Getting to the heart of the matter

The following text is originally lifted from the trivia section of The Jakarta Post dated Monday, 19 November 2007.

~Compiled from various sources~

• The average human heart beats about 100,000 times every 24 hours. In a 70-year lifetime, the heart beats more than 2.5 billion times.
• A woman’s heart beats faster than a man’s.
• The human heart creates enough pressure to squirt blood nine metres out of the body.
• The valves of the human heart are as thick as a single piece of tissue paper.
• The aorta, which is the largest artery located in the body, is about the diameter of a garden house.
• The average person takes from 12 to 18 breaths per minute.
• The right lung takes in more air than the left lung.
• The left lung is smaller than the right lung to make room for the heart.
• The brain has no sensation of pain, even when it is cut.
• The average brain comprises 2 percent of a person’s total body weight. Yet it requires 25 percent of all oxygen used by the body, as opposed to 12 percent used by kidneys and 7 percent by the heart.
• There are 100 billion neurons in the human brain. Each neuron is linked to hundreds of other neurons.
• Electrical simulation in certain areas of the brain can revive long lost memories.
• Your brain is more active and thinks more at night than during the day.
• The arteries and veins surrounding the brain stem called the “circle of Willis” looks like a stick person with a large head.
• The brain is 80 percent water.
• Your brain has the relative consistency of oatmeal.
• Humans begin losing brain cells at the age of 21.
• The Neanderthal’s brain was bigger than your is.
• The short-term memory capacity for most people is between five and nine items or digits.
• The human brain stops growing at age 18.
• The skin weighs twice as much as the brain.
• The storage capacity of the human brain is about four terabytes (4,000 gigabytes).
• The average brain weighs 1.35 kg, but about 1kg of that is water.
• The soft mass of the adult brain is motionless. Though it consumes up to 25 percent of the blood’s oxygen supply, it does not grow, divide or contract.
• Nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as 270 khp.
• The stomach can break down goat’s milk than cow’s milk.
• It takes the stomach an hour to break down cow’s milk.
• The stomach of an adult can hold 1.5 litres of material.
• There are 35 million digestive glands in the stomach.
• Every day the human stomach produces about two litres of hydrochloric acid.
• Even if you eat food standing on your head, the food will still end up in your stomach.