record. And all of a sudden, I had this interest in how we evolved to become really good long-distance runners. And from there, it just kind of took off. I've been working in Kenya for a long time, but I've been specifically working in the western part of Kenya around the city of Eldoret. And it's a wonderful natural experiment to study how bodies are changing as we go into sort of industrial lifestyles, urban lifestyles.

Tôi bắt đầu sự nghiệp của mình với vai trò là một chuyên gia về hóa thạch. Tôi nghiên cứu hóa thạch và quan tâm đến việc con người tiến hóa như thế nào và tại sao chúng ta lại có hình dạng đầu như hiện nay. Thực ra, đầu của chúng ta khá kỳ lạ đấy. Và tôi 

So because the city of Eldoret's the fifth largest city in Kenya, it's a very big, modern sort of urban sort of African city. And then just a few miles out of the city is a very rural area where there's no roads, there's no electricity, there's no running water. People are subsistence farmers, but from the same group, the Kalenjin-speaking population. And so we have a kind of a natural experiment. We can study how people's bodies change when they go from the countryside to the city. And so one of the things we were really interested in is carrying, because people, until recently, carried things a lot. I mean, everything you wanted to have, you had to carry.

Vì thành phố Eldoret là thành phố lớn thứ năm ở Kenya, nên đây là một thành phố lớn, hiện đại, mang đậm nét đô thị của châu Phi. Và chỉ cách thành phố vài dặm là một khu vực nông thôn hẻo lánh, nơi không có đường sá, không có điện, không có nước máy. Ngườ

You carried your babies, you carried your food, you carried your water, you carried your fuel.

Bạn đã mang theo con cái của mình, bạn đã mang theo thức ăn, bạn đã mang theo nước, bạn đã mang theo nhiên liệu.

And people there carry a ton of water. And we wanted to do some experiments on how women, especially women, carry huge amounts of weight on their head. And they don't seem to spend that much energy. And so our idea was to use a treadmill, because it's a lot easier to measure some of these things on a treadmill. And we'd have them carry the kinds of things they normally carry. We put on a respirometry mask to measure the oxygen and do some biomechanics to study how they do their gait, et cetera. So we bought this treadmill and schlepped it all these horrible roads to the nearest place we could plug it in. And then we brought the people from the area where we're doing research to the treadmill and put people on the treadmill. And if you've never been on a treadmill your whole life and all of a sudden somebody sticks you on a treadmill and you start walking, it's kind of a weird experience. And we realized that we couldn't really do the experiment because people weren't walking normally on the treadmill. So we abandoned the treadmill. After all that money and expense, we gave the treadmill to a local school and did our experiments by having people walk on ground as they normally do. And to me, it's a perfect manifestation, it's a perfect demonstration of the fact that treadmills are really weird. They're a strange, modern piece of equipment that we buy, we spend a lot of money on, and we spend a lot of money to go to a gym that makes you work really hard to get to stay in the same place. It's the apotheosis of exercise. And that's why in the book I spend a lot of time making fun of treadmills.

Và người dân ở đó mang theo một lượng nước khổng lồ. Chúng tôi muốn tiến hành một số thí nghiệm về cách phụ nữ, đặc biệt là phụ nữ, mang vác những khối lượng lớn trên đầu. Và họ dường như không tiêu tốn quá nhiều năng lượng. Vì vậy, ý tưởng của chúng tôi 

And by the way, if you think treadmills are a form of torture, I think it's kind of interesting that kind of the modern treadmill's origins are in Victorian prisons where they were actually invented as a form of torture. They were invented to keep prisoners from enjoying themselves. They made them trudge for hours and hours on these early treadmills. I don't know anybody who really enjoys being on a treadmill. Most of us, if we're forced to be on a treadmill, we either listen to a podcast or some music or watch something on our iPhones or whatever to kind of make it tolerable. But they really kind of, to me, epitomize how so many modern forms of exercise are kind of like cod liver oil. They're not really pleasant, right? We do them because they're good for us, but it's not fun. And so it's like taking your medicine. I study the human body and why it is the way it is. And I'm especially interested in the evolution of physical activity. And as I've been studying walking and running and various other sort of physical activities, it's become really clear to me that a lot of people are exercised about exercise. They're anxious. They're confused. They don't understand what's the right amount of exercise to do. They have trouble getting off the couch. And they feel kind of shamed and blamed for not being as physically active as they might like to be. And so I wanted to write a book to try to debunk a lot of myths about physical activity and about exercise using the lenses of evolution and anthropology. So the word exercise comes from the Latin exercisio, and it meant to train. So we still do math exercises or soldiers do exercises to get fit. But eventually the term has changed its meaning and it's developed new meanings. So on one hand, it means to do voluntary physical activity for the sake of health and fitness. That's that kind of sort of fitness, physical activity kind of exercise. But on the other hand, it also means to be exercised. It means to be upset, to be confused, to be anxious, to be kind of worried about something. And then again, we get exercised by our math exercises. And so to me, it's part and parcel of this strange concept of exercise. It's this modern idea of doing voluntary, discretionary physical activity for the sake of health and fitness. But we don't do it often. Most people don't do it because they want to. They do it because it helps stave off death and decrepitude. And in the modern world, of course, a lot of people are confused about it because they find it hard to do. They're not quite sure how much to do. There are all kinds of myths surrounding it. So very much people are exercised about exercise today. And really, I think that by shining the light of evolution and using kind of an anthropological perspective, my goal really is to help people be less exercised about exercise.

Và nhân tiện, nếu bạn nghĩ rằng máy chạy bộ là một hình thức tra tấn, tôi thấy khá thú vị khi nguồn gốc của máy chạy bộ hiện đại thực ra xuất phát từ các nhà tù thời Victoria, nơi chúng được phát minh như một hình thức tra tấn. Chúng được tạo ra để ngăn t

I would say that the definition I use of exercise is pretty much the bog standard definition that people in the fitness, exercise science world use. It's important to make a distinction between physical activity and exercise. So physical activity is just moving. When you do anything, go shop, pick up your groceries and take them to your car, that's physical activity. When you sweep the kitchen floor, that's physical activity. But exercise is discretionary, voluntary physical activity for the sake of health and fitness. So it can include everything from sports to running on a treadmill to going for a walk. I think the paradox of exercise is that everybody knows it's good for them. I don't know that really anyone who says they don't want to ever exercise. But the paradox is that most things that are good for us kind of want to do. But exercise is kind of the reverse. It's something that we all know we want to do. It's good for us.

Tôi cho rằng định nghĩa về tập luyện mà tôi sử dụng gần như là định nghĩa tiêu chuẩn mà những người trong lĩnh vực thể dục, khoa học tập luyện thường dùng. Điều quan trọng là phải phân biệt giữa hoạt động thể chất và tập luyện. Hoạt động thể chất đơn giản

And yet a lot of us have a hard time doing it. The proof is in the data. According to the CDC, only about 20% of Americans get the very minimum levels of exercise that every health organization in the world thinks is the minimum for an adult, which is 150 minutes a week. So 80% of us really struggle and fail to get the very basic amounts of exercise. But almost everyone says that they want to get enough exercise. The most common reason that people don't like to do exercise when you ask them is that they don't have time. They find it stressful and they're busy. And that's a legitimate concern for a lot of people. Imagine if you have to commute a long distance, you have a job that is very sedentary, you've got to deal with your kids in the evening, or maybe you have two jobs or whatever. It's very challenging for people to exercise and to find the time in the modern world. The other reason that people often give for not exercising is they don't like to.

Và thế nhưng, nhiều người trong chúng ta vẫn gặp khó khăn trong việc thực hiện điều đó. Bằng chứng nằm ở dữ liệu. Theo Trung tâm Kiểm soát và Phòng ngừa Dịch bệnh (CDC), chỉ khoảng 20% người Mỹ đạt được mức tập luyện tối thiểu mà mọi tổ chức y tế trên thế

They find it uncomfortable. They find it unpleasant. They get hot and bothered and they don't feel like they get much reward out of it. And so there's a lot of inertia that prevents people from doing it. They have a hard time getting off the couch. And

Họ cảm thấy khó chịu. Họ thấy không thoải mái. Họ cảm thấy bực bội và không thấy được nhiều lợi ích từ việc đó. Và vì vậy, có rất nhiều sự trì trệ khiến mọi người không muốn làm điều đó. Họ gặp khó khăn trong việc rời khỏi ghế sofa. Và

I think we need to be compassionate towards both of those reasons. Because yes, people are stressed for time. And yes, it is often unpleasant and unfun. But we make them feel bad about that.

Tôi nghĩ chúng ta cần phải thông cảm với cả hai lý do đó. Bởi vì đúng là mọi người đang bị áp lực về thời gian. Và đúng là điều đó thường không thoải mái và không vui vẻ. Nhưng chúng ta lại khiến họ cảm thấy tồi tệ vì điều đó.

We make them feel bad for being stressed. We make them feel bad for having that inertia when actually it's completely normal. Nobody ever exercised in the Stone Age. People were physically active when they had to be. And they might dance or do other things that were for fun. But volitionally going on a five-mile run in the morning or going to the gym to lift weights whose sole purpose is to be lifted, that's a really strange, weird, modern behavior. And there are all kinds of instincts that we have not to do it. And we shouldn't make people feel bad for having those instincts.

Chúng ta khiến họ cảm thấy tồi tệ vì bị căng thẳng. Chúng ta khiến họ cảm thấy tồi tệ vì có sự trì trệ, trong khi thực tế điều đó hoàn toàn bình thường. Không ai tập thể dục trong thời kỳ Đồ Đá. Con người chỉ hoạt động thể chất khi cần thiết. Họ có thể nh

Instead, we should help them figure out ways to overcome those instincts. Because we live in a world where we now, because we've mechanized everything, we no longer have to be physically active. We now, in a very strange way, have to choose to be physically active. And that's not so easy. Oh my gosh, there are so many myths about exercise. It's hard to know where to start. But

Thay vào đó, chúng ta nên giúp họ tìm ra cách để vượt qua những bản năng đó. Bởi vì chúng ta đang sống trong một thế giới mà bây giờ, do chúng ta đã cơ giới hóa mọi thứ, chúng ta không còn phải hoạt động thể chất nữa. Bây giờ, theo một cách rất kỳ lạ, chú

I would say that one myth is that our ancestors were just natural, incredible athletes who just get up in the bed in the morning and run ultra-marathons at will without much stress or difficulty, that our ancestors were really incredibly strong, that there's a trade-off between speed and strength, that it's normal to be less physically active as you get older, that there's a perfect type of exercise, perfect amount of exercise, that sports equals exercise.

