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YOUR MOUTH IS A JUNGLE!
For the bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and viruses inhabiting our mouths, life
is a piece of cake, or whatever else we have eaten. What we lunch on, they munch on.
In fact, our mouths are ecosystems for them, as the weather forecast remains
the same at 95º F, unless we are ill, the level of humidity at 100%, and the guaranteed a free meal on, actually in, the mouth
is unconditional. They select their own living quarters, with some preferring life between the teeth, others preferring the
space between the gums and the teeth, others preferring the roof of the mouth, and yet others preferring the cracks in the
front or in the back of the tongue. They do, however, work for this luxurious lifestyle, by performing such tasks as eating
each other, fending off bad species of bacteria, etc., manufacturing different products, and eating the food that becomes
lodged in parts of our mouths.
The only harmful species of bacteria inhabiting our mouths is Streptococcus
mutants, the cavity causing bacteria. Microbiologists believe that initially, this bacteria was our friend, and played a useful
role in our mouths, just as the other species of bacteria do. As man progressed down the evolutionary timeline and began refining
raw sugar, Streptococcus mutants became the enemy. This species thrives upon refined sugar and, as a part of its digestive
process, converts sugar into acid.
Before man began refining sugar, the bicarbonate ions in our saliva possessed
the ability to counteract the acid it produced. With the arrival of refined sugar on the scene, and Streptococcus mutants'
insatiable appetite for it, acid production increased to the point where the saliva could no longer counteract it. The excess
acid produced erodes our teeth, causes cavities, and subsequent visits to the dentist.
The more than 100 species of bacteria, and hundreds of species of fungi,
protozoa, and viruses that have taken up residence in our mouths is difficult to fathom. Microbiologists estimate that, in
addition to these known species, there are up to 500 other living, breathing organisms inhabiting our mouths, although only
50 have been identified and named.
The sheer number of these creatures is astronomical, considering the fact
that our mouths contain more bacteria than the entire world's population, and the fact that our bodies house approximately
one trillion bacteria.
What is a person to do about these squatters? Nothing. Our bodies provide
an ecosystem for them and, in return, they defend us from the invasion of bad bacteria, viruses, fungi, and protozoa, with
the exception of Streptococcus mutants and a couple of other undesirable species.
Our dentists' advice to brush and to floss our teeth on a regular basis
should be taken, as doing so helps to maintain healthy levels of these creatures from between 1,000 to 100,000 per tooth.
Enjoy your next meal…they certainly will!
Copyright © 1994-2004 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Mysteries of the Human Body
MISCELLANEOUS TRIVIA:
The average human body contains enough: iron to make a 3 inch nail, sulfur
to kill all fleas on an average dog, carbon to make 900 pencils, potassium to fire a toy cannon, fat to make 7 bars of soap,
phosphorous to make 2,200 match heads, and water to fill a ten-gallon tank.
Even if the stomach, the spleen, 75 percent of the liver, 80 percent of
the intestines, one kidney, one lung, and virtually every organ from the pelvic and groin area are removed, the human body
can still survive. Although, one would assume the quality of life would be severely impacted, and it wouldn't make you the
best doubles partner for tennis.
The largest cell in the human body is the female ovum, or egg cell. It is about 1/180 inch in diameter. The
smallest cell in the human body is the male sperm. It takes about 175,000 sperm cells to weigh as much as a single egg cell.
A fingernail or toenail takes about 6 months to grow from base to tip.
A 10 percent loss of bodyweight can relieve knee arthritis pain by up to
50 percent.
The average human bladder can hold about 13 ounces of liquid.
Dimples are hereditary and are a dominant trait.
During menstruation, the sensitivity of a woman's middle finger is reduced.
In the adult human body, there are 46 miles of nerves.
Over the many centuries of living in the Arctic, Eskimos' bodies have adapted
to the cold. Eskimos tend to be short and squat, which brings their arms and legs closer to the heart, so there is less danger
of freezing. Extra fat around the torso protects their internal organs from the cold. The metabolism of Eskimos is also set
a little higher than other people's. As a result, they burn their food faster to stay warm. Their veins and arteries are also
arranged to carry more warming blood to their hands.
It has been medically proven that pessimism raises blood pressure. The
more pessimistic a person is, the more likely he or she is to die earlier than optimistic counterparts.
If Barbie were life-size, her measurements would be 39-23-33. She would
stand seven feet, two inches tall.
Is the appendix our body's only vestigial structure?
There
are several apparently useless parts in the human body. Your nictating membrane is one. The nictating membrane is that small
useless fold in the corner of your eye. But the most interesting vestigial part is the only bone in your body that does
not appear to have been assigned a task. The coccyx begins as four small bones that fuse into one as you mature. But it has
no more use as a solo act than it did as a quartet. The coccyx is what we commonly call our "tail bone." It may indeed be
the remnant of the tail we once had, but in our time, it just sits there. Source: HOW A FLY WALKS UPSIDE DOWN by Martin
M. Goldwyn
Why do people sometimes eat dirt?
