10 Amazing Facts You Didn’t Know About Your Body

This miraculous fleshy machine that we posses, is capable of feats that are astonishing to say the least. Today we list 10 amazing facts about the human body that will surely make you think twice before giving up.

No 10. Easy Smiling

It is known that smiling is easier than frowning; it takes about 50% less muscles to smile than to frown. One other thing is that even smiling falsely will induce your brain to produce hormones that would actually make you happy.

No 9. Intelligent skin

Your skin actually produces antibacterial chemicals itself to keep germs away. Yes, this does undermine the sales of antibacterial soaps but it’s true. Not only this, but the human skin also produces antimicrobial peptides that protect the body from infection.

No 8. Breathing bags

The total surface area of the lungs inside you is approximately equal to the size of a tennis court and if you were to unfold the 300 million air sacs in your lungs, you could cover an entire football field!

No 7. Perpetual beating machine

Your heart will beat nearly 3 billion times if you live the average life span of about 70 years i.e. 4285000 times a year, 119000 times a day and 4960 times an hour. It’s even more fascinating when considering that an average heart weighs only 312 grams.

No 6. Tongue ID

Just like your fingerprints, your tongue print is also as unique. Maybe if we advance as the sci-fi movies depict, someday sticking out your tongue for IDing won’t seem that foolish or awkward. Apart from this, tongue also is the strongest muscle of the body.

No 5. Super Stomach

Otherwise used for pickling of steel, hydrochloric acid is produced by out stomach to help digestion. Hydrochloric acid is one of the most corrosive of chemicals and is widely used as an industrial chemical reagent. Our stomach lining protects the rest of the body from the acid by producing a chemical buffer as well as a mucus lining.Here is a video of how the whole digestion system works and about the role of hydrochloric acid:

No 4. Everactive Brain

It is a little known fact that although the brain comprises only 2% of your body weight, it gobbles up 20% of your body’s total energy. And this is partly due to the more known fact that our brain is awake even when we are asleep. When we are sleeping, our brain is busy working to replenish brain processes needed to function normally while awake.

No 3. Racing Nerves

Nerve impulses can travel at speeds in excess of 400 km per hour or 250 miles per hour. This is what helps you pull back your hand off a hot stove without consciously thinking. Here is a video depicting the working of the nerve impulses:

No 2. Superhuman strength

Hysterical strength is the term used to describe displays of strength by humans which are way beyond normal. It all happens due to ‘adrenaline’ and in extreme circumstances. The brain actually enables the muscles to overcome their normal capacity and utilize their full potential by slowing down other non-vital functions of the body like digestion and increasing heart and respiration rates. This is the strength displayed by women when they lift cars on their own in face of life and death situations.

No 1. A sneeze that can blow you away

Yes, literally, blow you away; the highest recorded speed of a human sneeze is 165 km per hour or 102 miles per hour. And storms with wind speeds reaching above 119 km per hour classify as hurricanes. These super powered sneezes cause you whole body to suspend every other action momentarily, including the heart. So, next time you sneeze, be thankful that your body has resumed normal operations once again, recovering from a 100 mph blow.Take a look at the sneezing phenomenon in slow motion:

McMaster vaccine has pet owners feline groovy

Good-bye itching, watering eyes and sneezing. McMaster University researchers have developed a vaccine which successfully treats people with an allergy to cats.

Traditionally, frequent allergy shots have been considered the most effective way to bring relief — other than getting rid of the family pet — for the eight to 10 per cent of the population allergic to cats.

Both options — one difficult and costly, the other troubling — may now be tossed aside thanks to the work of immunologist Mark Larché, professor in the Department of Medicine in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine and Canada Research Chair in Allergy & Immune Tolerance.

Mark Larché, professor in the Department of Medicine in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine and Canada Research Chair in Allergy & Immune Tolerance

Building on research he’s conducted for the past 10 years in Canada and Britain, Larché and his research team have developed a vaccine which is effective and safe with almost no side effects. The research is published in a recent (January 2011) issue of the Journal of Allergy & Clinical Immunology, a leading journal in the allergy field.

The researchers took one protein (molecule) that cats secrete on their fur which causes the majority of allergic problems. Using blood samples from 100 patient volunteers allergic to cats, they deconstructed the molecule and identified short regions within the protein which activate T-cells (helper cells that fight infection) in the immune system.

Using the amino acid code for the whole protein, researchers made synthetic versions of these regions. For the cat allergy vaccine, they found seven peptides (strings of amino acids). “And those synthetic peptides are what we mix together to make the vaccine,” said Larché. “We picked the peptides that would work in as much of the population as possible.”

Known as “peptide immunotherapy,” a low dose of the vaccine is given into the skin. Initially, four to eight doses a year may be required, but the side effects of the traditional allergy shots do not arise, Larché said. The optimal dose will be determined in phase three clinical trials which are getting underway with a much larger group of cat allergy sufferers.

The development of a vaccine to treat people allergic to cats is the first in a line of vaccines developed with Adiga Life Sciences, a company established at McMaster in 2008. It is a joint venture between McMaster University and Circassia Ltd., a UK-based biotech company.

Adiga and McMaster are now collaborating on research into the use of peptide immunotherapy for house dust mite, ragweed, grass, birch tree and moulds.