Tôi cho rằng một quan niệm sai lầm là tổ tiên của chúng ta chỉ là những vận động viên tự nhiên, phi thường, có thể thức dậy vào buổi sáng và chạy marathon siêu dài một cách dễ dàng mà không gặp nhiều căng thẳng hay khó khăn, rằng tổ tiên của chúng ta thực

I could go on. The topic of exercise is just laden with myths. A common view about our evolutionary origins and about the evolution of physical activity is that we evolved from these super athlete ancestors and that civilization has contaminated us. So if you wear shoes or you drink Gatorade or you have a fancy watch or something like that, somehow that deprives you of the natural talent that you have. And if only you had been born in some little village somewhere and didn't have TV and didn't have access to all these commercial goods, that you'd be a natural, incredible athlete and that you could just get out of bed and run an ultra-marathon or something like that. A lot of these myths, to be honest, stem from, I think, this idea of this Rousseauian idea of the myth of the noble savage, that humans uncontaminated by civilization are also sort of naturally good and fine. And they also come from terrible, horrible, racist stereotypes about, for example, Africans not experiencing pain as much and Asians having some kind of natural sort of proclivity to sneak around in the dark. We all know these stereotypes and they're pernicious and they're wrong, but they've been applied in various ways to hunter-gatherers and to subsistence farmers in various parts of the world to make us feel that somehow they're these kind of basically fundamental super-athletes.

Tôi có thể tiếp tục. Chủ đề về tập luyện thể dục thể thao chứa đầy những quan niệm sai lầm. Một quan điểm phổ biến về nguồn gốc tiến hóa của chúng ta và sự tiến hóa của hoạt động thể chất là chúng ta đã tiến hóa từ những tổ tiên là vận động viên xuất sắc 

And when you do that, I think you do harm to people all around the planet. You do harm to those populations because you kind of dehumanize them. I mean, when they run an ultra-marathon, it's just as hard as when I were to try to run an ultra-marathon. They sweat, they toil, they get nausea, they get cramps. They do it not because it's easy for them. They do it because they value it. They think it's worth doing. And you also make people in the West feel terrible, like somehow there's something wrong with them, right? And they should throw away their shoes and eat a paleo diet or something like that. And all of a sudden, ta-da, they'll become this amazing athlete. And that's just not true. That's just a myth.

Và khi bạn làm điều đó, tôi nghĩ bạn đang gây hại cho con người trên toàn hành tinh. Bạn gây hại cho những cộng đồng đó vì bạn đang làm mất nhân tính của họ. Ý tôi là, khi họ tham gia một cuộc đua ultra-marathon, nó cũng khó khăn như khi tôi cố gắng tham 

And so it's pernicious in a variety of ways. In 2012, I had the good fortune to be invited to go to the Ironman World Championships in Kona in Hawaii. It's an amazing event, right? And if you don't know what a full Ironman triathlon is like, you start off with a 2.4-mile open-water swim. Then the athletes rush out of the water, jump onto bikes with these high-tech helmets and stuff like that. They speed off, and they do a 112-mile bike ride across the desert. And then they come back, throw off their bike, jump off their bikes, and then they do a full marathon in the heat. It's like 90 degrees Fahrenheit, right? It's really amazing. And the elite athletes do this in a little bit over eight hours. They're just like cyborgs. They're not like human beings. It's astonishing to watch. And then the lesser athletes take longer to do, and everybody has to finish by 17 hours, so by midnight. It's just astonishing to see people put their bodies through that kind of endurance to achieve something like that. And I was really impressed by that. I'd never seen a full Ironman before. And then just a few weeks later, I was in a very rural part of Mexico, in Chihuahua, up in the Sierra Tarahumara, where I got to observe a rara hippery, which is the traditional foot race that the Tarahumara Native Americans do. And it's kind of almost like a soccer game. There are two teams, and they have a little ball, a little round ball that's carved out of wood that morning. And there are about five people on each team, and they kind of kick the ball with their feet and then chase it and find it and kick it again and chase it and find it and kick it again. There's like a little circuit they do, and there are two teams, and whichever team laps the other team wins. And the race I saw must have been about 40, 50 miles long. And so it's another incredible endurance event. And on the surface, you'd say, oh my god, these events are totally different. Ironman is very commercial, and everybody's wearing the fanciest, latest gear. And they've got super fancy shoes. They're using gel and goo and all kinds of specially formulated nutrition drinks. And their bikes cost like $10,000, $20,000.

Và vì vậy, nó có tác động tiêu cực theo nhiều cách khác nhau. Năm 2012, tôi may mắn được mời tham dự Giải vô địch Ironman thế giới tại Kona, Hawaii. Đó là một sự kiện tuyệt vời, phải không? Và nếu bạn không biết một cuộc thi Ironman toàn phần diễn ra như 

And it's very commercial. And there are speakers and crowds, et cetera. Whereas the Tarahumara, when they're running, they're just wearing the clothes that they normally wear. They're running in sandals. It's very uncommercial. And you think, oh my gosh, it's so different. One is more authentic than the other. But if you stop and think, actually, they're very similar, right?

Và nó rất thương mại. Có loa phát thanh và đám đông, v.v. Trong khi đó, người Tarahumara khi chạy bộ chỉ mặc những bộ quần áo họ thường mặc. Họ chạy bộ trong dép xăng đan. Nó rất không thương mại. Và bạn nghĩ, ôi trời ơi, nó khác biệt đến vậy. Một bên châ

Because both involve rewards, right? So Ironman, there's the winner, and the winner gets a prize, et cetera. Well, the Tarahumara also have prizes. They bet huge amounts of stuff, right? They bet clothes and goats and corn and stuff like that. They don't have Gatorade, but they make their own form of Gatorade out of corn. And they cheer on their runners, too. And there's the joy of victory and the agony of defeat and all that. So in some ways, they're very different. But in other ways, it's kind of the same thing. And it's a personal journey that people undertake, a very small number of them. The vast majority of people are observers. They're not participants.

Vì cả hai đều liên quan đến phần thưởng, đúng không? Vậy Ironman, có người chiến thắng, và người chiến thắng nhận được giải thưởng, v.v. Còn Tarahumara cũng có giải thưởng. Họ đặt cược những thứ rất giá trị, đúng không? Họ đặt cược quần áo, dê, ngô và nhữ

So really, it made me realize that, oh, yes, there are some differences between more modern, commercialized Western forms of endurance physical activity. This is something basic and fundamental that all cultures do. And actually, I think what makes us similar is greater than what makes us different. There are different kinds of training, right? Play is a form of training, in a way, right? Children play, right? Because they're learning skills. They're developing capacities. And humans are one of the few species, dogs are another, that continue to play as adults, and that play helps us maintain our capacities. It helps us with social relationships. I mean, there's all kinds of good things that happen with play, right? But exercise is kind of very,

Thực sự, điều đó khiến tôi nhận ra rằng, ồ vâng, có một số khác biệt giữa các hình thức hoạt động thể chất bền bỉ hiện đại, thương mại hóa của phương Tây. Đây là điều cơ bản và cốt lõi mà tất cả các nền văn hóa đều thực hiện. Và thực tế, tôi nghĩ những đi

I wouldn't say exercise is generally play, although some play is exercise. And when you kind of exercise in order to train for an event, you're doing something, you're spending a lot of energy, you're doing physical activity kind of to get ready for something, right? And certainly, you know, for the kinds of things that we do, again, that's a very modern Western behavior.

Tôi không nghĩ rằng tập thể dục nói chung là một hình thức giải trí, mặc dù một số hoạt động giải trí có thể được coi là tập thể dục. Và khi bạn tập thể dục để chuẩn bị cho một sự kiện nào đó, bạn đang làm một việc gì đó, tiêu tốn rất nhiều năng lượng, th

So when I was talking to, and I've talked to Native American runners who participate in these long-distance races, when I asked them how they get ready for the race, how they train, they would kind of look at me like they didn't understand the question. There was, you know, what are you talking about? And so, you know, I was working with the translator. The translator was saying, you know, this gringo, he runs five miles every day to kind of get ready for a race.

Khi tôi trò chuyện với những vận động viên chạy bộ người Mỹ bản địa tham gia các cuộc đua đường dài, khi tôi hỏi họ cách họ chuẩn bị cho cuộc đua, cách họ tập luyện, họ nhìn tôi như thể không hiểu câu hỏi. Họ như thể đang nghĩ: "Bạn đang nói về cái gì vậy

And, you know, the question that I got was, you know, why would you run if you didn't have to, right? Because their life is their training, right? You know, when I ask people there or ask people in Africa, in the places where I work, you know, like, when do you run? The most common answer I get is, oh, well, to chase a goat. You know, that's the most common answer I get.

Và, bạn biết đấy, câu hỏi mà tôi nhận được là, bạn biết đấy, tại sao bạn lại chạy nếu không cần thiết, đúng không? Bởi vì cuộc sống của họ chính là quá trình rèn luyện của họ, đúng không? Bạn biết đấy, khi tôi hỏi những người ở đó hoặc hỏi những người ở c

There are a lot of ways to quantify how physically active somebody is, right? And a very simple one, it's not necessarily the best one, but a simple way of doing it is what's called the physical activity level. It's just a ratio. So it's the total amount of energy you spend in a day divided by the energy you would spend if you were just in, you know, at bedrest, what's called your basal metabolic rates, the energy you spend just taking care of the most basic essential functions of your body. And so, say if you're in bedrest, you know, in a hospital and, you know, lying in bed with just like a clicker for the TV and you're doing absolutely nothing, not even digesting food, your physical activity level would be about, your power, physical activity level would be about a 1.2. And if you're like a Tour de France cyclist, it would be above 3. If you're kind of a desk worker, it would be like 1.6. So it's kind of a way to compare individuals but also species because it's standardized by how your body size, because your body size essentially determines your basal metabolic rate. And it's interesting that most animals have physical activity levels of about 2 to 3. So they're, you know, pretty active.

