The human body is amazing but we take this fact for granted every day. In today’s article, we will be discussing “10 amazing facts about the human body”.
Amazing fact number 1:
The Talus is a bone in the ankle and is the second largest bone in the hindfoot region of the human body. The Talus is the only bone in the human body that has no muscle or tendon attachment. (Khan et al 2019).
Amazing fact number 2:
The Sacrum bone, which sits at the base of your vertebral column attaching to the pelvis either side, gets its name from ‘sacred’ as it was considered holy or sacred by the ancient Egyptians, Romans and Greeks (Sugar 1987).
Amazing fact number 3:
The cracking that you make when you crack your back or knuckles isn’t bones grinding or you being put back into place, it is called cavitation. Cavitation is a sudden decrease in intracapsular pressure caused by dissolved gasses in the synovial fluid of the joint being released. The reason this makes a noise is thought to be a combination of the pressure release and the elastic recoil of the synovial capsule (Brodeur 1995). If you want to find out more on this check out the below article:
Amazing fact number 4:
Nerves are very fast! They can send signals at 180mph but not all nerves are this fast (Stevens 1966). Nerves with a myelin sheath are faster and so pain nerves (C fibres) are slower than light touch nerves (Aβ fibres) due to this. You can see this in real life if you bang your shin and it hurts you rub it and you get less pain because the light touch signal gets to the brain faster.
Amazing fact number 5:
Your Achilles tendon takes so long to heal itself that you will die first! A study by Heinemeier et al (2013), looked at Achilles tendon in people who were exposed to atomic bomb radiation to determine the healing or turnover rate of the Achilles tendon and they estimated that the longest half-life of the radiation was 200 years. This means that half of the tendon had been regenerated and replaced at 200 years. This would mean if 50% of your tendon was damaged and needed to regenerate and heal then it would take 200 years to do so. Luckily for us, it doesn’t need to heal to be pain-free and functioning normally.
Amazing fact number 6:
Around 1% to 2% of the world has red hair and in the northern hemisphere, it is higher, at around 2% to 6%. Amazingly, people with red hair are more sensitive to pain and have different effects from painkillers than those who don’t have red hair (Cunningham et al 2010).
Amazing fact number 7:
Babies have more bones than adults. A fully grown adult has 206 bones in their body but because babies bones are growing they have growth plates and these essentially divide the bones up into more so a baby technically has around 300 (Ryan et al 2011).
Amazing fact number 8:
You would assume that we all have the same amounts of muscle in our bodies but this is not the case, some people have more muscles in their bodies than others. So what are the ones that some have and some don’t?
Pyramidalis: This is a small muscle in the front of your abdominal wall and is absent in 20% of people (Das et al 2017).
Psoas Minor: This is a hip flexor muscle and is only present in 40% of people (Farias et al 2017).
Palmaris Longus: This is a long muscle in the forearm that flexes the wrist and is absent on one side only in 16% of people and it is absent in 9% of people in both arms (Thompson et al 2001).
Peroneus Tertius: This is a muscle on the outer side of the shin and ankle and its action is to dorsiflex and evert the ankle. It is absent in 10.5% of limbs according to Joshi et al (2005).
Plantaris: This is a small muscle in the calf and it is a very weak flexor of the knee and plantar flexor of the ankle. It is thought to be more proprioceptive in its role to help to detect movement and co-ordinate the larger calf muscles. It is absent in 7-20% of limbs according to Spina (2007).
Amazing fact number 9:
How tall are you? This actually alters throughout the day due to gravity and the loading effect on the body, so you are actually taller in the morning than at the end of the day. The intervertebral discs in the spine and menisci in the knees get compressed and lose height in upright positions, so in the morning you have been lying down so have more height in these structures making you taller (Ranu et al 2013).
Amazing fact number 10:
What is the strongest muscle in the body? This is not a straight forward one to answer because it depends on the size and more, but based on weight or size the strongest is considered to be the Masseter muscle, which is the main biting muscle. The average force of biting down has been found to exert 90kg on the molars but the world record according to Guinness world records was measured at 442 kg in 1986. It is important to note that the Masseter isn’t the only muscle working to bite down but it is the main one but impressive strength non the less!
So there you go that is 10 amazing facts about the human body that you didn’t know and have no real use to you in your life…………….you’re welcome!
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