Your unusual dish of everything.
Weirdest Diseases – Part VI – Cotord’s Syndrome
Cotord’s Syndrome is when a person thinks that they have died, lost their soul, or lost a vital organ, when in fact they have lost nothing. They may even think they do not have blood.
walking corpse
This disorder has been linked to many other disorders including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Other than mental illness this disorder can come about when there is a problem with the persons brain, such as an injury. Some people with this disorder may feel immortal. Although this feeling is very rare among those that have Cotord’s Syndrome. They may test their own mortality by attempting suicide. So you can see that this disorder is very dangerous to the person who has it.
This disorder was named after Jules Cotard, a French neurologist. He first discovered this disorder as well as had a patient with it. He explained in a lecture that she did not believe in God or the devil and did not believe she had certain body parts. She also didn’t think that she had to eat. There are a few other cases that are documented throughout history, this one being in the 1800′s. There are a few cases more recently, such as the one in 1994. A man thought that he did not have a stomach, thus he was starving himself. There is even more recent cases in the 2000′s.
Since this disorder is so rare the right treatments for it are unknown. Many psychiatrists have tried antipsychotic therapy, but this does not seem to work. There have been four cases however that have been helped using electroconvulsive therapy. Electroconvulsive therapy is when electrodes are attached to the top of a persons head and electricity is administered to the brain, to cause a seizure. This is also used in very severe cases of depression.
As you can see there is still much to be learned from this disorder. Since Walking Corpse Syndrome is so rare psychologists and psychiatrists know little about it. Further research in this area can better determine if the therapy used today is the most effective treatment available. Although Electroconvulsive therapy seems to help it can also damage patients. This kind of treatment leads to memory loss in some cases severe memory loss. Although rare this strange disorder is very real to those who have it.
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Morgellons Disease
about 1 year ago - No comments
Morgellons disease is a mysterious skin disorder characterized by disfiguring sores and crawling sensations on and under the skin. Although Morgellons disease isn’t widely recognized as a medical diagnosis, experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are investigating reports of the condition, which they refer to as unexplained dermopathy.
Morgellons Disease
If you suspect that you have Morgellons disease, you may have many questions about the condition. Here’s what you need to know about Morgellons disease, including practical tips for managing your signs and symptoms.
What are the signs and symptoms of Morgellons disease?
People who have Morgellons disease report the following signs and symptoms:
- Skin rashes or sores that can cause intense itching
- Crawling sensations on and under the skin, often compared to insects moving, stinging or biting
- Fibers, threads or black stringy material in and on the skin
- Severe fatigue
- Inability to concentrate and short-term memory loss
- Behavioral changes
- Joint pain
- Vision changes
Morgellons disease shares characteristics with various recognized conditions, including Lyme disease, liver or kidney disease, schizophrenia, drug or alcohol abuse, and a mental illness involving false beliefs about infestation by parasites (delusional parasitosis).
How widespread is Morgellons disease?
Reports of Morgellons disease have been made in every state in the United States and 15 countries around the world. Most reported cases are clustered in California, Texas and Florida.
What do researchers know about Morgellons disease?
Beyond anecdotal reports, researchers know little about Morgellons disease. The CDC reports no known causes of Morgellons disease and no successful treatment for the condition. Whether Morgellons disease is contagious remains a mystery.
How controversial is Morgellons disease?
Current attitudes toward Morgellons disease fall into various categories:
- Some health professionals believe that Morgellons disease is a specific condition that needs to be confirmed by future research.
- Some health professionals believe that signs and symptoms of Morgellons disease are caused by another condition, often mental illness.
- Other health professionals don’t acknowledge Morgellons disease or are reserving judgment until more is known about the condition.
Some people who suspect Morgellons disease claim they’ve been ignored, criticized as delusional or dismissed as fakers. In contrast, some doctors say that people who report signs and symptoms of Morgellons disease typically resist other explanations for their condition.
How can you cope with the signs and symptoms of Morgellons disease?
The signs and symptoms linked to Morgellons disease can be distressing. Even though health professionals disagree about the nature of the condition, you deserve compassionate treatment. While research continues, take positive steps to manage your signs and symptoms.
- Establish a caring health care team. Find a doctor who acknowledges your concerns and does a thorough examination. Since Morgellons disease often requires frequent follow-up visits, a local health care team may be most convenient.
