Click me
Transcribed

10 Facts About The Human Body

Today I Found Out... 10 Fascinaling Facs About the Human BCODY OTodaylFoundOut.com Why Getting Kicked in the Balls Causes Pain in the Abdomen Testes originally form in the abdomen near the stomach and kidneys. attached in that region, when a guy gets kicked in the balls or otherwise has his nuts squished, the pain involved travels up from each testicle into the abdominal cavity, via the spermatic plexus, which is the primary nerve of each testicle, and then to the spine. The nerves and blood vessels remain even after the balls drop. So In addition to the pain in the stomach area, many men also experience This is thought to be caused by a huge rush of sympathetic nervous system discharge. the body's tolerance level for that rush determines whether severe nausea. So that person will be someone susceptible vomiting when kicked in the nuts. So bottom line, getting kicked in the balls = severe to actually pain in testicles + abdominal pain + quite a bit severe of nausea and possible vomiting. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index. php/2010/10/why-getting-kicked in-the-balls-causes pain-in-the-abdomen/ Why It is Nearly Impossible to Tickle Yourself It turns out, it's very hard to tickle yourself because your brain anticipates things going on around you in order to help speed up response times. technically, the cerebellum monitors body movements and can also distinguish between expected sensations generally More unexpected or while and ones, resulting in discarding diminishing sensations, unexpected anticipating touch sensations. When it is doing this, it is also actively discarding sensations that it deems unimportant, like when you are typing and it significantly dulls fingertips so that you don't really notice it unless you consciously think about it. This same type of thing happens when you try to tickle yourself. completely paying So expected to much more attention ones. your brain is actively the touch sensation in your In short, you can't tickle yourself because there is no element of Your brain is using the surprise. various internal sensory data it has available anticipate is going to happen to exactly what based on your movements and visual data. When the anticipated reaction and the actual reaction line up, your brain diminishes or even sometimes completely discards the sensation as a result of that On the other hand, when someone else is tickling you, there are unexpected sensations on the skin and these then can result in action. the tickling sensation being activated. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/08/why-itis-nearly-impossible-to-tickle-yourself/ What Those Nasty White Chunks That Sometimes Come From Your Throat Are smelling, that sometimes feel at the back of your throat when you swallow are called Tonsilloliths or Tonsil Stones. These Tonsilloliths are stinky Those foul small, white-ish, chunks you can little globs of mucus, dead cells, debris and bacteria that the tonsil crypts which that appear everyone's tonsils. When the trapped dead cells, mucus, and debris harden or calcify, they form white/yellow ball in the tonsil pockets. They usually appear as tiny little chunks in the shape of cauliflower and smell like they could wake up your dead grandma. Tonsil stones are fairly common in adults and children. However, they tend to occur most often in people who suffer from chronic inflammation in their tonsils or repeated bouts of tonsillitis. Studies have shown that people who have had their tonsils removed, under most circumstances, almost never experience tonsil form in are simply small pockets or divots in stones. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/09/what-those-nasty-white-chunks-that-come-from-your-throat-are/ What Causes Muscle Soreness After Exercising Since the early 20th century, this specific type of muscle soreness, called “delayed onset muscle soreness" (DOMS), was thought to be caused by lactic acid buildup in the muscles during strenuous workouts where your body's oxygen supply is depleted. Recent research has shown this is not the case at all and has even shown that lactic acid is actually used by your muscles for fuel when oxygen supplies are depleted. So if it's not causing this soreness, what is it? Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is now understood to be lactic аcid that is caused themselves. the by This happens when you do some activity that microfractures in muscle cells your muscles aren't used to doing or do it in a much more strenuous way than they are accustomed to.This is also why after you exercise some specific way a few times and allow your muscles to recover, that you won't typically get sore again from doing that activity at a similar intensity level, so long as you continue to do it on a somewhat regular bases. being able to handle new activities further damage in the future; this is known as the “repeated-bout microfractures typically won't develop unless you change your activity in some substanti al way. rule, as long as the change to the exercise is under 10% of what you normally do, you won't experience DOMS as a result of the activity. The muscles quickly adapt to so as to avoid effect". When this happens, the As a general http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/08/what-causes-muscle-soreness-after-exercising-note-its-notlacticacid/ About 85% Of People Only Breathe Out Of One Nostril At A Time Around 85% of humans only breathe out of one nostril at Even more interesting is that the pattern of switching from breathing out of one nostril to the other happens in a cyclical fashion, with about four hours or so between each switch typically; although, this can vary to person and vary based on your bodily position or nasal congestion. How your nose accomplishes this switch is via erectile tissue in your nose, which is tissue in a penis clitoris. Erectile tissue will swell up in one nostril, mostly blocking it, and at the same time erectile tissue for a time. from person very similar to the erectile or the other nostril will shrink, opening it up more interesting is that depending on which nostril you are predominately breathing out of at any given moment, it seems to greatly affect your body study in 1988 showed that significantly increases blood glucose levels, while breathing through your left nostril has the opposite effect. Another study in 1993 showed that when you are breathing through your right nostril you will use significantly more oxygen than when breathing through your left. Most interestingly of all, yet another study published in 1994, showed that when left in breathing. Even and brain. For instance, a through breathing your right nostril breathing the right hemisphere of your you are through your nostril, brain will be more active or dominant and vice-verse when you are breathing through your right nostril. thing to know as the right hemisphere of your brain is your “creative/imaginative" side, while the left hemisphere of your brain is your "logical" side. breathing through one nostril or the other can actually affect the way you think at a given moment. This can be a handy So forcing http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/03/about-85-of-people-only- breathe-out-of-one-nostril-at-a-time/ A Typical Human Gut Contains About 100 Trillion Bacterial Cells The human gut contains about 100 trillion bacterial1 cells, about 10 times as many cells as make up the human body. The is human basically gut until you are born. first year sterile For the of your life, the cultures of bacteria and other microbes in your gut begin settling down around the time fluctuate wildly and you start weaning. A recent study published in the journal, Nature, which included scientists from Germany, Brussells, Beijing, Denmark, Spain, France and the UK, set out to catalog all of the microbes in a typical human gut, which they did successfully, managing to decode al1 the microbial genes found there. Given that we are so incredibly dependent on these microbes for our bodies to function properly, this research could very quickly lead to significant advancements in various medical fields, including how we treat and recognize a variety of ailments. During the study, over 1000 prevalent species were discovered with each person having about 160 species present in their guts and the vast majority of them being unknown in terms of what they do or what effects they have on us. Of these 1,000 species, they spread digest found over 3.3 million species. These essential When distinct genes across those bacteria help us food, provide vitamins, and protect us from invading pathogens. some of these cultures are destroyed, it can lead to such problems as Crohn's disease, Ulcerative colitis, and even has been linked to obesity. hittp://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/03/a-typicalhuman-gut-contains-about-100 trillion-bacterial-cells/ The Tongue Doesn't Have Zones For Different Tastes The tongue doesn't have zones specializing in specific tastes, contrary to popular belief. It turns out this myth got its start when a certain Harvard Psychologist Edwin G. Boring mistranslated a German paper written in 1901 titled “Zur Psychophysik des Geschmackssinnes". The tongue paper, written by German Scientist D.P. Hanig, outlined Hanig's research on the four known basic tastes (note: there are actually 5 known today). He got together a group of subjects and tested the main tastes on each of them on various parts of their tongues until he figured he had a good map put various together on where they tasted tastes the most. In reality, any undamaged taste bud can more or less taste any of the five main flavors through various mechanisms, so any actual "taste map" really just depends mostly on the density and location of taste buds on a particular person's tongue which varies from person to This myth endured, even among scientists, until the 1970s and still endures today, even among some educators. However, in the 1970's, scientists decided they might actually want to think about testing the commonly held notion of “tongue maps" that go against the personal1 experience of pretty much everyone who has ever tasted anything. ever. They quickly found out that while different areas of the tongue certainly have different densities of taste buds which, combined with olfactory influence, affect taste, there was no specific "taste zones" and the traditional "taste person and also changes as a person ages. map" depicted in Hanig's paper didn't exist. http://www.todayifour t.com/index.php/2010/05/the-tongue-doesnt-have-zones-for-different-tastes/ What the "Sleep" In Your Eyes Is "Sleep" is a type of "rheum", which is the name for discharge from your nose, mouth or eyes during sleep. More specifically, eye rheum is known as "gound". Gound is made up of a mixture of dust, blood cells, skin cells, etc. mixed with mucus secreted by the conjunctiva, as well as an oily substance from the meibomian glands. The meibomian glands are a type of sebaceous gland that line the rim of the eyelids with about fifty on the top and twenty five on the bottom of each eye. substance called meibum