The Human Body – Facts Most People Do Not Know About Their Body

The human body is an amazing thing. Here are interesting facts about your body you to drop in conversation and impress your friends!
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The human body is an amazing thing, but even though we spend all day with ourselves, there are still plenty of things that you probably don’t know about your body.

We’ve compiled a list of interesting facts for you to drop in conversation and impress your friends!

People who have blue eyes are the least sensitive to pain.

Green eyes are also an indicator of higher pain tolerance. Eye color is based on 12 to 13 individual variations in people’s genes, and these different genes server various functions in the body.

For example, the NCX-4 gene is related to darker eyes and controls many different proteins in the body. One of the proteins the NCX-4 gene controls is related to pain. Additionally, genes related to melanin are also related to pain. Melanin is the pigment that makes eyes darker. This explains why people with darker eyes are more susceptible to pain.

In the time it takes to read this sentence, 50 million cells died and were replaced.

There are about 120 million new red blood cells being formed in the body every minute.

Your body makes about 2 million new red cells every second, so it only takes a number of weeks to build up stores of them again.

Fingernails grow up to four times faster than toenails.

You would think that they both grow at the same rate. However, that’s not the case. Fingernails grow two to three times faster than toenails. A fingernail replaces itself in about six months while a toenail takes a year.

Feet are farthest afield in the circulatory scheme of things. A better blood supply to the fingers keeps them chugging along at a faster clip.

Kissing creates a fun chemical party in your brain.

When you kiss someone passionately, your brain releases the same chemicals as it does when skydiving or firing a gun. Kissing activates the brain’s reward system, releasing neurotransmitters like oxytocin, “the love hormone,” and vasopressin, which bonds mothers with babies and romantic partners to each other.

It also releases endogenous opioids, dopamine, and other helpful neurohormones to keep our moods balanced.

The human body’s structure contains only four minerals.

They are apatite, aragonite, calcite, and cristobalite. These mineral crystals are what make up the bones, teeth, and all of the other structural pieces of the body. It is a system that is both simple and complex.

Alternatively, the four most abundant elements in the human body – hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and nitrogen – account for more than 99 per cent of the atoms inside you. They are found throughout your body, mostly as water but also as components of biomolecules such as proteins, fats, DNA and carbohydrates.

Botox hurts people’s ability to feel emotions fully.

Botox blocks signals from the nerves to the muscles. The injected muscle can’t contract.

The facial expressions you make are directly tied to your emotional state. If you can’t make the full expression, the emotions you feel won’t be as powerful.

Hiccups may be byproduct of when people used to be aquatic.

One theory is hiccups are a remnant of our ancient ancestral past. About 370 million years ago, our ancestors spent a lot of time in the ocean and had both gills and lungs. The hiccup prevented water ingress.

But, a more recent explanation by Howes in 2012 suggests that hiccups may have evolved along with other reflexes developed in mammals that allow them to coordinate suckling milk and breathing.

The brain generates more electrical impulses in a day than every telephone in the world combined.

Your brain contains about 100 billion microscopic cells called neurons—so many it would take you over 3,000 years to count them all.  Believe it or not, the activity in your brain never stops. Countless messages zip around inside it every second like a supercharged pinball machine.

Your neurons create and send more messages than all the phones in the entire world. And while a single neuron generates only a tiny amount of electricity, all your neurons together can generate enough electricity to power a low-wattage bulb.

Your skin is replaced around 1000 times in your life.

Your skin is in a constant cycle of shedding and being replaced with new skin. Throughout your life, your skin will change constantly, for better or worse.

In fact, your skin will regenerate itself approximately every 27 days.

Heart attacks happen more often on Mondays.

Monday is the worst day of the week for heart attacks. The risk on Mondays increases by 15% for women and 20% for men. Saturdays is the least day of the week for heart attacks.

In fact, the risk of getting a heart attack was 11 per cent higher on Monday than on any other day from Tuesday to Friday.

The nerve impulses sent by the brain travel at 170 miles per hour.

That is 274 km per hour! In other words, super fast.

It only takes a split second for the impulses to be sent from the brain to the nerves.

Humans are the only animals that can draw a straight line and draw a perfect circle.

Yes, some other animals can draw. However, none can connect two points in a straight line.

They also can’t construct a perfect circle. These skills are reserved for humans.

Your feet can taste garlic.

