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Amazing facts about the human body: Round 2! (Round 1 Link)
Put simply, we are a collection of 35 trillion cells that make up the human body. Below are some more amazing things about our spaceship through the cosmos.
1. 25% of our bones are in our feet!
This sounds crazy, but it’s true. There are 26 bones in each foot of an adult, totaling 52 from both feet. That’s 25% of the 206 total bones in our body. A lot goes into making you walk.
2. Your mouth has more bacteria than people on Earth!
The mouth of an average person has between 20 to 100 billion bacteria in comparison to nearly 8 billion human inhabitants on Earth. People you reach for the Listerine, you should know that these bacteria are part of our normal microbiome and actually protect us from dangerous diseases.
3. By the time you turn 70, you will have consumed 12,000 gallons of water!
That’s nearly the quantity held within a small in-ground pool!
4. Human intestines are between 19 to 23 feet long
It takes a long of work and time to digest all the food we eat. This job is given to our digestive system, which spreads itself out to great lengths (see what I did there 🙂 ) to extract nutrients and remove waste.
5. Your skeleton accounts for around 14% of your body weight.
This is great news because now I can prove to people I’m big-boned. Without our skeleton, we’d all just be blobs though, so lets not “Brackium Emendo” just yet and keep walking around.
6. The liver is the only organ that can completely regenerate
Take that Hugh Jackman! We all got a little Wolverine in us! It was discovered by Fausto et. all in 2006 that only 25% of the liver can regenerate the entire organ. Time to put it to work…
7. We all pass gas… a lot…
Sorry to let this slip ladies and gentlemen, but on average, people pass gas about 15 times a day! While most of us do this privately, there are those who choose to share these with friends and family.
8. Veins don’t carry blue blood
I know every book shows veins in blue and arteries in red, but veins actually carry dark red blood, whereas arteries have bright red blood. Basically, your blood is always red, regardless of oxygenation.
You may notice blue veins on your wrists though, and they seem blue due to subcutaneous fat, which only allows blue light to penetrate all the way to the veins, which is then the only color reflected back, making the appear blue.
9. You blink 11,500 times a day!
The muscles that make your eyes blink are the fastest in your body. They “snap” in less than 1/100th of a second and do this eleven thousand five hundred times a day!
10. We spend one third of our lives asleep!
Let’s assume we make it to 80. By that time, you will have spent nearly 27 years asleep! Invest in a good mattress :).