In many societies
all around the world it is considered not only normal but actually beneficial to consume certain kinds of earth. In Africa
and other places, pregnant women regularly eat special kinds of earth, and in some cultures clay is mixed with bread or other
foods as an extender. The practice of earth-eating, also called geophagy [jee-OFF-uh-jee] has been alive for millennia. There
are three main reasons for it. First, certain kinds of clay can provide mineral nutrients not easily available elsewhere (which
is why it is often eaten by pregnant women). Second, some types of mineral earth are able to absorb toxins that would otherwise
poison us. Third, soft mineral clay is a harmless, bulky filler that can extend bread and other staple foods during times
of famine.
Does eating chocolate make you break out?
It
is a common myth that chocolate aggravates acne. Experiments conducted at the University of Pennsylvania and the U.S. Naval
Academy found that consumption of chocolate - even frequent daily dietary intake - had no effect on the incidence of acne.
Professional dermatologists no longer link acne with diet.
MUTATIONS IN MEN DRIVE EVOLUTION
A new study
shows that men carry 5.25 times the number of genetic mutations as women, meaning that evolution is male-driven, according
to a report in this week's edition of the journal Nature. The mutations appear to be caused mainly by random errors that occur
during cell divisions rather than by environmental factors. "Mutation is the ultimate source of variation," said Wen-Hsiung
Li, a professor in the department of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago. Male germ cells accumulate mutations
as they go through cell divisions throughout a man's lifetime, whereas a woman's egg cells only go through 24 cell divisions,
most before she is born. So is a man's biological clock ticking? Should he worry about accumulated mutations ruining his sperm?
"The mutation rate is very low, so the increase in mutations in an individual male is not appreciable," Li said, "even if
you were to double or triple the rate."
WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR BODY WHEN YOU SNEEZE?
All
your bodily functions stop, even your heart.
What causes hiccups?
Hiccups happen when the
diaphragm, the muscle that controls our breathing, becomes irritated and starts to spasm and contract uncontrollably. With
each contraction, air is pulled into the lungs very quickly, passes through the voice box, and then the epiglottis closes
behind the rush of air, shaking the vocal chords, causing the "hic" sound. The irritation can be caused by rapid eating, emotional
stress and even some diseases. The best cure? Breathing into a paper bag. This calms the diaphragm by increasing the amount
of carbon dioxide in your bloodstream.
WHAT IS THE SOUND MADE WHEN YOU CRACK YOUR KNUCKLES CAUSED
BY?
A bubble of gas bursting.
AGING
Age affects the growth of hair--the fastest growth is between ages 15
and 30, with a sharp decline between ages 50 and 60.
People lose more than hair as they grow old. By the age of 70, half of
your taste buds will be gone.
A 25 year old earthling, if raised on the planet Mercury, would be approximately
103 years old. A year is 88 days on the red planet.
Why does hair turn gray?
You get older. Your
body produces less melanin, the substance that gives hair its color. Without that color, your hair becomes transparent. Each
hair is hollow, a shaft enclosing a column of air. Without the protective coloring, light can penetrate your hair and be refracted
by that air column, producing the white/gray color we associate with aging.
Source: JUST CURIOUS JEEVES by
Jack Mingo and Erin Barrett
BABIES
Baby feet exert a lot of energy when standing and balancing. This causes
baby feet to get very hot. Baby feet can sweat up to twice the amount of adult feet.
When
the female embryo is only six weeks old, it makes preparations for her motherhood by developing egg cells for future offspring.
(When the baby girl is born, each of her ovaries carries about a million eggcells, all she will ever have.)
A fetus acquires fingerprints at the age of three months.
A newborn baby's head accounts for about one-quarter of its entire weight.
Up to the age of six or seven months, a child can breathe and swallow
at the same time. An adult cannot do this.
A fetus in the womb can hear. Tests have shown that fetuses respond to
various sounds just as vigorously as they respond to pressures and internal sensations. So watch what you say about the little
bugger!
Newborn babies are not blind. Studies have shown that newborns have approximately
20/50 vision and can easily discriminate between degrees of brightness.
BABIES HEAR DIFFERENTLY THAN ADULTS
The world
sounds differently to babies than it does to adults, according to new research. Babies have trouble distinguishing specific
sounds because they hear all frequencies simultaneously, which allows them to respond to unusual sounds, according to Lynne
Werner, a University of Washington professor of speech and hearing science. In contrast, "in real life (adults) are confronted
with a variety of sounds. Somehow the adult brain takes all sounds we hear and separates them into where they are coming from
and then focuses on the one we want to hear," Werner told New Scientist. "If you are a baby it is sensible to listen broadband,
and it was valuable for our ancient ancestors for survival in the Serengeti (the Serengeti Plain of Eastern Africa)," said
Werner. "But in today's western culture a baby is at a great disadvantage. All the noise we expose people to makes it difficult
for babies. The practical lesson from this research is, if you are talking to a baby or reading her a story, background noise
can be a problem. Turn off the television or radio."
