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“Your Internal Organs Itch”: 58 Facts About The Human Body That Might Keep You Up At Night
Even if you think you learned everything that you needed to know way back in biology class, everyone has knowledge gaps. And often you’re not even aware that they exist. There are tons of things we don’t know—or incorrectly assume we know—about how the human body works.
To shed some light on this topic, internet users shared some of the creepiest and coolest facts about the human body in an intriguing AskReddit thread. We collected the most interesting, spine-tingling ones to share with you, and you’ll find them below. Scroll down to learn something new that might just change how you see the world… and yourself.
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#1
The reason bleach feels “slippery” if it gets on your hand is because of saponification, it’s breaking down the fat in your skin and making it into soap. Always wear gloves when handling bleach. .
Emma London 1 day ago
When you eat lutefish, a traditional Norwegian Christmas dish, and tastes slippery 😬
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#2
When you tilt your head to the side, your eyeballs rotate so that the "top" stays oriented.
Want to be freaked out? Go look in a mirror and watch some stationary part of your eye, like a blood vessel. Then tilt your head and see your eyeball turn like a steering wheel.
#3
About 5% of our brain activity is conscious, and 95% unconscious.
That's not the creepy part.
The creepy part is that studies have shown the unconscious part of our brain making a decision up to several seconds before the conscious part thinks it's made a choice, and then retroactively justifying "why" with our conscious thoughts about it.
Breadcrumb. 1 day ago
Listen, if it's reminding my stupid self to breathe with out me thinking about it, I'm on board.
One of the coolest biology-related things we’ve learned in recent years is that your brain gets ‘washed’ to flush out waste while you sleep. In a nutshell, based on research conducted by scientists at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, nerve cells coordinate to produce rhythmic waves, which then propel fluid through dense brain tissue, washing it.
“These neurons are miniature pumps. Synchronized neural activity powers fluid flow and removal of debris from the brain,” says the study’s first author, Li-Feng Jiang-Xie, PhD.
“If we can build on this process, there is the possibility of delaying or even preventing neurological diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, in which excess waste—such as metabolic waste and junk proteins—accumulate in the brain and lead to neurodegeneration.”
#4
Some may find it creepy i guess; maybe more... disturbing. Tinnitus can often be neurological rather than from physical damage, meaning you can be completely deaf and still have the ringing/buzzing in your ears. As someone who has Tinnitus, I've learned to filter it in day to day life, but it's hard to impossible below a certain level of ambient noise. Id quickly go mad if it was the only sound I could actually hear....
#5
Male and female genitals are made up of the same embryological components, just arranged differently, and with some bits growing bigger depending on hormone exposure.
#6
It's a classic but humans are born with their baby teeth and their adult teeth, the adult teeth just hang on behind the baby teeth until their time comes, which means that a toddler's face is like 50% teeth and the skull images you can find on google are very unsettling.
Meanwhile, the senior author on the paper, Jonathan Kipnis, PhD, stresses that it is “critical” for the brain to dispose of metabolic waste build-up.
“We knew that sleep is a time when the brain initiates a cleaning process to flush out waste and toxins it accumulates during wakefulness. But we didn’t know how that happens. These findings might be able to point us toward strategies and potential therapies to speed up the removal of damaging waste and to remove it before it can lead to dire consequences,” Kipnis said.
#7
Your spinal cord is the same consistency as a banana.
#8
Finding out old scars reopen with scurvy haunts me.
#9
When you sleep your brain gets power washed with spinal fluid!
What do you think, Pandas? Which of these facts impressed you the most? Which ones did you find the creepiest and why? Were there any that you already knew? What’s the most bizarre and impressive biology fact you know that wasn’t mentioned here?
Share your thoughts with all the other readers (and us!) in the comments at the bottom of this post.
#10
When you're in a plane at cruising altitude and lose cabin pressure, you have about 15 seconds of useful consciousness before hypoxia sets in. That's why they tell you to put your own oxygen mask on first - you'd pass out trying to help others.
I'm a pilot and this fact still gives me chills.
#11
It takes up to a year for all the organs to go back in the right place after being pregnant. Also, during a c-section, they kind of just mush everything back inside and it all eventually goes back to where its suppose to on its own!
CP 1 day ago
I watched my ex get a C-section and it is wild. My first got stuck coming out so the baby wasn't in the normal C-section spot. They cut her open, pulled out the organs and set them on a table, and finally they pulled my pride and joy out. Even crazier was she was awake the entire time. She doesn't remember a thing, but I was talking to her. They just put the organs back in a sewed her up. It seemed easy for the doctors. It was 2 am and a team of people showed up out of nowhere to do this. Doctors are typically awesome!
#12
Everything in your house is completely covered by dead skin and is being eaten by something as we speak.
You also sleep in it :)
Sweet dreams.
OhnoI’vebeencensored 1 day ago
Not done me any harm, bar the occasional sneeze. I don't let stuff like this worry me.
#13
Babies grow and shed hair in the amniotic sac, which by the end of pregnancy is filled with.. old hair.
