The human body keeps getting stranger the closer you look at it, and this ninth installment proves it again. From CPR that keeps the brain alive without restarting the heart, to dessert stomachs, tight-pants nerve pain, laser-made colors, and gene-edited skin that saves a child’s life, these facts show just how bizarrely clever our biology can be. Dive into 50 more incredible human body facts that mess with your expectations about pain, vision, sweat, tears, brains, hearts, and everything in between.
Missed the earlier editions? Catch up with Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, and Part 8.
1 CPR Keeps Organs Alive Longer
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is not meant to restart the heart but to keep oxygenated blood moving to vital organs after the heart has stopped beating. During cardiac arrest, CPR acts as a manual pump that keeps blood flow active, even partially, which delays permanent damage to the brain and other organs until help arrives.
2. PBS reported on a study that used four human cadavers to figure out which body parts would provide the most nutritional value if someone resorted to eating human flesh. The analysis suggested ignoring kidneys, pancreas, and teeth and instead targeting butt muscles, thighs, and skin as the richest sources of calories. After working through the numbers and implications of the study, the researcher reportedly found it difficult to eat bacon afterward.
3. Humans are a tropical species whose bodies evolved for hot, humid conditions in Africa, with our lineage traceable back about 300,000 years to fossils in Morocco. Because our evolution favored warm environments, most of us still lack strong physiological adaptations to the cold, so in strict biological terms our bodies are not supposed to be able to survive freezing climates on their own.
4. The longest vein in the human body, the great saphenous vein, runs along the length of the lower limb but is not essential for normal venous circulation in the leg because other veins can take over through collateral circulation. Since removing it does not materially hinder leg blood flow, cardiac surgeons often harvest it and use it as an autotransplant conduit in coronary artery bypass operations, including triple and quadruple bypass surgeries.
5. A 2024 review in Molecular Psychiatry reports that adult human brains, including those from people aged roughly 20 to their late 70s, still contain neural progenitor cells that generate new neurons throughout life. This evidence overturns the old belief that neuron production stops after childhood and shows that regions like the hippocampus keep integrating immature neurons as we age.
6 Hundreds Of Headaches, Few Causes
Doctors classify more than 300 different types of headaches, yet only about 10 percent have a clearly identified cause. The brain tissue and skull themselves never generate this pain, because they lack nerves that register pain. Instead, the pain must come from other structures in the head and neck, which helps explain why tracking down the exact cause is so often difficult.
7. Saturday Night Palsy, named after late-night partying, happens when someone sleeps in an unnatural position while too drunk to shift or wake up, compressing nerves and causing sudden loss of muscle function. The condition typically involves prolonged pressure on a nerve during sleep, leading to weakness, numbness, or paralysis in the affected limb once the person wakes. In severe cases where the nerve damage is extensive, the chance of full recovery is low, and deficits can persist long-term.
8. We cry when we are happy because the hypothalamus in our brain cannot tell the difference between intense happiness and sadness. The amygdala first registers our emotional reaction and sends a strong signal to the hypothalamus, which then activates the autonomic nervous system. When the parasympathetic branch takes over, it stimulates acetylcholine receptors on the lacrimal glands, causing our tear ducts to produce tears in moments of joy, relief, stress, or sorrow alike.
9. About 35,000 years ago, a mutation in the EDAR gene arose in East Asia and began reshaping several physical traits. In most East Asians, one DNA unit in this gene differs from the ancestral version commonly carried by Africans and Europeans, and this change is linked to thicker head hair, more numerous sweat glands, distinct tooth shape, and smaller breasts.
10. A large observational study reported that, after controlling for other risk factors, people who drank about 3 to 5 cups of coffee a day had the lowest overall risk of cardiovascular disease. Researchers compared different intake levels and found that both lower and higher consumption were associated with higher risk than this middle range.
11 Different Arm Pressures Signal Danger
Doctors recommend measuring blood pressure in both arms because a large difference between the readings can signal trouble. A significant gap may indicate an increased risk of cardiovascular disease or even death.
12. Cardiologists have found that cardiovascular disease is strongly correlated with a specific diagonal crease between the tragus and the outer edge of the earlobe called Frank’s sign. Autopsy work from the University Hospital Bonn showed that higher-grade Frank’s sign appeared far more often in people with severe coronary artery disease, generalized atherosclerosis, preexisting cardiac disease, and cardiac-related causes of death. Based on these findings, the authors concluded that Frank’s sign has prognostic value, particularly in younger patients, and recommended routinely checking for it during physical examinations.
