Things You Didn’t Know About Your Own Body
Most of us believe that nobody knows us quite like ourselves, but when it comes to the human body, there are a lot of interesting facts and processes we have no idea occur all the time. Humans, like most animals, are incredibly complex organisms that require millions of processes to go on in our bodies just to function in daily life.
Here are some things that your body does that you probably had no idea about.
Hair Can "Taste"
Not the hair on your head—don't worry. Nasal passages and your lungs are lined with tiny, thin hairs called "cilia" that feel for foreign/unwanted objects and work to sweep them out. Celia sense bitter tastes of the things passing by them, and increase their rate of movement in an attempt to push it out.
It's Impossible To Tickle Yourself
The back part of your brain is called the "cerebellum" and it monitors the movements of your body. For example, if you were to close your eyes and try to touch your nose, you could, whereas it would be much harder to touch someone else's.
The cerebellum anticipates and predicts the sensation you'll feel when you attempt to tickle yourself, countering your brain's response that would occur if someone else did the deed.
Some Sneezes Travel Up To 20 Feet
You thought you were going to be fine because the sniffling sneezer in your office works a few desks away? Guess again. A group of researchers at MIT conducted a video study that concluded that sneezes travel much farther than they originally thought, with some particles going as far as 20 feet away.
Human Nails Grow Faster Now Than They Did In The Past
It turns out that people didn't have to trim their finger and toenails as much back in the day. A study at the University of North Carolina looked at recorded measurements of finger and toenails from two previous studies from 70 and 50 years ago, respectively, and compared them to modern measurements.
They found that growth had increased by 25% over the decades, and attributed the change to increases in protein-rich diets.
Dirty Hair Helps The Environment
Dirty or greasy hair can absorb the air pollutant ozone, according to Missouri University of Science & Technology. Scalp oils help to attract and trap air pollutants around you. So the next time someone tries to shame you for not washing your hair enough, tell them it's because you're a good environmentalist!
You're More Likely To Be Near-Sighted If You Have Big Eyes
Big eyes are often seen as a beautiful trait, but they come at a cost. If you have large eyes that make you look like a cartoon character, you're more likely to have nearsightedness, a condition that causes distant objects to look blurry.
If your eyeball grows too long, the light has farther to travel through the eye to the back, leading less of it to reach the retina. Therefore, far objects are hard to see.
A Blink Is Like A Teeny-Tiny Nap
We blink about 15-20 times a minute, which you probably assume is just to keep your eyes moist and prevent dust from entering. While those are very necessary functions, a Washington University study found that closing your eyes momentarily helps to sharpen attention and acts as a miniature energy recharge.
Taste Buds Dull As You Age
Finally, I have evidence that my parents wouldn't be able to handle as much spicy food if they were my age! Just as hearing and vision capabilities tend to decrease as time goes by, your taste buds regenerate at a slower pace as you get older. Women begin to lose taste in their 50's, while men tend to start to decline in their 60's.
Earwax Is Good For You
Put away the Q-tips, or at least stop shoving them into your ear canal. Earwax serves the very important purpose of cleaning and lubricating your ear canals as well as protecting invasive objects from entering and damaging the ear. Earwax is about 50% fat, and it coats the ear to prevent dust and other particles from getting in.
Humans Have A "Glow", You Just Can't See It
If someone ever tells you that you're "glowing", they technically aren't wrong. Research has discovered that the human body emits a small amount of visible light, but that it's 1000 times less intense than what we are able to detect with our eyes, making it invisible on a human scale.
Additionally, A Japanese research team found that the glow varies throughout the day, with it being the strongest in the late afternoon.
Your Hair Knows When You're Sleeping And Knows When You're Awake
Hair is just like Santa, and knows when you're actually sleeping. Researchers at Yamaguchi University in Japan discovered that our cell-rich hair follicles contain RNA from "clock genes" that express each person's sleep-wake cycle. If you get up later or got to bed earlier than normal, your hair will show it.
You Lose Almost 1/3 Of Your Bones As You Get Older
Human babies are born with about 300 bones, but as you age and grow, some of them fuse together, eventually leaving you with a total of 206 distinct bones by the time your body is finished growing (around young adulthood). Technically, the bones aren't lost, but they merge with others to make larger bones.
You Have A Unique Tongue Print
We all know that we have unique fingerprints, but your tongue print is equally individual and rare. The Thai Moogambigai Dental college ran a study during which they took biometric scans to compare individuals' tongue size, texture, and other specific details. While very interesting, tongue prints probably aren't super helpful at identifying criminals.
Humans Are The Only Emotional Criers
Lots of animals produce tears in order to lubricate their eyes, but humans are the only animals we know of that cry as an emotional response. Dr. Thomas Dixon, the director of the Centre for the History of Emotions at University of London, suggests that tears serve more of a social purpose for humans and are, even if done alone, a type of performance.