#14
Pretty much all the different fluids your body can leak. My wife got a poorly placed epidural (2 natural births and finally caved on #3 and it got messed up and was awful) and was leaking spinal fluid. Read a story about a guy who had a runny nose, but it was brain fluid! So now I feel like I'm an old truck and I'm just going to start waking up with random leaks under me :D.
Emma London 1 day ago (edited)
My friend started to leak brain fluid from her nose after having a cold, it turned out that she had a hole between the brain and nasal cavity. And she only went to a doctor because she couldn't sleep due the fluid ending up her throat and lungs when she was laying down.
#15
When having an operation doctors move your organs around to get to where they need to go. Once they are finished they dont put them back. They return back all on there own. Same with being pregnant. If you have a baby in there it moves your organs out of the way to make room. Once you give birth they start to realign back into place on there own. Like they remembered where they were.
#16
Not too happy with the fact that there’s a bunch of hollow tunnels filled with mucus exactly just right behind my face.
#17
Some women can actually feel pain when they ovulate. It’s called mittelschmerz, a German word that means “pain in the middle.
#18
Your brain can’t actually feel pain.That’s why surgeons can perform brain surgery on awake patients. You can feel pain in your skin, skull, and meninges but the organ that interprets pain itself feels none. It’s unsettling to realize the thing that screams “OUCH” can’t experience it at all.
#19
Your internal organs itch; your brain chooses to ignore the sensation!
#20
When were in an unfamiliar environment, we sleep with half our brain at a time kinda like sharks and that's why we wake up easier.
#21
Some people are walking around with 3 or more kidneys because when you get a transplant, unless medically necessary, they leave the old ones in there.
#22
You can be internally decapitated. The neck breaks and your head literally is only connected by soft tissue.
Chich the witch 1 day ago
Currently watching an episode of Bones where this was the cause of death.
#23
The feeling in your stomach when you go down on a roller coaster is your organs lagging behind your body.
#24
If you’ve ever worked in an OR, the smell of cauterization is similar to cooking steak/pork. We’re all literally walking meat sacks made of electrical signals.
#25
There are tiny mites that live in your eyelashes all the time.
#26
Your body produces cancer cells all the time.
#27
There's a fun little thing called Prions, which are a incorrectly folded protein. It has given us some fun diseases, like the Mad Cow Disease, Zombie Deer Disease, Kuru, and FFI (Fatal Familiar Insomnia). While these diseases are either genetic or spread by eating tainted meat, FFI has a fun little cousin called SFI, or Sudden Fatal Insomnia.
While extremely rare (only 3-5 known cases world wide, AFAIK), it can happen to anyone. Suddenly, in your late 30's, you start to lose the ability to sleep. Sleeping pills and such work in the beginning, but over time they no longer do the trick. Once you can no longer sleep (which can take anything from a few months to a few years), you only have a few weeks to live before your body breaks down.
#28
The ovaries aren’t physically connected to the fallopian tubes. The eggs shoot out into the fallopian tubes. This also means that certain other things (👀) that may go into the fallopian tubes ultimately just swim out the ends and end up floating around in the abdominal cavity.
#29
Young children can fully regenerate the the tip of a finger if it is severed or amputated.
Apparently the younger they are, the more active stem cells the have to promote this process which we adults lack.
#30
Your intestines and other organs are always squirming and moving around but your brain ignores it.
#31
Look at anything around you. Your tongue knows what it would feel like to lick it.
#32
I work in an emergency room. The sheer amount of patients that come in with literal maggot infestations is, well, disturbing.
Norfolk and good 1 day ago
Maggot therapy is still used today to clean some wounds. They are very effective at removing dead tissue and cleaning wounds.
#33
After the placenta is delivered you have a dinner-plate sized wound in your uterus.
#34
Unborn babies can cry inside your womb if you are pregnant.
#35
Brain matter smell is hella gross. Source: I'm a paramedic.
George Costanza 1 day ago
Every organ has a smell. Fresh brains (I've done many autopsies) never smelled particularly bad to me. Worst is the colon when ruptured (obviously). Otherwise the liver and kidneys have distinctive smells (just like animal ones). Most things smell like the blood they're often covered in, sort of a sicky-sweet metallic smell. Certainly doesn't make me crave organ meat for dinner, though.
#36
I have three:)
1.Ribs can regrow. It’s a problem they have to watch for if ribs are being removed for medical reasons. The tiny bud left behind on the rib cage starts a new bone.
2.Humans typically have one spleen, located in the upper left abdomen, but it's relatively common (around 10-20% of people) to have extra, smaller spleens (accessory spleens or splenunculi) due to developmental variations or the body's natural ability to regenerate spleen tissue after injury, a process called splenosis. I’ve read cases of people having six. Unless you have surgery near them, they rarely cause issues and you are unlikely to ever know they are there.
3.Children under a certain age do not have knee caps.
#37
When you gain body fat, as much grows internally as externally.