that a variety of functions including:helps seal your eyes in an air tight fashion when they are closed; prevents tears from spilling onto your cheeks; and helps keep tears that coat your eyes from evaporating. the primary components in gound, mixed with mucin from the conjunctiva and various foreign particles in your eye. Normally, when you are awake, the gound is naturally washed away via tears and the blinking motion. However, as you sleep, you obviously don't blink so the meibomian secretions and other components of the gound tend to gather in the corners of your eyes, as well as along your eye lines and dries out, yellow-ish “eye boogers" or “eye crusties". They secrete an oily erforms It is this oily substance that is one of creating hard http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/02/what-the-sleep-in-your-eyes-is/ Why Your Nose Gets Runny When It is Cold On an average day, a typical person's nose wi11 produce about one quart of mucus/fluid (just under one liter). Most all of this snot generally gets passed back into your throat and swallowed, often without you even really being too conscious of it. When you're breathing cold air production though, significantly, causing some of that snot to come out the front of your nose, rather than back in your throat. What's going on here is the blood supply to your nose actually increases as a response to the cold air, via tiny blood vessels in your nose dilating to increase the blood flow. This helps keep your nose warm as you breathe, as well as begins to warm the cold air you're breathing before it enters your lungs. the rate of mucus goes up This increased blood flow doesn't just help warm the air though, it also has a side effect of providing a lot more blood than normal to the glands which produce the mucuS in your nose. causes them to start producing snot at a much higher rate than normal, which causes your nose to run when you're breathing the cold air. Once you're back in a warm air environment, the blood vessels in your nose will constrict and the glands that produce the mucus/liquid mix will go back to their normal rate of around four cups of snot per day. This, in turn, http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/01/why-your-nose-gets-runny-when-itis-cold/ Humans Have a Lot More Than Five Senses It turns out, there are at least nine senses and most researchers think there are more like twenty-one or so. Just for reference, the commonly held definition of a “sense" is “any system that consists of a group of sensory cel1 types that respond to a specific physical phenomenon and that corresponds to a particular group of regions within the brain where the signals are received and interpreted".The commonly held human senses are as follows: sight, taste, sound, smell, touch, pressure, itch, thermoception (ability to sense heat and cold), proprioception (ability to tell where your body parts relative to other body parts), tension sensors are, (ability to monitor muscle tension), equilibrioception (sense that allows you to keep your balance and sense body movement in terms of acceleration and directional changes), stretch receptors (senses dilation of blood vessels and is also often involved in headaches), chemoreceptors (sense that detects blood born hormones and drugs), thirst, hunger, magentoception (ability to detect magnetic fields), and time: this one is debated as no singular mechanism has been found that allows people to perceive time. However, experimental data has conclusively shown humans have a startling accurate sense of time. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/07/humans-have-a-lot-more-than-five-senses/ Designed by: Noreen Sequeira OTODAYIFOUNDOUT.COM Today I Found Out... 10 Fascinaling Facs About the Human BCODY OTodaylFoundOut.com Why Getting Kicked in the Balls Causes Pain in the Abdomen Testes originally form in the abdomen near the stomach and kidneys. attached in that region, when a guy gets kicked in the balls or otherwise has his nuts squished, the pain involved travels up from each testicle into the abdominal cavity, via the spermatic plexus, which is the primary nerve of each testicle, and then to the spine. The nerves and blood vessels remain even after the balls drop. So In addition to the pain in the stomach area, many men also experience This is thought to be caused by a huge rush of sympathetic nervous system discharge. the body's tolerance level for that rush determines whether severe nausea. So that person will be someone susceptible vomiting when kicked in the nuts. So bottom line, getting kicked in the balls = severe to actually pain in testicles + abdominal pain + quite a bit severe of nausea and possible vomiting. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index. php/2010/10/why-getting-kicked in-the-balls-causes pain-in-the-abdomen/ Why It is Nearly Impossible to Tickle Yourself It turns out, it's very hard to tickle yourself because your brain anticipates things going on around you in order to help speed up response times. technically, the cerebellum monitors body movements and can also distinguish between expected sensations generally More unexpected or while and ones, resulting in discarding diminishing sensations, unexpected anticipating touch sensations. When it is doing this, it is also actively discarding sensations that it deems unimportant, like when you are typing and it significantly dulls fingertips so that you don't really notice it unless you consciously think about it. This same type of thing happens when you try to tickle yourself. completely paying So expected to much more attention ones. your brain is actively the touch sensation in your In short, you can't tickle yourself because there is no element of Your brain is using the surprise. various internal sensory data it has available anticipate is going to happen to exactly what based on your movements and visual data. When the anticipated reaction and the actual reaction line up, your brain diminishes or even sometimes completely discards the sensation as a result of that On the other hand, when someone else is tickling you, there are unexpected sensations on the skin and these then can result in action. the tickling sensation being activated. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/08/why-itis-nearly-impossible-to-tickle-yourself/ What Those Nasty White Chunks That Sometimes Come From Your Throat Are smelling, that sometimes feel at the back of your throat when you swallow are called Tonsilloliths or Tonsil Stones. These Tonsilloliths are stinky Those foul small, white-ish, chunks you can little globs of mucus, dead cells, debris and bacteria that the tonsil crypts which that appear everyone's tonsils. When the trapped dead cells, mucus, and debris harden or calcify, they form white/yellow ball in the tonsil pockets. They usually appear as tiny little chunks in the shape of cauliflower and smell like they could wake up your dead grandma. Tonsil stones are fairly common in adults and children. However, they tend to occur most often in people who suffer from chronic inflammation in their tonsils or repeated bouts of tonsillitis. Studies have shown that people who have had their tonsils removed, under most circumstances, almost never experience tonsil form in are simply small pockets or divots in stones. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/09/what-those-nasty-white-chunks-that-come-from-your-throat-are/ What Causes Muscle Soreness After Exercising Since the early 20th century, this specific type of muscle soreness, called “delayed onset muscle soreness" (DOMS), was thought to be caused by lactic acid buildup in the muscles during strenuous workouts where your body's oxygen supply is depleted. Recent research has shown this is not the case at all and has even shown that lactic acid is actually used by your muscles for fuel when oxygen supplies are depleted. So if it's not causing this soreness, what is it? Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is now understood to be lactic аcid that is caused themselves. the by This happens when you do some activity that microfractures in muscle cells your muscles aren't used to doing or do it in a much more strenuous way than they are accustomed to.This is also why after you exercise some specific way a few times and allow your muscles to recover, that you won't typically get sore again from doing that activity at a similar intensity level, so long as you continue to do it on a somewhat regular bases. being able to handle new activities further damage in the future; this is known as the “repeated-bout microfractures typically won't develop unless you change your activity in some substanti al way. rule, as long as the change to the exercise is under 10% of what you normally do, you won't experience DOMS as a result of the activity. The muscles quickly adapt to so as to avoid effect". When this happens, the As a general http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/08/what-causes-muscle-soreness-after-exercising-note-its-notlacticacid/ About 85% Of People Only Breathe Out Of One Nostril At A Time Around 85% of humans only breathe out of one nostril at Even more interesting is that the pattern of switching from breathing out of one nostril to the other happens in a cyclical fashion, with about four hours or so between each switch typically; although, this can vary to person and vary based on your bodily position or nasal congestion. How your nose accomplishes this switch is via erectile tissue in your nose, which is tissue in a penis clitoris. Erectile tissue will swell up in one nostril, mostly blocking it, and at the same time erectile tissue for a time. from person very similar to the erectile or the other nostril will shrink, opening it up more interesting is that depending on which nostril you are predominately breathing out of at any given moment, it seems to greatly affect your body study in 1988 showed that significantly increases blood glucose levels, while breathing through your left nostril has the opposite effect. Another study in 1993 showed that when you are breathing through your right nostril you will use significantly more oxygen than when breathing through your left. Most interestingly of all, yet another study published in 1994, showed that when left in breathing. Even and brain. For instance, a through breathing your right nostril breathing the right hemisphere of your you are through your nostril, brain will be more active or dominant and vice-verse when you are breathing through your right nostril. thing to know as the right hemisphere of your brain is your “creative/imaginative" side, while the left hemisphere of your brain is your "logical" side. breathing through one nostril or the other can actually affect the way you think at a given moment. This can be a handy So forcing http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/03/about-85-of-people-only- breathe-out-of-one-nostril-at-a-time/ A Typical Human Gut Contains About 100 Trillion Bacterial Cells The human gut contains about 100 trillion bacterial1 cells, about 10 times as many cells as make up the human body. The is human basically gut until you are born. first