Có rất nhiều cách để đo lường mức độ hoạt động thể chất của một người, đúng không? Và một cách rất đơn giản, không hẳn là tốt nhất, nhưng cách đơn giản để làm điều đó được gọi là mức độ hoạt động thể chất. Đó chỉ là một tỷ lệ. Vì vậy, đó là tổng lượng năn

We evolved from apes and it turns out that primates in general and apes in particular have really low PALs, really low physical activity levels. Chimpanzees have physical activity levels of about 1.4. And so their physical activity levels are actually lower than sedentary Americans. So your average sedentary American who doesn't really do much and, you know, spends most of his or her time in chairs and, you know, etc. and takes elevators and all that is still more physically active actually than your average chimpanzee. Whereas hunter-gatherers, people who, you know, every day have to go out and get their food, their physical activity levels tend to be around 2, about, you know, 1.92. Or subsistence farmers who don't have a lot of machines and tractors and stuff like that, they're maybe a little bit harder working, maybe 2.1, 2.2. And it really, it wasn't until the industrial revolution that people's physical activity levels were able to go back, go down like about 25% to, you know, 1.6, 1.7, which is sort of typical of your average American. So it's a useful kind of simple standard to help us compare just generally how active different groups or different individuals are.

Chúng ta tiến hóa từ loài khỉ và hóa ra, các loài linh trưởng nói chung và loài khỉ nói riêng có mức hoạt động thể chất (PAL) rất thấp, tức là mức độ hoạt động thể chất rất thấp. Khỉ đột có mức độ hoạt động thể chất khoảng 1,4. Vì vậy, mức độ hoạt động th

So your basal metabolic rate is a really important number because it tells you kind of just how much energy you're spending on just the essential maintenance of your body, you know, paying for your brain and paying for all the tissues in your body. And, you know, you have to turn over tissues all the time, like the cells in your gut are being replaced like every five days or so. I mean, your fingernails are growing. Everything's happening in your body, right? And that all costs energy. And it turns out that a kind of typical, say, adult male my size, right? I'm not all that big, but, you know, spends about two-thirds of his or her physical metabolism just on basal metabolic rate. So I spend about 1600 calories a day just existing, you know, just taking care of my body. So the vast majority of the energy that we spend isn't spent on running around and being physically active and moving. It's actually spent on just maintenance, just basic total maintenance. And that's one of the reasons why we kind of evolved not to be, you know, all that physically active when it wasn't necessary. Because until recently, energy used to be limited, right? It wasn't like, you know, 7-Elevens or Dunkin' Donuts or

Vậy, tỷ lệ trao đổi chất cơ bản (BMR) của bạn là một con số rất quan trọng vì nó cho biết lượng năng lượng bạn tiêu hao chỉ để duy trì các chức năng cơ bản của cơ thể, như cung cấp năng lượng cho não bộ và các mô trong cơ thể. Và, bạn biết đấy, các mô tro

Whole Foods or whatever your, you know, favorite place to get food is right around the corner.

Whole Foods hay bất kỳ nơi nào bạn thích mua thực phẩm đều nằm ngay gần đây.

You know, if you wanted something to eat, you had to go find it. You had to either, you know, hunt it or gather it or dig it up. And so energy was limited. And when energy is limited, you have to engage in trade-offs, right? And so if you spend energy on physical activity, that means you're not spending energy on taking care of your body or reproducing, which is what the only thing natural selection really cares about. And so the fact that our bodies are so expensive helps explain why we tend to avoid unnecessary physical activity. Because it prevents, you know, like for example, this morning I went for a 5-mile run. So I spent about 500 calories. Those are 500 calories that I could have spent on my metabolism. And if I were energy limited, that would have been a bit of a problem, right? Which is why people who are energy limited and already physically active, it makes no sense for them to go for a needless, completely pointless 5-mile run in the morning. So technically, a calorie is the amount of energy it takes to raise one gram of water one degree centigrade. So it's a unit of energy. And so we convert various kinds of energy into calories. There are, of course, other units of energy, like the joule, for example. But calories are kind of a useful one because our food is labeled in calories. So a calorie is the most common one. But actually, the calories that we mostly talk about that are on our food labels are actually kilocalories. They're actually 1,000 calories.

Bạn biết đấy, nếu muốn có thứ gì để ăn, bạn phải tự đi tìm. Bạn phải hoặc là săn bắt, hoặc là hái lượm, hoặc là đào bới. Và vì vậy, năng lượng là có hạn. Khi năng lượng có hạn, bạn phải chấp nhận những sự đánh đổi, đúng không? Và nếu bạn tiêu tốn năng lượ

So when you look at a label for a chocolate bar or a can of beans or something, and it says there are 50 calories, it actually means that there are 50,000 calories, right? But anyway, that's neither here nor there. But that's fine. But so most of the time, we're talking about calories with a capital C or Kcal, kilocalories. And our bodies use a lot of calories. A typical human body spends about 2,000 to 3,000 calories or, in this case, kilocalories a day existing. That's your basal metabolic rate plus all the energy you spend running around, doing chores, making dinner, whatever it is you do for your day. When you go for a walk, you probably spend an extra 50 calories per mile. If you go for a run, you're spending probably an extra 100 calories per mile for that run. So that hopefully gives you a sense of what kind of energy amounts we're talking about.

Khi bạn nhìn vào nhãn của một thanh sô-cô-la hoặc một lon đậu hoặc thứ gì đó, và nó ghi có 50 calo, thực ra điều đó có nghĩa là có 50.000 calo, đúng không? Nhưng dù sao thì điều đó cũng không quan trọng. Nhưng điều đó cũng được. Nhưng phần lớn thời gian, 

Chapter two, smarter sitting, smarter sleeping. All right, so I'm sitting here talking to you.

Chương hai, ngồi thông minh, ngủ thông minh. Được rồi, vậy là tôi đang ngồi đây nói chuyện với bạn.

But other than that, I'm basically doing nothing. Maybe I'm gesticulating a little bit, moving my mouth. But I'm completely physically inactive in any other regard. But even now, I'm spending a fair amount of calories just existing. And for every five breaths, one of my breaths is just taking care of my brain. My brain is constantly consuming vast quantities of energy. I spend about three, four, maybe 500, 450 calories a day just paying for my brain. My muscle, even if I'm not doing anything with my muscles, my muscles constantly require energy. My gut is requiring energy. My kidneys require energy. My liver is requiring energy. My heart is requiring energy.

Nhưng ngoài ra, tôi基本上什么也没做。也许我只是稍微比划一下，动动嘴唇。但在其他方面，我完全处于静止状态。但即便如此，我每天光是维持生命活动就消耗了相当多的卡路里。每五次呼吸中，就有一次呼吸专门用于维持大脑功能。大脑时刻都在消耗大量能量。 Tôi tiêu tốn khoảng ba, bốn, có thể là 500, 450 calo mỗi ngày chỉ để duy trì hoạt động của não bộ. Cơ bắp của tôi, ngay cả khi

My immune system, which is taking care of my body and making sure that I don't die from some virus or bacteria, that's taking up energy. So all of these processes are all adding up.

Hệ miễn dịch của tôi, vốn có nhiệm vụ bảo vệ cơ thể và đảm bảo tôi không bị chết vì virus hay vi khuẩn, đang tiêu tốn năng lượng. Vì vậy, tất cả các quá trình này đều góp phần vào việc tiêu hao năng lượng.

And a typical human is spending about 1,300, 1,400, 1,500, 1,600 calories a day just on all those basic processes, even if they're doing nothing else. So just existing is a fairly expensive prospect. And we have unusually expensive bodies in one regard, which is that our brains are really big. So brains are extraordinarily expensive organs. My brain is about 2% of my body weight, but it's using something like a fifth of my metabolism at the moment. Because of all kinds of reasons, it's because there's lots of pumps that have to pump energy in and out of the brain, because I've separated my brain from my bloodstream with this barrier, and neurons are very expensive, and I'm synthesizing all kinds of neurotransmitters.

Và một người bình thường tiêu tốn khoảng 1.300, 1.400, 1.500, 1.600 calo mỗi ngày chỉ cho các quá trình cơ bản, ngay cả khi họ không làm gì khác. Vì vậy, việc tồn tại đã là một điều khá tốn kém. Và cơ thể chúng ta có một đặc điểm đặc biệt tốn kém, đó là n

There's a whole bunch of things going on that make my brain super, super expensive.

Có rất nhiều thứ đang diễn ra khiến đầu óc tôi trở nên cực kỳ, cực kỳ căng thẳng.

And the thing about brains is that they don't store any energy. So unlike my muscles and my liver and other organs, which have some energy on board, all the energy from my brain constantly has to be delivered. And if I stop delivering that energy, even for just a short amount of time,

Và điều đặc biệt về não bộ là chúng không lưu trữ năng lượng. Vì vậy, khác với cơ bắp, gan và các cơ quan khác của tôi, vốn có một lượng năng lượng dự trữ, toàn bộ năng lượng cho não bộ của tôi luôn phải được cung cấp liên tục. Và nếu tôi ngừng cung cấp n

I'll die. So human brains, which are so big, require us to constantly have a little bit of extra energy on board. I decided to start this book on physical activity and exercise with actually discussing physical inactivity, because if you want to understand activity, you need to understand inactivity. There are as many myths about inactivity as there are about activity, and they illustrate, I think, how we make people exercise about health and about physical activity and other such things. And I think, for me, the most pernicious maybe is this idea that sitting is the new smoking. And it's a well-meaning expression. People who are public health experts who are trying to help people be more physically active, they think that by saying, trying to encourage people to get off the couch, get out of their chairs and be more physically active, that sitting is the new smoking as a way of doing that. And it's true that if you're never physically active, you increase your vulnerability to a wide range of diseases. But I think that the idea, that the concept kind of backfires because, look, I mean, the chair that I'm sitting in right now, I mean, it's not like a toxin like a cigarette, and it's not delivering poison to my bloodstream. It's just a completely harmless sort of thing. And furthermore, sitting is very normal. My dog spends most of her day just sitting around the house. If you go to any other part of the world, you go to villages all over the world, if you go to study hunter-gatherers, when they're not physically active, and we've already talked about how they're not physically active all day long, guess what they're doing? They're sitting. Now, they may not be sitting in chairs because they may not necessarily have chairs. They'll be sitting on the ground, or they might have benches or stools. But it turns out that when you measure amounts of sitting in non-Western, non-high-income populations, they sit pretty much as much as we do, about 10 hours a day. So I think we're not honest to people. Instead of saying sitting isn't you smoking and making people feel bad about themselves, why not tell them the truth, which is that there are better ways to sit and worse ways to sit. So it's good to be active when you sit, break up your sitting in bouts. Don't sit for huge amounts of time. Get up every once in a while. Make yourself a cup of tea, scratch the dog or something like that. And then the other is that there are more active kinds of sitting where you use some of your muscles. Right now,