#38
When a bone saw cuts into a preserved human skull it smells frighteningly similar to cool ranch Doritos.
Yes, I still eat cool ranch Doritos.
#39
Human bones stay wet for a very long time when left to dry naturally. (I worked in an osteology lab in college).
GenuineJen 1 day ago
I try to lick all of my bones on a regular basis to keep them from drying out.
#40
Evolution hasnt fully ironed out the whole walking upright thing. Its literally bad for your hips and back.
#41
That you can live without basically half of your organs. By that I mean 1 kidney, half a spleen, 1 lung, etcetera. Not going to be a great life but you can live.
#42
The “baby smell” that young babies have generally fades around two years of age. Coincidentally this is also around the time that babies skull finishes fusing together to get rid of the soft spot, leaving scientist to believe that what you’re actually smelling is baby’s brain.
#43
Bones aren’t naturally white. They can be cream, yellow, brown, red, or even black depending on minerals, medical conditions, or environment. There’s a real case where a woman’s bones were black, and it was only discovered after an accident during surgery. Most people never know their bone color unless bones are exposed. So you can have black bones for all you know 🤷♀️.
#44
Probably posted already but there are a few people born with all organ asymmetries on the opposite side (pancreas, liver, aorta position, etc.). This isn’t creepy until you try to diagnose appendicitis .
#45
That when you twist your wrist, your forearm bones overlap. It's biomechanically normal, but it's kinda gross to see in simulation.
#46
Your BRAIN is what makes your skin prune in water, your skin does NOT do it automatically.
Words From Infinity 1 day ago
I’ve noticed that I don’t prune anymore, no matter how long I soak. What’s is all mean, jelly bean?
#47
Your skeleton isn't inside of you. You are inside your skeleton, since your brain is inside of your skull.
#48
Your stomach is full of warm vomit.
You can thank another reditor from last week traumatizing me with that one...
#49
That if the chemicals expressed by the pancreas are blocked from the digestive tract (by gall stones) those chemicals just eat the pancreas itself.
Savannah greenleaf 1 day ago
Wouldn't gall stones block the gallbladder not the pancreas? I imagine it could be blocked but not by that.
#50
We almost all have eyelash mites that are a type of arachnid. Spiders live in your eyes.
#51
Well its not really about a living human body, but like literally a body.
Apparently a decomposing human body emits a "sweet scent", the type of overwhelmingly sweet scent that makes you instantly nauseous, even tjose that have often smelled it get nauseous by it, many thta smell it for the first time often throw up.
Thing like eating way too much sugand and getting a stomach ache, but then all that sugar is a scent in the standing air.
Oxford Ranch 1 day ago
The smell of “death”is one that you won’t soon forget. Used to own an auto wrecking yard. Some of the things people did to commit their own death always amazed me.
#52
I'm always amused that the colour purple doesn't exist, our brains invented it.
Purple is not violet as purple is a mixture of red and blue where as violet has a definite range of wavelengths.
When our brains see blue and red, which are at opposite ends of the spectrum, it sort of joins these opposite ends together and invents what we see as purple.
#53
Human cheekbones evolved to be thicker to withstand punches to the face better.
#54
Our bodies replaces most of its cells over time, yet our fears nd trauma can stay unchanged.
Stardust she/her 1 day ago
Well the braincells cannot die or be replaced as easily so you are still the same you just with a different meat exterior
#55
The fact your eyes are invisible to your brain and if they ever found out they existed they’d destroy them!! Can happen if you get a strong enough eye infection and you can say goodbye to your sight forever!! 😳.
Kirsten Kerkhof 1 day ago (edited)
I have herpes virus in my eyes (like the canker sores people get around their mouth, but mine are IN my eyes). Every 6 months or so, when my immune system dips a bit, it flares up and I need strong Prednison eye drops to suppress the infection. It started some 20 years ago, and by all means I ought to have been blind for years. Thank God for modern medicine.
#56
Your bladder is connected to your bellybutton. There's a condition that can cause your bellybutton to "open" and leak pee.
#57
Galen (c.129–c.216 CE) would dissect piglets live , and their screams bothered him . He found that by running his knife along both sides of the wind pipe he could sever a nerve that made the screams stop. I mean the pigs were still screaming , but their vocal cords made no noise .
And that's how we learned about the recurrent laryngeal nerve and its function.
#58
Every time you smell someone else's fart, you are literally inhaling bits of their fecal matter.
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What do you think ?
Norfolk and good 1 day ago
I've got one. It's possible for faecal matter to be vomited. If the bowels become obstructed then the faecal matter will come back the way it came.
patricia patricia 1 day ago
People, if you don't know what they are and you want to be able to sleep at night, DON'T look it up. You've been warned.
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Norfolk and good 1 day ago
I've got one. It's possible for faecal matter to be vomited. If the bowels become obstructed then the faecal matter will come back the way it came.
patricia patricia 1 day ago
People, if you don't know what they are and you want to be able to sleep at night, DON'T look it up. You've been warned.
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