10 Strange Things Your Body Does

1. Everybody’s body produces roughly two to four pints of saliva per day. On average, throughout your lifetime, you will have produced enough saliva to fill up two whole swimming pools.

2. Has it ever crossed your mind, why tissues are prone to tearing. This is due to the force of your sneeze which usually exceed 100 mph.

3. Some people hate the sound of others cracking their knuckles but what most people don’t know is what actually causes that distinctive sound. The noise created is due to the gas bubbles within the joint exploding.

4. Everybody has endured brain freeze at some point in time while enjoying an ice cream. The cause of this sharp pain is your brain being alerted of the quick temperature change of the roof of your mouth due to the cold substance which is in contact with it. As soon as the brain is alerted, the anterior cerebral artery dilates, in turn this increases the blood flow to the frontal lobe of the brain in order to keep the frontal lobe warm. This blood flow is interpreted by the neuroreceptors as pain. Brain freeze is ultimately blood flow.

5. The average person farts 14 times a day. This is the equivalent to 0.5 litres/500 mL of fart (gas) produced daily. Most people do not know but less than one per cent of a fart’s chemical makeup is responsible for the vile smell. The remainder of the fart’s (99 per cent) composition, 59% is nitrogen (chemical symbol: N), 21% hydrogen (H) , 9% carbon dioxide (CO2), 7 % methane (CH4) and 4 % oxygen (O).

6. The acid in your stomach is extremely acidic. The acid inside your stomach is hydrochloric acid (HCl). This acid is so corrosive it can dissolve razor blades (I would not recommend eating them however). Although it is highly corrosive it cannot corrode through your stomach as your stomach produces a lining to protect itself. This lining is then replaced every three to four days.

7. Your tongue is an exceptionally strong and flexible muscle. It is technically a “muscular hydrostat”, which means that your tongue is a bundle of muscles that function without the aid of bones. Imagine that your tongue were the size of an elephant’s trunk, it would be able to uproot an entire tree! In many languages the word “tongue” is the same word as “language”.

8. Have you ever noticed when you’re in the bath and your fingers are wrinkly and resemble prunes? This is caused by your nervous system constricting the blood vessels underneath the skin in your fingers and toes. There is a reason for this, the pruney texture acts as a set of rain threads, constantly channelling water out when you grip, an object for example. A recent study in Newcastle discovered that pruney fingers were up to 12 per cent faster than smooth fingers when performing behavioural tasks.

9. 10 seconds after injury, scabs begin to form. A chemical reaction then takes place where chemical proteins react to a type of blood cell called, platelets. Platelets cause the blood to clot and scab over the broken skin. The clotting of the blood then prevents infections. From then on, 16 different chemicals work together to form a scab which keep germs out while new skin cells are being produced.

10. A study by Bristol Myers found that almost 20 million American women remove facial hair weekly. A woman will produce facial hair mostly between her teenage years to when she is middle aged. The reason for this is most likely to be a natural sign of ageing rather than an increase in testosterone levels.
When a woman is experiencing menopause the ratio of male hormones to estrogen may change, if so there may be an increase of growth of facial hair during this period. A long with ageing, heredity and ethnicity both play major factors in female facial hair growth.

Apart from natural ageing, a physical disorder called ‘hirsutism’ results in excessive hair growth. There are many causes of this two of which are the over production of androgens (male hormones) in either the adrenal gland or ovaries.

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