- Be patient. Your doctor will likely look for known conditions that point to evidence-based treatments before considering a diagnosis of Morgellons disease.
- Keep an open mind. Consider various causes for your signs and symptoms, and follow your doctor’s recommendations for treatment — which may include long-term mental health therapy.
- Seek treatment for other conditions. Get treatment for anxiety, depression or any other condition that affects your thinking, moods or behavior.
- Keep track of the latest news about Morgellons disease. Supplement the information you find online with articles published in peer-reviewed medical journals. Remember that some sources are more reputable than are others.
Congenital Insensitivity To Pain – People Who Can’t Feel Pain – CIPA
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CIPA or congenital insensitivity to pain is one of the rarest diseases in the world. A very rare condition and it is also known as congenital analgia. People diagnosed with this condition have their pain sensors turned off and they can’t feel any pain. The condition is extremely dangerous as these people are prone to danger not knowing the level of pain inflicted.
Congenital Insensitivity To Pain – People Who Can’t Feel Pain
What caused the disorder? It is an unknown condition when the brain that recognizes the pain does not connect to the nerves that sense the pain. This unknown condition only happens to the pain sensors. People with CIPA have their other sensory areas completely checked and normal. Incredibly a rare disease, 35 people in the United States is diagnosed with CIPA. Sadly, people with CIPA has low survival rate and many doesn’t live that long to the age of 25 making the case a difficult case to study.
Pains are relatively a unique sense. It keeps us out of trouble, our body defense against harmful actions and not being able to feel pain is totally dangerous. Children especially will need to know how to sense this pain. We need to know what we should or shouldn’t do when we feel pain and we also know how not to cause pain to ourselves. Pain can help you to avoid danger and what causing this danger.
Anhidrosis, a condition of the body’s inability to sweat is found in people with CIPA. This condition can worsen the issue. With Anhidrosis, people with CIPA are not able to feel extreme temperature. Together with this and the body’s inability to sweat only means that their body is unable to regulate its temperature.
Proper attention should be made to the children with CIPA. They need to be watched more often than the normal children and may need regular checks to the doctor to see whether they are not suffering from anything that they may not be aware of. To make sure that nothing is bleeding or there’s an open cut, they should be constantly checked since they are unable to differentiate this pain from other feelings.
In a case involving CIPA, a little girl who was three years old burnt her skin from a hot oven. The little girl put her hand on the hot oven and smiling with her blood all over the kitchen. The parents who found her were shocked. It is also known that when this little girl began teething, she shredded her own lips too.
Another case in China showed a perfectly healthy 10 year old boy with a body temperature of 43 degrees. In another case in Iraq, a boy who is awake for more than 2 years without sleeping. There are many of other cases of children with CIPA condition.
Congenital insensitivity to pain is very serious. Few people with CIPA do not live to see age 25 because these people can’t feel pain. They may catch simple illness and unknowingly catching few other simple illnesses along the way but was unable to get proper treatments since they can’t feel this pain. Their body too was unable to tell them and that’s why CIPA is the rarest disease in the world with no cure yet.
Trichotillomania
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Trichotillomania is hair loss from compulsive pulling or twisting of the hair until it breaks off.
Trichotillomania
Causes
Trichotillomania is a type of compulsive behavior. Its causes are not clearly understood.
It may affect as much as 4% of the population. Women are four times more likely to be affected than men.
Symptoms
Symptoms usually begin before age 17. The hair may come out in round patches or across the scalp. The effect is an uneven appearance. The person may pluck other hairy areas, such as the eyebrows, eyelashes, or body hair.
These symptoms are usually seen in children:
- An uneven appearance to the hair
- Bare patches or all around (diffuse) loss of hair
- Bowel blockage (obstruction) if people eat the hair they pull out
- Constant tugging, pulling, or twisting of hair
- Denying the hair pulling
- Hair regrowth that feels like stubble in the bare spots
- Increasing sense of tension before the hair pulling
- Other self-injury behaviors
- Sense of relief, pleasure, or gratification after the hair pulling
Exams and Tests
People with this disorder often will first seek the help of a doctor who treats skin problems (dermatologist).
A piece of tissue may be removed (biopsy) to rule out other causes, such as a scalp infection, and to explain the hair loss.
Treatment
Experts don’t agree on the use of medication for treatment. However, naltrexone and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) have been shown effective in reducing some symptoms. Behavioral therapy and habit reversal may also be effective.
