共用题干Research Shows Walking Can Lift Depression

共用题干

Research Shows Walking Can Lift Depression

New research by German scientists shows that author Charles Dickens was onto a good thing when he
took long,brisk walks to relieve periodic bouts of depression.The author of Oliver Twist and David
Copperfield would walk for hours in the l860s as an antidote to intense feelings of sadness which alternated
with restless euphoria.__________(46)
Aerobic exercise like rapid walking can be more effective at lifting depression than drugs,reported the
scientists led by Dr. Fernando Dimeo._________(47)The team found that in 10 of these patients drugs had
failed to bring any substantial improvement.The team devised an exercise regime for the group that involved
walking on a treadmill for 30 minutes every day.__________(48)The intensity of the training programme was
stepped up as the heart rate adapted.A measurement of depression severity was taken at the start and the
end of the programme,and patients were asked to rate their own mood regularly over a 10-day period.The
researchers in Berlin found that after 10 days of the course six patients felt"substantially less depressed".
___________(49)Two were slightly less depressed,while four others remained unchanged.Depression levels
overall fell by a thirds and on the self-assessed scores by 25 percent,said the researchers whose findings
appeared in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
The study was small but the extent of the improvement was said by scientists to be impressive._____(50)
Nineteenth century doctors would have called Dickens’condition melancholia since the psychological
condition of depression was unknown.Dickens’biographer Peter Ackroyd says the author’s son Charles
remembers his father’s"heavy moods of deep depression"and many times of"intense nervous irritability",
something modern psychologists would certainly recognize.

_________(47) A:The number included five people who had not found any relief using drug treatment. B:Long and brisk walks are not necessarily beneficial to every person. C:They studied 12 people with severe depression that had lasted an average of nine months. D:The outcome indicated a clinical benefit which could not be obtained with pharmacological treatment currently available,they said. E:This is also the advice that experts from the Free University in Berlin are giving today. F:According to the regime,intense activity lasting three minutes was alternated with walking at half speed for three minutes.