13. For generations, doctors figured the appendix had no function, but recent research shows it actually acts as a good safe house for bacteria. When bacteria in the intestines die or are purged, the appendix holds on to beneficial microbes and then releases them to reboot the digestive system.
14. Teeth are only able to experience one sensation, and that is pain, because the nerves around them respond solely as nociceptors. When you eat or drink something too hot or too cold, or when a dentist operates on a tooth, those specialized nerve fibers fire, and your brain can interpret the signal only as pain.
15. In the mid-2000s, four teenage girls with vaginal aplasia received custom vagina implants that scientists grew in a lab from their own vulvar tissue biopsies and pelvic scans. Surgeons later connected two of the engineered vaginas to the uterus for potential reproduction, while follow-up showed that all four women reported normal arousal, lubrication, intercourse, and orgasm.
16 Ghost Pepper Contest Rips Esophagus
In 2016, a man ate a ghost pepper in an eating contest and drank six glasses of water to cool off, which triggered intense burning in his mouth and throat. He vomited so violently that he tore a hole in his esophagus, and when he was rushed to a hospital, doctors discovered his left lung had collapsed. He spent 23 days in the hospital and was sent home with a gastric tube.
17. Olo is a color that can only be seen via targeted lasers hitting certain color receptors in the human eye to avoid overlapping with other color receptors. This process lets the viewer see a blue-green of unprecedented saturation, and the same technology is now being investigated to help people with color blindness. In April 2025, scientists at UC Berkeley used a system called Oz to map individual cone cells and stimulate only the M cones with tiny laser pulses, creating this imaginary color outside the normal human gamut that only five test subjects have seen so far.
18. A boy named Hassan, whose whole body looked like an open wound because of a genetic condition that led his skin to be paper-thin, had a skin sample taken in Germany, its DNA repaired, and the modified skin cells grown to make skin grafts totaling 0.85 sq m, and he now leads a normal life. In 2015, doctors used these grafts to replace about 80% of his epidermis damaged by junctional epidermolysis bullosa. By late 2017 his new genetically modified skin was functioning normally with no sign of blistering.
19. Bacteria from chronic gum disease have been found in brains of people suffering from Alzheimer’s, and although bad oral hygiene has long been a known risk factor for dementia, researchers now suspect that bacteria from gum disease may somehow cross into the brain and cause or worsen Alzheimer’s symptoms.
20. Humans show a systematic aurofacial asymmetry, meaning that the eyes, nose, and mouth are displaced to the left with respect to the midplane between the ears. Studies on facial structure note that this small but consistent sideways shift appears across many people, marking humans as one of the few species whose external features are not arranged in perfectly mirror-symmetric fashion.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
21 Empty Nose Syndrome Suffocation Feeling
Empty Nose Syndrome (ENS) is a condition that can occur after nasal surgery when nerves are damaged, which can cause a constant feeling of suffocation even with normal airflow. People with ENS often suffer severe anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts, and many describe the condition as so debilitating that they feel they cannot breathe despite having objectively open nasal passages.
22. Dessert stomach is a real thing. When sweet food hits your digestive system, it triggers a response that relaxes and stretches parts of the gut, so you suddenly find space for cake or ice cream even though a savory main course just seemed to max you out.
23. Humans are experts at sweating: in one hour, a horse can lose about 100 grams of water per square meter of skin, while a human can easily shed 500 grams per square meter, which helped our ancestors become unrivalled predators, as we can stalk prey until they collapse from heat exhaustion. This, combined with our hairlessness and endurance running, let early humans practice persistence hunting in the heat of the day, chasing animals for 10 to 15 kilometers until they overheated and collapsed.
24. When your immune system fights an infection, it cranks up the mutation rate during antibody production by a factor of 1,000,000 and then has the resulting antibodies compete with each other, so this natural selection process creates highly specific antibodies for the virus. Immunologists call this somatic hypermutation, and it floods the variable regions of antibody genes in activated B cells with point mutations so that only the cells whose receptors bind the invading antigen most tightly survive and multiply.
25. Depression actually alters vision, making the world appear far more dull and monochrome because people with depression show lower retinal activity compared with those who do not have the condition. In a 2010 report from Harvard, researchers placed electrodes near volunteers’ eyes as they viewed black-and-white checkerboard patterns and found that depressed patients had weaker retinal responses to contrast, which may explain why their visual world seems gray instead of vivid.
