Body positivity is a growing concept that many people struggle with, regardless of gender, age or race. However, the human body is full of surprises and incredible processes that make up a person.
Here are 18 amazing facts about your body.
1. Your body is made of about 7 octillion atoms (that’s 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms).
2. There are 37 trillion cells in your body.
3. Stomach acid can dissolve metal.
4. Your skin’s outer layer sheds every 2-4 weeks, amounting to roughly 0.7 kg of dead skin in a year.
5. Cells in the inner lens of the eye, muscle cells of the heart, and the neurons of the cerebral cortex are the only cells that will be with you your entire life.
6. If you were to spread out all the wrinkles in your brain, it would be about the size of a pillowcase.
7. There are a trillion nerves powering your memory. Studies have shown that after viewing 2,500 images for only 3 seconds, participants could recall if they had seen the images with 92 per cent accuracy.
8. You spend 10 per cent of the day blinking.
9. Your eyes can distinguish between 2.3 and 7.5 million different colours.
10. Your nose can differentiate between 1 trillion different smells.
11. Your fingers can feel a ridge as small as 13 nanometers in size (7,500x smaller than the diameter of a human hair).
12. Without your pinky finger, you would lose 50% of your hand’s strength.
13. Your heart beats 100,000 times per day, pumping 5.5 litres per minute, which adds up to about 3 million litres of blood a year.
15. Human decomposition begins around 4 minutes after death, a process known as ‘self-digestion’ where your enzymes and bacteria eat you away.
16. 3 to 5 lbs of your body is made up of bacteria. Between 100 million to 1 billion bacteria can grow on each tooth.
17. In terms of compression strength, the femur bone of a person weighing 83kg with US size 11 feet could withstand the weight of 16,000 people standing on it at one time.
18. If all the DNA in your body were uncoiled, it would stretch out to about 10 billion miles, which is from Earth to Pluto and back.
