Monday, September 7, 2009

Human body - Some interesting facts




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* There are about one trillion bacteria on each of your feet.

* Side by side, 2000 cells from the human body could cover about one square inch.

* Women blink twice as much as men.

* The average person’s skin weighs twice as much as their brain.

* When you are looking at someone you love, your pupils dilate, they do the same when you are looking at someone you hate.

* It takes twice as long to lose new muscle if you stop working out than it did to gain it.

* You’re ears secrete more earwax when you are afraid than when you aren’t.

* Your body uses 300 muscles to balance itself when you are standing still.

* If saliva cannot dissolve something, you cannot taste it.

* The average woman is 5 inches shorter than the average man.

* A full bladder is roughly the size of a soft ball.

* Approximately 75% of human feces is made of water.

* It takes the food seven seconds to get from your mouth to your stomach.

* One human hair can support 3kg.

* Human thighbones are stronger than concrete.

* The attachment of human muscles to skin is what causes dimples.

* Your thumb is the same length of your nose.

* A woman’s heart beats faster than a man’s.

* If the average male never shaved, his beard would be 13 feet long when he died.

* Men without hair on their chests are more likely to get cirrhosis of the liver than men with hair.

* Men loose about 40 hairs a day. Women loose about 70 hairs a day.

* The length from your wrist to your elbow is the same as the length of your foot.

* Your heart beats 101,000 times a day. During your lifetime it will beat about 3 billion times and pump about 400 million litres (800 million pints) of blood.

* Your mouth produces 1 litre (1.8 pints) of saliva a day.

* On average, people can hold their breath for one minute. The world record is seven-and-a-half minutes.

* The human head contains 22 bones. More on the head and brains

* On average, you breathe 23,000 times a day.

* On average, you speak almost 5,000 words a day - although almost 80% of speaking is self-talk (talking to yourself).

* Einstein’s brain was of average size (1375 grams - 49oz).

* Over the last 150 years the average height of people in industrialised nations increased by 10 cm (4 in).

* In the 19th century, American men were the tallest in the world, averaging 1,71m (5′6″). Today, the average height for American men is 1,75m (5′7″), compared to 1,77m (5′8″) for Swedes, and 1,78m (5′8.5″) for the Dutch.

* If the amount of water in your body is reduced by just 1%, you’ll feel thirsty.

* A person can live without food for about a month, but only about a week without water.

* You’ll drink about 75,000 litres (20,000 gallons) of water in your lifetime.

* After a certain period of growth, hair becomes dormant. That means that it is attached to the hair follicle until replaced by new hair.

* Hair on the head grows for between two and six years before being replaced. In the case of baldness, the dormant hair was not replaced with new hair

Interesting facts about Skin



* It’s your body’s largest organ, despite what the readers of Maxim think.

* An average adult’s skin spans 21 square feet, weighs nine pounds, and contains more than 11 miles of blood vessels.

* The skin releases as much as three gallons of sweat a day in hot weather. The areas that don’t sweat are the nail bed, the margins of the lips, and the eardrums.

* Body odor comes from a second kind of sweat—a fatty secretion produced by the apocrine sweat glands, found mostly around the armpits, genitals, and anus.

* The odor is caused by bacteria on the skin eating and digesting those fatty compounds.

* Breasts are a modified form of the apocrine sweat gland.

* Fetuses don’t develop fingerprints until three months’ gestation.

* Without a trace: Some people never develop fingerprints at all. Two rare genetic defects, known as Naegeli syndrome and dermatopathia pigmentosa reticularis, can leave carriers without any identifying ridges on their skin.

* Fingerprints increase friction and help grip objects. New World monkeys have similar prints on the undersides of their tails, the better to grasp as they swing from branch to branch.

* Globally, dead skin accounts for about a billion tons of dust in the atmosphere. Your skin sheds 50,000 cells every minute.

* There are at least five types of receptors in the skin that respond to pain and to touch.

* One experiment revealed that Meissner corpuscles—touch receptors that are concentrated in the fingertips and palms, lips and tongue, productive organs, and tip of breasts—respond to a pressure of just 20 milligrams, the weight of a fly.

* In blind people, the brain’s visual cortex is rewired to respond to stimuli received through touch and hearing, so they literally “see” the world by touch and sound.

* White skin appeared just 20,000 to 50,000 years ago, as dark-skinned humans migrated to colder climes and lost much of their melanin pigment.

* People have started radio frequency identification chips, or RFID tags, inserting under their skin. The tags can provide access to medical information, log on to computers, or unlock car doors.

* The Cleveland Public Library, Harvard Law School, and Brown University all have books clad in skin stripped from executed criminals

Drink more water, lose more weight


Researchers analyzed weight-loss data on 240 overweight women, ages 25 to 50, who were following one of several popular diet plans. Before beginning their programs, the women drank an average of about two cans a day of sugary drinks (about 200 calories total), including soda and juice. Dieters who replaced virtually all sweetened drinks with water lost an average 5 pounds more in a year than dieters who didn’t. Those who drank more than four cups of water a day lost an additional 2 pounds more than dieters who did not drink that much.

