Your body might be responsible for all sorts of good things - like letting you live, for starters - but there's also a whole load of weird and slightly gross stuff going on in there that you probably never even had a clue about.
Here's 11 kinda grim but also kinda interesting things you never knew about your bod, because knowledge is power.
(Even if in this case, 'power' is having the ability to make everyone you know want to throw up a little bit in their mouth next time you hang out with them)
YOU HAVE CREATURES LIVING IN YOUR EYELASHES
Yep, like it or not, most of us have actual mites living, mating, eating and dying in our eyelashes. Ick. They’re so teeny tiny that they’re invisible to the naked eye, and they enjoy snacking on your dead skin cells.
The good news? They don’t poop. So that’s something. Oh, but the females do burrow down into your lash follicles to lay their eggs, which probably made you do a bit of a shudder.
YOUR STOMACH CAN BLUSH
Here’s an odd one for you - when you blush and your cheeks get all red and you want the ground to swallow you up - the lining of your stomach blushes too.
It’s caused by a rush of adrenaline triggering increased blood flow. Something to think about next time you’re dying of mortification and cursing your body for giving you away.
YOU ARE ONLY 10 PERCENT HUMAN
No really, as strange as it sounds, only 10 percent of the cells in your body are actually human. The other 90 percent is made up of 100 trillion microbes, including a whole lot of bacteria that’s actually essential for your health and wellbeing.
On a similar note, 80 percent of your brain is just water. Plain old H2O. Pretty mind-blowing, eh?
YOU COULD LITERALLY SWIM IN YOUR OWN SPIT
In your life you will make enough saliva to fill 2 entire swimming pools.
To put it into perspective, that’s between 2 and 4 pints of spit you’re making per day. Lovely.
YOU ARE HAIRIER THAN A GORILLA
No, we’re not insulting you personally, this is true of all human beings.
The average person has around 5 million hair follicles covering their body, a whole 3 times more than the standard gorilla. (RIP Harambe).
YOU COULD PLAY A BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT ON FORESKIN
A foreskin the size of a postage stamp can be expanded to the size of 3 (THREE!) basketball courts in just 21 days.
This godzilla of foreskin is grown in a laboratory via various ‘nutrition’ and ‘division’ techniques *shrugs* usually for skin grafts. Not basketball.
YOUR TONGUE COULD GET YOU ARRESTED
If you lick something while committing a crime, that is. This is thanks to the fact that all tongue prints are different, just like fingerprints.
P.S. DON’T COMMIT A CRIME IT’S NAUGHTY.
YOU EAT SNOT
Again, not a playground insult, because you actually do. The average human swallows around 1.5 pints of snot and mucus every. single. day.
That’s 192 teaspoons, just FYI. *gags*
IT IS POSSIBLE TO VOMIT POO
It’s called faecal vomiting and it’s very rare (thank the lord), but it can happen.
The condition occurs when the bowel is obstructed for some reason, and the intestines push the waste back up and out of the mouth instead. OH. GOD.
YOUR GUT WILL EVENTUALLY EAT YOU
Sounds like the plot of a science fiction movie, but is actually true. You have millions of bacteria in your gut that help you digest food and keep you healthy.
When you die, they will eat you from the inside out. Sorry.
SOME TUMOURS GROW TEETH
They’re called Teratoma tumours, and have also been known to grow organs, hair and bone. Nobody really knows why and we’re not sure we want to, tbh.
Well, we warntell you this was going to be gross, didn't we?
- By Lizzie Cox.