Try it for yourself. Rub some garlic on your feet and within 30 minutes, you will start to taste it in your mouth.

A compound in garlic called allicin is able to be absorbed through the cell membranes and journey through the bloodstream.

Newborn babies can breath and swallow at the same time.

They are able to do this incredible feat for up to seven months. It has to do with a mechanism involved in breastfeeding.

Once the babies get older, they can’t do it anymore.

There’s enough blood in the body to feed over a million mosquitoes.

Most humans contain enough blood to feed 1.2 million to 1.8 million of the hungry insects.  The body is a literal feast for them.  An adult will have approximately 1.2-1.5 gallons (or 10 units) of blood in their body. Blood is approximately 10% of an adult’s weight.

Regardless, in reality, it would be hard to get bit enough times to lose any substantial amount of blood at any one time.

Babies get fingerprints in the womb at three months.

Babies develop very rapidly. Twelve weeks into your pregnancy, or 10 weeks after conception, your baby is sprouting fingernails.

They will then have the same fingerprints for the rest of their lives.

The brain has a memory capacity of approximately 2.5 million gigabytes.

If it was compared to a computer hard drive, the the average adult human brain has the ability to store the equivalent of 2.5 million gigabytes digital memory.

The human brain has a capacity that is ten times greater than first thought and can retain 4.7 billion books, scientists have discovered.

Some people are born with an extra rib bone.

It happens at a rate of about 1 in 500 people. It’s called a cervical rib and can happen on both the left and right side of the rib cage.

Even though it is an abnormality, it doesn’t usually cause any problems.

Kissing is more effective for oral hygiene than using chewing gum.

It may not be as effective as flossing and brushing, but kissing increases saliva flow, which helps prevent tooth decay.

Kissing is nature’s natural cleansing process. According to the Academy of General Dentistry, kissing stimulates saliva, which washes out the mouth and helps remove the cavity-causing food particles that accumulate after eating. Saliva’s mineral ions can even promote repair of small lesions in tooth enamel.

The cornea of your eye is the only body part that doesn’t need blood.

Every other part of your body has a blood supply, but not the cornea.

It receives all of the oxygen it needs directly from the air. It absorbs it.

Colds are caused by more than 100 different viruses.

It’s likely you’ll never catch the same cold twice. It’s is possible to have more than one type of cold at once though. More than 200 viruses can cause a cold, but rhinoviruses are the most common type.

Viruses that cause colds can spread from person to person through the air and close personal contact.

Women have faster heartbeats than men.

The average resting heart rate of women is about three beats per minute faster than that of men. Women between 40 and 49 years of age have the highest average RHR of all.

Everyone is different though and there is a lot of different factors that determine heart rate.

The higher your IQ, the crazier your dreams.

Studies claim that people with higher IQs experience dreams that last longer and are more vivid.  It is also stated that dreams make you smarter and more creative.

However, most people don’t remember their dreams anyway, so it doesn’t really matter that much.

When kissing, over 278 different types of bacteria are passed between people.

The good news is that 95% of them are harmless. The bacteria are largely good for us.

However, it does mean that you probably shouldn’t be kissing everyone you meet.

People learn better when the information is printed on paper.

If the same information is read off of a computer screen, it won’t be absorbed into memory as readily. That’s what some studies show.

It’s a major win for the fans of the traditional paper book format.

Your ability to hear decreases after a big lunch.

For a lot of people, a full meal causes a mild ringing in the ears. It might not be very noticeable, but it does have an effect on hearing.

It also depends on what you consume. Sweet and salty foods often have a greater effect.

The length of all the blood vessels in the body is over 60,000 miles.

If you took all the blood vessels out of an average child and laid them out in one line, the line would stretch over 60,000 miles.

An adult’s would be closer to 100,000 miles long. There are three kinds of blood vessels: arteries, veins, and capillaries.

Your lips are 100 times more sensitive than your finger tips.

They are one of the most sensitive parts of your body.

Any contact with human lips instantly creates a noticeable sensation, no matter how light the touch is.

A person’s respiration rate is higher in spring than in autumn.

If you find yourself breathing heavier and faster in the spring than in the fall, this is why. Respiration rate changes are seasonal.

On average, people’s respiration rate is 1/3 higher at that time of year.

99% percent of your body’s calcium is located in the teeth and bones.

There is a small percentage that ends up in the blood, muscle, and various other tissues.