year sterile For the of your life, the cultures of bacteria and other microbes in your gut begin settling down around the time fluctuate wildly and you start weaning. A recent study published in the journal, Nature, which included scientists from Germany, Brussells, Beijing, Denmark, Spain, France and the UK, set out to catalog all of the microbes in a typical human gut, which they did successfully, managing to decode al1 the microbial genes found there. Given that we are so incredibly dependent on these microbes for our bodies to function properly, this research could very quickly lead to significant advancements in various medical fields, including how we treat and recognize a variety of ailments. During the study, over 1000 prevalent species were discovered with each person having about 160 species present in their guts and the vast majority of them being unknown in terms of what they do or what effects they have on us. Of these 1,000 species, they spread digest found over 3.3 million species. These essential When distinct genes across those bacteria help us food, provide vitamins, and protect us from invading pathogens. some of these cultures are destroyed, it can lead to such problems as Crohn's disease, Ulcerative colitis, and even has been linked to obesity. hittp://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/03/a-typicalhuman-gut-contains-about-100 trillion-bacterial-cells/ The Tongue Doesn't Have Zones For Different Tastes The tongue doesn't have zones specializing in specific tastes, contrary to popular belief. It turns out this myth got its start when a certain Harvard Psychologist Edwin G. Boring mistranslated a German paper written in 1901 titled “Zur Psychophysik des Geschmackssinnes". The tongue paper, written by German Scientist D.P. Hanig, outlined Hanig's research on the four known basic tastes (note: there are actually 5 known today). He got together a group of subjects and tested the main tastes on each of them on various parts of their tongues until he figured he had a good map put various together on where they tasted tastes the most. In reality, any undamaged taste bud can more or less taste any of the five main flavors through various mechanisms, so any actual "taste map" really just depends mostly on the density and location of taste buds on a particular person's tongue which varies from person to This myth endured, even among scientists, until the 1970s and still endures today, even among some educators. However, in the 1970's, scientists decided they might actually want to think about testing the commonly held notion of “tongue maps" that go against the personal1 experience of pretty much everyone who has ever tasted anything. ever. They quickly found out that while different areas of the tongue certainly have different densities of taste buds which, combined with olfactory influence, affect taste, there was no specific "taste zones" and the traditional "taste person and also changes as a person ages. map" depicted in Hanig's paper didn't exist. http://www.todayifour t.com/index.php/2010/05/the-tongue-doesnt-have-zones-for-different-tastes/ What the "Sleep" In Your Eyes Is "Sleep" is a type of "rheum", which is the name for discharge from your nose, mouth or eyes during sleep. More specifically, eye rheum is known as "gound". Gound is made up of a mixture of dust, blood cells, skin cells, etc. mixed with mucus secreted by the conjunctiva, as well as an oily substance from the meibomian glands. The meibomian glands are a type of sebaceous gland that line the rim of the eyelids with about fifty on the top and twenty five on the bottom of each eye. substance called meibum that a variety of functions including:helps seal your eyes in an air tight fashion when they are closed; prevents tears from spilling onto your cheeks; and helps keep tears that coat your eyes from evaporating. the primary components in gound, mixed with mucin from the conjunctiva and various foreign particles in your eye. Normally, when you are awake, the gound is naturally washed away via tears and the blinking motion. However, as you sleep, you obviously don't blink so the meibomian secretions and other components of the gound tend to gather in the corners of your eyes, as well as along your eye lines and dries out, yellow-ish “eye boogers" or “eye crusties". They secrete an oily erforms It is this oily substance that is one of creating hard http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/02/what-the-sleep-in-your-eyes-is/ Why Your Nose Gets Runny When It is Cold On an average day, a typical person's nose wi11 produce about one quart of mucus/fluid (just under one liter). Most all of this snot generally gets passed back into your throat and swallowed, often without you even really being too conscious of it. When you're breathing cold air production though, significantly, causing some of that snot to come out the front of your nose, rather than back in your throat. What's going on here is the blood supply to your nose actually increases as a response to the cold air, via tiny blood vessels in your nose dilating to increase the blood flow. This helps keep your nose warm as you breathe, as well as begins to warm the cold air you're breathing before it enters your lungs. the rate of mucus goes up This increased blood flow doesn't just help warm the air though, it also has a side effect of providing a lot more blood than normal to the glands which produce the mucuS in your nose. causes them to start producing snot at a much higher rate than normal, which causes your nose to run when you're breathing the cold air. Once you're back in a warm air environment, the blood vessels in your nose will constrict and the glands that produce the mucus/liquid mix will go back to their normal rate of around four cups of snot per day. This, in turn, http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/01/why-your-nose-gets-runny-when-itis-cold/ Humans Have a Lot More Than Five Senses It turns out, there are at least nine senses and most researchers think there are more like twenty-one or so. Just for reference, the commonly held definition of a “sense" is “any system that consists of a group of sensory cel1 types that respond to a specific physical phenomenon and that corresponds to a particular group of regions within the brain where the signals are received and interpreted".The commonly held human senses are as follows: sight, taste, sound, smell, touch, pressure, itch, thermoception (ability to sense heat and cold), proprioception (ability to tell where your body parts relative to other body parts), tension sensors are, (ability to monitor muscle tension), equilibrioception (sense that allows you to keep your balance and sense body movement in terms of acceleration and directional changes), stretch receptors (senses dilation of blood vessels and is also often involved in headaches), chemoreceptors (sense that detects blood born hormones and drugs), thirst, hunger, magentoception (ability to detect magnetic fields), and time: this one is debated as no singular mechanism has been found that allows people to perceive time. However, experimental data has conclusively shown humans have a startling accurate sense of time. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/07/humans-have-a-lot-more-than-five-senses/ Designed by: Noreen Sequeira OTODAYIFOUNDOUT.COM Today I Found Out... 10 Fascinaling Facs About the Human BCODY OTodaylFoundOut.com Why Getting Kicked in the Balls Causes Pain in the Abdomen Testes originally form in the abdomen near the stomach and kidneys. attached in that region, when a guy gets kicked in the balls or otherwise has his nuts squished, the pain involved travels up from each testicle into the abdominal cavity, via the spermatic plexus, which is the primary nerve of each testicle, and then to the spine. The nerves and blood vessels remain even after the balls drop. So In addition to the pain in the stomach area, many men also experience This is thought to be caused by a huge rush of sympathetic nervous system discharge. the body's tolerance level for that rush determines whether severe nausea. So that person will be someone susceptible vomiting when kicked in the nuts. So bottom line, getting kicked in the balls = severe to actually pain in testicles + abdominal pain + quite a bit severe of nausea and possible vomiting. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index. php/2010/10/why-getting-kicked in-the-balls-causes pain-in-the-abdomen/ Why It is Nearly Impossible to Tickle Yourself It turns out, it's very hard to tickle yourself because your brain anticipates things going on around you in order to help speed up response times. technically, the cerebellum monitors body movements and can also distinguish between expected sensations generally More unexpected or while and ones, resulting in discarding diminishing sensations, unexpected anticipating touch sensations. When it is doing this, it is also actively discarding sensations that it deems unimportant, like when you are typing and it significantly dulls fingertips so that you don't really notice it unless you consciously think about it. This same type of thing happens when you try to tickle yourself. completely paying So expected to much more attention ones. your brain is actively the touch sensation in your In short, you can't tickle yourself because there is no element of Your brain is using the surprise. various internal sensory data it has available anticipate is going to happen to exactly what based on your movements and visual data. When the anticipated reaction and the actual reaction line up, your brain diminishes or even sometimes completely discards the sensation as a result of that On the other hand, when someone else is tickling you, there are unexpected sensations on the skin and these then can result in action. the tickling sensation being activated. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/08/why-itis-nearly-impossible-to-tickle-yourself/ What Those Nasty White Chunks That Sometimes Come From Your Throat Are smelling, that sometimes feel at the back of your throat when you swallow are called Tonsilloliths or Tonsil Stones. These Tonsilloliths are stinky Those foul small, white-ish, chunks you can little globs of mucus, dead cells, debris and bacteria that the tonsil crypts which that appear everyone's tonsils. When the trapped dead cells, mucus, and debris harden or calcify, they form white/yellow ball in the tonsil pockets. They usually appear as tiny little chunks in the shape of cauliflower and smell like they could wake up your dead grandma. Tonsil stones are fairly common in adults and children. However, they tend to occur most often in people who suffer from chronic inflammation in their tonsils or repeated bouts of tonsillitis. Studies have shown that people who have had their tonsils removed, under most circumstances, almost never experience tonsil form in are simply small pockets or divots in stones. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/09/what-those-nasty-white-chunks-that-come-from-your-throat-are/ What Causes Muscle Soreness After Exercising Since the early 20th century, this specific type of muscle soreness, called “delayed onset muscle soreness" (DOMS), was thought to be caused by lactic acid buildup in the muscles during strenuous workouts where your body's oxygen supply is depleted. Recent research has shown this is not the case at all and has even shown that lactic acid is actually used by your muscles for fuel when oxygen supplies are depleted. So if it's not causing this soreness, what is it? Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is now understood to be lactic аcid that is caused themselves. the by This happens when you do some activity that microfractures in muscle cells your muscles aren't used to doing or do it in a much more strenuous way than they are accustomed to.This is also why after you exercise some specific way a few times and allow your muscles to recover, that you won't typically get sore again from doing that activity at a similar intensity level, so long as you continue to do it on a somewhat regular bases. being able to handle new activities further damage in the future; this is known as the “repeated-bout microfractures typically won't develop unless you change your activity in some substanti al way. rule, as long as the change to the exercise is under 10% of what you normally do, you won't experience DOMS as a result of the activity. The muscles quickly adapt to so as to avoid effect". When this happens, the As a general http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/08/what-causes-muscle-soreness-after-exercising-note-its-notlacticacid/ About 85% Of People Only Breathe Out Of One Nostril At A Time Around 85% of humans only breathe out of one nostril at Even more interesting is that the pattern of switching from breathing out of one nostril to the other happens in a cyclical fashion, with about four hours or so between each switch typically; although, this can vary to person and vary based on your bodily position or nasal congestion. How your nose accomplishes this switch is via erectile tissue in your nose, which is tissue in a penis clitoris. Erectile tissue will swell up in one nostril, mostly blocking it, and at the same time erectile tissue for a time. from person very similar to the erectile or the other nostril will shrink, opening it up more interesting is that depending on which nostril you are predominately breathing out of at any given moment, it seems to greatly affect your body study in 1988 showed that significantly increases blood glucose levels, while breathing through your left nostril has the opposite effect. Another study in 1993 showed that when you are breathing through your right nostril you will use significantly more oxygen than when breathing through your left. Most interestingly of all, yet another study published in 1994, showed that when left in breathing. Even and brain. For instance, a through breathing your right nostril breathing the right hemisphere of your you are through your nostril, brain will be more active or dominant and vice-verse when you are breathing through your right nostril. thing to know as the right hemisphere of your brain is your “creative/imaginative" side, while the left hemisphere of your brain is your "logical" side. breathing through one nostril or the other can actually affect the way you think at a given moment. This can be a handy So forcing http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/03/about-85-of-people-only- breathe-out-of-one-nostril-at-a-time/ A Typical Human Gut Contains About 100 Trillion Bacterial Cells The human gut contains about 100 trillion bacterial1 cells, about 10 times as many cells as make up the human body. The is human basically gut until you are born. first year sterile For the of your life, the cultures of bacteria and other microbes in your gut begin settling down around the time fluctuate wildly and you start weaning. A recent study published in the journal, Nature, which included scientists from Germany, Brussells, Beijing, Denmark, Spain, France and the UK, set out to catalog all of the microbes in a typical human gut, which they did successfully, managing to decode al1 the microbial genes found there. Given that we are so incredibly dependent on these microbes for our bodies to function properly, this research could very quickly lead to significant advancements in various medical fields, including how we treat and recognize a variety of ailments. During the study, over 1000 prevalent species were discovered with each person having about 160 species present in their guts and the vast majority of them being unknown in terms of what they do or what effects they have on us. Of these 1,000 species, they spread digest found over 3.3 million species. These essential When distinct genes across those bacteria help us food, provide vitamins, and protect us from invading pathogens. some of these cultures are destroyed, it can lead to such problems as Crohn's disease, Ulcerative colitis, and even has been linked to obesity. hittp://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/03/a-typicalhuman-gut-contains-about-100 trillion-bacterial-cells/ The Tongue Doesn't Have Zones For Different Tastes The tongue doesn't have zones specializing in specific tastes, contrary to popular belief. It turns out this myth got its start when a certain Harvard Psychologist Edwin G. Boring mistranslated a German paper written in 1901 titled “Zur Psychophysik des Geschmackssinnes". The tongue paper, written by German Scientist D.P. Hanig, outlined Hanig's research on the four known basic tastes (note: there are actually 5 known today). He got together a group of subjects and tested the main tastes on each of them on various parts of their tongues until he figured he had a good map put various together on where they tasted tastes the most. In reality, any undamaged taste bud can more or less taste any of the five main flavors through various mechanisms, so any actual "taste map" really just depends mostly on the density and location of taste buds on a particular person's tongue which varies from person to This myth endured, even among scientists, until the 1970s and still endures today, even among some educators. However, in the 1970's, scientists decided they might actually want to think about testing the commonly held notion of “tongue maps" that go against the personal1 experience of pretty much everyone who has ever tasted anything. ever. They quickly found out that while different areas of the tongue certainly have different densities of taste buds which, combined with olfactory influence, affect taste, there was no specific "taste zones" and the traditional "taste person and also changes as a person ages. map" depicted in Hanig's paper didn't exist. http://www.todayifour t.com/index.php/2010/05/the-tongue-doesnt-have-zones-for-different-tastes/ What the "Sleep" In Your Eyes Is "Sleep" is a type of "rheum", which is the name for discharge from your nose, mouth or eyes during sleep. More specifically, eye rheum is known as "gound". Gound is made up of a mixture of dust, blood cells, skin cells, etc. mixed with mucus secreted by the conjunctiva, as well as an oily substance from the meibomian glands. The meibomian glands are a type of sebaceous gland that line the rim of the eyelids with about fifty on the top and twenty five on the bottom of each eye. substance called meibum that a variety of functions including:helps seal your eyes in an air tight fashion when they are closed; prevents tears from spilling onto your cheeks; and helps keep tears that coat your eyes from evaporating. the primary components in gound, mixed with mucin from the conjunctiva and various foreign particles in your eye. Normally, when you are awake, the gound is naturally washed away via tears and the blinking motion. However, as you sleep, you obviously don't blink so the meibomian secretions and other components of the gound tend to gather in the corners of your eyes, as well as along your eye lines and dries out, yellow-ish “eye boogers" or “eye crusties". They secrete an oily erforms It is this oily substance that is one of creating hard http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/02/what-the-sleep-in-your-eyes-is/ Why Your Nose Gets Runny When It is Cold On an average day, a typical person's nose wi11 produce about one quart of mucus/fluid (just under one liter). Most all of this snot generally gets passed back into your throat and swallowed, often without you even really being too conscious of it. When you're breathing cold air production though, significantly, causing some of that snot to come out the front of your nose, rather than back in your throat. What's going on here is the blood supply to your nose actually increases as a response to the cold air, via tiny blood vessels in your nose dilating to increase the blood flow. This helps keep your nose warm as you breathe, as well as begins to warm the cold air you're breathing before it enters your lungs. the rate of mucus goes up This increased blood flow doesn't just help warm the air though, it also has a side effect of providing a lot more blood than normal to the glands which produce the mucuS in your nose. causes them to start producing snot at a much higher rate than normal, which causes your nose to run when you're breathing the cold air. Once you're back in a warm air environment, the blood vessels in your nose will constrict and the glands that produce the mucus/liquid mix will go back to their normal rate of around four cups of snot per day. This, in turn, http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/01/why-your-nose-gets-runny-when-itis-cold/ Humans Have a Lot More Than Five Senses It turns out, there are at least nine senses and most researchers think there are more like twenty-one or so. Just for reference, the commonly held definition of a “sense" is “any system that consists of a group of sensory cel1 types that respond to a specific physical phenomenon and that corresponds to a particular group of regions within the brain where the signals are received and interpreted".The commonly held human senses are as follows: sight, taste, sound, smell, touch, pressure, itch, thermoception (ability to sense heat and cold), proprioception (ability to tell where your body parts relative to other body parts), tension sensors are, (ability to monitor muscle tension), equilibrioception (sense that allows you to keep your balance and sense body movement in terms of acceleration and directional changes), stretch receptors (senses dilation of blood vessels and is also often involved in headaches), chemoreceptors (sense that detects blood born hormones and drugs), thirst, hunger, magentoception (ability to detect magnetic fields), and time: this one is debated as no singular mechanism has been found that allows people to perceive time. However, experimental data has conclusively shown humans have a startling accurate sense of time. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/07/humans-have-a-lot-more-than-five-senses/ Designed by: Noreen Sequeira OTODAYIFOUNDOUT.COM Today I Found Out... 10 Fascinaling Facs About the Human BCODY OTodaylFoundOut.com Why Getting Kicked in the Balls Causes Pain in the Abdomen Testes originally form in the abdomen near the stomach and kidneys. attached in that region, when a guy gets kicked in the balls or otherwise has his nuts squished, the pain involved travels up from each testicle into the abdominal cavity, via the spermatic plexus, which is the primary nerve of each testicle, and then to the spine. The nerves and blood vessels remain even after the balls drop. So In addition to the pain in the stomach area, many men also experience This is thought to be caused by a huge rush of sympathetic nervous system discharge. the body's tolerance level for that rush determines whether severe nausea. So that person will be someone susceptible vomiting when kicked in the nuts. So bottom line, getting kicked in the balls = severe to actually pain in testicles + abdominal pain + quite a bit severe of nausea and possible vomiting. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index. php/2010/10/why-getting-kicked in-the-balls-causes pain-in-the-abdomen/ Why It is Nearly Impossible to Tickle Yourself It turns out, it's very hard to tickle yourself because your brain anticipates things going on around you in order to help speed up response times. technically, the cerebellum monitors body movements and can also distinguish between expected sensations generally More unexpected or while and ones, resulting in discarding diminishing sensations, unexpected anticipating touch sensations. When it is doing this, it is also actively discarding sensations that it deems unimportant, like when you are typing and it significantly dulls fingertips so that you don't really notice it unless you consciously think about it. This same type of thing happens when you try to tickle yourself. completely paying So expected to much more attention ones. your brain is actively the touch sensation in your In short, you can't tickle yourself because there is no element of Your brain is using the surprise. various internal sensory data it has available anticipate is going to happen to exactly what based on your movements and visual data. When the anticipated reaction and the actual reaction line up, your brain diminishes or even sometimes completely discards the sensation as a result of that On the other hand, when someone else is tickling you, there are unexpected sensations on the skin and these then can result in action. the tickling sensation being activated. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/08/why-itis-nearly-impossible-to-tickle-yourself/ What Those Nasty White Chunks That Sometimes Come From Your Throat Are smelling, that sometimes feel at the back of your throat when you swallow are called Tonsilloliths or Tonsil Stones. These Tonsilloliths are stinky Those foul small, white-ish, chunks you can little globs of mucus, dead cells, debris and bacteria that the tonsil crypts which that appear everyone's tonsils. When the trapped dead cells, mucus, and debris harden or calcify, they form white/yellow ball in the tonsil pockets. They usually appear as tiny little chunks in the shape of cauliflower and smell like they could wake up your dead grandma. Tonsil stones are fairly common in adults and children. However, they tend to occur most often in people who suffer from chronic inflammation in their tonsils or repeated bouts of tonsillitis. Studies have shown that people who have had their tonsils removed, under most circumstances, almost never experience tonsil form in are simply small pockets or divots in stones. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/09/what-those-nasty-white-chunks-that-come-from-your-throat-are/ What Causes Muscle Soreness After Exercising Since the early 20th century, this specific type of muscle soreness, called “delayed onset muscle soreness" (DOMS), was thought to be caused by lactic acid buildup in the muscles during strenuous workouts where your body's oxygen supply is depleted. Recent research has shown this is not the case at all and has even shown that lactic acid is actually used by your muscles for fuel when oxygen supplies are depleted. So if it's not causing this soreness, what is it? Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is now understood to be lactic аcid that is caused themselves. the by This happens when you do some activity that microfractures in muscle cells your muscles aren't used to doing or do it in a much more strenuous way than they are accustomed to.This is also why after you exercise some specific way a few times and allow your muscles to recover, that you won't typically get sore again from doing that activity at a similar intensity level, so long as you continue to do it on a somewhat regular bases. being able to handle new activities further damage in the future; this is known as the “repeated-bout microfractures typically won't develop unless you change your activity in some substanti al way. rule, as long as the change to the exercise is under 10% of what you normally do, you won't experience DOMS as a result of the activity. The muscles quickly adapt to so as to avoid effect". When this happens, the As a general http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/08/what-causes-muscle-soreness-after-exercising-note-its-notlacticacid/ About 85% Of People Only Breathe Out Of One Nostril At A Time Around 85% of humans only breathe out of one nostril at Even more interesting is that the pattern of switching from breathing out of one nostril to the other happens in a cyclical fashion, with about four hours or so between each switch typically; although, this can vary to person and vary based on your bodily position or nasal congestion. How your nose accomplishes this switch is via erectile tissue in your nose, which is tissue in a penis clitoris. Erectile tissue will swell up in one nostril, mostly blocking it, and at the same time erectile tissue for a time. from person very similar to the erectile or the other nostril will shrink, opening it up more interesting is that depending on which nostril you are predominately breathing out of at any given moment, it seems to greatly affect your body study in 1988 showed that significantly increases blood glucose levels, while breathing through your left nostril has the opposite effect. Another study in 1993 showed that when you are breathing through your right nostril you will use significantly more oxygen than when breathing through your left. Most interestingly of all, yet another study published in 1994, showed that when left in breathing. Even and brain. For instance, a through breathing your right nostril breathing the right hemisphere of your you are through your nostril, brain will be more active or dominant and vice-verse when you are breathing through your right nostril. thing to know as the right hemisphere of your brain is your “creative/imaginative" side, while the left hemisphere of your brain is your "logical" side. breathing through one nostril or the other can actually affect the way you think at a given moment. This can be a handy So forcing http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/03/about-85-of-people-only- breathe-out-of-one-nostril-at-a-time/ A Typical Human Gut Contains About 100 Trillion Bacterial Cells The human gut contains about 100 trillion bacterial1 cells, about 10 times as many cells as make up the human body. The is human basically gut until you are born. first year sterile For the of your life, the cultures of bacteria and other microbes in your gut begin settling down around the time fluctuate wildly and you start weaning. A recent study published in the journal, Nature, which included scientists from Germany, Brussells, Beijing, Denmark, Spain, France and the UK, set out to catalog all of the microbes in a typical human gut, which they did successfully, managing to decode al1 the microbial genes found there. Given that we are so incredibly dependent on these microbes for our bodies to function properly, this research could very quickly lead to significant advancements in various medical fields, including how we treat and recognize a variety of ailments. During the study, over 1000 prevalent species were discovered with each person having about 160 species present in their guts and the vast majority of them being unknown in terms of what they do or what effects they have on us. Of these 1,000 species, they spread digest found over 3.3 million species. These essential When distinct genes across those bacteria help us food, provide vitamins, and protect us from invading pathogens. some of these cultures are destroyed, it can lead to such problems as Crohn's disease, Ulcerative colitis, and even has been linked to obesity. hittp://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/03/a-typicalhuman-gut-contains-about-100 trillion-bacterial-cells/ The Tongue Doesn't Have Zones For Different Tastes The tongue doesn't have zones specializing in specific tastes, contrary to popular belief. It turns out this myth got its start when a certain Harvard Psychologist Edwin G. Boring mistranslated a German paper written in 1901 titled “Zur Psychophysik des Geschmackssinnes". The tongue paper, written by German Scientist D.P. Hanig, outlined Hanig's research on the four known basic tastes (note: there are actually 5 known today). He got together a group of subjects and tested the main tastes on each of them on various parts of their tongues until he figured he had a good map put various together on where they tasted tastes the most. In reality, any undamaged taste bud can more or less taste any of the five main flavors through various mechanisms, so any actual "taste map" really just depends mostly on the density and location of taste buds on a particular person's tongue which varies from person to This myth endured, even among scientists, until the 1970s and still endures today, even among some educators. However, in the 1970's, scientists decided they might actually want to think about testing the commonly held notion of “tongue maps" that go against the personal1 experience of pretty much everyone who has ever tasted anything. ever. They quickly found out that while different areas of the tongue certainly have different densities of taste buds which, combined with olfactory influence, affect taste, there was no specific "taste zones" and the traditional "taste person and also changes as a person ages. map" depicted in Hanig's paper didn't exist. http://www.todayifour t.com/index.php/2010/05/the-tongue-doesnt-have-zones-for-different-tastes/ What the "Sleep" In Your Eyes Is "Sleep" is a type of "rheum", which is the name for discharge from your nose, mouth or eyes during sleep. More specifically, eye rheum is known as "gound". Gound is made up of a mixture of dust, blood cells, skin cells, etc. mixed with mucus secreted by the conjunctiva, as well as an oily substance from the meibomian glands. The meibomian glands are a type of sebaceous gland that line the rim of the eyelids with about fifty on the top and twenty five on the bottom of each eye. substance called meibum that a variety of functions including:helps seal your eyes in an air tight fashion when they are closed; prevents tears from spilling onto your cheeks; and helps keep tears that coat your eyes from evaporating. the primary