“Temper is basically the fight-or-flight response, getting us pumped,” says Bonior. “When we feel threatened, our entire body becomes more tense, and our actions more impulsive: It’s the opposite of relaxation and deliberate thought. We’re prone to overreacting to the smallest thing, because our body is primed...
Fingers Crossed There are 27 bones, 29 joints and at least 123 named ligaments in the human hand, but there are zero muscles: Tendons in our fingers are moved by the muscles of the forearm. Weirdly enough, if you were to lose one finger, the hand surgeons’...
Anyone who’s ever ridden in an elevator, carpooled, or stayed over at a new partner’s house for the night has tried to hold in a fart. This is a fact. Sometimes, it works: Other times, the pressure builds too much and your butt lets forth with a...
It Can’t Be Beat Every minute, your heart pumps about eight pints of blood through a system of vessels that’s more than 60,000 miles long. All in all, that translates to a whopping total of about 2,000 gallons of blood each and every day. Take that, Big...
Joint Effort The human elbow is a hinge-joint system made up of three bones: The humerus, the radius and the ulna. The humerus starts at the shoulder socket, while the radius comes from the thumb-area of the wrist and the ulna from the little finger side. Those...
Four simple steps to a good first day: 1. Allow plenty of time to get ready—check and double-check your appearance before heading out the door! 2. Make sure you know where you’re going! It sounds obvious, but you should find out exactly where you’re expected to go...
Anyone who’s experienced a swift hit to the nutsack knows just how painful that is, and has most definitely proceeded to ask (in a very high pitched voice), “Why must my testes be so tender?” We’ve felt your pain, so we sat down with Dr. Muhammad Mirza,...
Read My Lips Everyone’s lip mark is totally unique, just like our fingerprints, and thanks to millions of nerve endings, they’re at least 100 times more sensitive than our fingertips. They have no sweat glands—which is why they dry so fast—and no protective tissue either, which makes...
According to recent research by Australian scientists, we all have a second brain deep in our bums—and it’s surprisingly clever. It’s not a literal brain, mind you: As per Live Science’s report on the study, it’s “more of an autonomous matrix of millions of neurons that can,...
The Gut-Brain Connection Having a “gut-wrenching experience” or “feeling butterflies in your stomach” when you see the person you fancy is not as metaphorical as we may think: Anxiety, sadness and anger are all linked to stomach problems, since our gastrointestinal tract is sensitive to emotion and...
If your morning shave routine ends up looking less like the one in Key Largo and more like the one from Dumb and Dumber, don’t go running to the doctor raving about haemophilia—the explanation is actually quite simple. Your face is incredibly vascular near the surface, meaning...
From a young age, we’re taught to chew before we swallow. This, of course, is primarily to prevent our young selves from choking on large chunks of unmasticated food. To this day, though, articles around the web spout the importance of chewing your food at least 20...