RE: Fact #14 (Teeth Only Communicate As Pain) – Thankfully, my teeth don’t get aroused.
What, you don’t want hard teeth?
What if your teeth went soft, unless you were hungry?
RE: Fact #40 (Sigh Reflex Keeps Alveoli Inflated) – Okay, now I’m gonna be panicking and sighing every five minutes just to make sure my lungs don’t collapse.
I’m really worried I’m not sighing enough now.
The autonomic nervous system works behind the scenes to keep you alive, so you don’t have to think about it. You can’t stop yourself from sighing any more than you can stop yawning, breathing, stretching, or having a heartbeat. No worries at all. Edit: autonomic, not autonomous, sorry.
RE: Fact #41 (Psychic Tears Contain Natural Painkiller) – I found out about this a long time ago when my eyes stopped making enough tear lubrication. I’m basically stuck on eye drops for the rest of my life. I’ve tried the prescription ones that claim to boost natural tear production, but they didn’t work and burned like acid. Stupid eyes. One more thing people don’t always know: Visine isn’t for dry eyes. They do make a dry eye formula, but regular Visine is for redness. It won’t help if your eyes are dry. If you’ve been crying, out in the wind, etc., grab something like Blink, GenTeal, or any brand that says “lubricating” or “dry eye relief.”
Whenever my eyes get dry, I feel like I gotta kill a family member.
That’s the irony — crying actually dehydrates your eyes.
RE: Fact #15 (Lab-Grown Vaginas Restore Function) – That’s actually pretty amazing.
Yep, there’s a short interview with one of the young ladies who got an implant. She’s from Mexico, but medical professionals at Wake Forest Baptist in North Carolina did the surgery. Since some factrepublic users asked, here’s more info. The big question was, do these patients have working ovaries? Can’t say for everyone, but the young woman mentioned in that interview said she has a kind of Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome. Apparently, with that, your vagina might be underdeveloped or missing, yet your ovaries can still work fine. For her specifically, getting pregnant is a possibility. Though two other patients didn’t have all their reproductive organs working as they should. I looked up Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser, and what I found was: This issue means the vagina and uterus are either not fully developed or just not there at all, even though everything on the outside looks normal. Typically, women with this don’t get their periods because there’s no uterus. Often, the first sign someone has MRKH syndrome is when they don’t start menstruating by sixteen. These women have a normal female chromosome pattern and ovaries that work correctly. Their breasts and pubic hair also develop normally. While most women with this condition can’t carry a pregnancy themselves, they might still be able to have children using assisted reproduction methods. If it’s just the reproductive organs, it’s called MRKH syndrome type 1. But some women with MRKH also have other body parts affected; that’s MRKH syndrome type 2. With this type, kidneys might be shaped or placed weirdly, or one might not form at all. People often have bone problems too, especially with their spine. Plus, females with MRKH type 2 could have trouble hearing or heart issues.
RE: Fact #12 (Earlobe Crease Predicts Heart Disease) – If you don’t have one initially, does it show up as the illness advances? Is it a sign the disease is there, or more of a predictor that you might get it later?
The fact suggested that the crease might simply come from getting older.
RE: Fact #8 (Happy And Sad Tears Confused) – Your hypothalamus, man, it’s just so clueless. It can’t tell a rapid testosterone drop from your body needing to sweat like mad because it’s super hot. What a dumb part of your brain.
Seriously! For something in your brain, it’s incredibly ignorant.
Even with minimal brain research, you’d quickly learn it’s a very lazy and stubborn organ.
RE: Fact #14 (Teeth Only Communicate As Pain) – You know that feeling when something’s stuck in your teeth, causing pressure? And the big relief when it finally comes out? Is that like anti-pain?
RE: Fact #33 (Tear Ducts Drain Into Nose) – If a marble gets stuck in a kid’s nose, it turns slimy and hard to pull out. Make them cry, the extra tears lubricate it, and then it comes out easy!
RE: Fact #10 (Three To Five Coffees Safest) – So, when they looked at folks who drink the least coffee, the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) was 0.95 for the heaviest drinkers. Then it was 0.85 for the second heaviest group, and 0.89 for the third heaviest. Does this mean that drinking like 3.5 cups a day or even 1.5 cups daily actually carries less CVD risk than having 5 cups a day? If you compare it to having no coffee, 5 cups is 5% less risk, 3.5 cups is 15% less, and 1.5 cups is 11% less.
