Attractions How well do you know your body?
How well do you know your body?
MUSCLES
There are 665 muscles in the human body and their total weight is between 20 - 30 kg. These must also be taken care of. If you do not exercise then from thirteen years old onwards your body can lose over 1/2 kg of muscle.
VERTIBRAE
There are 33 – 34 vertibrae in the human body. Apart from their main function they also account for one curiousity – they grow during the night. During the day, when many people sit in office chairs, vertibrae can „shorten“ by up to 2cm. During sleep they "grow" again to their original size.
TONGUE
This is the strongest muscle in the human body and no two tongues are ever the same. This muscle also helps us to swallow saliva and during our lifetime we produce up to 40 thousand litres of saliva. Daily we swallow roughly 1200 times.
SKELETON
The most bones in the human body can be found in the hands and feet. On average we have 206 bones and they account for roughly one tenth of our body weight. Every week up to 5% of our bone mass is changed and regenerated.
BRAIN
The brain is formed by 100 billion nerve cells. If we play sport regularly the number of these cells increases. When we are inacive or in pain then cell numbers decrease. The brain is the most complex organ in the body. Scientists are still unable to explain how exactly the brain works. Its weight averages around 150 g.
LEGS
Where would we go without these? Literally! Statistics from an American university recently calculated that our legs walk around 200 thousand kilometres during our lifetime. If you cannot imagine this distance then it is the same as if you walked 5 times around the world.
NAILS
These are often seen as a sign of a persons attractiveness and so women (and often not just women) regularly go for manicures and pedicures. The Guinness Book of Records is full of crazy record-breakers who have not cut their nails – if though we did not cut our nails at all during our lifetime then thes nails would grow to 62 metres.
NOSE
Did you know that the surface of our ethmoidal (smell) membranes is only around 4 cm2 and yet for a dog this is up to 150 cm2? Even so we are capable of distinguishing up to 10 thousand smells. And what does our nose do when we sneeze? It is hard to believe but it can "transport" bacteria out from the body at a speed of up to 150 km/h.
EYES
Our eyes have a greater performance than the best graphic card on your computer. Even though they weigh around 7,5 g, they are capable of distinguishing 600 thousand shades of colour. The eye is moved by so called eye-moving muscles and there are 6 of these muscles in each eye.
HEART
It seems unbelievable yet the number of heart beats made during the lifetime are couted in billions... We must také care of our hearts, if we do not then in most cases it leads to death. One more interesting fact: the performance of the heart is similar to that of a 60 watt light bulb.
HAIR
Our oldest hair survives for a maximum of 7 years. When we lose hair usually new hair grows. This is why we all find from time to time hair loss (e.g. on our pillow when we wake up). Losing hundreds of hair in a day is nothing unusual.
Source: GRANDEXPRESS – a magazíne not just for train journeys no. 11/year 6.