components in gound, mixed with mucin from the conjunctiva and various foreign particles in your eye. Normally, when you are awake, the gound is naturally washed away via tears and the blinking motion. However, as you sleep, you obviously don't blink so the meibomian secretions and other components of the gound tend to gather in the corners of your eyes, as well as along your eye lines and dries out, yellow-ish “eye boogers" or “eye crusties". They secrete an oily erforms It is this oily substance that is one of creating hard http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/02/what-the-sleep-in-your-eyes-is/ Why Your Nose Gets Runny When It is Cold On an average day, a typical person's nose wi11 produce about one quart of mucus/fluid (just under one liter). Most all of this snot generally gets passed back into your throat and swallowed, often without you even really being too conscious of it. When you're breathing cold air production though, significantly, causing some of that snot to come out the front of your nose, rather than back in your throat. What's going on here is the blood supply to your nose actually increases as a response to the cold air, via tiny blood vessels in your nose dilating to increase the blood flow. This helps keep your nose warm as you breathe, as well as begins to warm the cold air you're breathing before it enters your lungs. the rate of mucus goes up This increased blood flow doesn't just help warm the air though, it also has a side effect of providing a lot more blood than normal to the glands which produce the mucuS in your nose. causes them to start producing snot at a much higher rate than normal, which causes your nose to run when you're breathing the cold air. Once you're back in a warm air environment, the blood vessels in your nose will constrict and the glands that produce the mucus/liquid mix will go back to their normal rate of around four cups of snot per day. This, in turn, http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/01/why-your-nose-gets-runny-when-itis-cold/ Humans Have a Lot More Than Five Senses It turns out, there are at least nine senses and most researchers think there are more like twenty-one or so. Just for reference, the commonly held definition of a “sense" is “any system that consists of a group of sensory cel1 types that respond to a specific physical phenomenon and that corresponds to a particular group of regions within the brain where the signals are received and interpreted".The commonly held human senses are as follows: sight, taste, sound, smell, touch, pressure, itch, thermoception (ability to sense heat and cold), proprioception (ability to tell where your body parts relative to other body parts), tension sensors are, (ability to monitor muscle tension), equilibrioception (sense that allows you to keep your balance and sense body movement in terms of acceleration and directional changes), stretch receptors (senses dilation of blood vessels and is also often involved in headaches), chemoreceptors (sense that detects blood born hormones and drugs), thirst, hunger, magentoception (ability to detect magnetic fields), and time: this one is debated as no singular mechanism has been found that allows people to perceive time. However, experimental data has conclusively shown humans have a startling accurate sense of time. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/07/humans-have-a-lot-more-than-five-senses/ Designed by: Noreen Sequeira OTODAYIFOUNDOUT.COM Today I Found Out... 10 Fascinaling Facs About the Human BCODY OTodaylFoundOut.com Why Getting Kicked in the Balls Causes Pain in the Abdomen Testes originally form in the abdomen near the stomach and kidneys. attached in that region, when a guy gets kicked in the balls or otherwise has his nuts squished, the pain involved travels up from each testicle into the abdominal cavity, via the spermatic plexus, which is the primary nerve of each testicle, and then to the spine. The nerves and blood vessels remain even after the balls drop. So In addition to the pain in the stomach area, many men also experience This is thought to be caused by a huge rush of sympathetic nervous system discharge. the body's tolerance level for that rush determines whether severe nausea. So that person will be someone susceptible vomiting when kicked in the nuts. So bottom line, getting kicked in the balls = severe to actually pain in testicles + abdominal pain + quite a bit severe of nausea and possible vomiting. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index. php/2010/10/why-getting-kicked in-the-balls-causes pain-in-the-abdomen/ Why It is Nearly Impossible to Tickle Yourself It turns out, it's very hard to tickle yourself because your brain anticipates things going on around you in order to help speed up response times. technically, the cerebellum monitors body movements and can also distinguish between expected sensations generally More unexpected or while and ones, resulting in discarding diminishing sensations, unexpected anticipating touch sensations. When it is doing this, it is also actively discarding sensations that it deems unimportant, like when you are typing and it significantly dulls fingertips so that you don't really notice it unless you consciously think about it. This same type of thing happens when you try to tickle yourself. completely paying So expected to much more attention ones. your brain is actively the touch sensation in your In short, you can't tickle yourself because there is no element of Your brain is using the surprise. various internal sensory data it has available anticipate is going to happen to exactly what based on your movements and visual data. When the anticipated reaction and the actual reaction line up, your brain diminishes or even sometimes completely discards the sensation as a result of that On the other hand, when someone else is tickling you, there are unexpected sensations on the skin and these then can result in action. the tickling sensation being activated. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/08/why-itis-nearly-impossible-to-tickle-yourself/ What Those Nasty White Chunks That Sometimes Come From Your Throat Are smelling, that sometimes feel at the back of your throat when you swallow are called Tonsilloliths or Tonsil Stones. These Tonsilloliths are stinky Those foul small, white-ish, chunks you can little globs of mucus, dead cells, debris and bacteria that the tonsil crypts which that appear everyone's tonsils. When the trapped dead cells, mucus, and debris harden or calcify, they form white/yellow ball in the tonsil pockets. They usually appear as tiny little chunks in the shape of cauliflower and smell like they could wake up your dead grandma. Tonsil stones are fairly common in adults and children. However, they tend to occur most often in people who suffer from chronic inflammation in their tonsils or repeated bouts of tonsillitis. Studies have shown that people who have had their tonsils removed, under most circumstances, almost never experience tonsil form in are simply small pockets or divots in stones. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/09/what-those-nasty-white-chunks-that-come-from-your-throat-are/ What Causes Muscle Soreness After Exercising Since the early 20th century, this specific type of muscle soreness, called “delayed onset muscle soreness" (DOMS), was thought to be caused by lactic acid buildup in the muscles during strenuous workouts where your body's oxygen supply is depleted. Recent research has shown this is not the case at all and has even shown that lactic acid is actually used by your muscles for fuel when oxygen supplies are depleted. So if it's not causing this soreness, what is it? Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is now understood to be lactic аcid that is caused themselves. the by This happens when you do some activity that microfractures in muscle cells your muscles aren't used to doing or do it in a much more strenuous way than they are accustomed to.This is also why after you exercise some specific way a few times and allow your muscles to recover, that you won't typically get sore again from doing that activity at a similar intensity level, so long as you continue to do it on a somewhat regular bases. being able to handle new activities further damage in the future; this is known as the “repeated-bout microfractures typically won't develop unless you change your activity in some substanti al way. rule, as long as the change to the exercise is under 10% of what you normally do, you won't experience DOMS as a result of the activity. The muscles quickly adapt to so as to avoid effect". When this happens, the As a general http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/08/what-causes-muscle-soreness-after-exercising-note-its-notlacticacid/ About 85% Of People Only Breathe Out Of One Nostril At A Time Around 85% of humans only breathe out of one nostril at Even more interesting is that the pattern of switching from breathing out of one nostril to the other happens in a cyclical fashion, with about four hours or so between each switch typically; although, this can vary to person and vary based on your bodily position or nasal congestion. How your nose accomplishes this switch is via erectile tissue in your nose, which is tissue in a penis clitoris. Erectile tissue will swell up in one nostril, mostly blocking it, and at the same time erectile tissue for a time. from person very similar to the erectile or the other nostril will shrink, opening it up more interesting is that depending on which nostril you are predominately breathing out of at any given moment, it seems to greatly affect your body study in 1988 showed that significantly increases blood glucose levels, while breathing through your left nostril has the opposite effect. Another study in 1993 showed that when you are breathing through your right nostril you will use significantly more oxygen than when breathing through your left. Most interestingly of all, yet another study published in 1994, showed that when left in breathing. Even and brain. For instance, a through breathing your right nostril breathing the right hemisphere of your you are through your nostril, brain will be more active or dominant and vice-verse when you are breathing through your right nostril. thing to know as the right hemisphere of your brain is your “creative/imaginative" side, while the left hemisphere of your brain is your "logical" side. breathing through one nostril or the other can actually affect the way you think at a given moment. This can be a handy So forcing http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/03/about-85-of-people-only- breathe-out-of-one-nostril-at-a-time/ A Typical Human Gut Contains About 100 Trillion Bacterial Cells The human gut contains about 100 trillion bacterial1 cells, about 10 times as many cells as make up the human body. The is human basically gut until you are born. first year sterile For the of your life, the cultures of bacteria and other microbes in your gut begin settling down around the time fluctuate wildly and you start weaning. A recent study published in the journal, Nature, which