“Scalp Is An Acronym”: 46 Facts About The Human Body That You Might Find Fascinating

One of the most emotional moments I've had reading First Aid was reading the line "Smallpox eradicated world wide by use of the live attenuated vaccine." Upon further reading, about 150 to 200 million lives have been saved between 1980 and 2018. So much suffering has been alleviated due to basic knowledge of bugs and our own immunology. Truly, just cool stuff.

The fact that If you stretch the DNA in one cell all the way out, it’s over 2 meters long and all the DNA in all your cells (of one person ) put together would be about twice the diameter of the entire Solar System!!!! Shout out to the underrated histones!!! Also don’t get me started on the genome itself. It’s just simply incredible!

The immune system is just amazing. Like the strategies that the body employs to protect you against pathogens are so exquisitely balanced (normally).

That we commonly develop “cancerous” cells and our body is able to find them with super intricate surveillance and destroy them before they grow. I never realized our body fended off cancer every day!

Yesterday in biochem: if a person farts continuously for 6 years and 9 months, it produces the energy equivalent of a nuke.

Today in biochem: North Dakota consumes the most beer nationally at 45.8 gallons per person per year.

Plum is the primary flavor in Dr. Pepper.

Those are the more recent ones. Last block, we had a professor that asked for fun facts for every hour of lecture. He would verify them and let us know their validity by next class. We pick up lots of nifty facts.

I found it interesting that peds has been turned on it’s head in the past few years about allergens. In the past, parents were told to avoid allergens like eggs and peanut butter until the baby was 2 years of age. Now, they give it to them as early as 4-6 months. They’ve found the earlier the introduction, the less likely the reaction to occur later on with daily introductions. So basically the opposite.

When you want to perform an action, the cerebellum gets a report on the current position of the body through the spinocerebellar pathway, the intended position of the from the frontal cortex, and subtracts the two to form a motor plan. That alone is mind-blowing enough, but the cerebellum is also constantly updated about the speed and force of muscle contraction as the movement is occurring and updates the plan in real time, thus fine-tuning and correcting the movement even as it's happening. That is so hype I literally can't believe it.

Diabetes mellitus and diabetes insipidus are named after how they make your urine *taste.*.

There are more over 65 year olds alive today than there have ever been in alive in all history combined before now. As in, all deceased 65 year olds and over in all human history added together is less than the current amount of alive 65 year olds. That is nuts!

How devastating diabetes actually is.

Honestly, I love iron metabolism. Everything from he synthesis to iron mediated cell destruction to its role in the pathology of neuronal injury is just crazy cool to me. If I’d gone PhD I’d probably be trying to work in ferroptosis rn.

When I found out bone marrow transplants were just an infusion of cells IV, not the injection of cells straight into the bone marrow. Blew my frickin mind.

Loved learning about cell signaling pathways so far. it’s just so insane to actually realize that all of these tiny processes are happening in your body every second and how each process has its own checking mechanism to make sure everything runs smoothly.

Babies born via C-section are much more likely to develop eczema than those born via vaginal births.

If you eat around 10 million bananas at once you’ll be giving yourself a lethal dose of radiation....


I’ll let myself out.

There's an HRT medicine with the brand name of Premarin. It's named after where they get the medicine from: PREgnant MAre uRINe.

So you've passed away in your apartment with your pets effectively trapped in a room with your now lifeless corpse. You forgot to feed them. How long do you think they'll go before hunger outweighs loyalty? The answer is "not long". Their favorite bits? Your face, digits and genitals. Source: Rotation with the medical examiner's office.

Every atom is 1% matter and about 99% empty space, and our bodies are made of millions of atoms…which means we are 99% nothingness.

A disproportionate number of people pass away in close proximity to doctors.

And, we don't really cure a whole heck of a lot. Just sort of manage things.

That there exists a ligament in the body called the gubernaculum, which somehow manages to be funnier to say then spleen.