Late nights: Bad for health? BBC News Review

Do you prefer late night or early mornings.

One of those choices could be bad for your health.

This is News Review from BBC

Learning English. I'm Neil...

And I'm Sian. Make sure you watch to the end to learn vocabulary, about today's story.

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Now, our story.

Staying up late into the night. For some people,

it's just the way they prefer to live.

But it may be affecting their health.

New research from the US found

that night owls may be more likely to develop heart disease and diabetes.

It's because people who get up early, burn fat for energy more easily.

You have been looking at the headlines,

Sian, what's the vocabulary?

We have 'night owl', 'chronic' and 'prone to'.

This is News Review from BBC Learning English.

Let's have a look at our first headline.

OK, this one is from Sky News.

So, the headline asks what kind of sleep pattern you have?

Do you prefer to stay up late?

Or, do you like getting up early? And there are two expressions in there

for those two situations.

What are they?

OK, so the one we're going to look at is 'night owl'. What can you tell me about owls, Neil?

Well, owls are a type of bird and they stay up late.

They stay up all night and they are very active at night.

That's when they do their work, which is hunting in this case.

Exactly. And so we call people who stay up late 'night owls'.

It means they stay up late,

but also they are mentally or physically active at night.

What about the opposite Neil?

Well, we can also see in the headline the expression.

'early bird' which comes from the saying 'the early bird catches the worm'.

And it describes someone who likes to get up early.

There are other ways of saying that as well.

You can call someone 'an early riser' or 'a morning person'.

Which one are you, Sian?

I used to be a night owl and I think, naturally,

I'm a night owl, but I wanna be a morning person,

so I've made myself become one. How about you?

Well the same. I like staying up late, but it's never a good idea.

Let's have a look at that again.

Let's have our next headline.

This one is from CNN:

The headline is saying that night owls -

that's the expression

we just looked at - are at a higher risk

of developing chronic diseases. And that's the word

we're looking at - 'chronic'.

And if we use 'chronic' to describe an illness

It means it's long lasting,

so it doesn't go away. For example, if I hurt my back in an accident

and the pain lasts forever,

I can say I have chronic pain or a chronic backache.

Yeah, and in a medical sense the opposite of that is 'acute'.

So, if you hurt your back,

but you get better after a couple of weeks,

that is not chronic pain,

that is acute pain.

We use this word, though,

chronic, for more than just illnesses, don't we Sian?

That's right. We can use it to describe situations which are long lasting and bad.

So, for example, we can talk about chronic unemployment,

or we can say there is a chronic shortage of doctors.

Yeah, and as you said that is for bad situations and in fact,

in slang, you can use the word

'chronic' on its own

just to mean bad. So, for example,

did you see that new detective drama on TV?

It was chronic! Acting was terrible.

And one more thing to note about the pronunciation,

so the spelling and pronunciation, are a bit tricky.

Normally, when we see c-h

it's pronounced 'ch' like cheese.

But here it's 'k', so 'chronic'.

Let's take a look at that one more time.

Our next headline, please.

This one's from the Guardian.

So, in this headline

we see that word 'night owls' again,

and it's saying that people who stay up late,

are more likely to develop diseases and

we're looking at the expression 'prone to'.

That's right. So, if you're prone to something

it means you are likely to be affected by something bad.

So, for example.

smokers are prone to lung disease or professional footballers

are prone to leg injuries.

So, the structure is 'prone to' followed by something bad.

Yeah, and we also use this expression 'prone to' to describe

certain negative types of behaviour that people have in their personality.

So, for example, if someone doesn't tell the truth a lot,

We can say they are prone to lying.

Or someone that exaggerates a lot, can be prone to exaggeration.

And we have another phrase which is 'accident prone'.

So, if someone is accident prone then they tend to have a lot of accidents.

Yeah, but be careful,

you can't just create an adjective like that

by adding 'prone' at the end. Accident prone is a set expression.

We wouldn't say, 'lying prone'.

OK, let's have a look at that again.

We've had 'night owls', people who stay up late

and are active at night.

'Chronic' - it's bad

and it lasts a long time.

And 'prone to' - likely to be affected by something bad.

Don't forget there's a quiz on our website at bbclearningenglish.com

Thank you for joining us

and goodbye. Goodbye.