Author: Tina Hesman Saey / Source: Science News for Students
SAN DIEGO, Calif. — Goose bumps make your hairs stand on end. This condition may also have a side benefit.
It can help hair grow, a new study finds.Nerves and muscles that raise goose bumps in the skin also stimulate some other cells to make hair follicles and grow hair. Those other stem cells are a type of unspecialized cells. They have the capacity to mature into several different types of cells.
Ya-Chieh Hsu is a stem cell researcher at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. She reported the findings December 9, here. She was speaking at a joint meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology and the European Molecular Biology Organization. Getting goose bumps when it’s cold, she suspects, might prompt animals’ fur to grow thicker.
The body’s sympathetic nervous system controls a lot of important body functions that we don’t think about. These include heart rate, the dilation…
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