38 Rare Facts About the Human Body
You just can't help but admire the marvel that you really are.
Published 3 years ago in Wow
The human body is an incredible machine, and one about which we know surprisingly little. While we can decipher the sizes and densities of stars and planets far beyond the bounds of our own galaxy, design self-driving cars and invent cryptocurrencies as a joke, much of the inner-workings own bodies nonetheless remain shrouded in mystery.
That said, we do know enough about our own marvelous physiology to be amazed. Down below are just a few of the incredible facts that science has uncovered about the wonderful weirdness of the human body.
That said, we do know enough about our own marvelous physiology to be amazed. Down below are just a few of the incredible facts that science has uncovered about the wonderful weirdness of the human body.
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Your brain regulates how strong your muscles are. If your leg muscles were to contract at full strength, they would snap your femur.Its why people in emergencies on adrenaline can lift cars off children. Your body is capable of great strength, but it could also severely damage you, so your brain keeps you a weak, soft bag of jelly.5
You hate the sound of your recorded voice because it's missing the low frequency you're used to hearing.When you talk, you hear your voice as it goes to the air and back to you ear. It also goes through your skull to your ear, and this bone conduction mechanism transmits the low frequencies better than air does.Your recorded voice only has the air transmitted sound. That causes the dissonance between what you think your voice sounds like, and what it really does. It's also why your voice will (almost) always be higher pitch than you think.7
People who live in "extreme" conditions for generations adapt in extreme ways. For example people that live in high elevations often have larger lungs and different blood makeup. Or my favorite is the Bajau people that live on the water and spend a lot of their time diving, their spleens have become 50% larger in order to store more blood.20
Humans are one of a few species of mammal that oddly don't produce their own vitamin C due to lack of a certain enzyme. Other mammalian species who exhibit this mutation are those contained in the main primate suborder Haplorhinni (monkeys, apes, tarsiers), as well as bats, capybaras, and guinea pigs.All other mammals produce vitamin C in the liver.30
You can live "normally" with half your brain. In some severe drug resistant epileptic syndrom in young kids, the only option to stop the seizures is to remove a complete brain hemisphere.After a while, with proper reeducation and all, the children can go on to have a normal life without cognitive deficit. They will have a limping, blindness from one eye and a very weark arm but can lead a normal life and not end up cognitively impaired.One of the earliest sign of alzheimer's disease, before the memory loss, could be the loss of the sense of smell. It's also the case with Parkinson disease.Our brain looks wrinkled because it is actually "folded" inside our skull in order to fit a maximum of surface and thus neurons & cell communications. Some animals like rodents have a completely smooth brain.31
X-rays of childrens mouths are nightmare fuel. The second set of teeth to replace baby teeth are already grown and lodged in their skulls. So you'll see two rows of teeth and its freaky looking. They don't grow in when the old ones fall out, they are already loaded in the chamber waiting to get launched.32
There's a "right" and a "wrong" way to swallow and the first swallow pattern you learn isn't the right one! Babies swallow by pushing their whole tongue forward (since it's better for nursing). However, as you transition to solid foods, you are supposed to change to a swallow where you put the tip of your tongue on the roof of your mouth and roll the food back. Not everyone does, and those that don't are more likely to choke, eat too fast, develop dental problems, and some develop a lisp or distorted sounds as they learn to talk!33
Your stomach is surrounded by more brain cells (half a billion neurons) than the brain of a cat contains in total.It's your enteric nervous system. It controls digestion, operates autonomously, has its own memory, can handle its own reflexes, it has its own senses even.It's thought to have come about because of the blood-brain barrier and the main brain being locked away in the skull, a spinal column and nerves away from the critical action of nutrition.35
In theory humans could breathe a liquid if it was super saturated with oxygen. It wouldn't be easy because the density of liquid being so much higher than air so after 15 mins or so you would be too fatigued to continue breathing.The hardest part is getting all the liquid out of the lungs so the person doesn't get pneumonia38
When you get conditioned to physical activity, your circulatory system adapts -- more blood, more vessels, more blood cells. But your lungs really don't. This is because no matter how much blood your heart is able to deliver to your lungs, the lungs still have no problem oxygenating it. This is why your oxygen saturation doesn't drop during exercise (unless you have a heart defect.)