Biologists from harvard tested the animals to find how stress affected them
Biologists from harvard tested the animals to find how stress affected them
Breaking News English
Home | Help This Site
Stress really does turn your hair grey
Slowest
Slower
Medium
Faster
Fastest
MY e-BOOK
See a sample
More Listening
READING:
Scientists found that stress turns hair grey in mice. Stem cell biologists from Harvard tested mice to find how stress affected them. The scientists injected the mice with the heat-giving ingredient in chili peppers. This caused a hair-colouring chemical in the mice to overwork in reaction to the stress. It used up all colour-regenerating cells. The mice’s hair quickly turned white. A researcher said this was, «beyond what I imagined».
People have always believed that stress turns hair grey. France’s Queen Marie Antoinette’s hair supposedly turned white before she was beheaded. More recently, the hair of presidents have quickly lost colour. The strains of leadership have gone to the roots and follicles. The researcher said the loss of the colour-regenerating cells cannot be reversed. She said: «The damage is permanent.» She thinks stress could also accelerate the aging process.
Higher Levels
Try higher levels. The listening is a little longer, with more vocabulary.
Breaking News English Lesson on Greying Hair
Home | Help This Site
Stress really does turn your hair grey (26th January, 2020)
LISTEN
MATCH
SPELL
WORDS
SEE MORE.
Scientists found that stress turns hair grey in mice. Stem cell biologists from Harvard tested mice to find how stress affected them. The scientists injected the mice with the heat-giving ingredient in chili peppers. This caused a hair-colouring chemical in the mice to overwork in reaction to the stress. It used up all colour-regenerating cells. The mice’s hair quickly turned white. A researcher said this was, «beyond what I imagined».
People have always believed that stress turns hair grey. France’s Queen Marie Antoinette’s hair supposedly turned white before she was beheaded. More recently, the hair of presidents have quickly lost colour. The strains of leadership have gone to the roots and follicles. The researcher said the loss of the colour-regenerating cells cannot be reversed. She said: «The damage is permanent.» She thinks stress could also accelerate the aging process.
Try the same news story at these levels:
News
«Much has been said and written on the utility of newspapers; but one principal advantage which might be derived from these publications has been neglected; we mean that of reading them in schools.»
The Portland Eastern Herald (June 8, 1795)
«News is history in its first and best form, its vivid and fascinating form, and. history is the pale and tranquil reflection of it.»
Mark Twain, in his autobiography (1906)
«Current events provide authentic learning experiences for students at all grade levels. In studying current events, students are required to use a range of cognitive, affective, critical thinking and research skills.»
Haas, M. and Laughlin, M. (2000) Teaching Current Events: It’s Status in Social Studies Today.
Buy my 1,000 Ideas and Activities for Language Teachers eBook. It has hundreds of ideas, activity templates, reproducible activities, and more.
Breaking News English
Home | Help This Site
All 3 Graded Readings
Stress really does turn your hair grey
Scientists found that stress turns hair grey in mice. Stem cell biologists from Harvard tested mice to find how stress affected them. The scientists injected the mice with the heat-giving ingredient in chili peppers. This caused a hair-colouring chemical in the mice to overwork in reaction to the stress. It used up all colour-regenerating cells. The mice’s hair quickly turned white. A researcher said this was, «beyond what I imagined».
People have always believed that stress turns hair grey. France’s Queen Marie Antoinette’s hair supposedly turned white before she was beheaded. More recently, the hair of presidents have quickly lost colour. The strains of leadership have gone to the roots and follicles. The researcher said the loss of the colour-regenerating cells cannot be reversed. She said: «The damage is permanent.» She thinks stress could also accelerate the aging process.
SPEED READING
Speed 1 | Speed 2 | Speed 3 | Speed 4
MORE
Scientists have found that stress turns our hair grey, white or silver in mice. Stem cell biologists from Harvard University did a series of tests on mice to find the effects of stress on them. The scientists injected the mice with the ingredient in chili peppers that gives them their heat. This made the mice stressed. It caused a hair-colouring pigment in the mice to overwork as a reaction to the stress. It used up all colour-regenerating stem cells and the mice’s hair rapidly turned white. A researcher said: «The detrimental impact of stress that we discovered was beyond what I imagined.»
