No matter what shape, age or condition our body is in, it’s nothing short of incredible. Every second of the day, it’s working hard to live, thrive and protect itself.
Here are 34 weird and wonderful facts about our incredible, impressive, miraculous, beautifully designed bodies:
- One person’s lungs have more than 2400 km of airways.
- Over the course of the average human lifespan, you’ll eat the equivalent of around 6 African elephants.
- During every minute of the day, we lose between 30 000 and 40 000 dead skin cells. So, every month, our skin is entirely replaced. So, if you live to be 75 years old, you will have had 900 different skins.
- When you’re awake, your brain produces enough energy to make a light bulb shine.
- When you laugh, you burn calories. In fact, for every 100 times that you enjoy a good laugh, you’ve burnt as much as you would have by cycling on a stationary bike for 15 minutes.
- There are more bacteria in your mouth alone than there are people on the entire planet.
- Messages travel at about 200 km/h from our fingertips to our brain to tell us what we’re touching and how it feels.
- Men tend to be more forgetful than women. This might be because a man’s hippocampus, which is the part of the brain responsible for our ability to remember, deteriorates and shrinks faster than a woman’s.
- Every month, we produce enough urine to fill the average bathtub.
- Anxiety can make neutral smells become bad and unpleasant odours seem even worse.
- Your blood vessels would go all the way around the earth 4 times if were laid down end to end.
- Our ears and noses are the only parts of our bodies that never stop growing throughout our lifetime.
- There are about 2.5 million sweat pores on each of our bodies, including modified sweat pores in our ears (which produce wax, a thicker type of sweat).
- Every day of your life, you’ll produce about 1 litre of saliva and 1 cup of mucus.
- While we sleep, we burn more calories than we do if we watch television.
- Most people breathe almost exclusively through one nostril at a time. Even more incredibly, that nostril will take a break every few hours and the other nostril will take over.
- Human beings are the only animals that have chins.
- We have 206 bones in our bodies. No fewer than 106 of these bones are in our hands and feet alone. There are 27 bones in each hand, and 26 in each foot.
- A single bacterium can multiply in our bodies so quickly that, within 24 hours, it can become more than 8 million bacteria cells.
- Every day, you produce enough gas in the form of farts to fill a balloon.
- Sitting on the back of a working rollercoaster can help you to pass a kidney stone. This is because the rollercoaster has quick, rough movements that include twisting and turning; which may help to dislodge the stone and increase the force on the body. However, if you’re going to try this, don’t ride a rollercoaster that goes upside-down as this could send your stones in the wrong direction.
- The smells of apples and cucumbers can help to reduce the feeling of claustrophobia, while the smell of a braai (barbecue) can make it worse.
- When we burn and lose fat, most of it is converted into carbon dioxide and we breathe it out, while the rest (only about 16%) exits our bodies via our body fluids and waste products.
- Certain foods can boost our mood and happiness. These include cooked oats, coffee, and bananas.
- You will spend about a year of your whole life sitting on the toilet.
- Pregnant moms that exercise have been shown to have more intelligent children.
- Have you ever wondered why you’re so tired after a day of concentrating hard? That’s because our brains use about a quarter of all the oxygen used by our bodies. The harder it works the more oxygen it needs.
- Your brain would be about the size of a pillowcase if you flattened out all the folds and grooves.
- Each person’s tongue print is unique.
- The cornea gets its oxygen directly from the air and has no blood supply.
- You’re about a centimetre taller when you wake up in the morning than you are when you go to bed at night. This is because the soft cartilage between your bones compresses under the weight of gravity during the day.
- Your skin alone weighs between 3 and 4 kgs, if you’re an adult.
- We carry around about 1.8 kgs of bacteria in our body at all times.
- Our bodies each contain enough iron to make 1 nail of about 2.5 cm long.
Take care of your amazing body
With this walking miracle in our care, we’ll no doubt want to do our very best to ensure that we keep our bodies as fit and healthy as possible. Nordens Ultimate has an array of incredible supplements that not only promote general well-being, but also help to fight chronic conditions, strengthen your immune system, prevent anxiety and depression, and detox. Have a look at our online store and order directly via the website or WhatsApp Tracy on 072 621 7725.