However, the bones are what benefits the most from calcium. It helps to strengthen them.

Children grow fastest in the spring.

Boys and girls grow more in the spring and summer than in the autumn and winter. It is believed that the increased spring growth rate is due to sun exposure. Some kids can have growth spurts that result in several inches of growth in just a few weeks’ time.

In addition, children produce more growth hormone during the first hours of sleep than during the day.

People are able to remember about 150 trillion pieces of information from their life.

At the end of life, that is the number of pieces of information stored in the brain. It’s an unfathomably large number.

It lends some credence to the idea that wisdom comes with age.

All of the bacteria in the body combined weighs around 4.4 pounds.

If you piled it all up, it would weigh 2 kg or 4.4 pounds.

It would include a mix of all kinds of bacteria, both good and bad. Just thinking about all those living creatures makes us a little uneasy.

80% of body heat escapes through the head.

If you want to stay warm, the head is the most important place to cover up. That is where most of the body heat escapes from.

Put on a heavy wool hat and you will stay much warmer in the cold weather.

The left lung is smaller than the right one.

Surprisingly, they aren’t the same size. It’s because the left lung is positioned over the heart.

It has to be slightly smaller to accommodate the important organ.

The feeling of thirst arises when your body loses 1% of its weight in water.

If it loses 5% of its weight in water, you will start to get dizzy and could potentially faint.

A 10% loss will result in extreme dehydration and possible death.

The human eye can see at around 140 megapixels.

We’re speaking in digital camera terms. The resolution of the eye is between 120 to 140 megapixels. Although, the highest resolution is in your central field of vision. Colors and pixels become less defined as you approach the sides of your vision field.

Human hair grows about 450 miles in a lifetime.

If you let your hair grow out forever and lined all of the hairs up, they would stretch over 450 miles.

For most people, each strand of hair grows about half an inch per month.

Humans are the only living creatures that sleep on their backs.

No other animal species sleeps on their backs naturally. Some animals like dogs and cats will occasionally do it when they are very relaxed.

However, it largely happens to them by accident.

The fragrance from bananas and apples can encourage weight loss.

Studies show that smelling a neutral sweet smell can help people who are trying to lose weight.

Whenever you are hungry, just take a whiff from a banana or an apple. It will curb your appetite.

Slugs and humans are genetically similar.

We share 70% of our DNA with the slimy insects.

Really, it’s not that surprising. Even humans and pickles have 40% of the same DNA.

Four-year-olds ask an average of 450 questions every day.

They are at the age when everything around them is new.

It results in a lot of curiosity and a lot of questions. Every couple of minutes, you can expect a question.

Most people fall asleep in about seven minutes.

Technically though, it depends on what we consider sleep. This figure is based upon reaching the alpha wave stage of sleep.

It’s a very light sleep. It takes significantly longer to enter a deep sleep.

Teeth are the only part of the body that can not heal itself

Teeth are the only part that can’t. Yes, the enamel on teeth can be repaired over time.

However, once a tooth has formed a cavity, there is no going back.

The tongue is the strongest muscle in the body.

It has an amazing amount of stamina. We use it all day for things like eating and speaking.

Although, if we are talking about the amount of force exerted, the strongest muscle would be the jaw.

Your heart is approximately the size of your fist.

Many people imagine it being bigger. However, the fist is a pretty good size gauge.

Most human hearts weigh between 220 and 260 grams.

The heart pumps an average of 182 million liters of blood in a lifetime.

It’s unfathomable how much blood that is. The heart is constantly working, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Each heartbeat pumps out about 1/3 cup of blood.

You burn more calories while sleeping than watching TV.

Watching TV is one of the most mindless things you can do. It burns fewer calories than taking a nap does.

It’s a good reason to turn off the box and get to bed early.

Each person has around 2000 taste buds.

They are the flavor receptors on your tongue. Some people actually have as many as 8000 taste buds.

We imagine that eating must be really enjoyable for them.

The human eye can see 10 million distinct colors.

That is a lot of different shades of colors.

It’s pretty impressive that the eyes can distinguish between so many.

They are one of the most miraculous parts of the human body.

People are more convincing liars when they have to go to the bathroom.

Having to go forces people to focus on self-control and making fewer extra movements.

This, in turn, makes it harder for others to tell if you are lying or not. Therefore, if you plan on lying anytime soon, it’s best to drink a lot of liquid first.