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Dr knowledge tells you fast facts about your body
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.
The human head contains 22 bones. More on the head and brains
On average, you breathe 23,000 times a day.
Breathing generates about 0.6g of CO2 every minute.
On average, people can hold their breath for about one minute. The world record is 21
minutes 29 seconds, by David
On average, you speak almost 5,000 words a day – although almost 80% of speaking is self-talk (talking to yourself).
Over the last 150 years the average height of people in industrialized nations increased by 10 cm (4 in).
In the 19th century, American men were the tallest in the world, averaging 1,71 metres (5’6″). Today, the average height for American men is 1,763 m (5 feet 9-and-half inches), compared to 1,815 m (5’10″) for Swedes, and 1,843 m (5’11″) for the Dutch, the tallest Caucasians.
The tallest nation in the world is the Watusis of Burundi: 1.98 m (6 feet 6 inches) tall.
If the amount of water in your body is reduced by just 1%, you’ll feel thirsty.
It is impossible to sneeze and keep one’s eyes open at the same time.
55% of people yawn within 5 minutes of seeing someone else yawn.
Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, suggested that a woman could enlarge her bust line by singing loudly and often.
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.
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.
Men loose about 40 hairs a day. Women loose about 70 hairs a day.
In the Middle Ages the length from the tip of the middle finger to the elbow was called an ell.
A person remains conscious for eight seconds after being decapitated.
The muscle that lets your eye blink is the fastest muscle in your body. It allows you to blink 5 times a second.
A typical athlete’s heart churns out 25 to 30 litres (up to 8 gallons) of blood per minute.
24 of the known 118 elements are found in your body – see What the average human
body contains
We have four basic tastes plus umami. The salt and sweet taste buds are at the tip of the tongue, bitter at the base, and sour along the sides; umami is a mixture of tastes sensed along the center of the tongue.
Not all our taste buds are on our tongue; about 10% are on the palette and the cheeks.
Unless food is mixed by saliva you cannot taste it.
The liver is the largest of the body’s internal organs. The skin is the body’s largest organ.
On average a hiccup lasts 5 minutes.
Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails.
Your middle fingernail grows the fastest.
Your finger nails grow at 1 nanometre per second (0.000 000 001 m/s). Your hair grows at 4 nanometres per second (0.000 000 004 m/s).
It takes about 3 months for the transplanted hair to start growing again.
In 1900, a person could expect to live to be 47. Today, the average life expectancy for
men and women in developed countries is longer than 70 years.
A newborn baby’s head accounts for one-quarter of its weight.
The bones in your body are not white – they range in color from beige to light brown. The bones you see in museums are white because they have been boiled and cleaned.
Our eyes are always the same size from birth.
Every person has a unique tongue print.
If all your DNA is stretched out, it would reach to the moon 6,000 times.
Approximately two-thirds of a person’s body weight is water. Blood is 92% water. The brain is 75% water and muscles are 75% water.
