We all try our best to become well-educated and open-minded — we read, we try new things, and hopefully, we learn new things every day. But have you ever thought about how little we know about ourselves and our own bodies? It really IS one amazing and unique mechanism that every single second triggers thousands of processes inside of us.
We were truly surprised to find out so many interesting and intriguing facts about the human body. Just imagine — all the things you’re about to read about are going on inside of you right now. Amazing!
1. Our sense of touch is very acute: if our fingers were the size of the Earth, we could feel the difference between houses and cars.
2. Your system of blood vessels is over 60,000 miles long. That’s long enough to go around the world twice.
3. Our visual acuity is stunning. If the Earth were flat, on a dark night, you could see a candle flame flickering up to 30 miles away from you.
4. When you blush, the lining of your stomach also turns red.
5. The human brain can read up to 1,000 words per minute.
6. Our belly buttons, it turns out, are a lot like rain forests. Scientists are constantly finding thousands of bacterial species in the human navel, some of which may be new to science.
7. When we fall in love, our the brain consistently releases the same set of chemicals as if we were taking psychoactive drugs, such as amphetamines. Love leads to side effects such as an increased heart rate, loss of appetite and sleep, and an intense feeling of excitement.
8. Our eyes could perceive ultraviolet light if the lenses on them didn’t ’filter’ it. Some people, who have undergone lens removal surgery, say that they perceive ultraviolet light.
9. An adult is made up of around 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (7 octillion) atoms. For comparison, there are about 300 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
10. We’re much stronger than we think. Our hidden, extra strength is believed to come from adrenaline, but in order not to end up with torn muscles due to higher mechanical stress, our body ’refuses’ to use its muscle strength to the fullest. Some scientists believe that adrenaline could help us to lift vehicles and huge stones in life and death situations.
11. We’re excellent distance runners. The best on the planet Earth, actually. As a matter of fact, our brainy ancestors could chase their prey until it was exhausted to death.
12. In 30 minutes our body produces enough heat to boil half a gallon of water.
13. We actually have as many hairs per square inch of skin as a chimpanzee. Since many of our hair follicles remain beneath the surface of our skin after birth, we can’t see them, and as a result, we don’t appear that hairy.
14. Every atom in your body was produced in the big bang 13.7 billion years ago. So the atoms of our body are billions of years old.
15. Human bone is as strong as granite. A bone the size of a matchbox can support up to 9 tonnes.
16. If the human brain were a computer, it could perform 38 thousand trillion operations per second. The world’s most powerful supercomputer, BlueGene, can manage only 0.002% of that.
17. The muscles which allow your eyes to focus move around 100,000 times a day. To give your leg muscles the same workout, you would need to walk 50 miles on a daily basis.
18. When you gain a pound of fat, your body makes seven new miles of blood vessels.
19. Humans share about 50% of their DNA with bananas.
20. Loneliness can cause physical pain. So if you don’t want to feel the pain of loneliness, make new friends and more actively search for companionship.
21. Every second, your body produces up to 25 million new cells.
22. All humans are bioluminescent. That means we literally glow. However, the intensity of the light emitted by the human body is 1,000 times lower than the sensitivity of our naked eye.
23. During their lifetime, the average person sheds around 40 lb of skin — all of our skin is fully renewed once a month.
24. When combined, our brain’s neurons look exactly like the structure of the universe.
25. Every human is a walking ecosystem — 90% of the cells within us aren’t ours, but belong to microbes.
26. We used to think that we have only five ’traditional’ senses — sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. But it turns out that we have a multitude more of them: balance, temperature, pain, kinesthetic sense and some other internal senses such as sensations of fullness, thirst, and a feeling of suffocation.
27. Surprise! You’re a little wealthier than you may think. About 0.2 milligrams of gold is dissolved in your blood. Unfortunately, you’d need 40,000 people to donate all their blood to collect enough gold to make a tiny, eight-gram golden coin.
28. Although the brain accounts for only 2% of the body’s weight, it uses up to 25% of the body’s oxygen and energy supply.
29. Some women see more colors. The majority of people have three types of color receptors, yet some women have four, and even more rarely, five color receptors, which allows them to see a wider range of colors than the average person.
30. A condition called synaesthesia can make your senses overlap. Some people may actually be able to ’taste’ words and ’hear’ colors.
31. We need to breathe out carbon dioxide more than we need to breathe in oxygen. If there were an alternative way to get rid of the carbon dioxide in our blood other than breathing, we would only inhale once in a minute.
32. Crying releases stress and helps people manage rage and sadness. Basically, crying helps you cope with everyday problems.
33. Our tears have a different structure depending on what has made us cry. These are tears photographed with the help of an optical microscope
34. Our ears and noses continue to grow as we age. And surprise! Because of gravity.
We’d love to hear your views on this…
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