RE: Fact #9 (EDAR Mutation Reshaped East Asians) – This just came back to me: mammary glands, get this, they’re actually just altered sweat glands.
Here’s a fun fact for you: platypuses manage this whole thing with a super primitive setup. They basically just excrete milk, and their babies simply lap it right off the mother for food. Honestly, how these fu*kers are still alive is beyond me.
RE: Fact #33 (Tear Ducts Drain Into Nose) – I saw a guy squirting milk through that thing.
Wow. You just reminded me of that Icarly episode where a guy sucked milk up through his nose and cried, squirts it out of his eyelids. I always thought it was fake, but now I get how they did it.
That’s how you get a nasty eye infection.
I can blow air through mine and hear a little whine come out.
RE: Fact #20 (Human Faces Shifted Slightly Left) – So, I’m curious, does this mean we could actually tell if a picture of someone we don’t know is mirrored, like, better than just guessing?
RE: Fact #7 (Drunken Sleep Causes Nerve Palsy) – “Saturday night palsy” gave me the creeps, so I figured I’d share my own story. On December 7, 2019, I woke up unable to lift my left wrist, with my hand and forearm feeling both numb and in total agony. I hadn’t partied or done anything weird the night before. I actually remember that night perfectly; I took a bath and went to sleep early because I was so cold. Around 3 AM, I woke up with extreme pain in my upper arm and spent hours putting an ice pack on it for some comfort. By morning, my left hand was just hanging there, totally useless. It was genuinely terrifying, but also a little funny. My doctor just called it Saturday Night Palsy, then completely disappeared on me when the pandemic hit and everything went crazy. Four months later, since nothing had changed, I found a different neurologist and a surgeon to examine me. They diagnosed me with Parsonage Turner Syndrome, which meant my radial nerve spontaneously tightened in three spots between my shoulder and elbow. The doctor explained Saturday night palsy would require me to have bent my upper arm in three places while I slept that initial night, which wasn’t even possible. This kind of constriction is usually seen in people after car accidents, but for me, it was just sh*tty genetics. I had multiple MRIs, ultrasounds, and some really painful nerve conduction tests done. Because my situation was so random, I was one of only 11 recorded cases, and my arm was actually shown at a conference about radial nerve issues. I was so excited to finally get a diagnosis and read about my specific symptoms in his medical books after months of wondering when it would all just stop. Somewhere in the neurology field, pictures of the inside of my arm are in medical texts. I had an operation that May to get rid of those hourglass-shaped constrictions. By then, my arm had withered down to just bone and tendon. I couldn’t lift anything and needed tons of medication to cope with the daily onslaught of various pains and strange feelings. As of April 2023, I’ve got about 80% use back in my left hand. I can lift my wrist, but I still can’t make a peace sign. Being an IT professional for 25 years, I don’t have enough function in my left hand to type normally, so I now just peck everything out with my index finger. Despite all that, I’m incredibly happy to have the movement I do now. I haven’t seen any more improvement in several months, so I think my three-year healing journey might be over. I’m truly thankful to my surgeon for the incredible job he did.
RE: Fact #17 (Laser-Made Color Olo Explained) – Octarine. Absolutely, they ought to be dealing with octarine; it just oozes magic.
RE: Fact #36 (Brain Downplays Personal Death Threat) – Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m totally planning on living forever. So far so good.
Scientists think the first person to live to 120 has already been born. I think that person is me.
I actually think I’m the one they’re talking about.
Everyone thinks they’ll live forever, until they don’t.
RE: Fact #7 (Drunken Sleep Causes Nerve Palsy) – A couple of years back, this totally happened to me. Waking up the next day was super scary; I seriously thought I’d had a stroke or something. The doctor explained what was up, saying it’d clear up in a few weeks. But my nerves stayed off, and I couldn’t fully use my hand or wrist for almost two months. I had this small plastic cast on that whole time. Turns out, nerves only grow back about as fast as a human hair’s width each day.
The exact same thing went down with me, and getting completely better took just as long, possibly even more time. Having to stress over it was definitely not fun.
