研究：缺覺會影響基因
Losing sleep is bad for you because it switches on genes that damage us
I've often wondered how exactly sleep, or lack of it , can have such a devastating effect on our bodies and, guess what, how much we sleep switches good genes on and bad genes off.
我時常思考,睡眠的充足與否會對我們的身體健康帶來怎樣嚴重的后果；也不禁去猜測,多久的睡眠才會讓基因發揮有益作用.
In early 2013, the Sleep Research Centre at the University of Surrey found a direct link between hours spent sleeping and genes.
2013年初,英國薩里大學的睡眠研究中心發現,睡眠時長與基因之間存在直接聯系.
Every cell in our bodies carries genetic instructions in our DNA that act as a kind of operating manual. However, each cell only 'reads' the portion of this manual it needs at any given moment.
我們人體的每一個細胞中DNA所攜帶的遺傳指令都相當于一套操作說明.然而在任何時候,細胞都只能夠讀取其需要的說明.
Can sleep affect how a gene reads instructions? It's a question asked by Professor Derk-Jan Dijk at the University of Surrey.
睡眠能夠影響基因讀取其操作說明嗎？薩里大學的教授德克-簡•迪克提出了這一問題.
He set up an experiment and asked his volunteers to spend a week sleeping around seven and a half hours to eight hours a night and the next sleeping six and a half to seven hours.
他著手進行了一項實驗,要求志愿者們每晚睡大約七個半到八個小時,一個星期后再將睡眠時間調整為六個半到七個小時.
Blood samples were taken each week to compare which genes in blood cells were being used during the long and short nights. The results were startling.他將志愿者這兩周的血液樣本進行比對,觀察在不同睡眠時長下,血細胞中的基因運作情況有何不同.實驗結果令人大吃一驚.