Tôi sẽ chết. Não người, vốn rất lớn, đòi hỏi chúng ta phải luôn có một lượng năng lượng dự trữ nhỏ. Tôi quyết định bắt đầu cuốn sách này về hoạt động thể chất và tập luyện bằng cách thảo luận về sự thiếu hoạt động thể chất, vì nếu muốn hiểu về hoạt động, 

I'm sitting in this comfy chair, and it's stabilizing my back. I don't have to spend any energy. But if I was sitting on a stool or squatting on the ground, I would have to spend some muscles to keep my body going. And all of that just turns on the cellular engine of our body. It's like turning on the car engine. It causes you to use up some of the sugar in your blood. It uses up some of the fats in your blood. It turns on various kinds of genes. It's all good, right? So you don't have to exercise hugely to get some of the benefits of being a little bit more active. Just moving a little bit is actually kind of healthy. And furthermore, when you look at the data on sitting, it turns out that how much you sit at work isn't really that much associated with health outcomes. It's how much people sit in leisure time that's associated with negative health outcomes. So if you sit all day at work, and then you go home, and you sit all day, and you're driving to work, and you're driving home, and you basically never do any physical activity, well, yeah. Then your risk of a wide range of diseases goes up. But if you have a normal desk job, but you also walk around and get some exercise and do various stuff, you're fine.

Tôi đang ngồi trên chiếc ghế êm ái này, và nó giúp ổn định lưng của tôi. Tôi không cần phải tốn sức. Nhưng nếu tôi ngồi trên ghế đẩu hoặc quỳ gối trên mặt đất, tôi sẽ phải dùng sức cơ bắp để duy trì tư thế cơ thể. Và tất cả những điều đó kích hoạt động cơ

There's no evidence that there's any problem with that. It's a completely normal thing to do.

Không có bằng chứng nào cho thấy có vấn đề gì với điều đó. Đó là một việc hoàn toàn bình thường.

So I got interested in the myths about sleep because we're told all the time to sit less, but then we're also told to sleep more. Why is that? What's going on there? And one of the myths about sleep, which is, of course, one of the most fundamental forms of physical inactivity is sleeping, is that the modern Western world has robbed us of sleep. We have television and iPhones and electric light bulbs and all these sorts of things. And ever since Edison, nobody's been able to sleep very much. And yet, I've spent time in various parts of the world where there's no electricity, and people seem to be up all night. I've always wondered about that. And I was delighted to see that there's been some research recently on that. This is not my research, where people have shown that in parts of the world, and we're talking about multiple continents, we're talking about Africa and South America and North America, places where people don't have electricity, people don't sleep eight hours a night. They actually sleep five and a half, six, sometimes seven hours a night. And so there's no evidence whatsoever that people sleep less in the modern industrial world because of televisions and iPhones and stuff like that.

Vì vậy, tôi đã quan tâm đến những quan niệm sai lầm về giấc ngủ vì chúng ta luôn được khuyên nên ngồi ít hơn, nhưng đồng thời cũng được khuyên nên ngủ nhiều hơn. Tại sao lại như vậy? Điều gì đang xảy ra ở đây? Và một trong những quan niệm sai lầm về giấc 

And then furthermore, when you look at the epidemiological data, so you look at how much people sleep, and not just what they say they sleep, but how much they actually sleep using sensors, because who knows actually how much they slept? How can you know that you're asleep?

Và hơn nữa, khi xem xét dữ liệu dịch tễ học, tức là xem xét lượng thời gian mọi người ngủ, không chỉ dựa vào những gì họ nói về giấc ngủ của mình, mà còn dựa vào lượng thời gian họ thực sự ngủ thông qua các cảm biến, vì ai biết được họ thực sự ngủ bao lâu

But if you measure sensor-based data on how much people sleep against their health outcomes on the y-axis, it turns out it's a U-shaped curve. And the bottom of that curve, so the optimal amount of sleep, turns out to be, for most people, around seven. Now, it's not a law. There's some people who do better with eight, and some people better with six, et cetera. But seven turns out to be better than eight for most people. So where this idea that we all need eight hours of sleep is,

Nhưng nếu bạn đo lường dữ liệu từ cảm biến về lượng giấc ngủ của con người so với kết quả sức khỏe của họ trên trục tung, thì hóa ra đó là một đường cong hình chữ U. Và đáy của đường cong đó, tức là lượng giấc ngủ tối ưu, hóa ra đối với đa số người, là kh

I think, pernicious. Now, it's true. It is definitely true that if you don't get enough sleep, you are compromising your health. If you're getting three or four hours of sleep, and you're constantly exhausted, and you fall asleep all the time, that's an issue. And it's worth paying some attention to that. But then just making people feel bad about their sleep, if they're actually getting normal amounts of sleep, just makes them anxious. It makes them concerned. And of course, when you make somebody anxious about sleep, what do you do? You arouse them. You elevate their levels of cortisol, which is a stress hormone. And guess what cortisol does?

Tôi nghĩ, điều đó thật nguy hiểm. Thật vậy, điều đó hoàn toàn đúng. Nếu bạn không ngủ đủ giấc, bạn đang làm tổn hại sức khỏe của mình. Nếu bạn chỉ ngủ được ba hoặc bốn giờ mỗi đêm, luôn cảm thấy mệt mỏi và thường xuyên buồn ngủ, đó là một vấn đề. Và điều 

It keeps you from sleeping. So making people kind of nervous about their sleep sets in motion, or can set in motion, a kind of vicious circle where you make people feel bad about their sleep. And then because of that, they're less likely to sleep. And it kind of drives a positive feedback loop. And so look, we should relax about sleep. We should help people more compassionate. If people aren't getting enough sleep, let's help them figure out ways to get sleep. And do that by treating the cause, not the symptoms of the lack of sleep.

Nó khiến bạn không thể ngủ được. Vì vậy, việc khiến mọi người lo lắng về giấc ngủ của mình có thể tạo ra một vòng luẩn quẩn, nơi bạn khiến họ cảm thấy tồi tệ về giấc ngủ của mình. Và vì điều đó, họ ít có khả năng ngủ hơn. Và điều đó tạo ra một vòng phản h

But let's not make people stressed about it in ways that are unhelpful.

Nhưng đừng khiến mọi người căng thẳng về vấn đề này theo những cách không hữu ích.

If you want to look at the power of culture and affecting biology, sleep is such a great example.

Nếu bạn muốn tìm hiểu về sức mạnh của văn hóa và ảnh hưởng đến sinh học, giấc ngủ là một ví dụ tuyệt vời.

Because in places like America, Western countries, we have such culturally prescribed ways of sleeping that would baffle our ancestors and baffle people in other parts of the world.

Bởi vì ở những nơi như Mỹ, các nước phương Tây, chúng ta có những cách ngủ được quy định bởi văn hóa đến mức sẽ khiến tổ tiên chúng ta và người dân ở các vùng khác trên thế giới cảm thấy bối rối.

We have this idea that sleep is this sort of solitary thing you do in a dark room with no noise and a super comfortable mattress. And we get upset if we hear a car honking or a dog barking or whatever. But for most of human evolution, in many cultures, sleep is a very social thing.

Chúng ta thường nghĩ rằng giấc ngủ là một việc làm riêng tư, diễn ra trong một căn phòng tối, yên tĩnh và có một chiếc giường cực kỳ thoải mái. Và chúng ta cảm thấy khó chịu nếu nghe thấy tiếng còi xe, tiếng chó sủa hay bất kỳ tiếng ồn nào khác. Nhưng tro

People sleep in groups. And you're outside and you hear animals in the distance. And actually hearing them in the distance is maybe a good thing because it helps your brain realize that they're in the distance. They're not nearby. And people sleep on the ground. They don't need to sleep in mattresses. And they don't have fancy pillows and all that kind of stuff. And you can learn to sleep in all kinds of situations if you relax, if you allow yourself. And the fact that we kind of feel like we have to have this sort of special circumstances. I'm no different. I like a nice quiet room and a comfortable mattress and all that sort of stuff. But I do try to remind myself when I have trouble sleeping that you can sleep on an airplane. You can sleep in a chair in a lecture when it's boring. I can sleep in all kinds of crazy places. And I can certainly sleep in this bed tonight if I want to. It's just a question of my mindset, not the environment that

Người ta ngủ theo nhóm. Và bạn ở ngoài trời và nghe thấy tiếng động vật ở xa. Và thực ra, việc nghe thấy chúng ở xa có thể là điều tốt vì nó giúp não bộ nhận ra rằng chúng ở xa. Chúng không ở gần. Và người ta ngủ trên mặt đất. Họ không cần ngủ trên giường

I'm in. Chapter 3. Walking, running, and everyday strength. Humans really suck at speed. I mean, there's just no way around it, right? I mean, as soon as we became bipedal, which was a great thing in some ways, right? About 7 million years ago, probably to save energy when we were walking.

Tôi đồng ý. Chương 3. Đi bộ, chạy bộ và sức mạnh hàng ngày. Con người thực sự kém cỏi về tốc độ. Ý tôi là, không có cách nào để tránh điều đó, đúng không? Ý tôi là, ngay khi chúng ta trở thành loài hai chân, điều đó thực sự tuyệt vời theo một số cách, đún

And it helps us carry things and we can have tools and we can gesticulate in ways that quadrupeds can't. Lots of great things about being a biped. But the second we get up on two legs, we lose half our horsepower, right? We only have two legs to generate power as opposed to four.

Và điều đó giúp chúng ta mang vác đồ đạc, sử dụng công cụ và thực hiện các động tác mà loài bốn chân không thể làm được. Có rất nhiều lợi ích tuyệt vời khi là loài hai chân. Nhưng ngay khi chúng ta đứng bằng hai chân, chúng ta mất đi một nửa sức mạnh, đún

And so we're about half as fast as a quadruped, our size. And that's true for the world's best runners. So Usain Bolt, who still owns the world record in the 100 meters, he can run a little bit over 10 meters a second, right? He can run, I think, 10.4 meters a second.

