5 Almost Magical Processes Your Body Is Doing Right Now

The human body works in a complex and surprising way, and not infrequently we find ourselves perplexed by what we can do, albeit involuntarily. Cracked has put together a host of human body features that will make you jaw-dropping. Doubt? Then check out the following information and be surprised:

1 - A matter of smell and taste

If you think only your face has smell and taste receptor cells, be prepared to be surprised: research over the past decade has revealed that parts of the human body such as the kidneys, heart, spine, respiratory tract and even our blood cells have receptors. of smell and taste!

In the kidneys, scientists have found smell receptors within a component known as the "dense macula." This region is responsible for regulating blood filtration and urine production, but the presence of these smell-related cells suggests that our kidneys literally smell and / or taste the pee we produce, almost as if it were a chemical analysis., say so.

Another experiment indicated that our blood can also smell. Bizarre, isn't it? To reach this conclusion, the researchers placed blood cells in a chamber and added an odor component to the mixture. Believe it or not, the blood cells moved toward the odor.

And it's not just the blood that can detect odors, no! Sperm also seems to do the same thing! Research indicates that male reproductive cells use their odor receptors to reach the egg. Apparently, we're much more efficient than we thought, huh!

2 - The Synapses

The brain is a spectacular organ that basically controls everything you do and even what you are. The organ is so complex that science is far from being able to say that it knows all about it, so every new discovery is worth celebrating.

For a long time the consensus was that the human brain had 100 billion neurons. More intense study has shown that this number is actually smaller: it appears that we have “only” 86 billion neurons.

The surprising question in neural terms is neither the number of these cells, but the amount of connections made between neurons. These links Science has called the "synapse."

All the time your brain is creating new synapses, and if it's easier for you to understand the immensity of the thing using numbers, let's go to them: your brain is capable of producing 100 trillion synapses - just to give you an idea, that number is a thousand times the number of stars in the Milky Way.

If it is not yet easy to understand the power of the machine you carry inside your skull, be aware that in 2013 German and Japanese scientists tried to build a machine that could simulate the power of the human brain. This required 82, 944 processors, and it took 40 minutes to archive the same amount of information the brain processes in one second.

3 - Your ear is a thermometer

We have evolved to better adapt to our surroundings, and it seems that even our ears over time have begun to acquire functions other than the basic listening.

The shape of the human ear, with so many folds, is not just a matter of style, but a shape our body has found to better conduct the sound waves around us so that we can identify the direction of the sound that comes to us. What many people have no idea is that, by ear, we can hear the temperature. Yes, you read that right: listen to the temperature.

This concept may seem a little too synaesthetic, but an experiment in Britain found that participants could tell if a cup of tea contained the hot or cold drink just by listening to the noise of the liquid being poured.

The test results showed that 96% of volunteers were able to pinpoint whether the tea was hot or cold. Some believe that this is due to differences in viscosity between hot and cold tea, as the molecules of the iced liquid are less energetic - this makes the hot tea, when poured into the cup, make a softer noise that without without even realizing it, we can distinguish thanks to our powerful ears.

4 - Acid, acid, acid, very acid

The digestion process involves an absurd amount of hydrochloric acid that melts the food you eat. This acid is extremely corrosive - capable of corroding steel just to give you an idea - and yet we live with that kind of substance within ourselves. How does this acid not melt us either?

Well ... In fact, it melts us, yes. Fortunately, our stomach is able to regenerate over and over again - whew! The truth is that the stomach is made up of special cells that secrete a protein that can protect us from this acid bath.

It works like this: Once the food is digested, the stomach cells neutralize the effect of the acid, turning it into an alkaline material. So the digested food does not pass through the intestines burning everything and your stomach does not melt.

The weird thing about this whole thing is that even the best stomach protection can't rid the organ of corrosion. Doses of hydrochloric acid are slowly eating you up. Every three days the membrane lining your stomach is replaced with a new one, that is: the skin on your stomach is completely eroded twice a week and is reborn at the end of each process.

5 - Cancer

You can maintain some healthy habits, such as not smoking, exercising, and trying to maintain a balanced diet, but women are 38% more likely to develop cancer - in men, the odds rise to 43%.

The odds are so high because, unfortunately, our bodies contribute to the development of the disease, which arises when a cell is damaged so that its DNA is altered and programmed to kill it. Frighteningly, this happens in an absurd proportion: each of the many trillion cells in your body can suffer thousands of injuries a day. Your body is practically a time bomb.

Biologically intelligent we are, our bodies rely on the help of some enzymes that monitor the DNA of our cells in an attempt to make it healthy and not self-destructive. These enzymes can identify cellular errors and, fortunately, most of the time, get the job done and reconstruct everything before these changes turn into disease.

The fact that some people develop cancer proves to us that this regeneration system is not the most effective of all, but it is still a relief to know that we have it.

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So, did you already know these adventures of your body? Which one made you stand up straight? Tell us in the comments!