What you didn’t know about your body

You don’t need to have genitals to have an orgasm. You don’t even need to be alive.

According to a Ted Talk where writer Mary Roach presented on orgasms, you don’t need to have genitals to have an orgasm.

“An orgasm is a reflex of the autonomic nervous system,” she said. “The orgasm reflex can be triggered by a surprisingly large range of input.”

There have been reports about people who can achieve orgasm by having someone stroke their eyebrow, rub their knee, or brush their teeth.

There have even been reports about someone who could think herself to orgasm in about one minute.

You can also trigger orgasms in brain-dead individuals by stimulating certain nerves on their lower spine. This is possible because, as mentioned, an orgasm is a reflex.

All men have the same amount of hormones. If you want to use yours growing body hair, that’s your business.

Most body hair is now useless. There are various theories as to why we evolved body hair and why we have lost some but not all of it as we evolved further.

There are two types of body hair: cranny hair, found in your armpits and pubic region, and androgenic hair, found on your arms and legs.

Likely (and, perhaps, ironically), cranny hair has to do with sexual attraction.

This is because, according to zoologist Desmond Morris, cranny hair behaves as a net that holds the body’s pheromones that attracts mates who are sexually compatible.

Androgenic hair, on the other hand, likely developed to help regulate body temperature. This is also why men have more androgenic body hair than women. That is, men needed body hair because they were out hunting and so their body temperatures were in constant flux whereas women’s body temperature didn’t vary as much because females were mainly nurturers and gathers.

What’s the point of your appendix?

Though your appendix, which is located in the lower right quadrant of your abdomen, produces some white blood cells, it is mostly useless. For this reason, most people can function fine if they have it removed.

Other mostly useless body parts include pinkie toes, the coccyx, wisdom teeth, the male uterus, and the female vas deferens.

You’re unique

No two people have identical fingerprints or toeprints, not even identical (monozygotic) twins. Like fingerprints and toeprints, everyone has a different pattern on his or her tongue and would make different teeth marks.

This means that your fingerprints and teeth marks are not entirely a result of your DNA because, if they were, monozygotic twins would have identical fingerprints and teeth marks because they have identical DNA.

Why do men have nipples?

According to an article published in Scientific American by Dr. Andrew M. Simons, a biology professor at Carleton University, “Like all ‘why’ queries, the question of why men have nipples can be addressed on many levels.”

In regards to why men have nipples he writes, “In a now-famous paper, Stephen Jay Gould and Richard C. Lewontin emphasize that we should not immediately assume that every trait has an adaptive explanation. Just as the spandrels of St. Mark’s domed cathedral in Venice are simply an architectural consequence of the meeting of a vaulted ceiling with its supporting pillars, the presence of nipples in male mammals is a genetic architectural by-product of nipples in females.”

“So, why do men have nipples? Because females do.”

Your largest organ

Skin is your largest organ and it makes up about 16 per cent of your body weight. It is made up of three main layers: the hypodermis, the dermis, and the epidermis.

In a period of 24 hours, your skin loses approximately 10 billion dead skin cells. This amounts to about two kilograms per year.

Your thinnest skin is about one millimeter thick and is on your eyelids. Your palms and the soles of your feet have the thickest skin which is approximately three millimeters thick.

Your skin acts as a container for your innards. It is a protective barrier from the outside world that guards against bacterial invasion. It helps to regulate your body temperature and provides a waterproof barrier to keep your internal liquids inside and the environments liquids outside.

Lets talk about it

“The Definitive Book of Body Language,” by Allan and Barbara Pease, mentions that kindergarteners laugh about 400 times a day where adults only laugh about 15 times.

Another study suggests that women smile more than men and that a positive correlation exists between smiling in school yearbook photos and having successful careers and marriages.

According to an American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) survey, 80 per cent of people are, ironically, not happy with their smile. AAP also found that smile enhancement procedures outnumber eyelid surgeries five to one.

The average American women says approximately 20, 000 words a day. That is 13, 000 more words than the average American male.

According to an Internet article by Marvin Mansky, “People who feel good about themselves take good care of their mouth and people who have a poor self image generally do not take good care of their mouth.”

Facts about Fat

Although body fat does not become hazardous to one’s health until it reaches levels of over 35 per cent of one’s weight, it is generally suggested that men ought to have less than 18 per cent body fat and women should have 23 per cent or less. Women generally have more body fat than men because it is required for childbearing and other hormonal related functions.

Two types of body fat are visceral (fat that surrounds your organs) and subcutaneous (fat that is beneath the skin). On average, subcutaneous fat makes up about 80 per cent of all your body fat.

Essential fats (such as fat that is stored in places such as your bone marrow, heart, lungs, muscles), is required for normal physiological functioning.
A pound of fat is equivalent to about 3, 500 calories.

Eye Spy

Dr. Jordan Peterson, psychology professor at the University of Toronto, said in a televised lecture that seeing is impossible. He reasons this based on the fact that boundaries between objects are unclear. Furthermore, why can we see on the scale we do and not on a micro or macro scale? Real life experiences, on the other hand, suggest that we can see.

Most people have three colour cones in their eyes and thus, for these people, there are three primary colours. Some people, however, have a fourth colour cone in their eyes and thus see four primary colours. Many birds have four colour cones.

For those of us with three colour cones, the most visible colour is chartreuse,
a yellowish green. It is the most visible because it is in the middle of the frequencies of visible light and makes more receptors in your brain fire than any other colour.