included scientists from Germany, Brussells, Beijing, Denmark, Spain, France and the UK, set out to catalog all of the microbes in a typical human gut, which they did successfully, managing to decode al1 the microbial genes found there. Given that we are so incredibly dependent on these microbes for our bodies to function properly, this research could very quickly lead to significant advancements in various medical fields, including how we treat and recognize a variety of ailments. During the study, over 1000 prevalent species were discovered with each person having about 160 species present in their guts and the vast majority of them being unknown in terms of what they do or what effects they have on us. Of these 1,000 species, they spread digest found over 3.3 million species. These essential When distinct genes across those bacteria help us food, provide vitamins, and protect us from invading pathogens. some of these cultures are destroyed, it can lead to such problems as Crohn's disease, Ulcerative colitis, and even has been linked to obesity. hittp://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/03/a-typicalhuman-gut-contains-about-100 trillion-bacterial-cells/ The Tongue Doesn't Have Zones For Different Tastes The tongue doesn't have zones specializing in specific tastes, contrary to popular belief. It turns out this myth got its start when a certain Harvard Psychologist Edwin G. Boring mistranslated a German paper written in 1901 titled “Zur Psychophysik des Geschmackssinnes". The tongue paper, written by German Scientist D.P. Hanig, outlined Hanig's research on the four known basic tastes (note: there are actually 5 known today). He got together a group of subjects and tested the main tastes on each of them on various parts of their tongues until he figured he had a good map put various together on where they tasted tastes the most. In reality, any undamaged taste bud can more or less taste any of the five main flavors through various mechanisms, so any actual "taste map" really just depends mostly on the density and location of taste buds on a particular person's tongue which varies from person to This myth endured, even among scientists, until the 1970s and still endures today, even among some educators. However, in the 1970's, scientists decided they might actually want to think about testing the commonly held notion of “tongue maps" that go against the personal1 experience of pretty much everyone who has ever tasted anything. ever. They quickly found out that while different areas of the tongue certainly have different densities of taste buds which, combined with olfactory influence, affect taste, there was no specific "taste zones" and the traditional "taste person and also changes as a person ages. map" depicted in Hanig's paper didn't exist. http://www.todayifour t.com/index.php/2010/05/the-tongue-doesnt-have-zones-for-different-tastes/ What the "Sleep" In Your Eyes Is "Sleep" is a type of "rheum", which is the name for discharge from your nose, mouth or eyes during sleep. More specifically, eye rheum is known as "gound". Gound is made up of a mixture of dust, blood cells, skin cells, etc. mixed with mucus secreted by the conjunctiva, as well as an oily substance from the meibomian glands. The meibomian glands are a type of sebaceous gland that line the rim of the eyelids with about fifty on the top and twenty five on the bottom of each eye. substance called meibum that a variety of functions including:helps seal your eyes in an air tight fashion when they are closed; prevents tears from spilling onto your cheeks; and helps keep tears that coat your eyes from evaporating. the primary components in gound, mixed with mucin from the conjunctiva and various foreign particles in your eye. Normally, when you are awake, the gound is naturally washed away via tears and the blinking motion. However, as you sleep, you obviously don't blink so the meibomian secretions and other components of the gound tend to gather in the corners of your eyes, as well as along your eye lines and dries out, yellow-ish “eye boogers" or “eye crusties". They secrete an oily erforms It is this oily substance that is one of creating hard http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/02/what-the-sleep-in-your-eyes-is/ Why Your Nose Gets Runny When It is Cold On an average day, a typical person's nose wi11 produce about one quart of mucus/fluid (just under one liter). Most all of this snot generally gets passed back into your throat and swallowed, often without you even really being too conscious of it. When you're breathing cold air production though, significantly, causing some of that snot to come out the front of your nose, rather than back in your throat. What's going on here is the blood supply to your nose actually increases as a response to the cold air, via tiny blood vessels in your nose dilating to increase the blood flow. This helps keep your nose warm as you breathe, as well as begins to warm the cold air you're breathing before it enters your lungs. the rate of mucus goes up This increased blood flow doesn't just help warm the air though, it also has a side effect of providing a lot more blood than normal to the glands which produce the mucuS in your nose. causes them to start producing snot at a much higher rate than normal, which causes your nose to run when you're breathing the cold air. Once you're back in a warm air environment, the blood vessels in your nose will constrict and the glands that produce the mucus/liquid mix will go back to their normal rate of around four cups of snot per day. This, in turn, http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/01/why-your-nose-gets-runny-when-itis-cold/ Humans Have a Lot More Than Five Senses It turns out, there are at least nine senses and most researchers think there are more like twenty-one or so. Just for reference, the commonly held definition of a “sense" is “any system that consists of a group of sensory cel1 types that respond to a specific physical phenomenon and that corresponds to a particular group of regions within the brain where the signals are received and interpreted".The commonly held human senses are as follows: sight, taste, sound, smell, touch, pressure, itch, thermoception (ability to sense heat and cold), proprioception (ability to tell where your body parts relative to other body parts), tension sensors are, (ability to monitor muscle tension), equilibrioception (sense that allows you to keep your balance and sense body movement in terms of acceleration and directional changes), stretch receptors (senses dilation of blood vessels and is also often involved in headaches), chemoreceptors (sense that detects blood born hormones and drugs), thirst, hunger, magentoception (ability to detect magnetic fields), and time: this one is debated as no singular mechanism has been found that allows people to perceive time. However, experimental data has conclusively shown humans have a startling accurate sense of time. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/07/humans-have-a-lot-more-than-five-senses/ Designed by: Noreen Sequeira OTODAYIFOUNDOUT.COM Today I Found Out... 10 Fascinaling Facs About the Human BCODY OTodaylFoundOut.com Why Getting Kicked in the Balls Causes Pain in the Abdomen Testes originally form in the abdomen near the stomach and kidneys. attached in that region, when a guy gets kicked in the balls or otherwise has his nuts squished, the pain involved travels up from each testicle into the abdominal cavity, via the spermatic plexus, which is the primary nerve of each testicle, and then to the spine. The nerves and blood vessels remain even after the balls drop. So In addition to the pain in the stomach area, many men also experience This is thought to be caused by a huge rush of sympathetic nervous system discharge. the body's tolerance level for that rush determines whether severe nausea. So that person will be someone susceptible vomiting when kicked in the nuts. So bottom line, getting kicked in the balls = severe to actually pain in testicles + abdominal pain + quite a bit severe of nausea and possible vomiting. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index. php/2010/10/why-getting-kicked in-the-balls-causes pain-in-the-abdomen/ Why It is Nearly Impossible to Tickle Yourself It turns out, it's very hard to tickle yourself because your brain anticipates things going on around you in order to help speed up response times. technically, the cerebellum monitors body movements and can also distinguish between expected sensations generally More unexpected or while and ones, resulting in discarding diminishing sensations, unexpected anticipating touch sensations. When it is doing this, it is also actively discarding sensations that it deems unimportant, like when you are typing and it significantly dulls fingertips so that you don't really notice it unless you consciously think about it. This same type of thing happens when you try to tickle yourself. completely paying So expected to much more attention ones. your brain is actively the touch sensation in your In short, you can't tickle yourself because there is no element of Your brain is using the surprise. various internal sensory data it has available anticipate is going to happen to exactly what based on your movements and visual data. When the anticipated reaction and the actual reaction line up, your brain diminishes or even sometimes completely discards the sensation as a result of that On the other hand, when someone else is tickling you, there are unexpected sensations on the skin and these then can result in action. the tickling sensation being activated. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/08/why-itis-nearly-impossible-to-tickle-yourself/ What Those Nasty White Chunks That Sometimes Come From Your Throat Are smelling, that sometimes feel at the back of your throat when you swallow are called Tonsilloliths or Tonsil Stones. These Tonsilloliths are stinky Those foul small, white-ish, chunks you can little globs of mucus, dead cells, debris and bacteria that the tonsil crypts which that appear everyone's tonsils. When the trapped dead cells, mucus, and debris harden or calcify, they form white/yellow ball in the tonsil pockets. They usually appear as tiny little chunks in the shape of cauliflower and smell like they could wake up your dead grandma. Tonsil stones are fairly common in adults and children. However, they tend to occur most often in people who suffer from chronic inflammation in their tonsils or repeated bouts of tonsillitis. Studies have shown that people who have had their tonsils removed, under most circumstances, almost never experience tonsil form in are simply small pockets or divots in stones. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/09/what-those-nasty-white-chunks-that-come-from-your-throat-are/ What Causes Muscle Soreness After Exercising Since the early 20th century, this specific type of muscle soreness, called “delayed onset muscle soreness" (DOMS), was thought to be caused by lactic acid buildup in the muscles during strenuous workouts where your body's oxygen supply is depleted. Recent research has shown this is not the case at all and has even shown that lactic acid is actually used by your muscles for fuel when oxygen supplies are depleted. So if it's not causing this soreness, what is it? Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is now understood to be lactic аcid that is caused themselves. the by This happens when you do some activity that microfractures in muscle cells your muscles aren't used to doing or do it in a much more strenuous way than they are accustomed to.This is also why after you exercise some specific way a few times and allow your muscles to recover, that you won't typically get sore again from doing that activity at a similar intensity level, so long as you continue to do it on a somewhat regular bases. being able to handle new activities further damage in the future; this is known as the “repeated-bout microfractures typically won't develop unless you change your activity in some substanti al way. rule, as long as the change to the exercise is under 10% of what you normally do, you won't experience DOMS as a result of the activity. The muscles quickly adapt to so as to avoid effect". When this happens, the As a general http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/08/what-causes-muscle-soreness-after-exercising-note-its-notlacticacid/ About 85% Of People Only Breathe Out Of One Nostril At A Time Around 85% of humans only breathe out of one nostril at Even more interesting is that the pattern of switching from breathing out of one nostril to the other happens in a cyclical fashion, with about four hours or so between each switch typically; although, this can vary to person and vary based on your bodily position or nasal congestion. How your nose accomplishes this switch is via erectile tissue in your nose, which is tissue in a penis clitoris. Erectile tissue will swell up in one nostril, mostly blocking it, and at the same time erectile tissue for a time. from person very similar to the erectile or the other nostril will shrink, opening it up more interesting is that depending on which nostril you are predominately breathing out of at any given moment, it seems to greatly affect your body study in 1988 showed that significantly increases blood glucose levels, while breathing through your left nostril has the opposite effect. Another study in 1993 showed that when you are breathing through your right nostril you will use significantly more oxygen than when breathing through your left. Most interestingly of all, yet another study published in 1994, showed that when left in breathing. Even and brain. For instance, a through breathing your right nostril breathing the right hemisphere of your you are through your nostril, brain will be more active or dominant and vice-verse when you are breathing through your right nostril. thing to know as the right hemisphere of your brain is your “creative/imaginative" side, while the left hemisphere of your brain is your "logical" side. breathing through one nostril or the other can actually affect the way you think at a given moment. This can be a handy So forcing http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/03/about-85-of-people-only- breathe-out-of-one-nostril-at-a-time/ A Typical Human Gut Contains About 100 Trillion Bacterial Cells The human gut contains about 100 trillion bacterial1 cells, about 10 times as many cells as make up the human body. The is human basically gut until you are born. first year sterile For the of your life, the cultures of bacteria and other microbes in your gut begin settling down around the time fluctuate wildly and you start weaning. A recent study published in the journal, Nature, which included scientists from Germany, Brussells, Beijing, Denmark, Spain, France and the UK, set out to catalog all of the microbes in a typical human gut, which they did successfully, managing to decode al1 the microbial genes found there. Given that we are so incredibly dependent on these microbes for our bodies to function properly, this research could very quickly lead to significant advancements in various medical fields, including how we treat and recognize a variety of ailments. During the study, over 1000 prevalent species were discovered with each person having about 160 species present in their guts and the vast majority of them being unknown in terms of what they do or what effects they have on us. Of these 1,000 species, they spread digest found over 3.3 million species. These essential When distinct genes across those bacteria help us food, provide vitamins, and protect us from invading pathogens. some of these cultures are destroyed, it can lead to such problems as Crohn's disease, Ulcerative colitis, and even has been linked to obesity. hittp://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/03/a-typicalhuman-gut-contains-about-100 trillion-bacterial-cells/ The Tongue Doesn't Have Zones For Different Tastes The tongue doesn't have zones specializing in specific tastes, contrary to popular belief. It turns out this myth got its start when a certain Harvard Psychologist Edwin G. Boring mistranslated a German paper written in 1901 titled “Zur Psychophysik des Geschmackssinnes". The tongue paper, written by German Scientist D.P. Hanig, outlined Hanig's research on the four known basic tastes (note: there are actually 5 known today). He got together a group of subjects and tested the main tastes on each of them on various parts of their tongues until he figured he had a good map put various together on where they tasted tastes the most. In reality, any undamaged taste bud can more or less taste any of the five main flavors through various mechanisms, so any actual "taste map" really just depends mostly on the density and location of taste buds on a particular person's tongue which varies from person to This myth endured, even among scientists, until the 1970s and still endures today, even among some educators. However, in the 1970's, scientists decided they might actually want to think about testing the commonly held notion of “tongue maps" that go against the personal1 experience of pretty much everyone who has ever tasted anything. ever. They quickly found out that while different areas of the tongue certainly have different densities of taste buds which, combined with olfactory influence, affect taste, there was no specific "taste zones" and the traditional "taste person and also changes as a person ages. map" depicted in Hanig's paper didn't exist. http://www.todayifour t.com/index.php/2010/05/the-tongue-doesnt-have-zones-for-different-tastes/ What the "Sleep" In Your Eyes Is "Sleep" is a type of "rheum", which is the name for discharge from your nose, mouth or eyes during sleep. More specifically, eye rheum is known as "gound". Gound is made up of a mixture of dust, blood cells, skin cells, etc. mixed with mucus secreted by the conjunctiva, as well as an oily substance from the meibomian glands. The meibomian glands are a type of sebaceous gland that line the rim of the eyelids with about fifty on the top and twenty five on the bottom of each eye. substance called meibum that a variety of functions including:helps seal your eyes in an air tight fashion when they are closed; prevents tears from spilling onto your cheeks; and helps keep tears that coat your eyes from evaporating. the primary components in gound, mixed with mucin from the conjunctiva and various foreign particles in your eye. Normally, when you are awake, the gound is naturally washed away via tears and the blinking motion. However, as you sleep, you obviously don't blink so the meibomian secretions and other components of the gound tend to gather in the corners of your eyes, as well as along your eye lines and dries out, yellow-ish “eye boogers" or “eye crusties". They secrete an oily erforms It is this oily substance that is one of creating hard http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/02/what-the-sleep-in-your-eyes-is/ Why Your Nose Gets Runny When It is Cold On an average day, a typical person's nose wi11 produce about one quart of mucus/fluid (just under one liter). Most all of this snot generally gets passed back into your throat and swallowed, often without you even really being too conscious of it. When you're breathing cold air production though, significantly, causing some of that snot to come out the front of your nose, rather than back in your throat. What's going on here is the blood supply to your nose actually increases as a response to the cold air, via tiny blood vessels in your nose dilating to increase the blood flow. This helps keep your nose warm as you breathe, as well as begins to warm the cold air you're breathing before it enters your lungs. the rate of mucus goes up This increased blood flow doesn't just help warm the air though, it also has a side effect of providing a lot more blood than normal to the glands which produce the mucuS in your nose. causes them to start producing snot at a much higher rate than normal, which causes your nose to run when you're breathing the cold air. Once you're back in a warm air environment, the blood vessels in your nose will constrict and the glands that produce the mucus/liquid mix will go back to their normal rate of around four cups of snot per day. This, in turn, http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/01/why-your-nose-gets-runny-when-itis-cold/ Humans Have a Lot More Than Five Senses It turns out, there are at least nine senses and most researchers think there are more like twenty-one or so. Just for reference, the commonly held definition of a “sense" is “any system that consists of a group of sensory cel1 types that respond to a specific physical phenomenon and that corresponds to a particular group of regions within the brain where the signals are received and interpreted".The commonly held human senses are as follows: sight, taste, sound, smell, touch, pressure, itch, thermoception (ability to sense heat and cold), proprioception (ability to tell where your body parts relative to other body parts), tension sensors are, (ability to monitor muscle tension), equilibrioception (sense that allows you to keep your balance and sense body movement in terms of acceleration and directional changes), stretch receptors (senses dilation of blood vessels and is also often involved in headaches), chemoreceptors (sense that detects blood born hormones and drugs), thirst, hunger, magentoception (ability to detect magnetic fields), and time: this one is debated as no singular mechanism has been found that allows people to perceive time. However, experimental data has conclusively shown humans have a startling accurate sense of time. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/07/humans-have-a-lot-more-than-five-senses/ Designed by: Noreen Sequeira OTODAYIFOUNDOUT.COM

10 Facts About The Human Body

shared by kcatoto on Dec 28
40,481 views
8 shares
5 comments
Today I found out... 10 Fascinating facts about the human body

Designer

Noreen

Source

Unknown. Add a source

Category

Health
Did you work on this visual? Claim credit!

Get a Quote

Embed Code

For hosted site:

Click the code to copy

For wordpress.com:

Click the code to copy
Customize size