FIRST COUSINS CAN HAVE CHILDREN WITH LITTLE RISK
New
research suggests that first cousins can marry and have children with only slightly higher risk of birth defects or genetic
disease than unrelated partners, according to a report in the Journal of Genetic Counseling. The researchers say there is
no biological reason to discourage first cousins from marrying. The chances of a child being born with a serious problem like
cystic fibrosis is 3 to 4 percent, and that goes up by 1.7 to 2.8 percent if cousins are involved. "As genetic advisers, we
give people all the various possibilities and risks and leave it up to them to make a decision. Some might decide a doubling
of the risk is not something they want to face," Arno Motulsky, a professor emeritus of medicine and genome sciences at the
University of Washington, told The New York Times.
WEEKEND BABIES SMALLER
Research indicates babies
born on the weekends tend to be smaller and sicker than those born during the week. Researchers at Lucile Packard Children's
Hospital and the Stanford School of Medicine say the finding casts doubt over claims higher death rates for newborns arriving
on the weekend are due to inadequacies in hospital staffing or experience. "We've found that weekends are not an inherently
more dangerous time to be born," said senior author and neonatologist Dr. Jeffrey Gould. "Instead, the fact that there is
a proportionally higher percentage of very tiny babies -- who are more likely to die -- born on weekends than during the week
inflates the observed mortality." The research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, should allay
the fears of women with uncomplicated, full-term pregnancies who begin labor on the weekend, researchers say.
FETUSES CAN RECOGNIZE MOM'S VOICE
Canadian
researchers at Queen's University suggest experiences in the womb help shape newborn preferences and behavior.
The study, published in the journal Psychological Science, found fetuses are capable of learning in the womb and can remember
and recognize their mother's voice before they are even born. The findings provide evidence that inutero experience has an
impact on newborn/infant behavior and development and that voice recognition may play a role in mother-infant attachment.
The precocious language processing abilities observed in newborns and young infants may not be due to a hardwired speech-processing
module in the brain as has been assumed, but instead stems from the interaction of the fetus with its environment, according
to the researchers.
BLOOD
The most common blood type in the world is Type O. The rarest, Type A-H, has been found in less than a dozen
people since the type was discovered.
Blood is red only in the arteries after it has left the heart and is
full of oxygen. Blood is a purplish, blue color in the veins as it returns to the heart, thanks to having picked up carbon
dioxide and other wastes from the body's cells. In fact, your blood is red throughout only half your body. When cut, of course,
the blood always appears red because it is instantly exposed to oxygen outside the body.
The fact that blood circulates was discovered by the British physician
William Harvey. (Source: Encarta.com)
The Ketchua Indians of the Andes Mountains in South America have 2 to
3 more quarts of blood in their bodies than people who live at lower elevations.
Men have more blood than women. Men have 1.5 gallons as compared to 0.875
gallons for women.
What is blood made of?
Blood is a mixture of
two things: cells and plasma. The heart pumps blood through the arteries, capillaries and veins to provide oxygen and nutrients
to every cell of the body. The blood also carries away waste products. The adult human body contains approximately 5 liters
(5.3 quarts) of blood; it makes up 7 to 8 percent of a person's body weight. Approximately 2.75 to 3 liters of blood is plasma
and the rest is the cellular portion.
HOW MANY MILES OF BLOOD VESSELS DOES THE HUMAN BODY HAVE?
Sixty thousand miles of vessels carry blood to every part of your body.
Blood Vessels
If all the blood vessel in your
body were laid end to end they would span the globe. But were this done, I doubt that you would be in the mood to appreciate
it.
HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE BLOOD TO CIRCULATE THROUGH THE BODY?
On average, it takes about 45 seconds for blood to circulate from the heart, all around the body, and back to
the heart again. An average adult's heart beats more than 100,000 times a day.
How quickly do you lose red blood cells?
In
the second it takes to turn the page of a book, you will lose about 3 million red blood cells. During that same second, your
bone marrow will have produced the same number of new ones.
BONES
Your bones act as a calcium store - if you don't get enough in your diet
your body will extract what it needs from your bones leaving your bones brittle!
Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete!
One quarter of the bones in your body are in your feet. The human
foot has 26 bones, 33 joints, 107 ligaments, 19 muscles and tendons. The 52 bones in your feet make up about 25 percent of
all the bones in your body.