I’m only just now getting over this, and it was in my shoulder and neck. It feels like the worst kind of neck crick, but the pain is actually in my back. I used to be so confused when folks talked about nerve damage hurting, since I always thought it was mainly about numbness. Now I totally get it, though; it can be incredibly painful. It’s almost like hitting your funny bone, but then your whole arm’s muscles seize up.
This happened to a bouncer at a bar where I used to work. Then suddenly, one day, he just didn’t show up for work anymore. Six months went by, and he eventually returned with a huge scar on his arm and serious nerve damage in his hand. He’d passed out drunk in his garage for around 16 hours. Now, his hand looks like a crab claw. Seriously, this is not something to mess with.
RE: Fact #18 (Gene-Repaired Skin Saves Child) – Yeah, this might sound a bit odd, but does anyone have pictures of what it looked like when the wound was open?
It’s not quite as awful as it sounds. If you’re looking for something way worse, like ten times more like a real open wound, you’d want to look up something called Harlequin ichthyosis baby. Just be warned, it’s really not safe for life viewing.
Those sound absolutely terrible, and I just don’t think I have the courage to even search. Fu*k.
Oh man, Harlequin ichthyosis baby. Yeah, that’s a fu*king pretty disturbing condition, for sure.
Same here, that’s exactly what I’m looking for.
RE: Fact #39 (Chest Blows Trigger Commotio Cordis) – It stops your heart, not just affects it. And when they say it kills within 3 minutes, they mean it’s way less likely you’ll get shocked back to life if there’s a delay.
A heart that’s stopped is called asystole. This condition can happen if something’s not treated, but the main reason is the blunt force hitting the chest, which messes up the heart’s rhythm because of weird electrical signals. That’s why you need defibrillation right away to fix that electrical issue. You can’t shock a heart that’s already stopped.
No, it’s not. Cardiac arrest, which means a stopped heart, is actually asystole, ventricular fibrillation, or pulseless ventricular tachycardia. V fib is a pulseless rhythm—basically cardiac arrest. It’s not like your heart is still working but just interrupted or messed up. It’s actually the heart tissue just quivering. There’s electrical activity happening, but it’s not making a proper heartbeat. I spent a lot of years as a nurse in the cardiac cath lab, and I’ve actually seen this happen way too many times. It’s also something we do in the lab—give a small shock at the right moment in the heartbeat—to test new ICDs and make sure they can shock the patient out of the dangerous arrhythmia we create. Spinchter-clenching stuff! lol
RE: Fact #11 (Different Arm Pressures Signal Danger) – Great. Like I really needed more to think about.
Oh, I’ll definitely pitch in! There are over a hundred kinds of cancer. Plus, in the US, about 42% of people will likely get it at some point in their lives.
RE: Fact #17 (Laser-Made Color Olo Explained) – You can actually get a visual like this without needing lasers at all. When this fact was shared previously, someone pointed out a straightforward method. It’s just a matter of staring at a super red square for a couple of minutes, then immediately shifting your gaze to a green one. That red color causes your eye’s sensors to adjust, making the green square afterwards look incredibly vibrant. I can totally vouch for it; that was the most intensely green shade I’ve ever come across.
RE: Fact #44 (Labor Stress Triggers First Breath) – Seeing my daughter being born was crazy. She came out looking almost lifeless and then suddenly started crying and breathing on her own.
You saw her boot up for the first time. Aww.
RE: Fact #29 (Mustard Shots Stop Muscle Cramps) – From my country, outside the US, we just say ‘cramp.’ Nobody says ‘Charley Horse.’ It’s kinda funny, though. Normally, Brits have all these quirky old-fashioned words. Americans often tease. But here, this time it’s totally flipped.
RE: Fact #23 (Sweat Powered Human Persistence Hunting) – Yeah, being hairless lets us get the most cooling from sweat. We’re totally made for endurance running. Humans are just so good at it.
Well, next time a lion chases me, I’ll just tell him that life’s more like a marathon than a sprint!
Given we’re like pack animals, a lion would probably only go after you if you were weak, or if your group pushed you out to the edges for some reason. So, as long as you’re in good shape, healthy, and everyone likes you, you’re probably fine.
Lions actually hunt by ambushing their prey. It’s leopards that chase people down.
Think about how we run marathons. How many animals can actually run for that long?
They have this human versus horse race in Wales every single year. On two different times, when it was a really hot day, the people actually won. Horses tend to do better on cooler days, though.
Seriously, none. Humans can outrun just about any other animal on Earth over long distances. Only dogs and horses can almost keep pace with us for a while.