Và như vậy, chúng ta chỉ nhanh bằng một nửa so với một loài bốn chân có kích thước tương đương. Điều này cũng đúng với những vận động viên chạy nhanh nhất thế giới. Ví dụ, Usain Bolt, người vẫn giữ kỷ lục thế giới ở nội dung 100 mét, có thể chạy với tốc đ

Your average goat from a pen just down the street can run 20 meters a second, and for a lot longer than Usain Bolt, right? So humans in general are slow, even the fastest humans on the planet.

Con dê bình thường trong chuồng ngay đầu phố có thể chạy 20 mét mỗi giây, và chạy được lâu hơn Usain Bolt nhiều, đúng không? Vì vậy, con người nói chung là chậm chạp, ngay cả những người nhanh nhất trên hành tinh.

And so we have this idea that humans evolved for running, but not for sprinting, but more for endurance running. And so there's this general idea out there that there's a trade-off between speed and endurance, and that you can either be really fast and not go very far, or can be slow and you can go forever. And we all know that's kind of true. But at the elite levels, it's especially true in terms of performance. But for most of us, actually, if you want to improve your endurance, one of the best ways to do that is actually to work on your speed, do what we call interval training. Occasionally get around, do some track work, do 200, 400, 600 meter repeats.

Và vì vậy, chúng ta có quan niệm rằng con người tiến hóa để chạy bộ, nhưng không phải để chạy nước rút, mà là để chạy bền. Và có một quan niệm phổ biến rằng có sự đánh đổi giữa tốc độ và sức bền, nghĩa là bạn có thể chạy rất nhanh nhưng không đi được xa, 

That'll not only make you faster, it'll also improve your endurance. But we often think about this trade-off because of the world's best athletes, right? And I think it shows how we get kind of off track by focusing too much on elite sports and professional athletics. So Usain

Điều đó không chỉ giúp bạn chạy nhanh hơn mà còn cải thiện sức bền của bạn. Nhưng chúng ta thường nghĩ về sự đánh đổi này vì những vận động viên hàng đầu thế giới, đúng không? Và tôi nghĩ điều đó cho thấy chúng ta đã hơi lạc hướng khi quá tập trung vào th

Bolt, he can run like 10.4 meters a second for like 10, 20 seconds, but he can't run a marathon at that distance. The world's record holder at the moment for the marathon is a guy named Elliot

Bolt có thể chạy với tốc độ khoảng 10,4 mét mỗi giây trong khoảng 10 đến 20 giây, nhưng anh ấy không thể chạy marathon ở khoảng cách đó. Hiện tại, người giữ kỷ lục thế giới về marathon là một người tên Elliot.

Kipchoge, fantastic runner too. And he can run a 440 mile, that's like six meters a second, a little more than six meters a second for 26 miles, which is astonishing. But I can't do that for one mile, right? And so you look at Bolt and Kipchoge and you think, okay, this guy's running almost twice as fast as the other guy, there's a trade-off between speed and endurance. But for most of us, actually, we can run, people can run, as I said before, if you want to run longer distances, one of the best ways to do that is to increase your speed. And people who are good at speed tend to also be better at endurance, unless they're elite athletes. So if you look at decathletes, for example, people who are amateur decathletes, the ones who are really good at the speed events are also good at the endurance events. So that trade-off is true only for really elite athletes.

Kipchoge, một vận động viên chạy bộ xuất sắc. Anh có thể chạy với tốc độ 440 dặm, tương đương 6 mét mỗi giây, và duy trì tốc độ đó trong 26 dặm, điều này thật đáng kinh ngạc. Nhưng tôi không thể làm điều đó cho một dặm, đúng không? Và khi nhìn vào Bolt và

It's not really true for the vast majority of us. So strength is important. And I think, and there are misconceptions about strength too. So strength is the ability, how much force you can produce, right? And power is the rate at which you can produce that force. So you can be, you don't need a lot of, you can be really strong, but not actually necessarily all that powerful, right? And so people who aren't all that strong, you know, if I were to get out of this chair, that requires power. I have to rapidly push my body up, right? And one of the problems that happens in the world today is that people get really frail as they get old. They lose strength.

Điều đó không thực sự đúng với phần lớn chúng ta. Vì vậy, sức mạnh là điều quan trọng. Và tôi nghĩ, cũng có những hiểu lầm về sức mạnh. Sức mạnh là khả năng, tức là lượng lực bạn có thể tạo ra, đúng không? Còn công suất là tốc độ mà bạn có thể tạo ra lực 

So hunter-gatherers aren't super strong. They tend to be about 75th percentile for sort of standard measures of strength, like, you know, grip strength tests. So, you know, they're, you know, like 25% of Americans would be stronger than your average hunter-gatherer, right? So they're not super strong. They're strong, but they're not, like, crazy strong.

Vậy nên, người săn bắn hái lượm không phải là những người cực kỳ mạnh mẽ. Họ thường nằm ở khoảng phần trăm thứ 75 theo các tiêu chuẩn đo lường sức mạnh thông thường, như các bài kiểm tra sức mạnh nắm tay. Vì vậy, khoảng 25% người Mỹ sẽ mạnh hơn so với ngư

But the difference is that as they age, they stay strong. So Americans, as we get older, or Brits, as they get older, you know, the strength declines rapidly. By the time people are in their 60s and 70s, they're pretty frail. But hunter-gatherers remain fairly physically active as they age because they're doing stuff. You know, they don't have can openers. They have to, you know, they don't have jars anyway, but they're, you know, they have to lift things and carry things and do stuff that keeps them strong. And the end result is that they maintain that strength. And that strength is important because one of the real serious, most pernicious issues of aging is a disease, or it's a problem called sarcopenia. Sarco is flesh, and penia is loss.

Nhưng điểm khác biệt là khi họ già đi, họ vẫn giữ được sức mạnh. Vì vậy, người Mỹ khi già đi, hay người Anh khi già đi, bạn biết đấy, sức mạnh của họ suy giảm nhanh chóng. Đến khi người ta ở độ tuổi 60 và 70, họ đã khá yếu ớt. Nhưng những người săn bắn há

So it's flesh loss. And as people get older in the West, they tend to lose a lot of strength and power. And that makes basic tasks difficult, like getting out of a chair, you know, going to the bathroom, you know, climbing the stairs, you know, doing chores, you know, going to the store. And when that happens, people become less active. When they become less active, they become less fit, and it kind of sets in motion a really disastrous, vicious cycle, right? And so as we get older, strength training becomes more and more important so that we can avoid those losses of vigor that are really important to maintaining your health and staying strong and staying healthy as we age.

Vậy đó là sự mất mát cơ bắp. Và khi con người già đi ở phương Tây, họ thường mất đi rất nhiều sức mạnh và sức bền. Điều đó khiến các hoạt động cơ bản trở nên khó khăn, như đứng dậy khỏi ghế, đi vệ sinh, leo cầu thang, làm việc nhà, đi mua sắm. Và khi điều

I mean, every culture engages in sports, right? It's a human universal. And sports are important for, and they're fun, and they're kind of play, right? And they serve all kinds of functions.

Ý tôi là, mọi nền văn hóa đều tham gia vào các hoạt động thể thao, đúng không? Đó là một đặc điểm chung của con người. Và thể thao rất quan trọng, chúng mang lại niềm vui, và chúng cũng là một hình thức giải trí, đúng không? Và chúng phục vụ nhiều mục đíc

And sports are socially important, especially when you're children, you learn good sportsmanship, right? You learn not to, if somebody scores a goal on you, it's not appropriate to bash them in the face, you know, that sort of thing. You learn to be, you know, you learn hierarchies, you learn companionship, you learn how to cooperate. There's a lot of wonderful things about being on a team and sports and all that. But some sports also have another origin, which is, I think, to train warriors. It's not coincidental that a lot of the sports, for example, in the Olympics, think about the ancient Olympics especially, were skills that were really important for warriors, right? You know, javelin throwing and chariot racing. Well, we don't do chariot racing anymore. You know, sprinting, wrestling, boxing, right? These are all very kind of physically demanding sports that are kind of combat related, right? So sports have all kinds of different meanings. And of course, the problem is that not everybody enjoys sports, and not all sports are all that physically active. I mean, take baseball, for example, which is a perfectly wonderful game. But I call it a game, not a sport, because you don't really have to be that physically active to play baseball. You have to have incredible reflexes. I mean, it takes a lot of skill to be a great baseball player. But, you know, it's not, you know, maybe if you're stealing bases, you have to be fast. But the vast majority of baseball players don't really actually have to engage in that much physical activity, right? And that's not a criticism of baseball. It's just that let's not equate all sports with physical activity. And I think that kind of an interesting dimension of sports that we never really think about that much is that sports, I think, evolved also to help us learn not to be reactively aggressive. So there's two kinds of aggression. There's reactive aggression. So like, you know, you figured it, like, take my watch, I'd like to be really mad at you, and I might hit you, right? But, you know, that's kind of an instant kind of non-planned, you know, aggression. But, you know, road rage is a perfect example of reactive aggression. But there's also proactive aggression, right? Which is when you plan something, you know, premeditate, you work it out in advance, right?

Và thể thao có ý nghĩa xã hội quan trọng, đặc biệt là khi bạn còn là trẻ em, bạn học được tinh thần thể thao tốt, đúng không? Bạn học cách không nên, nếu ai đó ghi bàn vào lưới bạn, thì không nên đánh vào mặt họ, bạn biết đấy, những thứ như vậy. Bạn học c

And war is an example of a proactive aggression. I think sports are also kind of proactive aggression sometimes. And in a lot of sports, we teach people not to be reactively aggressive.

Và chiến tranh là một ví dụ về hành động tấn công chủ động. Tôi nghĩ thể thao đôi khi cũng là một dạng tấn công chủ động. Và trong nhiều môn thể thao, chúng ta dạy mọi người không nên có hành vi tấn công phản ứng.

I mean, the extreme to me is tennis, right? You're not even allowed to swear when you're playing tennis, right? But it's perfectly acceptable to be appropriately, proactively aggressive, as long as you're within the rules, right? And that's what humans excel at. We excel at curbing our reactive aggression. And we excel in many cultures, and the US is no exception, at being really good at proactive aggression. That's what we call war.