HOW MUCH OF THE BODY IS MADE UP OF BONES?
Strong
and light, the skeleton of the average person accounts for less than 20 percent of body weight.
HOW STRONG ARE HUMAN BONES?
Human bones can
stand to be squeezed twice as hard as granite and stretched four times as hard a concrete. Weight for weight, bone is five
times as strong as steel.
WHAT IS THE STRONGEST BONE IN THE HUMAN BODY?
The strongest, largest, and longest bone in the human body is the femur or thighbone, and it is hollow. Ounce for ounce,
it has a greater pressure tolerance and bearing strength than a rod of equivalent size in cast steel.
HOW MANY BONES ARE THERE IN THE HUMAN SKULL?
29
- the cranium has 8; the face, 15 (including the lower jaw); the ears, 6.
HOW MANY BONES ARE THERE IN THE HUMAN WRIST?
Eight.
Vanishing Bones
Kids have about 100 more bones
in their bodies than adults do. (Adults have 206 bones; kids have about 300.) What happens to the extra bones as you
grow up? They join together, to make bigger, stronger - but fewer - adult bones. Having more but smaller bones
helps kids be more flexible than adults - which is one reason why tumbles, jumps, and flips are easier for kids than for grown-ups.
WHAT IS THE ONLY BONE IN THE HUMAN BODY NOT CONNECTED
TO ANOTHER BONE?
The only bone in the human body not connected to another is the hyoid, a V-shaped bone located
at the base of the tongue between the mandible and the voice box. Its function is to support the tongue and its muscles.
THE BRAIN
Pain from any injury or illness is always registered by the brain. Yet, curiously, the brain tissue itself is immune
to pain; it contains none of the specialized receptor cells that sense pain in other parts of the body. The pain associated
with brain tumors does not arise from brain cells but from the pressure created by a growing tumor or tissues outside the
brain.
The brain of Neanderthal man was larger than that of modern man.
The average brain comprises 2 percent of a person's total body weight.
Yet it requires 25 percent of all oxygen used by the body, as opposed to 12 percent used by the kidneys and 7 percent by the
heart.
The brain reaches its maximum weight at age 20 - about 3 pounds. Over
the next 60 years, as billions of nerve cells die within the brain, it loses about 3 ounces. The brain begins to lose cells
at a rate of 50,000 per day by the age of 30.
The brain is surrounded by a membrane laced with nerves that transmit
sensations to the organ. However, the brain itself has no feeling; if it is cut into, the person feels no pain. (Source:
UselessKnowledge.com)
The average brain comprises 2 percent of a person's total body weight.
Yet it requires 25 percent of all oxygen used by the body, as opposed to 12 percent used by the kidneys and 7 percent by the
heart.
Ancient Egyptians believed the heart was the center of intelligence and
emotion. They also thought so little of the brain that during mummification, they removed the brain entirely from bodies.
Your brain is more active sleeping than it is watching TV.
Eighty percent of the average human brain is water.
In one day, the human brain generates more electrical impulses than all
the telephones in the world put together. The nerve impulses can travel as fast as 170 miles per hour.
The left hemisphere of the brain controls language in 95 percent of right-handed people. The right hemisphere of the brain
controls language in 70 percent of left-handed people.
The human brain is insensitive to pain. The suffering of a headache comes
from nerves and the muscles lining them - not the brain itself.
The sperm whale has the largest brain of any animal. The brain weighs
around 9 kilograms (about 20 pounds). The human brain reaches its maximum weight at age 20: about 3 pounds.
The left side of the brain controls the faculty of speech in most people.
Doctors can determine if that's the case for any individual by giving that person a barbiturate injection and observing which
arm goes limp first. This is called the Wada test. Source: READER'S DIGEST BOOK OF FACTS
How big is a person's brain?
The average brain
comprises 2 percent of a person's total body weight. Yet it requires 25 percent of all oxygen used by the body, as opposed
to 12 percent used by the kidneys and 7 percent by the heart.
HOW GENES AFFECT BRAIN STRUCTURE
UCLA brain
mapping researchers in California have created the first images to show how an individual's genes can influence brain structure
and intelligence. Published in Nature Neuroscience, the findings offer new insight on how parents pass on personality traits
and cognitive abilities, and how brain diseases run in families. The team found that the amount of gray matter in the frontal
parts of the brain is determined by the genetic make-up of an individual's parents. Brain regions controlling language and
reading skills were virtually identical in identical twins, who share exactly the same genes, while siblings showed only 60
percent of the normal brain differences. "This tight structural similarity in the brains of family members helps explain why
brain diseases, including schizophrenia and some types of dementia, run in families," says Paul Thompson. "We were stunned
to see that the amount of gray matter in frontal brain regions was strongly inherited, and also predicted an individual's
IQ score."
Is it true that our eyes don't see?