RE: Fact #49 (Hearing Loss Raises Dementia Risk) – I knew there was a reason my dad told me not to play music so loud through my headphones, but I just can’t remember what it was.
RE: Fact #21 (Empty Nose Syndrome Suffocation Feeling) – Just found out something new today, but honestly, I wish I hadn’t learned it. Sounds absolutely awful.
RE: Fact #21 (Empty Nose Syndrome Suffocation Feeling) – One time I got super high and literally couldn’t feel anything in my whole body, even my nose. To make sure I was still breathing, I had to hum with every inhale and exhale. That night I was just a consciousness floating around, making odd sounds. Hey kids, stay in school, and if that first edible doesn’t seem to hit, definitely don’t take more. I still had a blast, though, watching The Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension. Awesome film. No clue what it’s even about.
RE: Fact #18 (Gene-Repaired Skin Saves Child) – This really shows how amazing genetic therapy can be. I’m so looking forward to when this tech can actually cultivate entire organs, maybe even a new pancreas.
Being a smoker myself, getting a new lung sounds appealing, but also kinda pointless. I wonder if gene therapy might help with addiction, like maybe resetting brain cells, or whatever part of the brain reacts to addictive stuff.
RE: Fact #39 (Chest Blows Trigger Commotio Cordis) – My teammate died that way playing hockey. He went down to block a shot and the puck went straight into his chest. Doctors said it hit right between heartbeats and messed with his rhythm so bad that his heart just stopped. His mom was a nurse and tried to revive him on the ice, but it was too late. The only way he might’ve survived was if a defibrillator had shocked him right after the puck hit him. I still think about him sometimes, 25 years later.
My dad played hockey in high school and took a puck to the chin — it knocked out his middle tooth. Once everyone realized he lost a tooth, his mom rushed down from the stands and started yelling for everyone to stop the game so they could find it. They found it on the ice, somehow. A few hours later, he was at the dentist getting it put back in. The tooth was dead by then, but it didn’t matter — he kept it in his mouth for about 40 years. You could tell it was dead because of a black ring around the gumline. He only got it replaced with a dental implant and crown a few years ago.
It launched his middle tooth right out of his mouth… does… does your dad have teeth like your hands have fingers? I don’t have a “middle tooth”? They’re symmetrical.
I chipped my two front teeth at age 7 and my twin sister did the same at 10. It’s funny how strong the instinct is to find the tooth, even though you can’t really do anything with it once you’ve got it.
RE: Fact #12 (Earlobe Crease Predicts Heart Disease) – Wonder how many FactRepublic users are snapping pics of their earlobes right now?
RE: Fact #2 (Most Nutritious Human Body Parts) – chewing on someone elses teeth is way more horrifying than anything else listed cant even handle a tiny shell in my eggs
had no idea this would freak me out so much
same here my whole body tensed up when i read it
RE: Fact #44 (Labor Stress Triggers First Breath) – Being an animal baby is a nightmare. You’ve got like thirty seconds to figure out how to breathe, stand up, and see the lion coming.
RE: Fact #10 (Three To Five Coffees Safest) – For a long time, people thought that consuming some alcohol, especially red wine, was actually good for you. They saw study results that made it seem that way. Sure, they did try to control for other things. But it turns out, you just can’t account for absolutely everything. Think about it: folks who drink a moderate amount of red wine often have more money. On the other hand, many who avoid alcohol completely are recovering from addiction and have years of heavy drinking in their past. It’s a similar story with coffee. People who drink a decent amount might have specific jobs, like office roles with free coffee machines. Those who don’t drink any coffee could have chosen that because caffeine makes them feel bad due to various existing health conditions. Someone who gets up at 4:30 AM to exercise might drink a lot of coffee, but that coffee probably isn’t what makes them so healthy.
Plus, individuals dealing with health issues might react poorly to coffee. They could decide not to drink it simply because of how it affects them, even if they’re unaware of the true medical problem causing it.
Yeah, that’s exactly right. I usually have two double espressos daily, loaded with cold milk and sugar. My heart health is actually pretty good too. How come? Well, the work that lets me enjoy those drinks free of charge every day is in electronics retail. We have a demo coffee machine there that we can use ourselves. And that kind of work keeps me moving constantly; I easily hit 10,000 steps or more most days. Plus, there’s always some light lifting and a lot of different movements involved. So, it doesn’t mean my daily intake of fat, sugar, and caffeine is beneficial for me at all.