Your Pinky Contains Half Of Your Hand Strength
While it's the smallest finger on your hand, it's vital to your hand strength. It helps the thumb to "pinch" and gives more power to your ring, middle, and index finger, making it the worst finger to lose in an accident. I'd like to apologize to my pinky for thinking it was borderline useless for all these years.
Humans Have More Than Five Senses
No, one of them is not the ability to see dead people. We know the classic five (smell, sight, hearing, taste, touch), but we also have nociception (sense of pain), equilibrioception (sense of balance), proprioception (sense of space), thermoception (sense of internal and external temperature), and temporal perception (sense of time).
Your Butt Is Your Largest Muscle
We have big butts and we cannot lie! There are a lot of debates around which muscle is the strongest in the body, but the gluteus maximus (your main butt muscle) is objectively the largest solid muscle in your body. The gluteus maximus works to keep your body upright, is central to moving your legs and hips, and cushions your bones when in the seated position.
Multiply Your Height By 4: That's How Long Your Small Intestine Is
If you cut your body open, removed your intestines, and lay them all in a straight line, you'd be dead. But seriously, your small intestine is about 18-23 feet long. This muscular tube works to digest and absorb nutrients from the food you eat before passing on the waste to the large intestine.
Children Grow Fastest In The Summer
As the temperature gets warmer, your children get taller. While some people believe that growth occurs at a steady rate, Dr. Joseph Gigante states that much like most organisms in the natural world, growth spurts can be seasonal.
While more research needs to be done to understand why this happens, it's perfectly normal to think your kids grew a lot when they return from summer camp.
There Are No Muscles In Your Fingers
Fingers are important body parts that help us do things regularly throughout the day, but they actually don't contain any muscles themselves. Every movement of your fingers is triggered by muscles in your hands, most of which are in your palms, and the fingers move due to bone and tendon connections to those muscles.
Your Tongue Is The Only Muscle That Doesn't Join Two Bones
Every muscle in your body connects to bones at both ends, with one being the "origin" bone and the other being the "insertion" bone. This allows for the muscles to create motion when they contract. The only exception is your tongue, which is only connected to the hyiod bone in your neck and remains unconnected on the other side.
Babies Don't Have Kneecaps
Babies instead are born with cartilage in the area, which slowly ossifies and turns into bone as their age. This process generally begins between ages 3-6 years and doesn't complete until young adulthood. That's part of the reason why babies' knees just look like lumpy little wrinkles.
You're Taller In The Morning Than At Night
Tell the NBA that they need to stop scheduling night games and get their players on the courts at 9 am instead! The pressure put on joints throughout the day slowly compresses your spine by just fractions of an inch, but it's enough to push everything down. When you relax in your sleep, there's no pressure on your spinal disks, allowing you to return to your full height.
Your Liver Can Almost Completely Regrow
Even if your liver is reduced by as much as 75%, a healthy liver can grow back to normal size over time. According to the researchers at the University of Iowa, the rapid replication of liver cells can cause the liver to regenerate to its original size (or close to it) within only a month!
Human Bones Are Stronger Than Steel
While most of us will have a "broken bone" incidence within our lifetime, bone remains an extremely tough substance. According to Discover Magazine, bone is, ounce for ounce, stronger than steel. Healthy bone has a greater pressure tolerance and bearing strength than a rod of steel with the same width, with the strongest bone being the femur (thigh bone).
Your Stomach Has A "Second Brain"
Butterflies in your stomach during a first kiss or that anxious tummy feeling you have before a big presentation have an actual physiological explanation. There is a large network of neurons that lines the stomach, leading it to have its own reflexes and senses that are intricately interwoven with your body's nervous system. You should literally trust your gut.
Your Ear Contains The Smallest Bone In Your Body
The smallest named bone in your body is called the "stapes", which is shaped like a stirrup and located in the middle ear. This tiny, light bone is complete with a base and an oval that is covered with a membrane, making what we know as the eardrum. The eardrum measures the vibrations of sound waves, which is how we hear.
Your Feet Contain Almost 25% Of Your Bones
Each human foot contains 26 bones, from the phalanges (bones in the toes), metatarsals (which are the long bones that reach towards the toes) and the tarsals, which are a clump of bones near your ankles. Between both feet, there are 52 down there, which is nearly a quarter of your total bone count!
Your Skeleton Entirely Replaces Itself After 10 Years
New decade, new me. Your skeletal system's cells are in a constant state of regeneration, which means your bones are trying to replace themselves non-stop. In about ten years time, all of you bone cells have died and replaced themselves. This process slows as you age, but you can still tell everyone you're not the same person you used to be!
Humans Are, Per Square Inch, As Hairy As Chimpanzees
We're just as hairy as our primate friends it seems. Okay, perhaps not quite, but per square inch, human skin has as many follicles as other great apes. While we might have the same amount of hair, the hair itself on human bodies is much finer, making it significantly less visible and a lower volume of hair overall.