We actually
do not see with our eyes - we see with our brains. The eyes basically are the cameras of the brain. One-quarter of the brain
is used to control the eyes.
HOW
MANY NEURONS DOES THE HUMAN BRAIN CONTAIN?
The brain contains more than 100 billion neurons--as many as there
are stars in the Milky Way.
BY WHAT AGE HAS THE HUMAN BRAIN GROWN TO ITS FULL SIZE?
By age four, the brain has grown to its full size. After that, learning is merely making connections between neurons.
Is a headache really a brainache?
The human
brain is insensitive to pain. The suffering of a headache come not from the organ itself but from the nerve and muscles lining
it
Do the holidays cause more headaches?
According
to some reasearch they do - Nearly one in four people said they have more headaches during the Christmas season than any other
time of the year. Of those surveyed, 75 percent said that not having enough time caused them to have headaches; 73 percent
said crowds and traffic created their headaches; and 51 percent said skipping meals gave them headaches.
BRAIN IS DIFFERENT LYING VS. TELLING THE TRUTH
Researchers
at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have found that telling a lie and telling the truth require different
activities in the human brain. The findings will be presented Tuesday at the national meeting of the Society for Neuroscience
in San Diego. "Sections of the brain that exercise a significant role in how humans pay attention, and monitor and control
errors, were on average more active in the volunteers when they were lying than when they were telling the truth," says Daniel
Langleben, M.D. "If truth was the brain's normal 'default' response, then lying would require increased brain activity in
the regions involved in inhibition and control." By identifying the brain activity associated with deception and denial, the
research paves the way for improvements in lie-detection techniques.
BREATHING
A person breathes almost 7 quarts of air every minute.
If water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen, why can't we
breathe underwater?
Humans cannot breathe underwater because our lungs don't have the surface area to absorb
enough oxygen from water, and the lining in our lungs is adapted to handle air rather than water. The thing about chemicals
is that, once they react in certain ways, they form compounds that are nothing like the original elements. In the case of
hydrogen and oxygen gas, if you react them together you get liquid water (H2O). The reason we can't breathe liquid water is
because the oxygen used to make the water is bound to two hydrogen atoms, and we can't breathe the resulting liquid. The oxygen
is completely useless to our lungs in this form. The oxygen that fish breathe is not the oxygen in H2O. Instead, the fish
are breathing O2 (oxygen gas) that is dissolved in the water using their gills. Evidently, it's not easy - the air around
us has 20 times more oxygen in it than the same volume of water. And water is heavier and thicker than air, so it takes a
lot more work to move it around. The only real reason gills work for fish is that fish are cold-blooded, with radically reduced
oxygen demands. Warm blooded critters that live underwater, like whales and dolphins, don't have gills - they breathe oxygen
like us. So we'll probably never see anything like an artificial human gill in the near future.
THE EARS
Earwax--called cerumen by doctors--is a normal secretion of special glands
in the outer ear. The wax coats the outer part of the ear canal, trapping germs and debris and preventing them from reaching
the eardrum. If you didn't have any your ears would, at a minimum, be very itchy. By the way, never use a Q-tip to remove
excess wax, you'll likely pack it in tighter. Better you should try an over-the-counter preparation such as Debrox or ordinary
mineral oil. You put in a dropper-full and pack your ear with cotton; the earwax softens and comes out.
Does the human body have any mechanical parts?
Your
ears -- They pick up all the sounds around you and then translate this information into a form your brain can understand.
This process is that it is completely mechanical. Your sense of smell, taste and vision all involve chemical reactions, but
your hearing system is based solely on physical movement.
THE EYES
Our eyes don't freeze in very cold weather because of the salt in our tears.
The transparent cornea of the eye is the only living tissue in the human
body that contains no blood vessels.
Because the eyes work harder when viewing objects up close, particularly
on a computer monitor, it is the proximity of the VDT screen to the eyes that causes eyestrain, not "radiation" emitted from
the screen. According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, using a computer or video display terminal will not harm your
eyes.
You blink every 2-10 seconds. As you focus on each word in this sentence,
your eyes swing back and forth 100 times a second, and every second, the retina performs 10 billion computer-like calculations.
How often do you blink?
You blink every 2-10 seconds. As you focus on each word in this sentence, your eyes swing back and
forth 100 times a second, and every second, the retina performs 10 billion computer-like calculations.
How well can the eye see?
The sensitivity of
the human eye is so keen that on a clear, moonless night, a person standing on a mountain can see a match being struck as
far as 50 miles away. Much to their amazement, astronauts in orbit were able to see the wakes of ships.
How would we look with bird's eyes?
A bird's eye takes up about 50 percent of its head, while our eyes take up about 5 percent
of our head. To be comparable to a bird's eyes, our eyes would have to be the size of baseballs.
