Sometimes when I am looking for information about something, I find information about other things. Sometimes one little piece of information makes me curious and so I go looking to check on it and then I find other things that have me curious. Sometimes it takes me a long time to write a post. I get into a mode where I am just looking at more stuff and more stuff. Fascinating. And as I always say about the internet if you find one thing to support something you will find another thing that doesn’t. Sometimes it is frustrating because you don’t know what to believe. But somethings are nice in that they are general facts and not too many people are going to argue with them. I was on my way to learn something and found out these things in the process:
—The esophagus is approximately 10 inches long.
—The esophagus is about the diameter of a quarter.
—The “walls” of the esophagus is about the width of three pennies.
—Adults eat about 1102.31 pounds of food a year.
—There is a bone that is hardly larger than a grain of rice. It is in the ear.
—The smallest muscle is an ear muscle, the stapedius
—Ears and the end of the nose are made up of cartilage.
—It takes fewer muscles to smile than frown, 20 versus 40.
—The sartorius is the longest muscle in the body. It rotates the thigh outwards and bends the knee as it runs down from the outside of the hip to the inside of the knee.
—There are about 5 million red blood cells, 300,000 platelets, and 10,000 white blood cells in a tiny drop of blood.
—Red blood cells, which carry oxygen to the tissues
—Platelets, smaller cells that help blood to clot
—White blood cells, which fight infections
—It takes about one minute for red blood cells to circle the whole body.
—Red blood cells make about 250,000 round trips of the body before they die.
—Red blood cells live about four months.
—The right lung is slightly larger than the left.
—The skin secretes antibacterial substances. These substances explain why you don’t wake up in the mornings with a layer of mold growing on your skin.
—The spinal cord is approximately 15 or so inches to 19 or so inches long.
—The spinal cord is about 2.54 to 3 (or so inches) in diameter.
—The spinal cord is a cylindrical structure of nervous tissue composed of white and gray matter.
Some things you learn and then forget so it is interesting to happen upon the facts again. Or when having a discussion with someone you find yourself looking things up to help further the discussion. Either way to me it is fascinating. I have shared my fascination before in my post Human Body Fantastic you can check that out by clicking here if you want. It has different body facts.
I gathered the facts noted in this post from Body Worlds 2 body fact sheet, the University of South Florida’s website, and Neuroscience Online.
Well, maybe you learned something. Maybe you didn’t. Maybe you were reminded by of something. Either way, I hope you were fascinated.
Don’t you find the body amazing?
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