10 human body facts to amaze you
Did you know these 10 amazing facts about your body?
- Your stomach secrets hydrochloric acid. This corrosive compound safely contained within the digestive system where it breaks down the food you eat. Outside the body, this poisonous liquid is deadly.
- How well you remember is directly tied to your senses. Scents and sounds are powerful tools, helping you remember things from a long time ago. Body position also affects memory: if you assume a pose struck during a certain event from your past, you'll remember if faster.
- Your bones are a calcium factory. If your muscles and nerves are lacking, hormones in your body will cause the bones to break down and help your calcium level raise to the appropriate level.
- The brain is only 2% of our total body weight but uses 20% of the body's oxygen and calories, which are supplied by three major cerebral arteries. If one of these oxygen-delivering vessels breaks or becomes blocked, the brain begins starving -- this is known as a stroke.
- The average adolescent girl has 34,000 egg follicles, and only about 350 (one per month) will mature during her life. The thousands that are unused by the ovaries deteriorate.
- The hormones that emerge during puberty reshape an adolescent's brain structure. The result? Emotional unpleasantness, apathy and poor decision-making skills -- at least until the brain finishes maturing.
- The cilia -- or little hair-like organelles -- in your nose help drain mucus from the nose down to the throat. Most of the cells in our body have this hair, which can also be credited for helping with digestion and hearing!
- Our early ancestors used wisdom teeth as a handy third set of molars to eat. As humans evolved and became smarter, however, our brains grew and left less room for our wisdom teeth. Like a tailbone, they serve no purpose nor cause any harm.
- Laughing makes others laugh. It's similar to the way you get the urge to yawn when you see someone else yawning. Laughing stimulates a part of the brain that's associated with facial movements and causes others to mimic you.
- Skin is not just a color -- it's four colors. On a creamy white palette, nature adds red from blood vessels, a yellow pigment and sepia-colored melanin. These four colors mix in various proportions to create the skin colors we see around the world.
