You Have More Than 5 Senses + Other Unbelievable Body Facts

Most people are sure that humans only have 5 senses. But that’s not entirely true. Taste, touch, smell, sight, and hearing aren’t the only ones we have. Scientists claim that people have between 9 and 20 senses in total. These include: thermoception — the sense of warmth; equilibrioception — the sense of balance. There’s also the sense of time — although not everyone seems to have that last one.

We used to think there were just eight different blood types. But in reality, there are over 30 known blood group systems. Here on the Bright Side, our favorite blood group is B Positive. Get it?

For every pound of fat you gain, you generate 1 mile of new blood vessels to supply oxygen and nutrients to your body.

Your stomach produces a new lining every 6 days to avoid digesting itself.

Nerve cells transmit 1,000 nerve impulses a second. They travel at 1 to 268 mph.

Our DNA contains 100,000 viruses. Scientists have discovered one that goes back 100 million years.

Your body emits visible light. You’re the brightest at 4 PM, and your glow is the least visible at 10 AM. Unfortunately, this glowing is 1,000 times less intense than what your eyes can see.

Sweat is mostly water mixed with proteins, sugars, ammonia, and a lot of other stuff. It even contains tiny amounts of trace metals, like copper, zinc, nickel, iron, and so on. What makes sweat taste salty is the sodium it contains. Plus, the more salt you eat, the saltier your sweat is. Your body’s trying to get rid of the excess, and the fastest way is to sweat it out.

If you walked 2 mph, you’d have to walk for 20 hours straight to lose 1 pound. And, it would take you 518 days and 8 hours to circle the equator.

Earwax isn’t actually wax. It contains fat, skin cells, sweat, and dirt.

Your brain gets three times bigger over the first year of life and reaches its full maturity when you’re 25. 60% of it is fat. Your brain generates around 23 watts of electrical power, which is enough to run a small light bulb.

Humans can’t really multitask. Your brain can’t perform more than one action at the same time. It switches between them, which doesn’t save time, as you might think, but increases the possibility you’ll do something wrong and makes the process longer.

When you have an exam to take, or you’re at work trying to focus on an important task, try chewing gum. Research showed it can help you stay concentrated for longer on tasks that require your full attention. Studies even say that’s a better test aid than caffeine.

There’s nothing special in the gum, but the act of chewing — it wakes your brain up. The effect doesn’t last long, though, just for 20 minutes.

Embryos develop fingerprints at 3 months.

Your bones are four times harder than concrete. The strongest bone in your body is the femur. It can support up to 30 times the weight of a grown-up person. Even crazier is that our bones are made up of composite material, meaning they’re both hard and elastic at the same time.

Sunburn is the result of radiation exposure. When your body’s natural defense mechanism gets overwhelmed trying to fight UV rays, a toxic reaction occurs that results in sunburn.

Goosebumps are an evolutionary reflex left over from our ancestors. The release of adrenaline made their hair stand up, and they looked scarier to approaching predators.

Your body produces 1–3 pints of saliva every day. It helps you digest food and fights off infections. You also have a lot of bacteria in your mouth. Yeah! The average amount of bacteria in a person’s mouth is almost the same as the number of people living on Earth. That’s hard to digest.

Each human has roughly 150,000 hairs on their head. Every strand grows around 1/2 inch per month. If we added the growth from each hair, it would measure the distance of 10 miles in just one year.

Your hair is also a lot stronger than you think. A single strand can hold 3 oz, which is the weight of an apple. If we combined the strength of all the hair on your head, it could support the weight of 2 elephants. Hey, let’s try it!

The beating sounds your heart makes are the clap of valve leaflets opening and closing. Your heart doesn’t replicate its cells unless you have an injury.

Your corneas are the only parts of your body that don’t get blood. They get oxygen directly through the air.

When you’re sitting or standing upright, it’s easier for you to recall some positive memories that make you feel good. Some believe it’s because sitting up with your back flat boosts blood flow, and your brain gets more oxygen which helps it function better.

The man who has the deepest voice in the world can produce sounds humans, including him, can’t hear at all. But elephants can hear those sounds.

Veins look blue because light has to go through layers of skin and fat to reach them. Your skin scatters a lot of the red portion of white light before it reflects the blood. This leaves only the blue light to bounce back to your eyes.

A person who has anosmia is unable to detect smells. Phantosmia is the opposite condition when someone smells an odor that isn’t actually there.

The human brain has 100 billion neurons. It is 73% water, and the same is true about the heart. That’s why if your brain loses even 2% of liquid, you start to feel tired. It also makes your memory worse, shortens your attention span, and puts a dampener on your mood.

The earliest known person to have had blue eyes lived in the Stone Age, 7,000 years ago.

Your right kidney is probably smaller and sits lower down than your left kidney to make room for your liver.

By the way, your brain makes sure you don’t drink too little or too much water. After you swallow some liquid, your mouth and throat start to fire signals to your brain, telling it to stop drinking. Otherwise, you’d keep gulping down water for the entire 10 to 60 minutes it takes the liquid to get to your cells.

Your eyes can see something for a mere 13 milliseconds, and your brain will already process this image. The average blink lasts from 100 to 400 milliseconds.

Even though the tongue isn’t the strongest muscle in your body, it never gets tired. That’s because of the way it’s built. It’s made up of 8 interwoven muscles. The tongue is the only muscle with ends not connected to bone. Other muscles join two bones at both ends because that’s how we pull and make a motion.

There are around 700 different species of bacteria in your mouth. Over 6 billion of them live there.

Your skin is your largest organ. It can cover the surface area of 2 bath towels. It accounts for around 16 percent of body weight and is around 22 square feet.

If you typed 60 words per minute for 8 hours a day, it would take you 50 years to type the human genome.

You get tired pretty quickly when you’re out in the heat. This happens because your body is trying really hard to keep itself cool, which puts a lot of extra work on it. So, you get exhausted and tired even if you don’t do anything physically demanding.

Your body has 78 organs, but only 5 of them are essential for survival — the brain, liver, kidneys, lungs, and heart.

Oh, the phone’s ringing! Must be something urgent, at 11 PM! Only... all the gadgets in the house are silent. It’s your ears that are ringing! You can also hear some hissing, whistling, buzzing, and even roaring. But all this noise doesn’t have an external source. That’s why it’s known as “phantom sounds.” They can occur in one or both ears, constantly or from time to time. They’re usually most noticeable at night when nothing distracts you.

Women have more taste buds on the surface of their tongues than men do. That’s one of the reasons why 35% of ladies and only 15% of guys are super-tasters. Those are people who feel flavors more strongly than others.

Left-handed people usually prefer to chew on the left side, and right-handed people... well, you guessed it... chew on the right.

Even if your fingerprints are damaged, they’ll grow back in the same unique pattern.

When breathing, a single lung only uses 5% of the oxygen you’ve inhaled.