Name: Heatwaves speed up ageing process: BBC Learning English from the News
Uploaded: 2026-01-28T17:08:10.000Z
Duration: 7 min 6 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

From BBC Learning English this is Learning English from the News, our podcast about the news headlines in this program Heat waves speed up the ageing process, new research says.

In this program, we look at one big news story and the vocabulary in the headlines that will help you understand it.

You can find all the vocabulary and headlines from this episode and as well as a worksheet on our website bbclearningenglish.com okay, let's hear more about this story.

A study in Taiwan has found that people's biological age increases when they experience heat waves.

The study measured participants organ function in order to determine their biological age.

Experiencing four heat wave days over a two year period led people's biological age to increase by about nine days.

Now, while this appears small, researchers have suggested that exposure to heat waves over several decades is likely to have a greater impact.

Manual workers, those living in rural areas, or those who do not have access to air conditioning are likely to be the worst affected.

This is from the Guardian, a newspaper in the uk.

Heat waves are making people age faster, study suggests.

And that headline again from the Guardian, a newspaper in the uk.

This headline is reporting the study that we've been talking about.

The word that we're going to learn is the verb age.

That's the number of years that someone has been alive.

So if someone or something ages, they have changed as they get older in years.

And it's important to note that it's not just another way to say get older.

If someone ages, we're often talking about their health and appearance changing.

Equally, people can be aged by something which without getting older in years, illness or stress can age people, for example.

And things you do to your appearance or the way you dress can also age you.

For example, my uncle grew a beard and it really aged him.

In this study, what was measured was people's organ function and researchers found that exposure to heat could lead people's organs to function as if they were older.

We can also use the verb age with things.

So some food and drink products like cheese or wine develop their flavour over time they have aged.

If you age something like a piece of furniture, you do something to make it look older than it actually is.

For example, after taking on such a stressful job, she aged considerably.

This is Learning English from the News, our podcast about the news headlines today.

We're talking about a study that suggests that heat waves may make our organs deteriorate quicker.

This is from Simax, an Australian science news site.

Repeated heat waves may accelerate aging.

And that headline again, repeated heat waves may accelerate aging.

This headline is talking about the study that we mentioned earlier.

We're going to learn the verb accelerate.

It's talking about how heat waves make the process of aging get faster.

We often use accelerate like this with processes or systems to talk about how they get faster.

If the economy accelerates, then it improves in the same way.

If something like an illness accelerates, it can mean to get worse.

It's also very common to use it to talk about vehicles like cars.

The pedal that you press to make a car go faster is called the accelerator.

You sometimes hear the opposite of accelerate, which is decelerate.

Now these words can be quite technical in everyday speech.

We're more likely to use speed up and slow down.

We've had accelerate, get faster or more intense.

For example, as time went on, his illness accelerated.

We're talking about a study that suggests that heat waves can speed up the ageing process.

The study suggested that manual workers, those are people who work with their hands, people living in rural areas and those living in communities with less access to air conditioning are most at risk from heat waves.

And that's what our next headline is about.

This is from the Independent, a newspaper in the uk The Demographics at risk of Aging due to Heat waves.

And that headline again from the Independent, the Demographics at risk of aging due to heat waves.

This story is about groups of people who are particularly at risk from heat.

We're going to learn the noun demographic.

Yes, a demographic is a group of people who share a particular characteristic.

So things like age, gender, type of job, sex, social class.

Here it's referring to groups of people who may be particularly vulnerable to heat waves.

Now, this noun comes from demographics, the study of statistics about the human population.

Demographic is often used in marketing and politics.

A product or policy might be designed to appeal to or to support a particular demographic that's a particular group of people.

For example, boy bands are often targeted at the teenage demographic we've had.

Demographic A group of people who share a characteristic.

For example, we hope our new product will allow us to appeal to a new demographic.

That's it for this episode of Learning English from the News.

We'll be back next week with another news story.

Now, if you want to practice what you've learnt, go to our website, bbclearningenglish.com to see more example sentences and to try our free worksheet.

And don't forget to follow us on social media.

Just search for BBC Learning English on your favourite platform.