A few weeks ago I wrote my column on interesting facts about fruits and vegetables I’ve learned. The response was so incredible, I decided to write this week, on interesting facts about our bodies. Here are a few. Every human spent about half an hour as a single cell. The strongest muscle in the human body is the tongue. It takes 17 muscles to smile and 42 to frown. You use 200 muscles to take one step. Each square inch of human skin consists of 20 feet of blood vessels. The feet account for one quarter of all the human body’s bones. Every tongue print is unique. The colder the room you sleep in, the better the chance you’ll have a bad dream. Women blink twice as many times as men.

Babies are born with 300 bones, but by the time they are an adult they only have 206, because some bones fuse. A fetus acquires fingerprints at the age of three months. Your nose can remember 50,000 different scents. The tooth is the only part of the human body that can’t repair itself. The average human drinks about 16,000 gallons of water in their lifetime. Your body has enough iron in it to make a nail 3 inches long. The most common blood type in the world is type O. The rarest blood type is h/h or “Bombay blood”, and has been found in less than a hundred people since its discovery.

An average human scalp has 100,000 hairs. It is not possible to tickle yourself, because your brain can predict where the tickle is coming from. Your brain uses about 20 percent of all your oxygen and caloric intake. In just 30 minutes, your body can produce enough heat to boil a gallon of water. Muscles that control your eyes contract about 100,000 times a day. Your teeth start growing six months before you’re born. One out of 200 infants already has a developed tooth at birth. Less than one third of the human race has 20/20 vision. The three things pregnant women dream most about during their first trimester are frogs, worms, and potted plants.

Your eyes are always the same size from birth, but your nose and ears keep growing. Every square inch of human skin contains about 20,000 bacteria. You are 1cm taller in the morning than before you go bed. You have no sense of smell when you’re sleeping. Children grow faster in the Spring as compared to any other time of year.  Your eyes can actually see your nose all the time, but your brain ignores it. An average person has over 1,460 dreams a year. That’s about 4 dreams each night. On a clear night the human eye can see about 2000 to 3000 stars in the sky.

Did you know 50 percent of human DNA is the same as a banana? The human eye is so sensitive that if the earth were flat, you could actually see a candle flickering 30 miles away. Your brain is more active at night than in daytime.   If the human brain were a computer, it could actually perform 38 thousand-trillion operations per second. Many scientists believe the higher your IQ, the more you dream.  I hope you enjoyed these interesting but true facts about the human body. As the Bible says  we  are “fearfully and wonderfully made”. Diet  or exercise question? Email me at dwcrocker77@gmail.com or visit fitness4yourlife.org. David Crocker of Landrum has been a nutritionist and master personal trainer for 28 years. He served as strength director of the Spartanburg Y.M.C.A., head strength coach for the USC-Spartanburg baseball team, S.C. state   champion girl’s gymnastic team and the Converse college equestrian team. He served as a water safety consultant to the United States Marine corps., lead trainer to L.H. Fields modeling agency and taught four semesters at USC-Union. David was also a regular guest of the Pam Stone radio show.