Outlook (Prognosis)
Typically, trichotillomania is limited to younger children who tend to outgrow the behavior. For most, the hair pulling ends within 12 months. Children who start pulling hair early (before age 6) tend to do better than those who start later.
Possible Complications
People can have complications when they eat the pulled-out hair (trichophagia). This can cause a blockage in the intestines or lead to poor nutrition.
Prevention
Early detection is the best form of prevention because it leads to early treatment. Decreasing stress can help, because stress may increase compulsive behavior.
Alternative Names
Trichotillosis; Compulsive hair pulling.
Möbius Syndrome
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Background
Möbius syndrome is due, in part, to loss of function of motor cranial nerves. Although von Graefe described a case of congenital facial diplegia in 1880 , the syndrome was reviewed and defined further by Paul Julius Möbius, a German neurologist, in 1888 and 1892. Because of these contributions, Möbius is now the eponym used to describe the syndrome. p
Möbius Syndrome
The definition and diagnostic criteria for Möbius syndrome vary among authors. Both von Graefe and Möbius accepted only cases with both congenital facial diplegia and bilateral abducens nerve palsies as constituting M ö bius syndrome. In 1939, Henderson broadened the definition and included cases with congenital unilateral facial palsy.
Other authors are more restrictive in attempts to eliminate conditions of a different pathogenesis being labeled as Möbius syndrome. These investigators require the presence of a congenital musculoskeletal anomaly in order to make the diagnosis. In most studies, Möbius syndrome is defined as congenital facial weakness combined with abnormal ocular abduction.
Pathophysiology
The complete pathophysiological description of Möbius syndrome remains elusive. Whether nerve, brainstem, or muscle aplasia is the primary event has not been established. Nerves that may be involved include cranial nerves (CNs) VI through XII, with general sparing of CN VIII. CN III and CN IV can be involved, but only rarely. The facial nerves (CN VII) are involved in all cases, the abducens nerves (CN VI) in a high percentage of cases (75%), and the hypoglossal nerves (CN XII) in only a minority of cases.
Numerous theories exist concerning the primary underlying pathogenesis. Möbius believed that the condition was degenerative or toxic in origin and that it involved the nuclei of the affected nerves. Some authors suggest that the underlying problem is an inherited congenital hypoplasia or agenesis of the cranial nerve nuclei. Approximately 2% of cases appear to have a genetic basis. In addition, theories of vascular etiologies of the syndrome have many proponents. One such theory involves disruption of flow in the basilar artery or premature regression of the primitive trigeminal arteries. A second vascular theory is a disruption of the subclavian artery supply that involves interruption of the embryonic blood supply. Still others view Möbius syndrome as a mesodermal dysplasia involving musculature derived from the first and second branchial arches. This theory holds that brainstem changes are secondary to retrograde atrophy of the cranial nerves.
Simultaneous limb malformations with cranial nerve dysfunction suggests a disruption of normal morphogenesis during a critical period in the development of the embryonic structures of these regions, most likely at 4-7 weeks of gestation.
Frequency
United States
Möbius syndrome is a rare disorder. Only approximately 300 cases have been described in the English-language literature. The prevalence in the United States is reported as 0.002-0.0002% of births, or 1 case per 50,000 newborns.
International
In a nationwide Dutch survey reported in 2003, the prevalence of Möbius syndrome was at least 0.002% of births (4 cases per 189,000 newborns) for the years 1996-1998.
Mortality/Morbidity
Feeding problems at birth and in infancy may be severe and often are aggravated by associated micrognathia. In severe cases, death may occur in the perinatal period, often as a result of respiratory or bulbar problems. Life expectancy may be normal in patients with less extensive brainstem involvement.
- In a series from the Hospital for Sick Children in London, England, 8 of 29 patients died over the course of 18 years. All deaths occurred shortly after birth. Four of the deaths were due to respiratory or bulbar problems.
- Another striking feature causing morbidity in persons with Möbius syndrome is the high incidence of associated congenital deformities. The most common deformity is clubfoot. Brachial deformities and pectoral muscle hypoplasia have been described.
- A congenital condition called the Poland sequence, characterized by partial or complete absence of the pectoralis muscles and breast and ipsilateral hand malformations, is concurrent with Möbius syndrome in approximately 15% of patients.
Race
No racial predilection is described.
Sex
Both sexes are equally affected.