For centuries, people have believed that stress turns hair grey. France’s Queen Marie Antoinette’s hair supposedly turned white the night before she was beheaded during the French Revolution. More recently, the hair of presidents and other world leaders have quickly lost colour. The strains of leadership have gone to the roots of things, especially hair follicles. The researcher said the loss of the pigment-regenerating stem cells cannot be reversed. She said: «You can’t regenerate pigment any more. The damage is permanent.» She thinks stress could accelerate the aging process.
SPEED READING
Speed 1 | Speed 2 | Speed 3 | Speed 4
MORE
People have wondered for centuries about the link between stress and greying hair. It is believed that France’s Queen Marie Antoinette’s hair turned white the night before she was beheaded during the French Revolution in the late-eighteenth century. More recently, we have witnessed the locks of presidents and other world leaders quickly lose colour. The strains of leadership seem to go to the roots of things, especially hair follicles. Professor Hsu said the loss of the pigment-regenerating stem cells cannot be reversed. She said: «Once they’re gone, you can’t regenerate pigment any more. The damage is permanent.» Worryingly, she hypothesised that stress could be responsible for accelerating the aging process.
SPEED READING
Speed 1 | Speed 2 | Speed 3 | Speed 4
MORE
MY e-BOOK
See a sample
How Stress Causes Gray Hair: Harvard Scientists Solve a Biological Puzzle
By Harvard University January 23, 2020
Elaborate sympathetic innervation (magenta) around melanocyte stem cells (yellow). Acute stress induces hyperactivation of the sympathetic nervous system to release large amount of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine. Norepinephrine drives rapid depletion of melanocyte stem cells and hair greying. Credit: Hsu Laboratory, Harvard University
Harvard Scientists Uncover Link Between the Nervous System and Stem Cells That Regenerate Pigment
When Marie Antoinette was captured during the French Revolution, her hair reportedly turned white overnight. In more recent history, John McCain experienced severe injuries as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War — and lost color in his hair.
For a long time, anecdotes have connected stressful experiences with the phenomenon of hair graying.
Now, for the first time, HSCI scientists have discovered exactly how the process plays out: stress activates nerves that are part of the fight-or-flight response, which in turn cause permanent damage to pigment-regenerating stem cells in hair follicles.
The study, published in Nature on January 22, 2020, advances scientists’ knowledge of how stress can impact the body.
“Everyone has an anecdote to share about how stress affects their body, particularly in their skin and hair — the only tissues we can see from the outside,” said senior author Ya-Chieh Hsu, the Alvin and Esta Star Associate Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard and HSCI principal faculty member. “We wanted to understand if this connection is true, and if so, how stress leads to changes in diverse tissues. Hair pigmentation is such an accessible and tractable system to start with — and besides, we were genuinely curious to see if stress indeed leads to hair graying. ”
Narrowing down the culprit
Because stress affects the whole body, researchers first had to narrow down which body system was responsible for connecting stress to hair color. The team first hypothesized that stress causes an immune attack on pigment-producing cells. However, when mice lacking immune cells still showed hair graying, researchers turned to the hormone cortisol. But once more, it was a dead end.
Infographic depicting how stem cells are depleted in response to stress, causing hair to turn gray in mice. Credit: Judy Blomquist, Harvard University
“Stress always elevates levels of the hormone cortisol in the body, so we thought that cortisol might play a role,” Hsu said. “But surprisingly, when we removed the adrenal gland from the mice so that they couldn’t produce cortisol-like hormones, their hair still turned gray under stress.”
After systematically eliminating different possibilities, researchers honed in on the sympathetic nerve system, which is responsible for the body’s fight-or-flight response.
Sympathetic nerves branch out into each hair follicle on the skin. The researchers found that stress causes these nerves to release the chemical norepinephrine, which gets taken up by nearby pigment-regenerating stem cells.
Permanent damage
In the hair follicle, certain stem cells act as a reservoir of pigment-producing cells. When hair regenerates, some of the stem cells convert into pigment-producing cells that color the hair.
Researchers found that the norepinephrine from sympathetic nerves causes the stem cells to activate excessively. The stem cells all convert into pigment-producing cells, prematurely depleting the reservoir.
“When we started to study this, I expected that stress was bad for the body — but the detrimental impact of stress that we discovered was beyond what I imagined,” Hsu said. “After just a few days, all of the pigment-regenerating stem cells were lost. Once they’re gone, you can’t regenerate pigments anymore. The damage is permanent.”
The finding underscores the negative side effects of an otherwise protective evolutionary response, the researchers said.
