BBC 6分钟英语 我们皮肤上的那种不愉快的感觉对我们有什么好处

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Hello and welcome to 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I'm Neil.
And I'm Georgie.
Find the vocabulary, definitions
and a free worksheet on our website, bbclearningenglish.com.
So, Georgie we're going to talk about something a little different today.
We're talking about itching.
Now an itch is that unpleasant feeling you get on your skin
that you have to scratch with your fingers.
What sort of things make you itch?
Well, funny you should ask, because I'm actually wearing quite an itchy jumper
at the moment and it's making me want to scratch my skin. What about you?
Well, recently I was bitten by a mosquito and,
as you know, when you get bitten by a mosquito, it's really itchy.
I had to scratch loads and loads.
Oh, I hate it when that happens.
It was horrible.
In this podcast, we're going to hear from some experts about why we itch
and how scratching can be good for us.
And as usual, we'll be learning some useful new vocabulary.
OK. Well, we're going to start with a quiz question of course, Georgie.
It's a bit of a different one today.
Dr Henning Holle studies the psychology of itching,
and he played some scratching sounds
to the guests on the BBC World Service programme CrowdScience.
Now the question is, what is being scratched?
You have three choices: a) an arm, b) a beard, or c) some jeans.
OK. Well, let's listen...
Well, that sounded a bit hairy, so I'm going to go with b) a beard.
Well, we'll find out at the end of the programme.
So, Neil, I mentioned that my jumper was a bit itchy
but sometimes I feel itchy for no particular reason.
So, what's going on there?
Well, that's something that
the listeners of BBC World Service programme CrowdScience also wondered.
They wanted to know the answer to that.
The presenter, Anand Jagatia,
spoke to itching expert Sonja Ständer to find out more. Let's listen.
There's lots of science to unpack here. Sonja,
what actually is itchiness?
Yeah. So, by scratching the skin, we remove parasites or plants
or anything that does not belong on the skin.
And so we start to scratch at the very same area where we itch and remove it.
And it can no longer damage the skin and harm ourselves.
Anand says there's a lot of science to unpack about itchiness.
'Unpack' here means explain.
Sonja explains that when our skin feels itchy, we scratch it,
and that helps to get rid of parasites and other harmful things on our skin.
Parasites are animals or plants that live on another animal
and feed from them.
So, Neil, itching is our skin's way of protecting itself
against harmful parasites.
And I have to say, all of this talk of itching
and scratching is making me feel a bit itchy right now.
Well, that's interesting because Dr Henning Holle wanted to study
whether just thinking about itching makes us more likely to feel itchy.
Henning and his team studied what happened when people watched videos
of itching and scratching.
Let's listen to him speaking to BBC World Service programme CrowdScience.
And what we found in this study was, yes,
these scratching videos indeed made people feel itchier.
They also started to scratch themselves more spontaneously.
So, the answer is basically yes, you can catch a scratch.
In Henning's study, when people watched videos of scratching,
they scratched themselves spontaneously.
If you do something spontaneously, you do it without being asked
or without thinking.
So, Henning concludes that yes, you can catch a scratch,
just like you might catch an illness.
'Catch' in this context means get from someone else.
OK. Georgie, I think it's time for the answer to my quiz question.
We had a clip of people scratching
and you had to decide what is being scratched.
I said that was a beard.
OK. Well, let's see if the people who are listening to this
on the programme CrowdScience agreed.
It sounds like hairy skin so I would go for the scalp.
Yeah, I think it's beard or something because it does sound
like there's hair there.
It is definitely hairy skin and Anand was spot on.
So, it is indeed a beard scratch that we were listening to.
Wow!
So I was right!
You were. Congratulations!
OK. Let's recap the vocabulary we learned in this programme,
starting with 'itch', which is an unpleasant feeling on your skin.
And something can be described using the adjective 'itchy'.
When you feel an itch, you often scratch it with your fingers
by rubbing your nails on the skin.
If you unpack an idea or scientific concept, you explain it in clear detail.
A parasite is an animal or plant that lives on another animal and feeds on it.
If you do something spontaneously, you do it without being asked
or without thinking.
'Catch' can be used to mean get from someone else, such as an illness.
For example, you can catch a cold.
Once again, our six minutes are up, but you can test what you've learned
with the worksheet on our website, bbclearningenglish.com.
Thank you for joining us and goodbye.
Goodbye.
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