I’m a huge fan of trivia – I love Trivial Pursuit and pub quizzes – and one of the things I love about writing this column is the wide array of fascinating facts I come across while researching. For example, apparently blondes have more hair than brunettes. Here’s a few I’ve found about health and our amazing bodies.
1 We make around a litre of saliva every day. During our lifetime, we’ll produce enough to fill two swimming pools.
2 The surface area of the human lung is the same size as a tennis court.
3 The best-selling pharmaceutical drug in the world is a brand of statin – a cholesterol-lowering drug.
4 The strongest muscles in the human body are the masseters, located either side of your mouth, which are used for chewing.
5 You can’t see it, but your skin is constantly flaking. on average, people shed around 18kg of skin in their lifetime.
6 Your left lung is smaller than your right one, to make space for your heart.
7 Babies are born with 300 bones in their bodies but adults only have 206. This is because some bones fuse as you grow.
8 Your brain generates about 25 watts of power while you are awake.
9 It takes the body around 12 hours to completely digest food.
10 Fingernails grow nearly four times faster than toenails. The ones on the hand you write with grow fastest.
11 other than being burned, human hair is basically indestructible. It can’t be destroyed by water (no wonder it clogs up drains!) and is resistant to many acids and corrosive chemicals.
12 Eyes stay the same size from birth – but your nose and ears grow throughout your lifetime.
13 More people die of a heart attack on oonday than any other day of the week.
14 The human scalp has around 100,000 hairs and you lose around 80 of them a day
15 The indentation between your nose and upper lip is called the philtrum.
16 Women suffer four times as many headaches as men, which is thought to be due to fluctuations in hormones.
17 The average cost of developing a new prescription drug and making it available to the public is $1.13 billion.
18 Your heart beats around 100,000 times a day.
19 The largest cell in the human body is the female egg, while the smallest is the male sperm
- Babies who are breastfed are less likely to be overweight as adults than those who are breastfed
- In our lifetime most of us will eat around 7000 times our weight in food
22 By the time they reach 60, most people have lost 50% of their taste buds.
23 The largest artery in the body, the aorta, is about the same width as a garden hose. Meanwhile, capillaries are so small, 10 of them put together are the thickness of a human hair.
24 Right-handed people live an average of nine years longer than left-handed ones.
25 A sneeze can exit your nose at 166km/h.
26 Your brain is made up of 75 to 80% water. This is why being dehydrated affects its ability to work properly.
27 As well as having unique fingerprints, we also have unique tongue prints.
28, The tooth is the only body part that can’t heal itself
29 Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
30 The average person breaks wind 14 times a day.
31 The smallest bones in your body are in your ears.
32 Your thigh bone is stronger than concrete
33 When you laugh heartily, the linings of your blood vessels relax, increasing blood flow for up to 45 minutes.
34 Although your brain processes pain messages when other parts of your body hurt, it can’t feel pain itself.
35 A woman’s egg survives around 18 hours after being released from the ovary but sperm lasts for five to seven days after ejaculation, so depending on when you ovulate, it’s possible to conceive several days after having intercourse.
36 About one person in every 20 has an extra pair of ribs.
37 The biggest muscle in your body is your gluteus maximus, in your buttock. The smallest is in your ear and is thinner than a cotton thread.
38 Your stomach gets a new lining every three days. If it didn’t, the acids in your gut that digest food would also digest your stomach.
39 We’re taller in the morning than in the evening. During the day, cartilage between our bones gets compressed by activities such as sitting and standing so by the end of the day, we’re about 1cm shorter.
40 The cornea is the only living tissue in the body that doesn’t have any blood vessels.
41 The space between your eyebrows is called the glabella.
42 Bones are about 75% water.
43 Blood accounts for about 8% of your body weight.
44 People who suffer from gum disease are twice as likely to have a heart attack or stroke.
45 Hair and fingernails are made of the same substance – keratin.
46 We start losing around 7000 brain cells a day once we turn 35. They can never be replaced.
47 There are approximately 96,000km of blood vessels in your body
- Studies have shown smelling the herb rosemary may improve your memory.
49 Smokers have up to 10 times as many wrinkles as non-smokers.
50 Sex burns around four calories a minute.