The human body is an amazing thing. It is capable of creating life, surviving horrible diseases and accidents, and tasting all kinds of good (and equally bad) food). But human bodies are also susceptible to great tragedies, from freak accidents to medical mysteries. Understanding your body and how it works is vital to not only surviving, but also to live longer. So often when something goes wrong with our bodies, it can be traced back to our diets.
“Good nutrition is an important part of leading a healthy lifestyle,” the Health and Human Services website says. “Combined with physical activity, your diet can help you to reach and maintain a healthy weight, reduce your risk of chronic diseases (like heart disease and cancer), and promote your overall health.” If you feel like you aren’t healthy, it’s never too late to change that. “A person who is not very active can start by making small changes, such as replacing soft drinks with water and adding a 10-minute walk to a daily routine,” Carly Schuna writes for Livestrong.org. And understanding your body and the benefits of good health are vital for thriving communities as well. “Better health is central to human happiness and well-being,” the World Health Organization’s website reports. “It also makes an important contribution to economic progress, as healthy populations live longer, are more productive, and save more.”
So how much do you know about your body? What you don’t know will surprise you, like how 50 percent of your hand’s strength lives in your little finger. Well, if you want to know about your body (and why wouldn’t you?), we have you covered. Here are 50 facts about your body that you probably aren’t aware of, but should be.
Twenty-five percent of bones in an adult are in the foot. Even more of a reason to get those sensible shoes.
The body’s largest muscle is the gluteus maximus a.k.a. your booty a.k.a. your twerking muscle.
You will likely eat 100,000 pounds of food in your lifetime. Set a goal to make 25,000 pounds of that food pizza.
The only part of your body with zero blood flow is the cornea of eye. It only requires oxygen.
If you think you have big ears or a big nose, there’s a reason for that: both parts of your body never stop growing.
More than 278 different types of bacteria are exchanged when two people kiss. 95 percent of them aren’t harmful.
The skin cells that make up a human mouth are the same skin cells that make up a person’s vagina. Knowing this, do you see chapstick in a new light?
If you take your DNA and stretch it out, it would stretch for 10 billion miles.
Fifty percent of your hand’s strength lives in your little finger. So give it a ring or something, it works hard.
Your heart will likely beat more than 3 billion times over the course of your lifetime. 4 billion if your prone to celebrity crushes.
The lining of your stomach changes every four to five days it from digesting itself. If only it could take a few extra pounds with it.
A single step requires the use of over 200 muscles. So it’s less the boots that were made for walking, and more all those muscles at play.
Your brain has a memory capacity so big it could fill four terabytes on a hard drive.
If you weigh 150 pounds, your skull weighs 21 pounds. So subtract 21 from 150 and you’ve got the weight you should have on your driver’s license.
An adult stomach can hold two quarts of food. Don’t try and challenge this assessment, you’ll get sick to your stomach.
Roughly 33 percent of your life will be spent sleeping. Imagine how much TV you’re missing with all that sleep?
Your body detects taste within 0.00015 seconds, making your Aunt Frieda’s fruit cake at Thanksgiving even more frightening.
Newborn babies can breathe and swallow at the same time for the first 7 months of their life.
Your sneeze could travel up to 100 mph or more. Perhaps consider carrying around a sneeze seatbelt, just in case.
You take 23,040 breaths a day. One breath at a time. Many times. Thousands of them actually.
Your lips are hundreds of times more sensitive than your fingertips.
Did you know that some people can actually hear their eyeballs moving? You’re trying to listen to your eyeballs now, aren’t you?
Most people have about 2,000 tastebuds in our mouths.
The average human walks 100,000 miles in their lifetime. But how many FitBits you’ll go through tracking your steps in your lifetime is debatable.
You will die sooner from lack of sleep than from hunger. You can go 10 days without sleep before death occurs, it would take weeks to die from hunger.
The human skull is made up of just 29 bones. This feels like very little compared to what goes inside those bones: your brain.
Forget 4K UHD TV’s, your eye can distinguish between roughly 10 million different colors.
Your skin weighs 8 to 11 pounds. But don’t worry, you lose 1.5 pounds every year in dead skin cells.
Most people say 4,800 words within a 24 hour period. Even more if you’re a teenager.
Your liver is the only organ in your body that can regenerate. That said, this doesn’t mean you can drink more. It’s still possible to significantly damage your liver.
If you isolated all the times you ate over your lifetime, it would work out to roughly 5 nonstop years of eating. With the increase of binge-watch TV, that number is likely to change. Thanks “Game of Thrones.”
Some studies show that right-handed people live longer—up to 9 years longer—than left-handed people.
After three months in your mother's womb, you get your fingerprints, which are unique to you.
Each human tongue is unique to that person, just like your fingerprints. Imagine how relieved police were when they figured out they didn’t need to keep making people stick their tongues out.
Your heart is about the same size as your fist.
Ninety-nine percent of all the calcium in your body lives in your teeth. So definitely remember to floss.
Studies show people with blue eyes are more sensitive to pain.
Hitting your head against a wall for an hour could result in a loss of 150 calories (and a splitting headache).
Humans shed 1.5 pounds every year in dead particles of skin. Not exactly a miracle diet, is it?
A newborn baby has about 300 bones in their body, but an adult has 206. This is because as a person grows, some bones fuse together to form one bone.
On average we only remember 10 percent of our dreams.
Your mouth produces enough saliva in your lifetime to fill two swimming pools. Regardless, you still shouldn’t pee in the pool.
The surface area of your lungs is equivalent to that of the area of a tennis court.
When you blush, your stomach also turns red. That said, if you’re blushing because you have a crush on someone, we don’t recommend lifting your shirt to reveal your stomach. That could make things weird.
Most people only require 7 minutes to fall asleep. Even less if you just ate a big meal.
Studies show that the scent of apples and bananas can trigger an impulse in you to not overeat, which explains why those apple pie scented candles are so popular.
Our right lungs have a greater capacity for air than our left lungs.
A person weighing 150 pounds burns 63 calories sedate (like while sleeping).
It only requires the use of 17 muscles to smile, but 43 to frown. So go ahead and smile, it’s easier.
By the time we turn 60, most of us will lose up to half of our taste buds.