健康飲食:多吃橙色食品——長壽福音大綱

Eat your carrots. And have some leftover pumpkin pie.

吃些胡蘿蔔吧，感恩節剩下的南瓜派也拿出來吃點吧。

People with high blood levels of alpha-carotene — an antioxidant found in orange fruits and vegetables like carrots, winter squash, oranges and tangerines — live longer and are less likely to die of heart disease and cancer than people who have little or none of it in their bloodstream, a new study reports.

一項新的研究發現，血液中α-胡蘿蔔素含量高的人比那些不含或含量低的人壽命更長，死於心臟病或癌症的機率也更低。α-胡蘿蔔素是一種抗氧化劑，富含於橙色的蔬菜瓜果中，比如，葫蘿蔔、慄南瓜、橙子和柑橘類等。

The study does not prove a cause-and-effect relationship, only an association; in the past, rigorous clinical trials of such correlations have often had disappointing results.

這項研究未證實兩者之間的因果關係，只是說明兩者有聯繫。以前曾有研究人員做過數次嚴密的臨牀試驗來證明兩者內在聯繫，但結果往往不如人意。

Still, the study’s results are intriguing. Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed alpha-carotene levels in blood samples from more than 15,000 adults who participated in a follow-up study of the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, known as Nhanes, from 1988 to 1994.

不過，這項研究發現還是令人振奮的。研究中，疾病預防控制中心的研究人員分析了一萬五千多名參與第三次全國健康與營養調查(1988-1994)跟蹤調查的成年人的血樣中α-胡蘿蔔素含量。

By 2006, researchers determined, 3,810 of the participants had died. But those with the highest levels of alpha-carotene were more likely to have survived, even after the scientists controlled for variables like age, body mass index and smoking.

至2006年，研究人員確定有3810名調查參與者已死亡。那些血液中α-胡蘿蔔素水平最高者，即便年齡、體質指數(body mass index)、是否吸菸等參數改變後，他們活得更久的可能性依舊很大。

Those with the highest concentrations of the antioxidant were almost 40 percent less likely to have died than those with the lowest; those with midrange levels were 27 percent less likely to die than those with the lowest levels.

與那些體內含α-胡蘿蔔素這種抗氧化劑水平最低者相比，高濃度與中等濃度含量者長壽的可能性分別提高40%和27%。

“It’s pretty dramatic,” said the lead author, Dr. Chaoyang Li, a C.D.C. epidemiologist, whose study was published online on Nov. 22 in the Archives of Internal Medicine. While alpha-carotene may be no more than an indicator of other aspects of a healthy lifestyle, studies have found that it inhibits the growth of cancer cells in the laboratory, he said, adding, “We need more research.”

這份發佈於11月22日《內科學文獻》網上的研究報告，其第一作者是疾病預防控制中心的流行病學家李朝陽博士(Chaoyang Li)。他說：“這個發現非常值得注意。”並表示，雖然α-胡蘿蔔素可能只能說明這是保持健康生活方式需要注意的方面，但試驗發現它能抑制癌細胞的生長。“還有待進一步研究，”他補充道。