FEET
Baby feet exert a lot of energy when standing and balancing. This causes
baby feet to get very hot. Baby feet can sweat up to twice the amount of adult feet.
The foot consists of 26
bones ranging in size from half the size of your little finger to half the size of your fist. The bones are divided into 3
main groups: Toes (phalanges) 14 tiny bones used for gripping Mid-foot (metatarsus) 5 slender bones to absorb shock Rear-foot
(tarsus) 7 large bones to keep the foot stabilized.
FINGERPRINTS
AT WHAT AGE DOES A FETUS ACQUIRE FINGERPRINTS?
At the age of three months.
DO FINGERPRINTS HAVE A FUNCTION?
They provide
traction for your fingers, helping you to grasp things.
FINGERS & TOES
Your fingers and toes are the coldest parts of your body.
FLATULENCE
A healthy individual releases 3.5 oz. of gas in a single flatulent emission,
or about 17 oz. in a day.
If a person 'passes wind' consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough
gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb. (Source: Bizzarro)
What is "gas," and why does it smell bad?
What
is commonly referred to as gas, flatus or flatulence (or, somewhat more vulgarly, a fart) is a combination of gases (nitrogen,
carbon dioxide, oxygen, methane, and hydrogen sulfide) that travels from a person's stomach to their hindquarters. When a
person swallows too much air or eats foods that their digestive system can't digest easily gas becomes trapped in the stomach.
The only way for this excess gas to exit the body is for you to "pass gas." The gas that makes these emissions stink
is hydrogen sulfide, which contains sulfur. The more sulfur rich your diet, the more they stink. Foods that contribute to
the bad odor include: beans, cabbage, cheese, soda, and eggs.
On the average, a healthy person will pass gas 16 times a day, male and
female, mostly while they sleep. As anyone with a pet will tell you, many animals pass gas as well, and while elephants are
some of the worst offenders, the family dog can be rather pungent as well. And, yes, emissions that contain a large amount
of methane & hydrogen can be flammable. But such activities are definitely not recommended!
WHAT IS BORBORYGMI?
Borborygmus (plural borborygmi)
is the rumbling sound made by gas and fluids moving through the intestines. The word was originally coined by the Ancient
Greeks in an attempt to imitate the sounds their bellies made when they were hungry (making words that sound like what they
describe is called onomatopoeia, of which borborygmus is an example). The reason we experience borborygmi when we are hungry
is that our bodies respond to the desire for food by a reflex (like a doctor hitting your knee with a hammer) which prepares
the stomach for food by moving the stuff in the intestines out of the way, i.e. down to the rectum. This increased activity
in the intestines causes small pockets of water and gas to be squeezed through the intestines, making bubbling and gurgling
noises as it goes. Some people experience borborygmus after meals, since the same reflex is for digestion.
How much flatulence does one release in a day?
It is estimated that a healthy individual releases 3.5 oz. of gas in a single flatulent emission, or about 17 oz. in a
day.
HAIR
The average scalp has 100,000 hairs. Redheads have the least at 80,000;
brown and black haired persons have about 100,000; and blondes have the most at 120,000.
Types of Hair
-African
hair grows more slowly and is more fragile than European hair.
-Asian hair grows the fastest and has the greatest elasticity.
-Africans and Europeans are more prone than Asians to balding.
Women's hair on average is about half the diameter of men's hair. (Source:
triviaworld.com)
Beards are the fastest growing hairs on the human body. If the average man never trimmed his beard, it would
grow to nearly 30 feet long in his lifetime.
Age affects the growth of hair--the fastest growth is between ages 15
and 30, with a sharp decline between ages 50 and 60.
The hair of an adult man or woman can stretch 25 percent of its length
without breaking. If it is less elastic, it is not healthy.
HOW LONG WOULD THE AVERAGE MAN'S BEARD GROW IF HE NEVER
SHAVED IT?
27.5 feet.
How fast does hair grow?
Hair
is the fastest growing tissue in the body, second only to bone marrow. Human hair grows at a pretty consistent
rate of about one half of millimeter per day, or about half an inch every month. It may grow faster or slower depending on
your age, your genetics and your hormonal state (pregnancy seems to have an affect on hair), but one half of a millimeter
a day is a good average. What this means is that the maximum growth rate for hair is about 6 inches (15 cm) per year. Everything
is relative, of course - a half-millimeter isn't very much when you're waiting to grow out your hair for a part in a play,
but it's quite a bit if you've worked a long day at work and still have a meeting that you need to look good for and have
to shave.
Why does our hair go gray?
Hair goes gray because
pigment cells in the hair base at the roots of the hair stop producing melanin. It doesn't matter if you are fair-haired
or dark-haired you have the same chances of getting gray hair. However, it is more noticeable in darker haired people.