“Acute stress, particularly the fight-or-flight response, has been traditionally viewed to be beneficial for an animal’s survival. But in this case, acute stress causes permanent depletion of stem cells,” said postdoctoral fellow Bing Zhang, the lead author of the study.
Answering a fundamental question
To connect stress with hair graying, the researchers started with a whole-body response and progressively zoomed into individual organ systems, cell-to-cell interaction and, eventually, all the way down to molecular dynamics. The process required a variety of research tools along the way, including methods to manipulate organs, nerves, and cell receptors.
“To go from the highest level to the smallest detail, we collaborated with many scientists across a wide range of disciplines, using a combination of different approaches to solve a very fundamental biological question,” Zhang said.
The collaborators included Isaac Chiu, assistant professor of immunology at Harvard Medical School who studies the interplay between nervous and immune systems.
“We know that peripheral neurons powerfully regulate organ function, blood vessels, and immunity, but less is known about how they regulate stem cells,” Chiu said.
“With this study, we now know that neurons can control stem cells and their function, and can explain how they interact at the cellular and molecular level to link stress with hair graying.”
The findings can help illuminate the broader effects of stress on various organs and tissues. This understanding will pave the way for new studies that seek to modify or block the damaging effects of stress. Harvard’s Office of Technology Development has filed a provisional patent application on the lab’s findings and is engaging prospective commercial partners who may be interested in clinical and cosmetic applications.
“By understanding precisely how stress affects stem cells that regenerate pigment, we’ve laid the groundwork for understanding how stress affects other tissues and organs in the body,” Hsu said. “Understanding how our tissues change under stress is the first critical step towards eventual treatment that can halt or revert the detrimental impact of stress. We still have a lot to learn in this area.”
Discover more
Reference: “Hyperactivation of sympathetic nerves drives depletion of melanocyte stem cells” by Bing Zhang, Sai Ma, Inbal Rachmin, Megan He, Pankaj Baral, Sekyu Choi, William A. Gonçalves, Yulia Shwartz, Eva M. Fast, Yiqun Su, Leonard I. Zon, Aviv Regev, Jason D. Buenrostro, Thiago M. Cunha, Isaac M. Chiu, David E. Fisher and Ya-Chieh Hsu, 22 January 2020, Nature.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-1935-3
The study was supported by the Smith Family Foundation Odyssey Award, the Pew Charitable Trusts, Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Harvard/ MIT Basic Neuroscience Grants Program, Harvard FAS and HMS Dean’s Award, American Cancer Society, NIH, the Charles A. King Trust Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, and an HSCI junior faculty grant.
Breaking News English Lesson on Greying Hair
Home | Help This Site
Stress really does turn your hair grey (26th January, 2020)
LISTEN
MATCH
SPELL
WORDS
SEE MORE.
Scientists have found that stress turns our hair grey, white or silver in mice. Stem cell biologists from Harvard University did a series of tests on mice to find the effects of stress on them. The scientists injected the mice with the ingredient in chili peppers that gives them their heat. This made the mice stressed. It caused a hair-colouring pigment in the mice to overwork as a reaction to the stress. It used up all colour-regenerating stem cells and the mice’s hair rapidly turned white. A researcher said: «The detrimental impact of stress that we discovered was beyond what I imagined.»
For centuries, people have believed that stress turns hair grey. France’s Queen Marie Antoinette’s hair supposedly turned white the night before she was beheaded during the French Revolution. More recently, the hair of presidents and other world leaders have quickly lost colour. The strains of leadership have gone to the roots of things, especially hair follicles. The researcher said the loss of the pigment-regenerating stem cells cannot be reversed. She said: «You can’t regenerate pigment any more. The damage is permanent.» She thinks stress could accelerate the aging process.
Try the same news story at these levels:
News
«Much has been said and written on the utility of newspapers; but one principal advantage which might be derived from these publications has been neglected; we mean that of reading them in schools.»
The Portland Eastern Herald (June 8, 1795)
«News is history in its first and best form, its vivid and fascinating form, and. history is the pale and tranquil reflection of it.»
Mark Twain, in his autobiography (1906)
«Current events provide authentic learning experiences for students at all grade levels. In studying current events, students are required to use a range of cognitive, affective, critical thinking and research skills.»
Haas, M. and Laughlin, M. (2000) Teaching Current Events: It’s Status in Social Studies Today.
Buy my 1,000 Ideas and Activities for Language Teachers eBook. It has hundreds of ideas, activity templates, reproducible activities, and more.