Age
Möbius syndrome is congenital, and most cases are diagnosed during infancy. The disease is not progressive, and the patient’s presentation is generally based on the severity of the symptoms.
100 Very Cool Facts About The Human Body – Part VIII
about 1 year ago - No comments
Disease and Injury
Most of us will get injured or sick at some point in our lives. Here are some facts on how the human body reacts to the stresses and dangers from the outside world.
unicorn injury
- Monday is the day of the week when the risk of heart attack is greatest. Yet another reason to loathe Mondays! A ten year study in Scotland found that 20% more people die of heart attacks on Mondays than any other day of the week. Researchers theorize that it’s a combination of too much fun over the weekend with the stress of going back to work that causes the increase.
- Humans can make do longer without food than sleep. While you might feel better prepared to stay up all night partying than to give up eating, that feeling will be relatively short lived. Provided there is water, the average human could survive a month to two months without food depending on their body fat and other factors. Sleep deprived people, however, start experiencing radical personality and psychological changes after only a few sleepless days. The longest recorded time anyone has ever gone without sleep is 11 days, at the end of which the experimenter was awake, but stumbled over words, hallucinated and frequently forgot what he was doing.
- A simple, moderately severe sunburn damages the blood vessels extensively. How extensively? Studies have shown that it can take four to fifteen months for them to return to their normal condition. Consider that the next time you’re feeling too lazy to apply sunscreen before heading outside.
- Over 90% of diseases are caused or complicated by stress. That high stress job you have could be doing more than just wearing you down each day. It could also be increasing your chances of having a variety of serious medical conditions like depression, high blood pressure and heart disease.
- A human head remains conscious for about 15 to 20 seconds after it is been decapitated. While it might be gross to think about, the blood in the head may be enough to keep someone alive and conscious for a few seconds after the head has been separated from the body, though reports as to the accuracy of this are widely varying.
100 Very Cool Facts About The Human Body – Part VII
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Aging and Death
From the very young to the very old, aging is a necessary and unavoidable part of life. Learn about the process with these interesting, if somewhat strange facts.
old couple
- The ashes of a cremated person average about 9 pounds. A big part of what gives the human body weight is the water trapped in our cells. Once cremated, that water and a majority of our tissues are destroyed, leaving little behind.
- Nails and hair do not continue to grow after we die. They do appear longer when we die, however, as the skin dehydrates and pulls back from the nail beds and scalp.
- By the age of 60, most people will have lost about half their taste buds. Perhaps you shouldn’t trust your grandma’s cooking as much as you do. Older individuals tend to lose their ability to taste, and many find that they need much more intense flavoring in order to be able to fully appreciate a dish.
- Your eyes are always the same size from birth but your nose and ears never stop growing. When babies look up at you with those big eyes, they’re the same size that they’ll be carrying around in their bodies for the rest of their lives. Their ears and nose, however, will grow throughout their lives and research has shown that growth peaks in seven year cycles.
- By 60 years of age, 60-percent of men and 40-percent of women will snore. If you’ve ever been kept awake by a snoring loved one you know the sound can be deafening. Normal snores average around 60 decibels, the noise level of normal speech, intense snores can reach more than 80 decibels, the approximate level caused by a jackhammer breaking up concrete.
- A baby’s head is one-quarter of it’s total length, but by age 25 will only be one-eighth of its total length. As it turns out, our adorably oversized baby heads won’t change size as drastically as the rest of our body. The legs and torso will lengthen, but the head won’t get much longer.
New ultra-flexible, waterproof LEDs can be implanted under your skin
about 1 year ago - No comments
LEDs are, on small scales, the cheapest, most reliable, and most technologically powerful light sources out there. But their true potential is finally being unleashed. A new generation of LEDs can go anywhere – even into your body.
Led
LEDs, or light-emitting diodes, are often used for text and video displays, and their infrared counterparts are everywhere in remote control technology. You can’t take a trip without running into an LED – traffic signals are all LEDs, as are most of the lights on a car dashboard. And anyone who has been to a rock concert has probably run into a few people going crazy with LED-powered glowsticks.
Still, as researcher John Rogers of the University of Illinois points out, LEDs are brittle, meaning they can’t be bent into different shapes. Well, no more, thanks to his new invention. He and his team have put tiny LEDs, each one smaller than the tip of a pen, on flexible electronic sheets. These sheets can be stretched and twisted up to 720 degrees without any loss in LED function, and they can hold up under soapy water or even underneath the skin, which they demonstrated by implant one sheet under the skin of mice.
