高中(學測,指考)◆英文題庫下載題庫

        The Japanese have long puzzled public health researchers because they are such an apparent paradox: They have the world’s lowest rates of heart disease and the largest number of people that live to or beyond 100 years despite the fact that most Japanese men smoke—and smoking counts as one of the strongest risk factors for heart disease. So what’s protecting Japanese men? 

        Two professors at the University of California at Berkeley hoped to find out the answer. They investigated a pool of 12,000 Japanese men equally divided into three groups: One group had lived in Japan for all their lives, and the other two groups had emigrated to Hawaii or Northern California. It was found that the rate of heart disease among Japanese men increased five times in California and about half of that for those in Hawaii. 

        The differences could not be explained by any of the usual risk factors for heart disease, such as smoking, high blood pressure, or cholesterol counts. The change in diet, from sushi to hamburgers and fries, was also not related to the rise in heart disease. However, the kind of society they had created for themselves in their new home country was. The most traditional group of Japanese Americans, who maintained tight-knit and mutually supportive social groups, had a heart-attack rate as low as their fellow Japanese back home. But those who had adopted the more isolated Western lifestyle increased their heart-attack incidence by three to five times. 

        The study shows that the need to bond with a social group is so fundamental to humans that it remains the key determinant of whether we stay healthy or get ill, even whether we live or die. We need to feel part of something bigger to thrive. We need to belong, not online, but in the real world of hugs, handshakes, and pats on the back.