50 amazing facts about the human body
Posted by: - Deepak
Kumar
I’m a huge fan of trivia – I love Trivial Pursuit and pub
quizzes – and one of the things I love about writing this column is the wide
array of fascinating facts I come across while researching. For example,
apparently blondes have more hair than brunettes. Here’s a few I’ve found about
health and our amazing bodies.
1 We make around a litre of saliva every day. During our
lifetime, we’ll produce enough to fill two swimming pools.
2 The surface area of the human lung is the same size as a
tennis court.
3 The best-selling pharmaceutical drug in the world is a brand
of statin – a cholesterol-lowering drug.
4 The strongest muscles in the human body are the masseters,
located either side of your mouth, which are used for chewing.
5 You can’t see it, but your skin is constantly flaking. on
average, people shed around 18kg of skin in their lifetime.
6 Your left lung is smaller than your right one, to make space
for your heart.
7 Babies are born with 300 bones in their bodies but adults only
have 206. This is because some bones fuse as you grow.
8 Your brain generates about 25 watts of power while you are
awake.
9 It takes the body around 12 hours to completely digest food.
10 Fingernails grow nearly four times faster than toenails. The
ones on the hand you write with grow fastest.
11 other than being burned, human hair is basically
indestructible. It can’t be destroyed by water (no wonder it clogs up drains!)
and is resistant to many acids and corrosive chemicals.
12 Eyes stay the same size from birth – but your nose and ears
grow throughout your lifetime.
13 More people die of a heart attack on oonday than any other
day of the week.
14 The human scalp has around 100,000 hairs and you lose around
80 of them a day
15 The indentation between your nose and upper lip is called the
philtrum.
16 Women suffer four times as many headaches as men, which is
thought to be due to fluctuations in hormones.
17 The average cost of developing a new prescription drug and
making it available to the public is $1.13 billion.
18 Your heart beats around 100,000 times a day.
19 The largest cell in the human body is the female egg, while
the smallest is the male sperm
20. Babies who are breastfed are less likely to be overweight as
adults than those who are breastfed
21. In our lifetime most of us will eat around 7000 times our
weight in food
22 By the time they reach 60, most people have lost 50% of their
taste buds.
23 The largest artery in the body, the aorta, is about the same
width as a garden hose. Meanwhile, capillaries are so small, 10 of them put
together are the thickness of a human hair.
24 Right-handed people live an average of nine years longer than
left-handed ones.
25 A sneeze can exit your nose at 166km/h.
26 Your brain is made up of 75 to 80% water. This is why being
dehydrated affects its ability to work properly.
27 As well as having unique fingerprints, we also have unique
tongue prints.
28, The tooth is the only body part that can’t heal itself
29 Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
30 The average person breaks wind 14 times a day.
31 The smallest bones in your body are in your ears.
32 Your thigh bone is stronger than concrete
33 When you laugh heartily, the linings of your blood vessels
relax, increasing blood flow for up to 45 minutes.
34 Although your brain processes pain messages when other parts
of your body hurt, it can’t feel pain itself.
35 A woman’s egg survives around 18 hours after being released
from the ovary but sperm lasts for five to seven days after ejaculation, so
depending on when you ovulate, it’s possible to conceive several days after
having intercourse.
36 About one person in every 20 has an extra pair of ribs.
37 The biggest muscle in your body is your gluteus maximus, in
your buttock. The smallest is in your ear and is thinner than a cotton thread.
38 Your stomach gets a new lining every three days. If it
didn’t, the acids in your gut that digest food would also digest your stomach.
39 We’re taller in the morning than in the evening. During the
day, cartilage between our bones gets compressed by activities such as sitting
and standing so by the end of the day, we’re about 1cm shorter.
40 The cornea is the only living tissue in the body that doesn’t
have any blood vessels.
41 The space between your eyebrows is called the glabella.
42 Bones are about 75% water.
43 Blood accounts for about 8% of your body weight.
44 People who suffer from gum disease are twice as likely to
have a heart attack or stroke.
45 Hair and fingernails are made of the same substance –
keratin.
46 We start losing around 7000 brain cells a day once we turn
35. They can never be replaced.
47 There are approximately 96,000km of blood vessels in your
body
48. Studies have shown smelling the herb rosemary may improve
your memory.
49 Smokers have up to 10 times as many wrinkles as non-smokers.
50 Sex burns around four calories a minute.