As scientist’s tend to do, Rogers looks at this from the perspective of how it might benefit humanity. He sees great potential applications in using implanted LEDs for diagnostic purposes, and putting his LEDs on surgical gloves could allow doctors an even better view at what they’re operating on.
100 Very Cool Facts About The Human Body – Part VI
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Senses
The primary means by which we interact with the world around us is through our senses. Here are some interesting facts about these five sensory abilities.
Bees
- After eating too much, your hearing is less sharp. If you’re heading to a concert or a musical after a big meal you may be doing yourself a disservice. Try eating a smaller meal if you need to keep your hearing pitch perfect.
- About one third of the human race has 20-20 vision. Glasses and contact wearers are hardly alone in a world where two thirds of the population have less than perfect vision. The amount of people with perfect vision decreases further as they age.
- If saliva cannot dissolve something, you cannot taste it. In order for foods, or anything else, to have a taste, chemicals from the substance must be dissolved by saliva. If you don’t believe it, try drying off your tongue before tasting something.
- Women are born better smellers than men and remain better smellers over life. Studies have shown that women are more able to correctly pinpoint just what a smell is. Women were better able to identify citrus, vanilla, cinnamon and coffee smells. While women are overall better smellers, there is an unfortunate 2% of the population with no sense of smell at all.
- Your nose can remember 50,000 different scents. While a bloodhound’s nose may be a million times more sensitive than a human’s, that doesn’t mean that the human sense of smell is useless. Humans can identify a wide variety of scents and many are strongly tied to memories.
- Even small noises cause the pupils of the eyes to dilate. It is believed that this is why surgeons, watchmakers and others who perform delicate manual operations are so bothered by uninvited noise. The sound causes their pupils to change focus and blur their vision, making it harder to do their job well.
- Everyone has a unique smell, except for identical twins. Newborns are able to recognize the smell of their mothers and many of us can pinpoint the smell of our significant others and those we are close to. Part of that smell is determined by genetics, but it’s also largely do to environment, diet and personal hygiene products that create a unique chemistry for each person.
100 Very Cool Facts About The Human Body – Part V
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Sex and Reproduction
As taboo as it may be in some places, sex is an important part of human life as a facet of relationships and the means to reproduce. Here are a few things you might not have known.
Hotmale
- On any given day, sexual intercourse takes place 120 million times on earth. Humans are a quickly proliferating species, and with about 4% of the world’s population having sex on any given day, it’s no wonder that birth rates continue to increase in many places all over the world.
- The largest cell in the human body is the female egg and the smallest is the male sperm. While you can’t see skin cells or muscle cells, the ovum is typically large enough to be seen with the naked eye with a diameter of about a millimeter. The sperm cell, on the other hand, is tiny, consisting of little more than nucleus.
- The three things pregnant women dream most of during their first trimester are frogs, worms and potted plants. Pregnancy hormones can cause mood swings, cravings and many other unexpected changes. Oddly enough, hormones can often affect the types of dreams women have and their vividness. The most common are these three types, but many women also dream of water, giving birth or even have violent or sexually charged dreams.
- Your teeth start growing 6 months before you are born. While few babies are born with teeth in place, the teeth that will eventually push through the gums of young children are formed long before the child even leaves the womb. At 9 to 12 weeks the fetus starts to form the teeth buds that will turn into baby teeth.
- Babies are always born with blue eyes. The color of your eyes depends on the genes you get from your parents, but at birth most babies appear to have blue eyes. The reason behind this is the pigment melanin. The melanin in a newborn’s eyes often needs time after birth to be fully deposited or to be darkened by exposure to ultraviolet light, later revealing the baby’s true eye color.
- Babies are, pound for pound, stronger than an ox. While a baby certainly couldn’t pull a covered wagon at its present size, if the child were the size of an oxen it just might very well be able to. Babies have especially strong and powerful legs for such tiny creatures, so watch out for those kicks.
- One out of every 2,000 newborn infants has a tooth when they are born. Nursing mothers may cringe at this fact. Sometimes the tooth is a regular baby tooth that has already erupted and sometimes it is an extra tooth that will fall out before the other set of choppers comes in.
