Let's be honest — the human body is a strange organism. It can heal itself of minor cuts, regulate its own body temperature...oh, and grow a whole other human within an internal, and very expandable, muscular organ.
If all that doesn't make it clear, we'll reiterate: the body is undeniably peculiar. But despite this knowledge, nothing could quite prepare us for the startling body facts these Redditors willingly shared.
Instead of a little voice being heard in one's head, some Redditors revealed they actually view their inner monologue.
Yup, you read that right. An apparent selected few are actually able to see vivid pictures or scenes in lieu of hearing words.
But the plot thickens. Other users jumped onto the inner monologue debate, stating that they can both hear and see their inner thoughts. Talk about a total dream team!
Well, not quite.
The exact odds of having identical triplets are quite murky as no precise statistic has been concretely agreed upon.
A medically reviewed article on Verywell Family suggests that the chances of naturally conceiving identical triplets are one in 100,000 births.
This is significantly slimmer than the odds of one in 200 million that the Redditor states. So where did the user get this statistic?
The answer is most likely from news outlets, like the DailyMail, who previously covered stories of mothers giving birth to identical triplets.
In the articles, it is reported that these women have overcome the 200 million to one probability of delivering naturally conceived triplets.
As to which figures are correct, is a bit of a toss-up. But what is universally concurred is the greater chance of conceiving identical triplets with the help of assisted reproductive technology.
Okay, so that's not exactly true.
Instead, as another Reddit user explains, your runny nose triggered by an outburst of emotions isn't pure tears.
"The tears saturate the mucus, turning it runny," says rabid_briefcase.
So the next time you break into an uncontrollable sob and feel gross about your leaking nostrils, remember this fact.
After all, your nose is just being sympathetic and crying with you. It's actually really sweet when you look past the liquified snot.
An umami mushroom, to be exact.
That's what Reddit user littlepoot described after receiving plenty of comments from fellow Redditors who were understandably concerned and intrigued by his fungi comparison.
The user, who happens to be a cardiac anesthesiologist, seemingly caused the sale of mushrooms to drop significantly with one simple statement.
We certainly won't be eating umami anytime soon.
The user went on to explain that the nerves reside on the same level that sends signals to your organs in your urinary tract, specifically the urethra and bladder.
"So when you feel like you have to pee when you touch the inside of your belly button, that's why," they add.
The human body is so terrifyingly weird!
Confused? So were we until the Redditor broke down the process.
"The sensory aspect travels to the spinal cord and the spinal cord itself sends the muscle movement signals to your limbs," they explain.
If the dots still aren't connecting (we don't blame you, the nervous system is puzzling!), perhaps this imagined scenario of burning your hand on a stove will do the trick:
"Prime example: touching a hot stovetop by accident and withdrawing your hand so fast that by the time you even feel the burn, the hand is far away," writes Redditor guto8797.
It's crystal clear that the body can think on its own before we even have a chance to process what happened.
An article by The Scientist also states this fact, referencing a recent study that suggests a bone lost decades ago to human evolution is making a comeback.
The tiny bone, known as the fabella, is a tendon located just behind the knee. Scientists are unsure of why fabellas are reappearing in the human body.
A possible explanation posed by one author of the study is that humans are much more nourished than before, leading to taller and heavier people.
Both these factors strain the body's knees which suggests that the bone's reoccurrence could potentially be assisting with the movement of knee muscles. But this has yet to be proven.
Current research reveals that the bone seems to be causing more harm than good, as the fabella has been linked to knee problems.
Yeah, that rather unsettling fact just sounds like a lot of dust cleaning to us. Yuck!
But do the numbers actually hold up? Scientists of the UCSB ScienceLine, a program that sees researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara answer the questions of young students, argues yes.
One scientist devised a calculation to estimate the number of dead skin cells lost per minute.
And the final number is just over the 30,000-mark at 34,000 cells lost per minute. To put this into perspective, that's two million cells lost every hour.
We extend our sincerest apologies if this adorable sloth just made you yawn. It sure did get us ready to take a quick siesta.
But don't let all the cuteness distract you from the horrifying fact that a jaw muscle can be pulled while declaring your tiredness for all to see.
By the responses of other Redditors under the thread, it's evident that straining your jaw is not a fun time.
"It's extremely painful. It feels like someone ripped my jaw off for about five seconds. And then the pain vanishes," writes user HungryMorlock. Ouch!
We've all been there before — updating our voicemail greeting with a satisfactory grin until we playback the message. And within a few seconds, all confidence dissipates.
So why does our voice sound so different from what we're used to hearing? One Redditor offers an answer.
