BBC 6分钟英语学习 头发的奇妙之处

From

BBC, learning English. Welcome to Six Minute English, where today we introduce a hairy raising topic and six items of vocabulary.

I'm Tim. So what's hair raising about today's topic meal Hair

Raising means scary, but also exciting.

We're talking about hair, which may be exciting for some, but definitely won't be scary.

Hair raisings is a real thing, though, isn't it?

I hands do rise. Yes, tim they do.

We get goose bumps when we're cold, scared or excited.

But other mammals do it better than us.

Cats fluff up when they see other cats.

They don't like that's true. We can't fluff up because we don't have enough body hair.

I suppose we used to be as hairy as gorillas.

If you go back a million years or so, do you know why we lost so much hair, tim isn't it?

Because it allowed us to sweat more easily.

This meant we didn't get so hot and tired.

We could run faster and for longer and catch more animals to eat.

That sounds like a good theory, but do you have a theory on how many hair follicles the human body has today?

What's a hair follical? A hair follicle is the organ that produces a hair underneath the skin.

Now, answer the question, tim, how many hair follicles does the human body have today?

Is it a 500000? B 5 million or C 50 million?

MM 50 million. Sounds about right. Did you know that men have more than women?

Tim No, I didn't. But it makes sense, since men are usually harier than women on their faces, but not necessarily on their heads.

Are you referring to the fact that men of a certain age can be frolically challenged.

If you're folically challenged, it means you're losing your hair.

Having little or no hair is called baldness, and if you've reached a certain age, it means you aren't young anymore.

Why is our hair so important to us, neil?

When we aren't worrying about going bald, we're busy shaving, waxing, plucking and trimming the stuff, erring to people in general, not myself.

Well, a good head of hair indicates health and youth, and hair in your face.

Facial hair shows when boys have reached manhood.

On the other hand, going grey or losing your hair shows you're getting older.

Here today, gone tomorrow. Oh, bad joke.

Now, I'm sorry. It's true that hair on your head shows signs of aging, but this isn't true of all human hair.

Let's listen to Ralph Pus, a leading hair loss researcher, talking about this.

The eyebrows get stronger, usually in aging men, the hairs in your nose and your ears get stronger.

And what a miracle of nature that in organ and while the entire body is is aging, actually grows stronger.

So we may even be able to learn from half a local or not to age.

Um, I'm not sure I would swap a good head of hair, thick eyebrows and nose hair.

How about you, neil? I agree.

But let's hear more from Ralph past about why some hair gets stronger as you get older.

The hephelg apparen'tly knows some tricks that the other organs don't know.

So it's continuously regenerating. Itself, goes through a so called hair cycle.

And part of that, we, we know pretty well.

And there are these stem cells that it uses to regenerate cells.

So a hair follicle can regenerate cells or grow new cells to replace old or damaged ones.

But if that's only true for eyebrows, nose and ear hair, I am not that impressed.

I want hands on my head to be able to regenerate.

The important thing here is that these cells in the hair follicles may help scientists discover a way to stop other organs of the body aging.

Okay, I'm now going to reveal how many hair follicles on average we have on our bodies.

The answer is 5 million. Oh, so not 50 million.

Then don't worry to him. It was a tricky question.

Now let's go over the words we learn today.

Hair raising means scary, often in an exciting way, e.g.

that ride on the roller coaster was a hair raising experience.

Next is hair follicle, the organ that produces a hair underneath the skin.

Scientists believe that stress can affect hair follicles.

A number of things can affect hair follicles, actually, age, disease, diet.

Okay, but we haven't got all day, neil, so let's move on to the next item, boldness, which means having little or no hair on your head.

My grandfather is bold, and he always wears a hat to cover

his boldness. Nice example. Is your grandpa actually bald?

Neil? No. He has a fine head of hair.

Now, if you are of a certain age, it means you are no longer young.

E.G. All the people at the party, whereof us age, how many of them had facial hair?

TIM that's our next word. And facial

means to do with the face.

None of the people at the party had facial hair.

There's your answer? Hmm, that's unusual.

Tim Lots of men have beards these days.

Okay, our final word for today is regenerate, which means to grow again.

And you can talk about regenerating a range of things, e.g.

the council has plans to regenerate this part of the city.

Regeneration of parts the city is in progress.

Regeneration is the noun. Well, it's time to go now.

But if today show gave you goose bumps, please let us know by visiting our Twitter, facebook and youtube pages in telling us all about it.

扫码查看听力音频