Fascinating facts about the human body

The human body is one of the coolest things the universe ever created. Click further to see some incredible facts about our body's potential.

A human being produces about half a litre of saliva per day. Some even reach two litres daily. This amount accumulated over a lifetime would be enough to fill two Olympic swimming pools.

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A human bone is stronger than a steel bar of the same size and thickness. Still, it is possible to fracture it, as many of us have experienced.

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Throughout a life, the human heart pumps up to 182 million litres of blood.

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When we cough, we produce a current of air that passes through the airways at almost 100km/h.

We can try it hundreds of times, but we'll never be able to sneeze with our eyes open. Have you tried?

The human body has a total of 206 bones. Over a quarter of them are at the bottom: in the feet. Each foot has 26 bones: 7 tarsals, 5 metatarsals and 14 phalanges (three in each toe, except for the largest which has two).

A right-handed person lives, on average, 9 years longer than a lefty. Is this a biological mystery or a statistical failure?

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The brain's storage capacity, if it were compared to a computer, would be 10 to 100 terabytes. Some scientists even assume this figure to be 2.5 petabytes or 2.5 million gigabytes. Hypertext Magazine calculated that this would be the equivalent of storing 3 million hours of videos.

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A nerve impulse, once sent from the brain, travels through the body at a speed of 274km/h.

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The human body contains enough:

- Sulfur to kill all the fleas of a medium-sized dog

- Carbon to make a 900-pencil mine

- Potassium to fire a toy gun

- Fat to make 7 bars of soap

- Water to fill a 35 to 50 litre container

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While you're reading this sentence, 50,000 cells in your body died and were replaced by new ones.

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Charles Osbourne was an ordinary American man, until he started hiccupping in 1922 and continued to do so until he died... in 1991! It was over 68 years of hiccups that made him famous but also very unhappy.

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The accumulated length of the body's blood vessels is almost 100,000 kilometers.

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About 80% of the heat accumulated by the body ends up leaving it through the head.

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When a person becomes embarrassed, not only does their face turn a darker red colour but also the stomach. That's because its internal walls suffer a sudden increase in blood flow.

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The sensation of thirst appears when the body loses the equivalent of 1% of its body weight. A loss of 5% represents a severe degree of dehydration and may cause fainting. If the decrease is greater than 10%, it could cause death.

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A 4-year-old can ask up to 450 questions a day.

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A healthy person takes an average of 7 minutes to fall asleep. The U.S. National Sleep Foundation says that you may have problems getting rested if you take half an hour or more to fall asleep.

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According to a study by the National and Kapodistric University of Athens (Greece) and the University of St Andrews (United Kingdom), about 10.6% of the world's population is left-handed.

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If all the hair on our body did not fall out or be cut during our entire lives, its total length could reach an average of 725km.

The total weight of all the bacteria that a human being accumulates, is approximately 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds).

If the muscles of our jaws concentrated on a single point, they could exert a force of 77 kilograms per square centimetre. The fact that 99% of our calcium is concentrated in the teeth also helps.

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Our lips are 100 times more sensitive than our fingertips. What's more, a kiss received from a person we like can cause our pulse to increase 100 times per minute.

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The downside of kissing is that it causes you to exchange almost 300 different types of bacteria. Fortunately, 95% of them are not dangerous to your health.

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Over the course of a person's life, they can replace their skin up to a thousand times.

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An average person spends two weeks over the course of life kissing others.

In proportion to its size, the tongue is the strongest muscle in the human body.

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A person's small intestine measures around 3.5 meters.

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In 24 hours, a person can inhale and exhale about 24,000 times.

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Scientists estimate that the human eye is able to distinguish up to 100 colour variations that combine in up to 1 million colour tones.

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From the age of 60, people lose many of their taste receptors. However, the sensation of what pleases the palate does not disappear.

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One person pronounces an average of 4,800 words in a day. That would be 200 words per hour, but if we discount the time we are asleep, this number goes up to about 300.

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Our eyes are the same size as when we were born, but our nose and ears never stop growing. This behaviour happens due to their cartilaginous formation that deforms the body parts with the force of gravity.

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The muscles of the eyes that allow us to focus on images move about 100,000 times a day. This effort would be the equivalent of walking 80km a day.

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If a person were deprived of both food and rest, they would die of sleep and not of hunger. Our organism survives up to 14 days without food, but it can't stand more than 10 days without sleep.

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When we talk about toxic gases, we often forget that humans are also responsible for expelling them. A person releases an average of 14 farts a day, which means an average of 0.5 to 2 litres of gas.

The scientific community considers it possible that the head of a decapitated person will continue to show signs of life for 20 seconds.

A person has about 250 lashes in each eye. The lifespan of these lashes is 4 months, so they grow much faster than the hair on the head.

The five main senses - smell, taste, sight, hearing and touch - have a number of ramifications. Among them are proprioception (perception of movement), thermoception (feeling changes in temperature) and synesthesia (ability to relate sounds, flavours and colours to each other).

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Fingers help us use our strength in everyday life, but they don't have muscles. They're composed of bones and tendons only.

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Next: Why did scientist design a creature that is half ape, half human?