Why you should drink more water

The body needs water to function. Many parts of the body contain water, including the brain, blood and lean muscle. Water in the body serves to:

* regulate body temperature
* remove wastes (through urine and stool)
* carry nutrients (food) and oxygen to cells
* cushion joints and
* dissolve nutrients to make them available to the body

Water does not contain any calories. The body absorbs water through the stomach and gut. Water leaves the body through urine, sweat, and stool and at times, vomiting and diarrhea.



How much water should you drink?

Many people don’t drink enough water. Being thirsty is not a good signal for how much water you need to drink. If people drank only when they were thirsty, most would never drink anything.

Everyone has heard that we need eight glasses of water a day. Experts are now suggesting that we need more.

You may think that this is too difficult. It is at first, but your body will adjust. In the beginning you will need to urinate frequently, but after about one week you will find that holding more urine is possible without having to go to the bathroom as much.

A good test to know if you are getting enough liquid is the color of your urine. If it is dark yellow, you need more liquid. You need to make sure that your urine is clear and pale in the morning and in the evening.

Soda with caffeine, and alcoholic drinks, do not count toward your liquid intake. They actually do the opposite of hydrating your body, they cause you to lose fluids. Avoid these drinks for optimal hydration. If you plan to party at night, drink more water during the day.

It’s important to remember that thirst is not a good indication of dehydration. This can be a major problem for the elderly, as they often fail to recognize their own need for water.


How to start drinking more water:




1. Determine how much water you need. You’ve probably heard the “8 by 8″ rule - drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water per day - but the amount of water a person needs varies depending on his or her weight and activity level. Another way to determine your specific recommended water intake is to divide your weight (in pounds) by two. The resulting number is the number of ounces of water you need each day.

2. Measure your daily intake of water. Do this for a few days. If you find that you’re drinking less than the recommended quantity, try some of the following tips.

3. Carry water with you everywhere you go in a bottle or other container. Before long, you’ll find yourself reaching for it without a second thought.

4. Keep a glass or cup of water next to you whenever you’ll be sitting down for a long time, such as when you’re at your desk at work. Drink from it regularly as you’re working.

5. Try wearing a digital watch that beeps at the beginning of each hour. Use that as a reminder to pour yourself a glass of water. Vow to drink that water before the next beep. If you drink only one small (6 ounce or 180 ml) cup per hour, you’ll have consumed 48 ounces (1.4 l) by the end of an 8-hour workday.

6. Get a water purification system. Purified water tastes very good and may help make drinking water more appealing to you. Be aware, though, that as you grow accustomed to purified water, you may find that tap water leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

7. Add lemons or limes to your water, it makes it taste better and makes you want to drink more of it. Be careful not to make it too sour, just a splash of sourness should do the trick. Some mint leaves can be added to a pitcher of water which should be allowed to sit overnight. These are cheap alternatives to the bottled flavoured water.

8. Eat water rich foods, such as fruits like watermelon, which is 92 % water by weight. Blend up some seedless fresh watermelon flesh with some ice and place a few sprigs of mint (optional) - one of the most refreshing drinks, especially for the summertime. Cranberry juice is also another option, and has a bitter taste. It is advised to patients suffering from urinary infection caused by insufficient intake of water to drink cranberry juice and watermelon if not plain water everyday. A tomato is 95 % water. An egg is about 74 % water. A piece of lean meat is about 70 %water.

9. Try having 8 glasses (1600ml) of water a day - 2 before breakfast, 2 between breakfast and lunch, 2 between lunch and dinner, and 2 after dinner. It may take a while to get used to, but it will be very good for you

Are Eggs Good for Weight Loss?



Eggs have been a hot topic of the weight loss debate. Two different dietitians will tell you two different opinions about eggs; one says stay away, the other says eat eggs every day. With opinions about eggs so divided, how do you know if eggs are good for weight loss?

The Incredible Egg
Eggs are a natural, nearly perfect food. They are an excellent source of easily digestible protein, plus many other vital nutrients. Eggs can certainly be included as part of a healthy diet.

Unfortunately, eggs have gotten a bad rap over the years because they also contain two seemingly nefarious factors: cholesterol and fat.

Cholesterol
One egg contains about 212 mg of cholesterol, and since the daily limit is 300 mg, people are scared away from eating them. However, most of the cholesterol in your body is actually made by your body, and is not as affected by diet as we may have thought. Eating one egg a day is generally considered to be safe and moreover, healthy for weight loss.





Fatty Acids
Egg yolks do contain an essential fatty acid called arachadonic acid. This fatty acid has a mixed reputation because although it is essential for metabolism, it is also the “parent” molecule for many inflammatory substances, to which many people are highly sensitive. However, it may be more likely that the problem is just an imbalance of arachadonic acid and omega-3 fatty acids. Therefore, your healthy solution is not to stop eating eggs, but to eat eggs and fish (or another omega-3 source).


Eggs for Weight Loss


One egg consists of about 80 calories and 5g of fat, so eating one egg every day is good for your diet. If you find yourself wanting more, add extra egg whites to your egg to cut down on fat. Hard-boiled, scrambled, and poached eggs are the best cooking methods. If you must fry them, do it in a non-stick pan without butter or oil.

Eggs are an excellent source of nutrition in your weight loss diet. Eat one a day for optimal health.

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