Smoking cigarettes is bad for you. But if you're going to smoke anyway, medical researchers recommend that you have some red wine beforehand.

吸烟有害健康。但如果实在无法远离烟草，医学研究者们建议吸烟前喝点红酒。

According to a newly published study, adequate drinking of red wine can help stave off some of the immediate¹ damage that smoking does to your vascular² system.

根据一项最新公布的研究，适量摄入红酒可以帮助延缓吸烟对血管系统造成的直接伤害。

In the study, researchers looked at the biochemical effects of smoking on 20 healthy nonsmokers.

在这项研究中，研究人员观察了香烟对于20名身体健康的非烟民的生化影响。

The researchers found that wine drinkers didn't suffer the changes in their vascular systems that generally are caused by smoking, such as inflammation and cell damage.

研究人员发现，喝红酒的人的血管系统中不会出现炎症或细胞破损等这类通常而言由吸烟引起的变化。

That may be because red wine stimulates⁴ the formation of chemicals in the bloodstream that improve cellular⁵ function in coronary arteries⁶.

这可能是因为红酒刺激血液中的化学物质的形成，从而改变了冠状动脉的细胞功能。

Additionally, drinking wine before smoking also reduced harm done to the telomeres, the protective caps on the cells' chromosomes⁷.

此外，烟前饮酒还能减少对端粒的伤害。端粒位于细胞染色体末端，负责保护染色体。

The researchers found that in subjects who simply smoked without drinking any wine, the telomeres' protective activity decreased by 56 percent. But the wine drinkers, in contrast, only saw a 20 percent decrease.

研究人员发现，在不喝酒的情况下，吸烟的受试者端粒的保护活性下降了56%。但相比之下，喝葡萄酒的人只下降了20%。

University of Saarland researcher Dr. Viktoria Schwartz, the study's lead investigator⁸, said in a press release that the study "adds to the present evidence that the proinflammatory effects in nonsmokers with 'occasional lifestyle smoking' could be prevented by red wine consumption."

萨尔兰大学的研究员维多利亚·施瓦兹博士是这项研究的首席研究员，他在一次新闻发布会上称，这项研究“有利于证明非吸烟者偶尔吸烟对生活方式的影响，可以通过喝红酒来预防。”

While the study is good news of sorts for healthy people who smoke once in a while, it's unclear whether red wine provides similar protection to the elderly, the ill, or people who are frequent smokers³.

虽然这项研究对于健康人群来说是一个好消息，但是红酒是否能为老年人、病人或者经常吸烟的人提供类似的保护尚不清楚。