They explain that when we hear our own voice, the noise vibrates through our skull and into our ears. Low frequencies are better transmitted through this bone conduction than without it.
So when you hear your voice on a recording, you aren't hearing it through this bone-transmitted sound. Instead, you're hearing it solely through the air.
"That causes the dissonance between what you think your voice sounds like, and what it really does," the user adds. "It's also why your voice will (almost) always be [a] higher pitch than you think."
No, not exactly.
Many other Redditors were quick to point out that this fact isn't fully accurate.
"They have knee caps [sic], but they’re basically cartilage. They don’t harden until later in toddlerhood," writers user Lipstick_On.
Another explained that this hardening of the kneecaps, also commonly referred to as the patella bone, does occur between the ages of two and six as the original poster stated.
They provided a rationale as to why this is, explaining that babies have soft kneecaps earlier in life to make crawling around much easier and safer.
"You can live without it, but it’s not just chillin’ in there," the Redditor continued to explain.
This is a fascinating fact that contradicts what was formerly believed about the tiny organ. And furthermore, it's backed up by science.
A peer-reviewed article on the medical and live science hub, News Medical, also supports this claim. It states that the appendix does have a clear function.
According to research based out of the Duke University Medical Center, an appendix houses and produces microbes (microscopic organisms) that are beneficial to the human gut.
Putting party hats and a pair of sunglasses on pineapples won't disguise the fact that these fruits are currently plotting your death.
Okay, that's a gross exaggeration. But is it not terrifying to know that as we digest the pieces of pineapple in our stomachs, they're digesting us right back?
Yeah, that's a whole lot of nope for us.
"Not with that attitude," responds fellow Reddit user nokittythatsmypie.
Sure, a negative attitude does prevent a human from floating on helium. But that's not the only reason.
This helium theory wouldn't work largely because of the fact that it would be fatal.
As another Redditor explains, inflating a human's lungs with helium would cause the organ to explode long before enough gas could be pumped in to counter the body's weight.
"That combined with the complete replacement of oxygen in the lungs means no, absolutely not survivable in any capacity," they conclude.
Admittedly, this sounds a lot scarier than it actually is.
A newborn's collarbone doesn't actually break the same way a developed adult's bone would, says user 3dt4mor1, whose baby's collarbone broke during birth.
"More like a fresh, young stick, it bends and fractures, but does not break clean off," they go on to explain.
And as such, the crack heals quite rapidly. The only remnants of the break may be a slightly raised section of the collarbone where the fracture grew back together, creating a callus.
You just "woooh'd" and "haaah'd" on your hand to test it out, didn't you?
It's okay, we're just as guilty. And to our surprise (assumably yours as well), this theory does actually check out.
As for the scientific reason behind it, well, that's not so clear. But the most logical explanation we could find comes from another Reddit user, Soloandthewookiee.
They explain that when you "wooo" at a fast speed, you create a cooling effect with your breath. This is comparable to "how wind on a hot summer day still feels cooler even though the air is the same temperature."
But when you breathe out at a slower pace, still making the "wooo" mouth shape, the air feels warmer.
Thus, it's not so much the mouth shape that results in a warmer or cooler breath; it's the speed of your exhale.
Okay, so what the heck does an 'oversensitive vasovagal response' mean?
According to Verywell Health, the vasovagal response is "an automatic response within our bodies that occurs as a result of stimulation of our vagus nerve."
The vagus nerve is known as the lengthiest nerve in the autonomic nervous system. Think of this system as the control panel that subconsciously regulates bodily functions, like heart rate, respiration, and digestion.
When the vagus nerve is unexpectedly stimulated by external triggers it can cause a variety of symptoms throughout the body, such as fainting.
It comes as no surprise that one of the triggers responsible for causing the nerve to go haywire is the sight of blood.
While the percent of this fact wasn't disputed, defining sweat as 'waste' was. Redditor bearpics16 explained that the statement is misleading.
"Sweat isn't waste," they wrote. "It's mostly salt and water. Both are very essential."
As well as vital to what the user suggests is an important function to maintaining healthy skin
"You can't see it because your brain tricks you not to see, it covers the spot with some made-up image of what it thinks fits better with the rest of it," the user went on to explain.
Feeling a little skeptical? We were too. And then we tried a simple test that has you cover one eye and stare at a symbol, moving forward and backward until it disappears.
You can give the clever test a shot on WedMD.
We saved the most horrifying fact for last, and it comes with some good and bad news.
Here's the bad: we weren't able to find any studies proving this statistic to be wrong.
And now for the good: we thankfully weren't able to find any studies proving this statistic to be true.
Because it would be extremely concerning if that figure was just floating around the Internet.