Ý tôi là, với tôi, tennis là môn thể thao cực đoan nhất, đúng không? Bạn thậm chí không được phép chửi thề khi chơi tennis, đúng không? Nhưng việc thể hiện sự hung hăng một cách thích hợp và chủ động là hoàn toàn chấp nhận được, miễn là bạn tuân thủ quy t

I like to try participant observation. You know, I like to try what I study, right? You know,

Tôi thích thử phương pháp quan sát tham gia. Bạn biết đấy, tôi thích thử những gì mình nghiên cứu, đúng không? Bạn biết đấy,

I like to try barefoot running, and I like to eat foods that other people eat. And when I was working on this chapter on aggression, I realized, you know, I'm a very unaggressive person.

Tôi thích thử chạy bộ chân trần và thích ăn những món ăn mà người khác thường ăn. Và khi tôi đang viết chương này về sự hung hăng, tôi nhận ra rằng, bạn biết đấy, tôi là một người rất ít hung hăng.

And I didn't want to, like, you know, go participate in some kind of brawl in a bar or something like that. But I thought, I'll go to a mixed martial arts fight. That's like, you know, because I've never been to one before. You see them on TV, but it's not the same thing.

Và tôi không muốn, kiểu như, tham gia vào một cuộc ẩu đả trong quán bar hay cái gì đó tương tự. Nhưng tôi nghĩ, tôi sẽ đi xem một trận đấu võ thuật tổng hợp. Đó là vì, biết đấy, tôi chưa bao giờ đi xem một trận đấu như vậy trước đây. Bạn thấy chúng trên T

So I went to a mixed martial arts fight, not too far from Boston. And it was a fascinating experience to see, you know, how people, because, you know, mixed martial arts, there are really almost no rules, you know, you're not allowed to kick somebody in the groin, you're not allowed to bite them. And if somebody wants to stop, you know, if they're in peril, you have to stop. But that's about it. There's not a lot of other rules, right? And, you know, apart from a few, you know, fights when I was in school, when people, you know, bullies, you know, hit me and stuff like that. I mean, I've never really, you know, seen a lot of fighting in my life. I've kind of cloistered life. So it was fascinating to go see these mixed martial arts fights and see how people can be, you know, how humans fight. Because, you know, we're as a species, you know, we do fight hand to hand, but most of the fighting that humans do is with weapons, right? You know, we've invented weapons millions of years ago. And it's kind of strange to see people willingly fight each other without the benefit of weapons, right? And what it really shows is just how bad we are as a species, how inadequately adapted we are for combat without weapons. You know, we really are adapted for fighting with weapons. You know, we don't have claws. We don't have fangs. We're bipedal. So we have these big heads that are very vulnerable.

Vậy là tôi đã đi xem một trận đấu võ thuật tổng hợp, không xa Boston lắm. Và đó là một trải nghiệm thú vị khi được chứng kiến, bạn biết đấy, cách mọi người thi đấu, vì võ thuật tổng hợp gần như không có quy tắc nào, bạn biết đấy, bạn không được đá vào vùn

And so it's really kind of fascinating to see how human fighting is really so different from the way animals fight. You know, going to see a mixed martial arts fight really kind of, at least for me as somebody who's thinking about it from an evolutionary and anthropological perspective, just how much weapons have changed the nature of human aggression. If there's any one physical activity that humans evolved to do, it's to walk. We are the walking champions of, you know, among the world. I mean, we're just, you know, walking is the most fundamental basic form of human physical activity. We know from studies of hunter-gatherers in tropical environments, you know, there's not just one group of people, but people from different parts of the world, that women on average walk about nine kilometers or five miles a day. And men walk on average about 14, 15 kilometers a day, about nine to 10 miles every single day, right? They do it seven days a week. There are no holidays. There's no weekends. There's no retirement. Walking is the way in which humans get around, get food. You know, it's kind of fundamental to who we are as a species.

Và thật sự rất thú vị khi thấy cách con người chiến đấu thực sự khác biệt như thế nào so với cách động vật chiến đấu. Bạn biết đấy, khi xem một trận đấu võ thuật hỗn hợp, ít nhất là đối với tôi, một người suy nghĩ về vấn đề này từ góc độ tiến hóa và nhân 

We often carry when we walk. And today, in the modern sort of Western world with cars and escalators and elevators and, you know, Zoom and, you know, TV and all that sort of stuff, we just don't walk very much. So especially during this pandemic, people have been walking, you know, step counts have plummeted around the world from already pretty low levels. So, you know, the average sort of hunter-gatherer will take maybe, you know, 10, 15,000 steps a day.

Chúng ta thường mang vác khi đi bộ. Và ngày nay, trong thế giới phương Tây hiện đại với xe hơi, thang cuốn, thang máy, Zoom, TV và tất cả những thứ như vậy, chúng ta đơn giản là không đi bộ nhiều. Vì vậy, đặc biệt trong đại dịch này, mọi người đã đi bộ ít

The average American before the pandemic was taking something like 4,700 and something steps a day. So a lot less than our ancestors. And, you know, my step counter for the, you know, when I'm not running, you know, my discount running, I mean, my steps have decreased by about 50% during this pandemic, during COVID, because, you know, I'm not going anywhere.

Trước đại dịch, người Mỹ trung bình đi khoảng 4.700 bước mỗi ngày. Con số này ít hơn nhiều so với tổ tiên của chúng ta. Và, bạn biết đấy, máy đếm bước của tôi, khi tôi không chạy bộ, tức là chạy bộ giảm giá, ý tôi là số bước của tôi đã giảm khoảng 50% tro

You know, I'm traveling to the bathroom and occasionally, you know, I go on a little errand here or there and I walk the dog around the block. But that's about it, right? And one of the misconceptions that, and it's a bit of a debate right now, but people often sort of discount how important walking is because people think that walking really isn't very good for weight control and weight loss. And I would disagree with that. I think it's to be sure that if you walk only, you know, a few miles a day, you're not going to lose very much weight very fast. It's, you know, you don't spend that much energy walking. So if you want to go on a, if you want to lose weight, you know, not eating, you know, bacon or cheese or, you know, other things that are really, you know, sugary things that are full of calories, you're going to go, you're going to lose a lot more calories than if you walk for a few miles, right? But walking is important because even if you do a fair amount, you still will actually lose some weight. You'll just lose small amounts and you'll lose it slowly, but that's still good. But more importantly, walking is, turns out to be an important way to kind of keep your metabolism going to prevent weight gain. And there's a lot of studies which show that physical activity, you know, it's not the best way to lose weight, but it is an important component of preventing people from gaining weight or regaining weight after a diet. So if people go on a diet and then they lose weight and then they stop the diet, they often regain the weight. It's very common. But people go on a diet, lose weight, and then they stay physically active, they're much more likely to keep that weight off. Again, one of the ways which we medicalize exercise in the Western world is we think there's a certain amount you should do, right? We prescribe it, you know? You should have, you should take two aspirin, you should get eight hours of sleep, and you should walk 10,000 steps a day. You know, we like that, right? And there's nothing necessarily wrong with a goal, right? Goals can be really helpful, actually. But 10,000 steps is kind of arbitrary, right? The number actually came from when the first pedometer was invented in Japan before the 1960s Olympics. They were, you know, in the board room, they were trying to decide what to call it. Turns out that 10,000 is a very auspicious number in Japan. And they thought it kind of sounded good. It seemed kind of reasonable. So they called it, you know, 10,000 step monitor. And that kind of stuck. And surprisingly, it turns out that 10,000 steps isn't actually a bad goal, right? It's, if you actually look at what, you know, a lot of, you know, people in non-Western societies do, you know, 10,000 steps isn't actually that far off.

Bạn biết đấy, tôi thường đi vệ sinh và thỉnh thoảng, bạn biết đấy, tôi đi làm vài việc vặt ở đây đó và dắt chó đi dạo quanh khu phố. Nhưng thế là hết, đúng không? Và một trong những quan niệm sai lầm, và hiện nay đang có một chút tranh cãi, nhưng mọi ngườ

So it's a perfectly reasonable goal to shoot for. But there's nothing, like, special about it.

Vì vậy, đó là một mục tiêu hoàn toàn hợp lý để hướng tới. Nhưng nó không có gì đặc biệt cả.

If you do 8,000 steps, that's fine. If you do 15,000 steps, that's fine. The important thing is to get, you know, get, be physically active because some is better than none. And a little bit more is, you know, tends to be better than that. But, you know, it's all good. You know, there's no magical number. There's no, it's not a U-shaped curve with a, you know, a bottom on it, right, where that tells you, like, where you should aim for. That doesn't, that does not exist.

Nếu bạn đi 8.000 bước, điều đó cũng được. Nếu bạn đi 15.000 bước, điều đó cũng được. Điều quan trọng là phải hoạt động thể chất, vì một chút còn hơn là không có gì. Và một chút nữa thường tốt hơn. Nhưng, bạn biết đấy, tất cả đều tốt. Bạn biết đấy, không c

I'm especially interested in running. It's actually one of my major areas of research. And

Tôi đặc biệt quan tâm đến chạy bộ. Thực ra, đây là một trong những lĩnh vực nghiên cứu chính của tôi. Và

I'm interested in how humans evolved to run long distances and what role running plays in our, in our, in our lives and in our evolution. And look, running is the most fundamental form of vigorous physical activity. Walking is the most fundamental form of moderate activity. Running is what we do to be vigorous, right? You know, because there were no ellipticals and, you know, other kinds of machines back in the Stone Age. If you want to get your heart rate up, you probably were running, right? And people ran long distances in order to hunt or scavenge, etc.

Tôi quan tâm đến cách con người tiến hóa để có thể chạy đường dài và vai trò của việc chạy trong cuộc sống và quá trình tiến hóa của chúng ta. Và hãy nhìn xem, chạy là hình thức hoạt động thể chất mạnh mẽ cơ bản nhất. Đi bộ là hình thức hoạt động thể chất

But running today is kind of, you know, a very popular sport, way to exercise. And a lot of sports use a lot of running. You know, a typical soccer player will run, you know, five, six miles in a game. So, so running is, there's a lot of ways in which people run. And, but, but, but people are kind of exercised about running too, like there are so many other kinds of physical activity.