Some things we barely think about can really matter. For instance, if you use a paper filter for your coffee, it’s way better for your LDL cholesterol compared to those reusable permanent ones.
RE: Fact #2 (Most Nutritious Human Body Parts) – now they tell me not to eat the teeth first
how do you even chew teeth theyre literally made of teeth
RE: Fact #28 (Newborn Brains Devour Most Energy) – Five for lava pooping. Five for projectile barfing, spontaneously. Three for everything else.
And the nipple radar? Always running. Like some background app.
It’s just normal brain activity.
RE: Fact #40 (Sigh Reflex Keeps Alveoli Inflated) – This is useful stuff. Next time I sigh and someone asks, “What’s wrong? Are you sad? Bored?” I can just say, “I’m fine, I’m just trying to stop my lungs from collapsing, OK?”
RE: Fact #2 (Most Nutritious Human Body Parts) – isnt that what we eat from most animals dont think anyone eats cow teeth
RE: Fact #4 (Leg Vein Repurposed For Bypass) – Calling it ‘not needed’ for regular circulation isn’t quite right. It actually is important for that, but your body manages to cope even if it’s gone.
Well, if the body can get by without it, then by its very definition, it sounds like it’s not really essential.
RE: Fact #37 (Men And Women Share Ribcount) – I didn’t know it was a common myth that men and women have different numbers of ribs. I’ve never actually heard that before.
Yeah that was the bigger surprise to me.
I used to think that too, all the way through high school. A bunch of my classmates were just as shocked when the teacher said no, everyone has the same number of ribs. I always thought it was just a weird biological thing, and then I remembered that Bible story about how males and females had different numbers of ribs — I figured that was just a religious explanation for the difference.
But the Bible doesn’t actually say that, just that Adam gave a rib.
I always thought this was true back in the day. I was born in ’85. Before the Internet, you had to just go with what older folks said was real. Edit: in rural Texas.
RE: Fact #4 (Leg Vein Repurposed For Bypass) – Wow, this has to be one of the most interesting facts I’ve come across on factrepublic. Thanks so much for sharing it.
It’s wild that someone or a whole team even figured this out. The human body is already so intricate, so I wouldn’t instantly think, ‘Alright, what can we actually remove or change here?’ That’s just a funny way to put it.
RE: Fact #33 (Tear Ducts Drain Into Nose) – I once had an eyelash get stuck in my tear duct. For a whole day, it was super annoying. I finally saw the tip poking out and managed to pull it out with tweezers. So much better right away!
RE: Fact #42 (Saccade-Like Motion Disappears From Awareness) – This effect shows up in Blindsight by Peter Watts, where it gives the aliens a kind of invisibility cloak. It’s an excellent read, with ideas rooted in real biological processes, and it’s written by a marine biologist. One of the best first contact stories I’ve seen, it really makes you rethink what we assume aliens might be like and what could drive them.
RE: Fact #7 (Drunken Sleep Causes Nerve Palsy) – One time, I passed out with my arm draped right over the side of the bed, my elbow sitting perfectly on the mattress edge. When I woke up, I couldn’t bend my arm at all for more than an hour. I started heading toward the hospital, but thankfully it just went away right before I arrived.
Haha, the exact same thing happened to me, but I woke up with sleep paralysis too and couldn’t move anything at all.
If you get sleep paralysis, try licking the roof of your mouth; that trick always works for me.
Stephen King wrote a short story about this retired Vietnam veteran who’s golfing, gets bitten by a rare poisonous snake, and then slowly becomes paralyzed as his heart rate drops super low. At the hospital, they’re about to say he’s dead, but then he gets an erection while a nurse is checking his private parts, and that’s how they figure out he’s still alive. So, if you ever end up in a situation like that, just pop a boner… it might just save your life.
RE: Fact #34 (Microsurgery Made Limb Replantation Possible) – I’ll be honest, I was watching Vinland Saga with some friends and guys get cut up in that show. So I say, “they better get their limbs and try to get them reattached by a doctor.” My friend says, “that’s not possible for like a thousand years.” I say, “nah, we’ve been attaching limbs for a long time.” Well, I was completely wrong—this is way more complicated than I thought. Seriously, sewing in individual blood vessels is an impressive feat. Kudos to all the doctors around the world who figured out those techniques.