Graying of the hair generally starts at the age of around 30 for males and 35 for females however since the onset of
this phenomena varies greatly from person to person, age is not the most accurate indicator. The graying of hair appears
to be genetically determined but the connection isn't at all clear. So for now, your hair turning gray is just one of
those mysteries of science that we have yet to solve. But salt and pepper hair always did look distinguished. Poliosis
is the graying of the hair. It comes from polios, the Greek word for "gray." Hair color comes from cells located in the root of each hair and as people age the pigmentation begins to slow down.
The process of going gray is genetically predetermined and this slow process stops at gray for some people but moves on to
white for others. White hair basically signals that no pigment remains to color the hair.
How does men's and women's hair loss differ?
Male
pattern baldness generally starts with a receding hairline at the front or thinning of the crown hair and gradually progresses
until, in extreme cases, only a thin horseshoe-shaped rim of hair remains at the back and sides of the head. Female pattern
baldness, which has received more attention in recent years, refers to general thinning of hair all over the scalp, usually
beginning at around age 30 and becoming more noticeable after 40 and particularly after menopause.
Why do we have eyebrows?
Those tiny, little
hairs above our eyes that many women either pluck, paint, pierce or tattoo play a very important role in keeping moisture
out of our eyes. Just like an umbrella keeps our bodies dry from the rain, our hairy eyebrows keep our eyes dry from
rain or sweat. When it's pouring rain outside or when sweat drips down from our foreheads, our eyebrows divert the flow
of water or sweat away from our eyes.
Our arch-shaped eyebrows angle the rain or sweat around to the side of
our faces--leaving our eyes fairly dry. By catching the water or sweat, our eyebrows not only allow us to see more clearly,
but also keep salty sweat from burning or irritating our eyes.
Eyebrows have other roles also. As one of our most expressive facial
features, eyebrows help us determine how people are feeling without ever really asking them. If a person's eyebrows are frowning, chances are they are mad or upset. In addition, eyebrows have an increasing impact on our beauty/fashion culture over the years.
Thick, hairy and big eyebrows tend to be characterized as unattractive while thin and plucked eyebrows are said to be more
attractive.
HANDS
According to a study published in the journal Psychological Science,
you can think better if you gesture with your hands. One of the authors concluded: "These findings suggest that gesture reduces
the cognitive load of explanation, freeing capacity that can be used on a memory task at the same time." Source:
www.nytimes.com
The thumb is such a major player in the human body that it has a special
section, separate from the area that controls the fingers, reserved for it in the brain.
HEARING
When a person dies, hearing is generally the last sense
to go. The first sense lost is usually sight. Then follows taste, smell, and touch.
The little lump of flesh just forward of your ear canal, right next to
your temple, is called a tragus.
WHY DON'T WE HEAR AS WELL TODAY?
Because it's a noisier
world - According to a study for the University of Tennessee's Noise Laboratory, 60 percent of American college students suffer
from some high-frequency hearing loss. The main cause of this premature deafness is noise. Hearing loss has long been linked
to exposure to noise. Sustained loud noises - from vehicles, jet aircraft, stereos, food processors - destroys the ears' tiny
hair cells.
THE HEART
How much does your heart weigh?
The heart comprises
less than 0.5% of a person's total body weight. The average weight of the heart in a female is 9 ounces, while the average
weight of a male heart is 10.5 ounces.
WHERE IS YOUR HEART LOCATED?
The heart is
not located on the left side of the chest. It's about in the center with it's strongest portion on the left side, thus, it
can be heard slightly better from the left.
HOW MANY TIMES DOES THE AVERAGE HUMAN HEART BEAT?
About 100,000 -to
pump 5 quarts of blood every minute.
WHEN DOES A HUMAN EMBRYO HAVE ITS FIRST HEARTBEAT?
At the age of
three weeks, when the heart of the embryo looks like a tube. As it begins to beat, it starts the blood circulating through
the few blood vessels that have formed around it.
How come your heart muscle doesn't get charley-horsed from
all that exertion?
If you're pumping iron, your heart is pumping blood, big time. Even walking fast stresses
the old ticker. Likewise a little romantic activity. So why don't you wake up the next morning with aches and pains where
it would really scare you? For one thing, your heart muscle is not like your other muscles. The part that turns food
into energy is a greater percentage of cardiac muscle than of the rest of your muscles. Your heart also contracts more slowly
than other muscles, with a smoother, less taxing motion. Each of these factors decreases the amount of stress on heart muscle,
lessening fatigue.
Source: Why Things Are & Why They Aren't by Joel Achenbach
HUMAN CELLS
What are the largest and smallest cells in the human body?
The largest
cell in the human body is the female ovum, or egg cell. It is about 1/180 inch in diameter. The smallest cell in the human
body is the male sperm. It takes about 175,000 sperm cells to weigh as much as a single egg cell.