Nhưng chạy bộ ngày nay thực sự là một môn thể thao rất phổ biến, một cách tập luyện hiệu quả. Và nhiều môn thể thao khác cũng đòi hỏi chạy bộ rất nhiều. Ví dụ, một cầu thủ bóng đá trung bình có thể chạy khoảng 5-6 dặm trong một trận đấu. Vì vậy, chạy bộ c

And one of the biggest myths about running is that it'll destroy your knees. And, and like all myths, this is a bit complicated, because it is true that the most common injuries that runners experience are knee injuries, right? But there are kind of two kinds of knee injuries. Some knee injuries are caused by, you know, by your muscles being kind of out of whack, and, you know, you kind of pull a ligament or you pull a tendon or something like that, or your IT band, etc.

Và một trong những quan niệm sai lầm lớn nhất về chạy bộ là nó sẽ hủy hoại đầu gối của bạn. Và, giống như tất cả các quan niệm sai lầm, điều này khá phức tạp, vì đúng là những chấn thương phổ biến nhất mà người chạy bộ gặp phải là chấn thương đầu gối, đún

But those are injuries that you can recover from. And the other kind of injury are wear and tear injuries, which you can't recover from, the worst being osteoarthritis. And the idea that running too much wears out your joints is just wrong. It's just fundamentally, completely wrong.

Nhưng đó là những chấn thương mà bạn có thể hồi phục. Loại chấn thương khác là chấn thương do mài mòn, mà bạn không thể hồi phục, nghiêm trọng nhất là viêm khớp thoái hóa. Và quan niệm cho rằng chạy quá nhiều sẽ làm hỏng khớp là hoàn toàn sai lầm. Đó là m

You know, it's like, you know, if you think about your joints, like the shock absorber in your car, it's just like, it's just nonsense. There's tons and tons of studies, more than a dozen, randomized, controlled, perspective, gold standard studies, which show that people who run more are not more likely to get arthritis. In fact, lots of research shows, and research from my lab among them, that physical activities like running actually cause your joints to repair themselves and to stay healthy. The other kinds of running injuries, so you're not going to destroy your knees by running, at least in terms of arthritis. But if you have arthritis and you run, it can be excruciating. You can exacerbate it. The other kinds of running injuries, I think that a lot of them are caused because people, we don't learn how to run properly anymore. I think running is a skill, right? Like swimming or throwing or, you know, all kinds of other things that we do. And we don't learn the skill that much of running anymore in the Western world. But the cultures

Bạn biết đấy, nó giống như, bạn biết đấy, nếu bạn nghĩ về các khớp của mình, giống như bộ giảm xóc trong xe hơi của bạn, thì đó chỉ là điều vô nghĩa. Có hàng tá nghiên cứu, hơn một chục nghiên cứu ngẫu nhiên, có đối chứng, triển vọng, tiêu chuẩn vàng, cho

I work in, like, you know, you ask people about running, they believe that it's a skill and that there's like a right way to run and a wrong way to run. And how do they learn the right way to run?

Tôi làm việc trong lĩnh vực này, và khi bạn hỏi mọi người về chạy bộ, họ tin rằng đó là một kỹ năng và có cách chạy đúng và cách chạy sai. Vậy họ học cách chạy đúng như thế nào?

Well, they imitate people who are really good. They'll actually follow them. Like in Kenya, like a good runner will run in the front and then people will run behind him or her and imitate their, the way they run. They'll move their arms and legs, etc. They'll imitate them to try to learn that person's skill, just as we do that for, you know, we watch, you know, Andre Agassi hit a backhand, you know, try to hit the backhand in the same way. And the other thing is that we also use these cushioned running shoes, etc. And we run in different ways. And I think running shoes enable you to slam into the ground so you don't learn to run lightly and gently. And we overstride, we have overly slow cadences. And the other thing is that when people run in other cultures, especially in the Stone Age, you know, they didn't run every day and they weren't running, you know, they didn't stand on one line and run 26.2 miles to another line as fast as they could on a regular basis. And they'd probably go running maybe once a week or something like that, you know. So the idea that you go running five, six times a week, which is what I do, you know, and for long distances on pavement, etc. These are all kind of weird, strange Western things. And there's nothing necessarily wrong with them. And there's nothing necessarily harmful about them. You have to learn how to do it properly. And you have to build up enough strength and learn the skills of running. But let's not scare people off running. I think the most pernicious, the most serious, the most problematic, the most concerning way in which we think about exercise in the Western world is that as people get older, it's kind of normal to be less physically active. And I think that maybe the most important argument that I make in my book is that that's actually really problematic. Because, you know, we evolved, we're a unique species. We evolved to live long after we stopped reproducing. We evolved to be grandparents, basically. And the reason we evolved to be grandparents is that grandparents in foraging societies and also in farming societies are active. They go out and they hunt and they gather or they work in the fields and they help get food for their children and their grandchildren. And that physical activity helps their reproductive success, right? Because they make it more likely for their children and grandchildren to survive and they make it easier for their children to be parents, right? But there's another benefit. And the other benefit is that physical activity is important because it turns on repair and maintenance mechanisms. When you're physically active, you stress your body. You produce what's called reactive oxygen species, which cause cellular damage throughout your body. It causes mutations. It causes inflammation. It causes cells to get kind of cruddy, proteins to get kind of cruddy. But because that's normal, our bodies turn on all kinds of repair and maintenance mechanisms that counter those. We produce antioxidants. Our muscles produce all kinds of molecules that turn down the inflammation of our bodies that causes a wide range of diseases. We repair our muscles. We repair our bones. We repair our brains. We turn on like hundreds, maybe thousands of genes that get turned on by exercise that they're involved in repair and maintenance. And as we get older, that repair and maintenance becomes really important because it prevents senescence. It prevents our bodies from decaying.

Họ bắt chước những người thực sự giỏi. Họ sẽ thực sự theo dõi họ. Ví dụ ở Kenya, một vận động viên chạy giỏi sẽ chạy ở phía trước, và mọi người sẽ chạy theo sau họ và bắt chước cách chạy của họ. Họ sẽ di chuyển tay chân, v.v. Họ bắt chước họ để cố gắng họ

So when people become physically inactive as they get older, they're no longer turning on those mechanisms that we evolved to use, right, that help us age better and makes us more vulnerable to disease and we age faster. So we evolved to live long in order to be physically active. And that physical activity helps us to live longer and stay healthy because there's an important distinction between healthspan and lifespan, right? We often think about the effects of physical activity on lifespan, how long you live. But really, before the invention of modern medicine, what determined how long you lived was actually how long you were healthy, your healthspan.

Khi con người trở nên ít vận động hơn khi tuổi tác tăng lên, họ không còn kích hoạt những cơ chế mà chúng ta đã tiến hóa để sử dụng, đúng không? Những cơ chế này giúp chúng ta lão hóa tốt hơn và làm cho chúng ta dễ bị bệnh tật hơn, đồng thời khiến quá trì

And so healthspan is really the key thing. And what physical activity does is it increases your healthspan and your healthspan therefore increases your lifespan. And until recently, that was what it was all about. And so as we get older, let's not cut back on the physical activity. Let's maintain it. You do some strength, do some endurance. And the evidence is incontrovertible.

Và vì vậy, tuổi thọ khỏe mạnh thực sự là yếu tố quan trọng nhất. Hoạt động thể chất giúp tăng cường tuổi thọ khỏe mạnh, và tuổi thọ khỏe mạnh từ đó kéo dài tuổi thọ của bạn. Và cho đến gần đây, đó chính là mục tiêu chính. Vì vậy, khi chúng ta già đi, đừng

There's tons of data which show that as we get older, the more we age, the more physical activity is really beneficial. The most famous study that kind of started all this was actually done at Harvard University. It's called the Harvard Alumni Health Study. And they did it because universities are really good at keeping track of their alums. They constantly ask you for money, right? And so they never lose track of alumni. And so a fellow named Ralph Paffenbarger was at the medical school at Harvard, got the Harvard alumni office to let him find out from alumni what kind of physical activity they were doing. And he asked them health questions and find out how healthy they were and also find out when they died. And what he showed was that younger alums, so one of the advantages of the study is that it kind of controls for socioeconomic status, right? Because these are all Harvard alums back from the old days when they're all basically rich white people, right? So the younger alums who were physically active, they had like 20% lower death rates. So that's good, right? By the time they got to their 70s, the alums who were more active had like 50% lower death rates. And other studies have found the same thing, that physical activity as you get older is more important, not less important for preserving your health. Well, I think there's two issues about the medicalization of exercise. So look, exercise is very medicalized. It's also very commodified, right? And there's nothing wrong with either, right? There's nothing wrong with having fun sports clothes and gyms. And there's nothing wrong with doctors telling people to exercise and all that. But the problem is that it doesn't really work too well. It doesn't get a lot of people motivated. And the proof of that is that 80% of Americans don't get minimum levels of physical activity. And the other problem is that exercise doesn't really fit a medical prescription in a very simple way. There's like no optimal dose, right? People want to know how much to do it and exactly, and there is no answer to that question, right? And then finally, in a way, it's not so much that exercise is medicine, which is what we often say. It's really that the absence of exercise or the absence of physical activity is harmful. And so you're kind of just basically restoring to the body what it kind of essentially needs. And although that sounds like a kind of a trivial distinction, actually, I think it's really profound because it helps us understand on a deep level, you know, the kinds of dosages of physical activity and their effects and how they affect our vulnerability and susceptibility to various kinds of diseases and why it's not really a magic bullet. I mean, people can look at, there are lots of people we can think of, like the last president of the United States, who doesn't exercise, right? And he's in his 70s and looks like he's doing just fine, right? So you don't have to exercise to live a long life. And that makes people kind of, I think, suspicious about the medicalization of exercise. We like to be told what to do. We like to think, you know, you should take X milligrams of this medicine, etc. So you should exercise this many hours a week, right?

Có rất nhiều dữ liệu cho thấy rằng khi chúng ta già đi, hoạt động thể chất càng trở nên có lợi hơn. Nghiên cứu nổi tiếng nhất đã khởi xướng xu hướng này được thực hiện tại Đại học Harvard. Nghiên cứu đó có tên là Harvard Alumni Health Study. Họ thực hiện 

We want to know what the optimal dose is. But there is no optimal dose, right? Because first of all, we're all experiments of one, right? You might be young, you might be old, you might be male, you might be female, you might be fit, you might be unfit, you might be living in a suburb, you might be living in a city, you know, you might be previously injured, you might be worried about heart disease, you might be worried about Alzheimer's. There's no one outcome and there's no one nature. It's impossible to prescribe one dose for everybody. So that's one thing.

