Belly buttons are full of lint, bacteria, and fungi. If they're infected, there might also be a cheese-like liquid inside.
If you're allergic to pollen, your immune system mistakes it for a threat and releases histamine. That makes you sneeze in an effort to flush the grains out.
The human body can replace 20 million cells in just a few seconds, which means over a lifetime, your body produces a lot of hair, blood, saliva, and skin. Our bodies shed a whole layer of outer skin every two to four weeks. Your liver can regenerate itself – sort […]
Space is a dangerous and unfriendly place not suited for human life, yet astronauts are sent up to the International Space Station every year. From exposure to high levels of radiation to surviving in micro-gravity conditions, space can be a tough place to live. Without gravity working on your body, […]
The average billed cost of a heart transplant is an estimated $US1,382,400, according to consulting firm Milliman, and other organs aren’t much cheaper. Doctors say transplant centres are strong revenue sources for hospitals; they charge high service fees, which factor into the overall cost, to help meet their bottom line. […]
Your brain is one of the first parts of your body to break down. Just a few minutes after death, its cells collapse and release water. Then other energy-guzzling organs follow. That night, microbes eat through your gut and escape into the rest of your body. They release toxic gases […]
Each year, 26 million Americans experience allergies, sometimes nicknamed hay fever. When trees, weeds, and grasses want to mate, they release thousands of pollen grains into the air – which can end up entering your lungs, eyes, and nose. Special antibodies attach to the grains and summon immune cells to […]
Belly buttons are most people’s first scars, which form when doctors cut their umbilical cord after birth. Most innies are full of dozens of kinds of bacteria, fungi, and lint – especially if they’re on a hairy belly. If a navel gets infected, it might also have a foul-smelling, cheese-like […]
Beer bellies aren’t exclusive to beer drinkers. It has more to do with the way our bodies store up fat. While women tend to store fat in their thighs, arms, and backside, men tend to do so in their bellies. Visceral fat pushes a man’s abdominal wall outward, creating a […]
Stubbing your toe hurts so much because you’re slamming a tiny surface with a force equal to 2-3 times your bodyweight. Then a bundle of nerve endings called nociceptors fire a danger signal to your brain. Although it’s not pleasant, this pain might have helped your ancestors step carefully and […]
Around 200,000 different species of bug, bacteria, and fungus live in your house. You may think most of them live in your toilet, but that’s not true. Some fungi live in your air conditioner and get blasted throughout the house. One kind of mycobacteria lives in your showerhead and has […]
NASA and companies like SpaceX and Boeing are looking to the moon and Mars as exciting targets for astronaut exploration, if not permanent colonization. However, we’re only just beginning to understand what long-term life in space can do to human bodies. Much of what scientists are learning comes from NASA’s […]
Researchers have identified a network of fluid-filled spaces surrounded by connective tissue that fills the spaces between our organs, surrounding and potentially protecting our insides throughout the body. In a study, scientists define this network as a new organ, the interstitium, which they say could be the largest organ in […]
Anil Seth, professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, explains the link between perception and reality. Seth believes reality as we know it comes from activity of our brain. Following is a transcript of the video. Anil Seth: How do we know that we experience the […]
The human body is in a constant state of regeneration, from the cells in our skeleton to the nails on our toes. But some cells are replaced more quickly than others, and some body parts never get replaced. The graphic below illustrates how cellular regeneration and regrowth happens in your […]
Here's what actually happens when you "pull" a...
Your body is walking proof of evolution, but...
