52 Facts You Should Know About Your Amazing Human Body

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52 Facts You Should Know About Your Amazing Human Body

1. 3 to 5 lbs of your body is made up of bacteria. Between 100 million to 1 billion bacteria can grow on each tooth.
2. A condition called synaesthesia can cause senses to overlap. In other words, some people can taste words or hear colours.
3. A full head of human hair is strong enough to support 12 tonnes.
4. A single human sperm contains the 37.5mb of male DNA required to create a human child. That means an average ejaculation sees the transfer of 1,500 terabytes of information.
5. Along with the five traditional senses of sound, sight, touch, smell and taste, humans have 15 “other senses." These include balance, temperature, pain and time as well as internal senses for suffocation, thirst, and fullness.
6. An adult is made up of 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (7-octillion) atoms. For perspective, there is a 'measly' 300,000,000,000 (300 billion) stars in our galaxy.
7. Around 90% of the cells that make humans are not “human" in origin. We are mostly fungi and bacteria.
8. Cells in the inner lens of the eye, muscle cells of the heart, and the neurons of the cerebral cortex are the only cells that will be with you your entire life.
9. Crying alleviates stress and allows humans to decrease feelings of anger and sadness. It physically does help to let it out.
10. For every pound of fat or muscle gained, your body creates seven miles of new blood vessels.
11. Human bone is as strong as granite. A block of bone the size of a matchbox could support nine tonnes of weight.
12. Human decomposition begins around 4 minutes after death, a process known as ‘self-digestion’ where your enzymes and bacteria eat you away.
13. Human fingers are so sensitive, that if your fingers were the size of Earth, you could feel the difference between a house and a car.
14. Humans are bioluminescent and glow in the dark. The light that we emit is 1,000 times weaker than our human eyes are able to pick up.
15. Humans share 50% of their DNA with bananas.
16. Humans shed 40 pounds of skin in their lifetime, completely replacing their outer skin every month.
17. If all the DNA in your body were uncoiled, it would stretch out to about 10 billion miles, which is from Earth to Pluto and back.
18. 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 .002% of that.
19. If you stretched out the 300,000,000 capillaries in your lungs end to end, the line would extend from Seattle to San Diego, or about 1,300 miles.
20. If you were to spread out all the wrinkles in your brain, it would be about the size of a pillowcase.
21. In 30 minutes, the human body gives off enough heat to bring a gallon of water to the boil
22. In one day, your blood travels 12,000 miles around your body. That is four times the distance across the US from coast-to-coast.
23. In terms of compression strength, the femur bone of a person weighing 83kg with US size 11 feet could withstand the weight of 16,000 people standing on it at one time.
24. Inside your belly button are thousands of bacteria that form an ecosystem the size of an entire rainforest.
25. Loneliness is physically painful. Just as you have a drive to avoid physical pain, you have a similarly powerful drive to connect with others and seek companionship - in order to avoid the pain of loneliness.
26. Laughter is therapeutic: Watching a funny movie for even 15 minutes can increase your blood flow. Remember to laugh every day—it can keep your heart happy and healthy.
27. Nerve impulses travel to and from the brain at speeds of up to 250 miles per hour, faster than a Formula 1 race car.
28. Our brain's connected neurons look similar to the structure of the universe. In a way, our brains are modelled after the universe.
29. Our muscles are actually incredibly more powerful than they appear to be. Human strength is limited to protect our tendons and muscles from harming themselves. This limitation can be removed during an adrenaline rush, during which some people have lifted boulders or even cars off themselves.
30. Some women see more colours than everyone else does. Most people have three types of colour receptors to see colour vision, while some women have four or even five of these receptors and can see a wider range of colours.
31. Stomach acid can dissolve metal.
32. The skin releases as much as three gallons of sweat a day in hot weather. The areas that do not sweat are the nail bed, the margins of the lips, the tip of the penis, and the eardrums.
33. The atoms that make up your human body today are same atoms that formed during the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago.
34. The focusing muscles in your eyes move around 100,000 times a day. To give your leg muscles the same workout, you would need to walk 50 miles.
35. The human brain can read up to 1,000 words per minute.
36. The human brain uses 20% of the entire body's oxygen and calorie intake, despite only accounting for about 2% of an adult's body mass.
37. The human eye is so sensitive that if the Earth were flat, you could spot a candle flickering at night from up to 30 miles away.
38. The need to breathe so much is due to carbon dioxide buildup more than the need for oxygen. If there was a different way to get rid of carbon dioxide from the blood, we would only need to breathe at a rate of about once per minute.
39. There are 37 trillion cells in your body.
40. We have the same amount of hairs on our body as a chimpanzee. Most are useless and so fine that they are invisible.
41. We humans are the best long-distance runners on the planet. Better than any four-legged animal. In fact, thousands of years ago we used to run after our prey until they died of exhaustion.
42. When in love, the human brain releases the same cocktail of neurotransmitters and hormones that are released by amphetamines. This leads to increased heart rate, loss of appetite and sleep, and intense feelings of excitement.
43. When you blush, the lining of your stomach blushes too.
44. With the 60,000 miles of blood vessels inside the average human body, you could circumnavigate Earth two and a half times.
45. Without your pinky finger, you would lose 50% of your hand’s strength.
46. You can see ultraviolet light; the ability is just filtered out by the eye's lens. Some people have undergone surgery to remove the lenses and can detect ultraviolet light.
47. You spend 10 per cent of the day blinking.
48. Your body produces 25 million new cells each second. Every 13 seconds, you produce more cells than there are people in the United States.
49. Your heart beats 100,000 times per day, pumping 5.5 litres per minute, which adds up to about 3 million litres of blood a year.
50. Your nose can differentiate between 1 trillion different smells.
51. Your skin’s outer layer sheds every 2-4 weeks, amounting to roughly 0.7 kg of dead skin in a year.
52. You are a little richer than you might think. Inside all of us is around 0.2 milligrams of gold, most of which is in our blood Sadly, you'd need the blood of around 40,000 people to collect enough gold to make one 8g coin.