Laughter helps the heart - BBC News Review

Is laughter a cure for heart disease?

This is News Review from BBC

Learning English.

I'm Beth. And I'm Phil.

Make sure you watch to the end to learn the vocabulary that you need

to talk about this story. And remember to subscribe

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and try the quiz on our website. Now, the story.

Laughter can make your heart stronger,

new research suggests. The study revealed that being shown

TV comedies increased the amount of oxygen being pumped around heart

patients' bodies.

This Brazilian investigation also suggests

that laughter therapy could reduce inflammation in blood vessels.

You've been looking at the headlines.

What's the vocabulary?

We have: having a laugh, literally

and first-of-its-kind.

This is News Review from BBC

Learning English.

Let's have a look at our first headline.

This is from The Mirror.

Having a laugh twice a week

could help reduce the risk of heart disease: trial finds.

This headline says that laughter therapy can help reduce the risk

of heart disease.

Now, we are going to look at the expression 'having a laugh'.

Now, this doesn't refer to laughing

twice a week, does it?

No. Now, using 'have' with 'laugh' is interesting.

'having a laugh'

means having a good time.

Here, it is talking about sessions of laughter therapy

using comedy programmes rather than two individual laughs.

Now, this study is talking about the act of laughing,

but we do often use it, like you said, to just mean having a good time.

Now, Phil.

Didn't you meet some friends after work yesterday?

Yes, we had a great laugh.

We had a great time. And actually there is another use of this, Beth.

I'm gonna tell you something amazing.

You could learn a new language

in just three weeks.

No! You're having a laugh!

There I mean 'I don't believe you'.

Yes, it's just a little joke.

I'm having a laugh. Let's look at that again.

Let's have our next headline.

This is from the New York Post.

Laughter can heal a broken heart - literally: cardiac health study.

We're going to look at the word 'literally', which is an adverb.

Here, it refers to the adjective 'broken'.

Now, Phil,

when can a heart be broken, literally?

OK. The headline is using broken in the sense of doesn't work and

it's because the study is about people with heart problems. In this context,

'literally' means the real, actual meaning of the word.

So, it's a clever headline,

because 'broken heart' is not usually used literally.

It's more common to use it metaphorically to refer to when somebody is sad,

often at the end of a relationship.

But here we see how literally can be used for emphasis

and it's often used in a surprising situation.

Here's a surprising situation.

The trains were so bad this morning.

It took me literally hours to get to the studio, literally hours, like two of them!

That's really annoying.

And there are literally seconds until we look at this headline again!

Next headline please. This is from The Independent.

First-of-its-kind

study finds laughter is indeed

good medicine, especially for the heart.

This study is unlike previous research.

We are looking at the expression

first-of-its-kind.

Now, Phil. Can you explain what 'kind' means here?

Yes. 'Kind' means type here.

So if something is the first of its kind,

there is nothing like it before.

It's the first of its type and we use it usually for innovations.

If you think about the first smartphone,

it was the first of its kind.

This study is the first of its kind, according to the headline,

because it's looking at laughter therapy with heart patients,

which has not been looked at before.

OK, let's look at that again.

We've had having a laugh – enjoying yourself; joking,

  literally – it's actually real,

first-of-its-kind – different to anything before.

Now, if you've enjoyed this episode, we think you'll love

This episode of 6-minute English, where we found out why laughter is the best medicine.

Click here to watch.

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