It’s your own body, you should know everything that there is to know about it! Right? Well, that’s what WebMD is for no? To tell you everything that you don’t know about your body? It seems like we only check that when something is wrong though. And even then it’s only to confirm our already very certain suspicions that we have cancer and are going to die tomorrow.
But really, there are a lot of things that not even scientists know about our bodies, so how could the average person like you or me have any hope? That’s a good question, and although it seems like we should just leave things up to the professionals, it can be interesting and enlightening to actually learn a little something about our own biology.
Of course, you may have noticed from the title of this list that today’s biology lesson isn’t going to be very run-of-the-mill. It’s going to be exactly the things that you would never have wanted to learn about your body. Some of you may think that this is too much information. Others of you will love it. Either way, these are 25 things you never wanted to know about your body!
Featured Image: pixabay
Gastrointestinal fistula
This is a hole that occurs in your stomach or intestines which allows the contents to leak out.
Translation: poop inside your body
Blood
Almost every liquid in your body is made out of blood to some extent. Your tears, milk, sweat…it’s all blood.
Melanoma
They can be small and faint. In fact, they often look like freckles to the untrained eye, but melanomas can be the most lethal of all the cancers. Get yourself checked.
Note: this is especially relevant for Australians
Stomach acid
If it weren’t for cells that were constantly busy rebuilding your stomach’s wall, you would digest yourself.
Demodex folliculorum
These mites live in your eyelashes and eat your dead skin cells.
Commotio cordis
This happens when your chest gets hit in just the right area at just the right moment, and causes you to go into cardiac arrest (it disrupts your heart rythm). So yes, you can die by getting hit in the chest.
Note: this usually occurs in young healthy males who play sports.
Digestive tracts
All of us are walking around with poop in them, almost all of the time.
Chronic alcoholism
Chronic alcoholics can develop oesophageal varices. These are basically varicose veins in your throat. If they pop you can bleed out through your mouth in just a few minutes.
Human microbiota
This refers to the aggregate of microorganisms that live on and in you. Although it was long thought that microbes in your body outnumber human cells by 10 to 1, recent research has shown that it is actually closer than that. Also, defecation may tip the scale in favor of human cells.
Translation: pooping makes you more human
Telemorase
This enzyme essentially makes your cells immortal but it is for the most part turned off after birth. Cancer cells actually re-activate it to become immortal.
Prions
You may or may not have a protein in your brain that is bent the wrong way. If you do, one day it will convince the other proteins to bend that way, and you will die (after going crazy).
Danger triangle of the face
Due to the special nature of the blood supply to the human nose and surrounding area, it is possible for retrograde infections from the nasal area to spread to the brain.
Translation: popping a zit on your nose can kill you, at least theoretically
Mucus
On average, you produce about 2 quarts every day, and swallow it.
Organisms
There are more bacteria and other organisms living on and in your body than there are humans on Earth.
Obstructive Bowel Cancer
One of the possible symptoms is vomiting feces
Coffin birth
This happens when the gases built up inside a dead pregnant mother push the fetus out (it is also dead).
Cancer cells
Every hour of every day your body is producing cancerous cells. They don’t lead to cancer, however, because your immune system destroys them.
Eyes
Your eye is not recognized by your body as belonging to your body. In other words, if there weren’t a barrier protecting the eye from the immune system, your white blood cells would attack it. In scientific terms, your eye has immune privilege.
The Lazarus Reflex
This is a reflex in brain dead patients that causes them to lift their arms and fold them on their chest like Egyptian mummies.
Aneurysm
It can kill you completely unexpectedly and within seconds. Even if you are young and healthy.
Internal decapitation
Also known as orthopedic decapitation, this is when your skull separates from your spine (but everything else remains intact). This is immediately fatal in about 70% of cases.
Smell
The only way to smell something is for small particles of that object to attach themselves to the inside of your nose. So yes, your worst fear is confirmed.
Meconium
This is what makes up a baby’s first few poops and it is the result of ingesting hair, skin, and other things while in the uterus.
Kidney transplants
They don’t actually take the bad one out, so you end up with three kidneys.
Dermoid Cysts
Sometimes they contain teeth, eyes, and other body parts.