Most of us give little thought to the amazing machine
that is the human body until it goes wrong, that is. And given that
we are made up of over 200 bones, around 600 muscles, in excess of
100,000 kilometres of blood vessels and about 40,000 kilometres of
nerve fibres, it’s actually rather surprising that it
doesn’t go wrong more often.
We take for granted that our heart will continue to beat 40
million times a year. (In energy terms, that’s the same as
lifting a one kilogram weight to twice the height of Mount Everest
- every day), that our lungs will take over 400 million breaths in
a lifetime and that our kidneys will filter 180 litres of fluid
every day. But what about the less obvious?
Did you know?
- We produce around two litres of mucus every day - the lining of
our noses and sinuses is designed to produce mucus which helps trap
bacteria and viruses and prevent them from getting into the airways
and causing infection. We are only aware of this production if the
mucus becomes very thick, often linked to central heating or
bacterial infection, or if the volume increases significantly above
two litres - usually due to allergy or viral infection.
- We produce up to two litres of gas in our bowels every day -
most of this gas is produced by the millions of good bacteria that
live in our gut and help digest our food. Digesting beans, cabbage,
sprouts and onions increases gas production and if we don’t
eat for 12 hours, a wave of muscular contractions starts in the
stomach and runs the entire length of the gut, forcing any gas in
front of it - you have been warned
- Stomach acid is as strong as battery acid - cells in the wall
of the stomach produce strong acid to help digest food. Our stomach
protects itself by producing a mucus layer, which it has to replace
every fortnight to prevent it from digesting itself.
- Children replace their skeleton every two years - bone is
constantly changing, being broken down by cells called osteoclasts
and built up again by osteoblasts. The rapid turnover that we see
in kids slows down as we get older but we still build a new
skeleton every seven to ten years well into our twenties.
- Sweat glands in our armpits are capable of producing over
eleven litres of sweat in 24 hours - sweating is our built-in
cooling system and is crucial to survival. Exercising produces a
lot of heat energy. A 70kg man running at 15km/hour will use around
1,100 calories an hour. If he didn’t sweat, our body
temperature would rise to a fatal 41.5 degrees in under an hour.
You may not like sweating, but it’s better than the
alternative.
- So when you go to bed tonight, spare a thought for your body -
you will be resting, but it certainly won’t be!
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