- A fetus acquires fingerprints at the age of three months. When only a small fraction of the way through its development, a fetus will have already developed one of the most unique human traits: fingerprints. At only 6-13 weeks of development, the whorls of what will be fingerprints have already developed. Oddly enough, those fingerprints will not change throughout the person’s life and will be one of the last things to disappear after death.
- Every human spent about half an hour as a single cell. All life has to begin somewhere, and even the largest humans spent a short part of their lives as a single celled organism when sperm and egg cells first combine. Shortly afterward, the cells begin rapidly dividing and begin forming the components of a tiny embryo.
- Most men have erections every hour to hour and a half during sleep. Most people’s bodies and minds are much more active when they’re sleeping than they think. The combination of blood circulation and testosterone production can cause erections during sleep and they’re often a normal and necessary part of REM sleep.
100 Very Cool Facts About The Human Body – Part IV
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Internal Organs
Though we may not give them much thought unless they’re bothering us, our internal organs are what allow us to go on eating, breathing and walking around. Here are some things to consider the next time you hear your stomach growl.
Parts of the body
- The largest internal organ is the small intestine. Despite being called the smaller of the two intestines, your small intestine is actually four times as long as the average adult is tall. If it weren’t looped back and forth upon itself it wouldn’t fit inside the abdominal cavity.
- The human heart creates enough pressure to squirt blood 30 feet. No wonder you can feel your heartbeat so easily. Pumping blood through your body quickly and efficiently takes quite a bit of pressure resulting in the strong contractions of the heart and the thick walls of the ventricles which push blood to the body.
- The acid in your stomach is strong enough to dissolve razorblades. While you certainly shouldn’t test the fortitude of your stomach by eating a razorblade or any other metal object for that matter, the acids that digest the food you eat aren’t to be taken lightly. Hydrochloric acid, the type found in your stomach, is not only good at dissolving the pizza you had for dinner but can also eat through many types of metal.
- The human body is estimated to have 60,000 miles of blood vessels. To put that in perspective, the distance around the earth is about 25,000 miles, making the distance your blood vessels could travel if laid end to end more than two times around the earth.
- You get a new stomach lining every three to four days. The mucus-like cells lining the walls of the stomach would soon dissolve due to the strong digestive acids in your stomach if they weren’t constantly replaced. Those with ulcers know how painful it can be when stomach acid takes its toll on the lining of your stomach.
- The surface area of a human lung is equal to a tennis court. In order to more efficiently oxygenate the blood, the lungs are filled with thousands of branching bronchi and tiny, grape-like alveoli. These are filled with microscopic capillaries which oxygen and carbon dioxide. The large amount of surface area makes it easier for this exchange to take place, and makes sure you stay properly oxygenated at all times.
- Women’s hearts beat faster than men’s.The main reason for this is simply that on average women tend to be smaller than men and have less mass to pump blood to. But women’s and men’s hearts can actually act quite differently, especially when experiencing trauma like a heart attack, and many treatments that work for men must be adjusted or changed entirely to work for women.
- Scientists have counted over 500 different liver functions. You may not think much about your liver except after a long night of drinking, but the liver is one of the body’s hardest working, largest and busiest organs. Some of the functions your liver performs are: production of bile, decomposition of red blood cells, plasma protein synthesis, and detoxification.
- The aorta is nearly the diameter of a garden hose. The average adult heart is about the size of two fists, making the size of the aorta quite impressive. The artery needs to be so large as it is the main supplier of rich, oxygenated blood to the rest of the body.
- Your left lung is smaller than your right lung to make room for your heart. For most people, if they were asked to draw a picture of what the lungs look like they would draw both looking roughly the same size. While the lungs are fairly similar in size, the human heart, though located fairly centrally, is tilted slightly to the left making it take up more room on that side of the body and crowding out that poor left lung.
- You could remove a large part of your internal organs and survive. The human body may appear fragile but it’s possible to survive even with the removal of the stomach, the spleen, 75 percent of the liver, 80 percent of the intestines, one kidney, one lung, and virtually every organ from the pelvic and groin area. You might not feel too great, but the missing organs wouldn’t kill you.
- The adrenal glands change size throughout life. The adrenal glands, lying right above the kidneys, are responsible for releasing stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. In the seventh month of a fetus’ development, the glands are roughly the same size as the kidneys. At birth, the glands have shrunk slightly and will continue to do so throughout life. In fact, by the time a person reaches old age, the glands are so small they can hardly be seen.
