Healthy living and DNA: BBC News Review

A healthy lifestyle might add five years to your life,

despite your genes.

This is News Review from BBC Learning English,

where we help you understand news headlines in English. I'm Neil.

And I'm Georgie.

Make sure you watch to the end to learn the vocabulary

you need to talk about this story.

And don't forget to subscribe to our channel,

so that you can learn more English from news headlines.

Now, the story.

Your DNA can influence how long you live.

But it's still worth leading a healthy life,

according to new research. In the first study of its kind,

scientists explored whether the negative impact of genetics

on life expectancy could be reduced by a healthy lifestyle.

Habits to extend life include regular exercise, a healthy diet,

no smoking and getting enough sleep.

You've been looking at the headlines Georgie,

what's the vocabulary

people need to understand this news story in English?

We have 'prolong', 'offset' and 'tweaks'.

This is News Review from BBC Learning English.

Let's have our first headline.

This one's from the Independent.

Vast study shows healthy living could prolong the lives of some by five years.

So, this headline is about a vast study.

That means a very large-scale piece of academic research.

The word that we are looking at though is 'prolong'.

It's a verb and it has the word 'long' inside it, Georgie.

So are we talking about making something longer?

Yes, Neil.

But you can use 'prolong' for some things and not others.

So, do you want to do a guessing game? Yes, please.

I'll give you some examples where you can use it

and where you can't, and you can guess the rule.

So, I can prolong a meeting, healthy living can prolong our lives,

But if I... if my trousers are too short and I want to make them longer,

I can't prolong them.

No, you're right.

You can lengthen them, so your quiz...

I'm guessing that 'prolong' is used for

time. Is that right?

  That is right Neil. Well done!

OK, a note on the pronunciation of this word 'prolong'.

It's got two syllables,

the stress is on the second.

And so the 'o' in the first part

sounds like 'uh' prolong, prolong.

Anything else you can tell us, Georgie?

Yes, well quite often, not always, we use it in quite a negative sense.

So, it's used to talk about delay a lot or

time that has extended that we don't want.

So, if you're sick,

you should rest to recover,

because we don't want to prolong the illness.

In a construction project,

if the materials are out of stock for a while,

this could prolong the process.

It could extend the date for completion.

Yes, and we don't want this explanation to go on too long.

We don't want to prolong it, don't want it to be too boring.

Let's look at that again.

Let's have a look at our next headline.

This one is from the Guardian.

Healthy lifestyle may offset genetics by 60%

and add five years to life, study says.

So, this headline says

that if you have DNA that could negatively impact

how long you live, a healthy lifestyle could reduce that effect.

Now I think the word we really want to look at here

Georgie is 'offset'. Is that right?

Yes. So, if your genes might reduce your life expectancy,

living healthily might actually help to bring that life expectancy back up.

It offsets the negative effects of genetics.

It brings about a kind of balance.

Yes, and an example of this word 'offset' that's used a lot

at the moment is carbon offsetting.

So, we have this idea of doing something good, planting trees,

to reduce the negative effects of doing something bad, burning carbon.

So, we offset the bad thing with something good.

Is there anything else to say about this?

Yes, we've got a couple of similar words.

One is 'counter-balance', which is about re-finding that balance.

We've also got 'neutralise' which is about taking away

the bad and adding some good. So, quite similar.

OK, let's look at that again.

Let's have our next headline.

This one is from the Daily Mail.

Proof you can outrun bad genes with just four lifestyle tweaks

- and it'll give you an extra five years of life.

So, this headline says that we can outrun our DNA.

That means 'to get ahead of' in a metaphorical sense,

but we're looking at the word 'tweaks'.

That's a nice little word, Georgie.

It sounds like the noise that a bird makes - 'tweak tweak' is that right?

Erm, Neil, no. That is a 'tweet'.

Here, a 'tweak' means a small change or a slight adjustment

to something, anything.

So, here in the headline - 'just four lifestyle tweaks'.

They're trying to make the change

sound easy and small, so that you can extend your life.

Yes, some typical contexts you can use this word in:

perhaps you have a financial budget.

It's ready to go for the year ahead.

But you need to make some small changes - make some tweaks.

Perhaps also you have a favourite recipe that you want to cook for a friend

that they have an allergy.

You need to tweak that recipe, so that they don't get ill.

What else can you tell us about tweaks?

Well, in the headline, we see it as a noun.

It often goes with the verb 'make' so we make a tweak,

but it can also be used as a verb.

So, for example, yesterday

I wrote this script.

But this morning before coming into the studio, Neil and I tweaked the script

a bit to make sure that it was ready for today.

Yes, we made just some small changes, some tweaks,

because it was basically brilliant, wasn't it?

Let's look at that again.

We've had 'prolong' - extend the duration.

'Offset' - do something good

to reduce the effect of something bad.

And 'tweaks' - small changes.

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Thank you for joining us and goodbye. Bye.