按：此文译介自美国Popular science杂志2015年第8期，英文附后，有翻译不对之处，敬请指正。

说话能消耗我们多少能量？

   简单说：实在没什么，除非你扯着嗓子喊。

   说话会靠许多块肌肉以维持，它会令人疲惫。1998年纽约州立大学语音语言病理学家Bridget Russell发表了一项研究结果，她让被测试者轻声、正常发声以及大声阅读，同时测量他们的呼吸频率、氧气和能量消耗。Russell发现，持续的正常谈话并不比安静地坐着更令人产生疲劳，但是轻声和大声谈话均有碍正常呼吸。高声朗读的男性往往受到情绪影响，他们要多消耗20%的氧气。

   在其他生物上也进行了同样测量。犹他大学的Franz Goller研究了鸟类鸣叫的能量消耗。他猜测这种情况一定会（使鸟）产生疲倦：一只金丝雀可以爆发30秒钟欢快的鸣叫，这种饱满、复杂的颤音需要急促的“小呼吸”——大约每秒几十次。当他对斑胸草雀做实验时，在既有可比较的发声行为基础上，发现斑胸草雀在鸣叫时新陈代谢的增速只有5%-35%。这种“疲劳”就像它们清洁自身的羽毛一样。Goller推测，用人类行为描述的话，就像在大街上散步（一样轻松）。

   不过，话说回来，即使一项简单的工作也会随着重复变得令人生倦。如果你做某事需要一分钱，一天重复3000次的话，便要花掉30刀。“作为一名教师，讲了一天课，我会筋疲力尽的”，Goller说道。

英文原文，链接 http://www.popsci.com/ask-us-anything-how-much-exercise-do-we-get-talking

 Speaking involves dozens of muscles, and it can be a bit tiring. For a studypublished in 1998, speech language pathologist Bridget Russell, of the State University of New York at Fredonia, asked participants to read aloud using either a quiet, normal, or loud voice while she measured their breathing rates, oxygen consumption, and energy expenditure. Russell found that continuous, normal speech is no more exhausting than sitting in silence, but quiet and loud talk both interfere with normal respiration. Most affected were men who read out loud at high volume; they took in 20 percent more oxygen.

That’s on par with measurements in other species. Franz Goller, a physiologist at the University of Utah, has studied the energetic costs of singing in birds. He guessed it would be tiring: A canary erupts in 30 second bursts of song, replete with complicated trills that require rapid “mini breathing,” tens of times per second. When he ran experiments on zebra finches, though, which have comparable vocal behavior, he found their metabolic rates went up by only 5 to 35 percent while singing. That’s about as tiring as cleaning one’s feathers. Or, in human terms, Goller speculates, walking down the street.

Then again, even an easy task grows costly with repetition. “If you spend a penny on something 3,000 times a day, that’s still 3,000 pennies,” he says. “As a teacher, at the end of a day of speaking, I’m exhausted.”

This article was originally published in the August 2015 issue of Popular Science, under the title "How Much Exercise Do We Get From Talking?