Most people breathe between 12 and 20 times a minute.
*in*
*out*
*in*
*out*
A lot of people breathe mainly through one nostril at a time.
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Thanks to something called the nasal cycle, which somewhere between 20 and 80% of people experience (yup, super-specific number there).
As BuzzFeed Science explains in , one nostril is blocked during the nasal cycle so you can only breathe around one-third to two-thirds of the normal amount through it, and your dominant nostril switches periodically.
You probably blink around 15 times a minute.
Give or take a few. The variation between individuals is actually pretty huge, though, so don’t be surprised if you blink a lot more or less than this. The rate also tends to change depending on what you’re doing – some people blink less while reading, and more while in conversation.
Speaking of your eyes, there are mites living in your eyelashes right now.
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And also around your nose and in your ears and in the oil-secreting sebaceous glands in your pores. There are two kinds of mites that inhabit human faces: Demodex folliculorum, which live in hair follicles, and Demodex brevis, which live in your sebaceous glands. They have eight stubby legs and elongated bodies, and a study published in PLOS One found that all participants over the age of 18 had Demodex DNA on their faces.
You can’t breathe and swallow at the same time.
Via letmegifthatforyou.tumblr.com
That is, unless you’re a nursing baby, or a non-human primate. At some point in our evolution, humans lost the ability to do this.
Your tongue is either resting at the top or bottom of your mouth.
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You might have heard that that native English-speakers tend to rest their tongue at the top of their mouth. This seems to have originated from a study published in the journal Phonetica that involved just 10 participants, so the results aren’t conclusive.
Either way, your tongue is resting somewhere, and now you’re acutely aware of it. You’re welcome.
There are more bacteria living in your mouth right now than there are humans on Earth.
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Dr Bruce Paster, a microbiologist at the Forsyth Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, told NPR in 2007 that there are between 10 and 50 billion bacteria in your mouth.
The average adult has 10 pints of blood in their body.
When you donate blood, you give around a pint of that.
Most adults’ hearts beat between 60 and 100 times per minute.
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Each beat pumps out around 70ml of blood.
This means your heart pumps around five litres of blood every minute.
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Ten pints is just over five litres, so all of your blood is pumped through your heart about once every minute.
Most people are susceptible to contagious yawning, even when they’re not tired.
Seeing someone else yawn or even just reading the word “yawn” can trigger you to yawn yourself. Feeling sleepy?
Itching can also be contagious.
“Simply seeing someone scratching is enough to trigger your own bout of clawing, in a vain effort to rid yourself of pests, real or imagined,” Robert Provine, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, told Science of Us.
And finally, this is what your spine looks like if you were looking down at your phone while reading this post.
Kenneth Hansraj / Surgical Technology International
According to work published in the Surgical Technology International journal, (or your book, or anything, tbh) could be putting up to 60 pounds (27kg) of weight on your spine.
Have a nice day!
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