Chúng tôi muốn biết liều lượng tối ưu là bao nhiêu. Nhưng không có liều lượng tối ưu, đúng không? Bởi vì trước hết, chúng ta đều là những thí nghiệm riêng lẻ, đúng không? Bạn có thể trẻ, có thể già, có thể là nam, có thể là nữ, có thể khỏe mạnh, có thể yế

And then the other thing is that everything involves trade-offs, right? Exercise is no exception, right? If you exercise more, that's great for some things, but you also could have some negative effects on other things, the most common one being injury, right? You're more likely to hurt yourself, right? So for the vast majority of people, what they're trying to figure out is how to just get enough exercise, right? And I think the important message that often is missed is that if you're physically inactive and you're struggling to be more active, anything is better than nothing. And you don't need to run marathons, you don't need to do a couch to 5k, you don't need to even do necessarily 150 minutes a week, right? Even an hour a week will be better than nothing, right? It can actually lower, on average, somebody's rate of mortality by 30%. If you can get up to 150 minutes a week, on average, it will lower somebody's mortality rate by about 50%. More is better, but eventually it kind of tails off. And so there's no one perfect dose, there's no one perfect type, and I think helping people understand that, I think, relieves them of some of the stress. There's a big debate about whether you can exercise too much, and the answer is that most people think it's true, but we actually don't have a lot of evidence for that. So there was a study that actually just came out from the UK Biobank, huge study of just about everybody in England, right? Large numbers of people in England, along with genetic data, by the way. And of course, there's very, very few people who are doing a huge amount of exercise.

Và điều khác nữa là mọi thứ đều có sự đánh đổi, đúng không? Tập thể dục cũng không ngoại lệ, đúng không? Nếu bạn tập thể dục nhiều hơn, điều đó tốt cho một số khía cạnh, nhưng cũng có thể gây ra một số tác động tiêu cực cho các khía cạnh khác, phổ biến nh

It's a tiny, tiny number of individuals at the end of the curve there, but there's no evidence from that study that the people doing ridiculous amounts of exercise, 30 hours a week or so, had actually any negative effects. And the same is true of some studies that were done in the

Đó là một con số rất nhỏ, rất nhỏ của những cá nhân ở cuối đường cong đó, nhưng không có bằng chứng nào từ nghiên cứu đó cho thấy những người tập luyện với cường độ cực cao, khoảng 30 giờ mỗi tuần, thực sự gặp phải tác động tiêu cực nào. Và điều tương tự 

United States. So yes, it's possible, but there's not a lot of evidence. But I'm not really worried about those folks. There's still a few of them. The vast majority of people we're worried about are on the other end of the extreme, who are not getting enough, and let's worry about that.

Hoa Kỳ. Vâng, điều đó có thể xảy ra, nhưng không có nhiều bằng chứng. Nhưng tôi không thực sự lo lắng về những người đó. Vẫn còn một số ít trong số họ. Đa số những người mà chúng ta lo lắng là ở phía cực đoan kia, những người không nhận được đủ, và hãy lo

We've medicalized, and this sounds like a strange way of speaking, but we've medicalized disease, right? We've medicalized health, right? For a lot of people, health is the absence of disease.

Chúng ta đã y tế hóa, và điều này nghe có vẻ kỳ lạ, nhưng chúng ta đã y tế hóa bệnh tật, đúng không? Chúng ta đã y tế hóa sức khỏe, đúng không? Đối với nhiều người, sức khỏe là sự vắng mặt của bệnh tật.

And it is true to a large extent, but health can also be just vigor, vitality, the ability to do what you want. Somebody can have a disability and still be healthy, for example. So what's really important about physical activity and exercise is that it reduces our vulnerability to a wide range of diseases. So you can not exercise and still live a long and healthy life. You can exercise and still get cancer and heart disease and all kinds of other diseases. It's just that physical activity lowers your risk of most of those diseases. And we know that both epidemiologically, we know in terms of the probability that you'll get those diseases if you exercise a certain amount, but we also know how that works based on a wide range of mechanisms. And the most important benefit of exercise is that it decreases inflammation. So inflammation is when your immune system essentially starts to attack you, yourself, right? So if you get a bacterial infection or a viral infection, your immune system kicks into high gear and you attack those invaders. But your immune system can also go on the offensive at such a very low level, that's called chronic inflammation, that you can't really detect it, but it's still there. And it's still kind of attacking things. And it can start attacking your own body. And that leads to heart disease. It leads to diabetes. It leads to Alzheimer's. It leads to osteoarthritis.

Và điều đó đúng đến một mức độ lớn, nhưng sức khỏe cũng có thể chỉ là sự dẻo dai, sức sống, khả năng làm những điều bạn muốn. Một người có thể có khuyết tật nhưng vẫn khỏe mạnh, ví dụ như vậy. Vì vậy, điều quan trọng nhất về hoạt động thể chất và tập luyệ

It leads to a wide range of diseases. And one of the huge benefits of exercise is that it lowers those levels of inflammation. It does so through a number of mechanisms. One is by getting your muscles active, those muscles actually turn down the inflammation with various molecules. The other way is that it reduces the fat around your belly, visceral fat, belly fat, which is very pro-inflammatory. And so the combination of these various consequences of exercise have enormous implications for just lowering people's chances of getting a wide range of chronic diseases that are very debilitating. We spend so much time thinking about how exercise, physical activity is so good for physical health, for diseases that range from heart disease to cancer, et cetera. And that's all true. Not in any way want to minimize that. But I think we often undervalue just how important physical activity is for mental health.

Nó dẫn đến một loạt các bệnh tật. Và một trong những lợi ích lớn của việc tập thể dục là nó làm giảm mức độ viêm nhiễm. Nó làm điều này thông qua nhiều cơ chế khác nhau. Một trong số đó là bằng cách kích hoạt cơ bắp, các cơ bắp này thực sự làm giảm viêm n

When you're physically active, your brain turns on a whole cocktail of chemicals that are really good for you. It turns on dopamine and serotonin, which are important for anxiety and depression and mood. You produce opioids, which of course can make you happy. And even in extreme cases, endocannabinoids, which can make you high and make you feel really good.

Khi bạn hoạt động thể chất, não bộ sẽ kích hoạt một loạt các chất hóa học có lợi cho sức khỏe. Nó kích hoạt dopamine và serotonin, hai chất quan trọng trong việc điều chỉnh lo âu, trầm cảm và tâm trạng. Bạn cũng sản xuất opioid, chất có thể mang lại cảm g

And study after study after study shows that physical activity has important immediate benefits on people's mental health. And so one of the crises I think of the pandemic has been as people's physical activity levels down, I think it's partly responsible for some of the stress and the anxiety and the depression that's on the rise recently today. And one way to help, simple way to help folks. I mean, it's not a magic bullet. It's not going to cure it overnight. But it's certainly a potent part of our tool to help people is to help people be more physically active. It has enormous effects on people's mood and mental health. We think so much about exercise in terms of elite athletics. The fastest, the highest jumping, the strongest, et cetera. Because you turn on the TV and that's where we see amazing athletes do amazing things. And it's wonderful. It's great entertainment. But that's actually kind of what it is. It's actually entertainment. I mean, what the world's fastest runners are able to do or the world's best basketball players are able to do have almost nothing to do with what most of us do. I mean, I can run. I'm a pretty good runner.

Và nghiên cứu này nối tiếp nghiên cứu khác cho thấy hoạt động thể chất có những lợi ích quan trọng ngay lập tức đối với sức khỏe tinh thần của con người. Và một trong những khủng hoảng mà tôi nghĩ đến trong đại dịch là khi mức độ hoạt động thể chất của mọ

And I struggle to run like a six minute mile. And the world's best marathoners are running 440 miles for 26 miles. I mean, I can't even dream of that. I can't run one mile that fast. I can't even run a half a mile that fast. And so we get this kind of, I think, sometimes a perverted idea about what's normal from elite athletics. Because we're looking at the extremes, the best of the best of the best of the best of the best. And while that's amazing and impressive, these are people who've spent years of their lives training to do just one thing and one thing really well.

Và tôi gặp khó khăn khi chạy với tốc độ 6 phút cho mỗi dặm. Trong khi đó, những vận động viên marathon hàng đầu thế giới có thể chạy 440 dặm trong 26 giờ. Ý tôi là, tôi thậm chí không thể mơ đến điều đó. Tôi không thể chạy một dặm với tốc độ đó. Tôi thậm 

That's not what most of us do. And they've gotten lucky in the genetic lottery. They've got a lot of genes, which I don't have, which give them certain kinds of capabilities. And I do worry that sometimes our focus on elite athletics can actually be off-putting rather than inspiring.

Đó không phải là điều mà phần lớn chúng ta làm. Và họ đã may mắn trong cuộc xổ số gen. Họ sở hữu nhiều gen mà tôi không có, những gen đó mang lại cho họ những khả năng đặc biệt. Và tôi thực sự lo lắng rằng đôi khi sự tập trung vào thể thao đỉnh cao có thể

I think that one of the things that people really struggle with when I talk to them about the research that I do is that they struggle to understand both the nature of research in general, but also evolutionary research in particular. Because research is a process. You never know the truth. And so when I pick up a paper written by somebody else or my own work, or when I do an experiment, I'm not trying to think, oh, can I prove this? What I'm trying to actually do is say, can I disprove this? And I'm trying to be really critical about it.

Tôi nghĩ rằng một trong những điều mà mọi người thực sự gặp khó khăn khi tôi nói chuyện với họ về nghiên cứu mà tôi thực hiện là họ khó hiểu cả bản chất của nghiên cứu nói chung, cũng như nghiên cứu tiến hóa nói riêng. Bởi vì nghiên cứu là một quá trình. 

So when we think about, for example, the effects of physical activity and exercise on the body,

Vậy khi chúng ta nghĩ về, ví dụ như, tác động của hoạt động thể chất và tập luyện đối với cơ thể,

Sự tiến hóa của sự lười biếng: Tại sao con người lại chống đối việc tập gym | Daniel Lieberman: Phỏng vấn đầy đủ (The evolution of laziness: Why humans resist the gym | Daniel Lieberman: Full Interview)