How many viruses are there in most human cells?
While you might expect that a healthy human cell would be free of viruses, it turns out that in every human cell there
are thousands of them, in the form of dormant DNA embedded in the cell's own chromosomes. Called endogenous retroviruses (ERVs),
many of them have been present in our cells for millions of years. Most ERVs are completely inactive, but some seem
to play a vital role in human reproduction. Recent research shows that when an embryo begins to grow, certain ERVs are activated.
These viruses actually reproduce and bud off the embryo's growing cells by the thousands. Retroviruses have a special
talent that comes in handy during embryo growth: they can suppress the mother's immune system, so that the growing baby is
not rejected by the mother's body. Through evolution these tiny passengers have become an important part of our earliest days.
BRAIN CELLS FROM CADAVERS
So-called progenitor
cells have many potential applications in medicine because they are capable of developing into different kinds of new tissue.
They could one day be used to grow new organs or replace damaged brain cells, for example. But there is a problem: Most such
cells are isolated from fetal tissue, and their harvest is fraught with ethical dilemmas. In this week's issue of the journal
Nature, Fred Gage of the Salk Institute (La Jolla, California) and his colleagues report the recovery of progenitor cells
from cadavers that can go on to form brain neurons. The ages of the deceased ranged from a few weeks to adult, and functioning
cells were obtained up to 20 hours after death. It isn't clear what medical applications the cells will have because they
are not as powerful as cells taken from fetuses, but the results provide hope that neural progenitor cells could one day be
taken from the dead and given to the living.
JOINTS
How does a “double joint” work?
No
one truly has double joints. Contortionists are actually able to stretch the fibrous tissues known as ligaments. Ligaments
hold organs in place and fasten bones together. Ligaments normally restrict the movements of certain joints, but some folks
find that their ligaments are more flexible than others.
THE LIVER
If 80 percent of your liver were to be removed, the remaining part would
continue to function. Within a few months, the liver would have reconstituted itself to its original size.
THE LUNGS
Because of their extreme elasticity, the lungs are 100 times easier to
blow up than a child’s toy balloon.
The lungs of an average adult, unfolded and
flattened out, would coveran area the size of a tennis court.
MUSCLES
The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.
The ability to firmly grip with your hand comes from the muscles
in the forearm. The muscles pull on tendons in the hand, bending the fingers.
Your muscles do not grow during exercise. Exercise is only the stimulus. The body strengthens the muscles while you are
resting.
Each pound of muscle (1 pound = 0.45 kilograms) burns 75-100 calories every day simply by being.
The facial muscles have a distinctive evolutionary path. Most of the muscles of expression in the human face originate
from the platysma muscle of ancestral animals. No other animals have evolved as complex a set of facial muscles as have
humans.
Fingers have no muscles. The muscles which bend the finger joints are located in the palm and up in the
mid forearm, and are connected to the finger bones by tendons, which pull on and move the fingers like the strings of a marionette.
Much of muscle contraction occurs without conscious thought and is necessary for survival, like the contraction of
the heart or peristalsis, which pushes food through the digestive system.
WHAT IS THE LONGEST MUSCLE IN THE HUMAN
BODY?
The longest muscle in the human body is the sartorius. This narrow muscle of the thigh passes obliquely
across the front of the thigh and helps rotate the leg to the position assumed in sitting cross-legged. Its name is a derivation
of the adjective "sartorial," a reference to what was the traditional cross-legged position of tailors (or "sartors") at work.
Which muscle is the fastest?
The
muscle that lets your eye blink is the fastest muscle in your body. It allows you to blink 5 times a second. On average, you
blink 15,000 times a day. Women blink twice as much as men.
THE NOSE
HOW MUCH DOES YOUR NOSE KNOW?
The
nose cleans, warms, and humidifies over 500 cubic feet of air every day.
ORGANS
Because of their extreme elasticity, the lungs are 100 times easier to
blow up than a child’s toy balloon.
WHAT IS THE LARGEST ORGAN - BY WEIGHT?
The
lungs. Together they weigh about 42 ounces. The right lung is two ounces heavier than the left, and the male's lungs
are heavier than the female's.
HOW LONG ARE THE INTESTINES?
The small intestine,
which is contained in the central and lower abdominal cavity, is 20 to 23 feet long. The large intestine is 5 feet long.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY NOT SET BY 30
A large study shows
personality is not set by age 30, but keeps changing for life. As people grow older, they begin to care more about work and
friends, and women become more emotionally stable and self-assured, the study published in the Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology indicates. Sanjay Srivastava and Oliver John of the University of California, Berkeley, surveyed 132,515
adults ages 21 to 60 on the "Big Five" personality traits: conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness and extraversion.
Conscientiousness -- being organized, "planful" and discipline
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